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11/16/2006
A Century of Conflict
Niall Ferguson is Harvard Professor of History and Senior
Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His
latest book is “The War of the World.”
In the Sept./Oct. issue of Foreign Affairs, he looks back, and
ahead, at our chaotic world.
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“In 1898, H.G. Wells wrote ‘The War of the Worlds,’ a novel
that imagined the destruction of a great city and the
extermination of its inhabitants by ruthless invaders. The
invaders in Wells’ story were, of course, Martians. But no aliens
were needed to make such devastation a reality. In the decades
that followed the book’s publication, human beings repeatedly
played the part of the inhuman marauders, devastating city after
city in what may justly be regarded as a single hundred-year ‘war
of the world.’”
Over nine million killed in World War I. 59 million in World
War II. “By one estimate, there were 16 conflicts throughout the
last century that cost more than a million lives, a further six that
claimed between 500,000 and a million and 14 that killed
between 250,000 and 500,000. In all, between 167 million and
188 million people died because of organized violence in the
twentieth century – as many as one in every 22 deaths in that
period.”
While all this carnage was taking place, per capita GDP
quadrupled, but much of the worst violence involved the
wealthier nations. “The chief lesson of the twentieth century is
that countries can provide their citizens with wealth, longevity,
literacy, and even democracy but still descend into lethal
conflict.”
But a common explanation, economic crises, can’t explain all the
bloodshed. For instance, it’s too easy to just say the Great
Depression had a lot to do with the outbreak of World War II.
As Niall Ferguson writes, “Nazi Germany started the war in
Europe only after its economy had recovered .In fact, no
general relationship between economics and conflict is
discernible for the century as a whole.”
Ferguson:
“And as tempting as it is to blame tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin,
and Mao for the century’s bloodletting, to do so is to repeat the
error on which Leo Tolstoy heaped so much scorn in ‘War and
Peace.’ Megalomaniacs may order men to invade Russia, but
why do the men obey?”
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“Three factors explain the timing and the location of the extreme
violence of the twentieth century: ethnic disintegration,
economic volatility, and empires in decline.”
While conflict in multiethnic societies is not inevitable,
“assimilation can be violently reversed. Before World War I,
four dynasties – the Hapsburg, the Hohenzollern, the Ottoman,
and the Romanov – had governed central and eastern Europe.
Such regimes cared less about their subjects’ nationality than
about their subjects’ loyalty.”
But the map was redrawn and “As a result, in Czechoslovakia,
Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia, the majority population in
each accounted for less than 80 percent of the total population.
Ethnic minorities in such countries suddenly found themselves
treated as second-class citizens .
“Economic volatility exacerbated political frictions .From the
mid-1920s to the mid-1930s, stock markets also experienced
their highest levels of volatility of the century. Although it is
obvious that low growth or a recession contributes to social
instability, rapid growth can also be destabilizing. This is
especially true in multiethnic societies, where booms can appear
to benefit market-dominant minorities disproportionately, such as
the Armenians in Turkey in the early 1900s or the Jews in central
and eastern Europe. When booms turn to busts, the prosperous
minority can become the target of reprisals by the impoverished
majority .
“The critical third factor determining both the location and the
timing of twentieth-century violence was the decline and fall of
empires .
“In 1913, around 65 percent of the world’s land and 82 percent
of its population were under some kind of imperial rule.”
But then they all quickly dissolved; the Qing dynasty in China,
the Romanovs, Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns and the Ottomans.
Then the British, Dutch, and French empires in Asia were done
in by imperial Japan.
Niall Ferguson:
“Violence is most likely to occur as empires decline. The late
Romans understood well the unpleasantness associated with
imperial dissolution. Modern commentators, on the other hand,
have generally been too eager to see empires end and too
credulous about the benefits of ‘self-determination’ to realize the
potentially high costs of any transition from a multiethnic polity
to a homogeneous one. As imperial authority crumbles, local
elites compete for the perquisites of power .From the point of
view of minorities, the prospect of a new political order can be
deeply alarming; members of a minority group that has
collaborated with the imperial power frequently find that the
empire’s disappearance leaves them vulnerable to reprisals.”
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One example of the extreme economic volatility that Ferguson
speaks of is Iraq. During the last year of Saddam Hussein’s
reign, real GDP declined 8 percent. But in 2003 it plummeted by
more than 40 percent, then soared 46 percent in 2004; only to
rise just 4 percent in 2005. Changes in the oil price, and
production, have led to the wild swings. Other countries in the
Middle East, such as Iran, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have also
experienced similar volatility.
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Finally, Niall Ferguson comments on “The Fire Next Time”.
“What makes the escalating civil war in Iraq so disturbing is that
it has the potential to spill over into neighboring countries. The
Iranian government is already taking more than a casual interest
in the politics of post-Saddam Iraq. And yet Iran, with its Sunni
and Kurdish minorities, is no more homogeneous than Iraq.
Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria cannot be expected to look on
insouciantly if the Sunni minority in central Iraq begins to lose
out to what may seem to be an Iranian-backed tyranny of the
majority .
“The obvious conclusion is that a new ‘war of the world’ may
already be brewing in a region that, incredible though it may
seem, has yet to sate its appetite for violence. And the
ramifications of such a Middle Eastern conflagration would be
truly global .
“If the history of the twentieth century is any guide, only
economic stabilization and a credible reassertion of U.S.
authority are likely to halt the drift toward chaos. Neither is a
likely prospect. On the contrary, the speed with which
responsibility for security in Iraq is being handed over to the
predominantly Shiite and Kurdish security forces may accelerate
the descent into internecine strife .
“The war of the worlds that H.G. Wells imagined never came to
pass. But a war of the world did. The sobering possibility we
urgently need to confront is that another global conflict is
brewing today – centered not on Poland or Manchuria, but more
likely on Palestine and Mesopotamia.”
Hott Spotts will return November 30. Happy Thanksgiving.
Brian Trumbore
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