June 3, 2015

Finest Hour 101, Winter 1998-99

Page 26

We often seek in Churchill’s experience the answers to modern problems he never had to consider, but on which he may have left some guidelines. This thoughtful exchange occurred on our Internet forum a year ago, during one of the periodic Iraq outbursts. We filed it for publication after the next outburst, which involved the recent AngloAmerican action over that country, the results of which are suggested on page 5 in our “quote of the season.” -Ed.

THE FUTILITY OF SANCTIONS

Charles Montgomery <[email protected]>

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Churchill’s Arms and the Covenant (London: 1938) offers many comments relative to the Iraq situation—not all of them by Churchill. For instance, on 18 May 1934, in the wake of Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia, Stanley Baldwin commented about sanctions used against aggressor states: “There is no such thing as a sanction that will work that does not mean war.” (146)

Sanctions without war were as unsuccessful against Mussolini as they were later against Hitler: on 18 June 1936 the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, said in the House of Commons:

Whatever view we take of the course of action which the League should follow [upon German aggression] there is one fact upon which we must, of course, be agreed. We have to admit that the purpose for which the sanctions were imposed has not been realized. (345).

Sanctions are an easy alternative to serious action, which appeal to politicians who base their decisions on opinion polls, or who refrain from applying more serious correctives out of fear of public or press reaction. A passage showing Churchill’s commitment to principle, regardless of political or press attacks, occurs in this book in his speech of 20 July 1936. He was speaking of course of how Britain should deal with an aggressive Nazi Germany. Let us admit at the outset that Saddam Hussein is no Hitler; but Churchill’s political philosophy is no less worthy of reflection in respect to the Iraq problem today:

I believe that in dangerous times, once public danger is made known, we should be found not less worthy of the handling of confidential matters than were the rugged generations which built up this island’s greatness. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be absolutely stultified…and proved to be an alarmist. I would endure with patience the roar of exultation that would go up when I was proved wrong, because it would lift a load off my heart and the hearts of many Members. What does it matter who gets exposed or discomfited? If the country is safe, who cares for individual politicians, in or out of office? (354)

In contrast to this attitude was Baldwin’s response to Churchill’s speech on “The Locust Years” on 12 November 1936, which will be familiar to readers of the news in 1998:

My position as the leader of a great party was not altogether a comfortable one. I asked myself what chance was there…of that feeling being so changed that the country would give a mandate for rearmament? Supposing I had gone to the country and said that Germany was rearming and that we must rearm, does anybody think that this pacific democracy would have rallied to that cry at the moment? I cannot think of anything that would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more certain. (385-86)

Baldwin was saying that the loss of an election was more important than the safety of the nation. In all the Parliamentary exchanges over rearmament, that was certainly the most damning of any speaker.

How often in reading books like Arms and the Covenant I am reminded that politicians learn little from history, continuing to make decisions based on polls and self-aggrandizement; and even in some cases self-preservation. One of the things that made Churchill great was that he was committed to principle. He continued to speak out when he saw his country heading towards trouble, even in the face of terrible “ratings” or negative opinion polls. As Alistair Cooke remarked, recalling those years: “I imagine that most of us here would like to think that, had we been in Britain in say 1934-36, we should certainly have been on Churchill’s side. We’d have said, ‘Yes, it’s true about the German air force.’ In fact I don’t think ten percent of us would have been with him.” (Proceedings of the Churchill Societies, 1988-89).

George F. Will, a longtime Churchill Center member, wrote in his column on 16 February 1998:

If Saddam’s arsenal is as dangerous as the [American] Administration’s hot rhetoric asserts…the Administration should be making the case for commensurate measures, meaning measures designed to remove him. Such measures could include indicting him as a war criminal, recognizing a provisional government in exile and funding it with Iraq’s frozen assets, stripping his regime of its UN seat, and most important, using ground forces to occupy sparsely populated southern Iraq, which includes the nation’s largest oil field….During four decades of Cold War, the United States, while waiting for the Soviet regime to change, largely deterred and contained that regime, which was potentially far more dangerous than Iraq is. Granted, Saddam’s Iraq can be more regionally destabilizing than the Soviet Union was, and chemical and biological weapons have terrorist applications that it is all too easy to see him countenancing. Still, Saddam was deterred from using such weapons in the Gulf War by U.S. threats of massive retaliation.

SANCTIONS HAVE THEIR PLACE

Robert Shepherd <[email protected]>;

George Will’s formulations are the first I’ve seen with a Churchillian cast: military containment on the ground as well as the air, coupled with the threat of massive retaliation should doomsday weapons be used by the enemy. (Churchill once remarked that the irony of the hydrogen bomb was that its very terror made Armageddon less likely.) Unfortunately, bringing democratic nations around to Will’s recommendations requires leadership and persuasive diplomacy of the kind that seems in short supply at present. Air strikes which accomplish nothing permanent are a cheap way out, and will no doubt be confirmed through government-by-focus-group. It seems that “leaders of great parties” do worry about being “exposed or discomfited”; or fear to act lest they make the loss of elections more certain.

But what about South Africa? We did not have to go to war in that case, over apartheid, nor was there any serious use of a threat of war—none at all! The world used economic sanctions, which some would say were a weak slap on the wrist. But the fact is, those sanctions (divestment, etc.) represented a strong, steady, potent pressure against a determined regime that ultimately accepted the will of the world.

Other cases of an international cold shoulder have led to such successful outcomes as the political “relaxation” of the former dictatorships in Portugal and Greece. Both those countries were eager to join the European Community. The “carrot and stick” in these instances were economic—and they worked without the use of any threat of war whatsoever.

As for remaining indifferent to the opinion of those who lack our principles, we certainly honor Churchill for that (at times). But isn’t being indifferent to the opinion of others with contrary principles the whole problem we have with Saddam Hussein to begin with? We praise Churchill’s indifference to political and press attacks on his beliefs (amazing, isn’t it—a politician who truly believed in a cause and purpose for his country?). But the experience of the West with Iraq involves a man with remarkable indifference to (western) military, political and press attacks on him or his regime.

We can certainly stand in a respectful awe of Churchill for his perseverance, even stubbornness, in the face of united opposition. Yet it is not his stubbornness alone that merits respect, but also his values and ideals on behalf of which that stubbornness was expended. After all, the bad guys can be stubborn, too.

REBUTTALS

Mr. Montgomery:
The examples you give for cases where sanctions worked without threat of war all involve countries (Greece, South Africa, Portugal) that had not engaged in warlike activities. The quotes from Arms and the Covenant referred to Mussolini after his invasion of Abyssinia. Iraq/ Saddam has previously shown it/he was predisposed to war and would be stopped by nothing less. Sanctions didn’t work against Japan (which had invaded Manchuria in the 1930s), or against Red China or the USSR during major incidents in the Cold War. The most drastic sanctions, such as total blockade and declaration of war, had no effect on Germany in 1914 or 1939, or for that matter on the Southern Confederacy in 1860.

Peaceful countries engaged in domestic wrongdoing are susceptible to sanctions. But can you show one case where sanctions caused a country which had invaded another, or previously engaged in warlike behavior, to give up or withdraw from conquered land or to radically change its behavior?

Mr. Shepherd:
If I follow the argument correctly, countries susceptible to sanctions would have to include mostly, or at least characteristically, peaceful countries with a tendency to or leaning toward democracy; or without an entrenched predisposition to war, or readiness to fight; or regimes engaged in domestic wrongdoing (but excluding the Confederacy in I860 and Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s)? I believe there is a danger in being too dismissive of the power of economics. Some of America’s “founding fathers” wrote about the power of commerce and economic self-interest in moderating the effects of a fanatical or warlike spirit. A generation later, Alexis de Tocqueville said similar things in greater depth.

As an example of the success of sanctions against a warlike country, consider the evolution of Vietnam since the mid-1980s, which has been more favorable, from the Western standpoint, than during the wars fought to promote that evolution from the 1940s to the mid-1970s. Vietnam reminds me of Aesop’s fable of the Sun and the Wind, arguing who was the stronger—which could make the man remove his coat. The Wind blew and blew and only made the man clutch his coat tighter. The Sun benignly shone his mild, mellow warmth and the man took off his coat. The moral was that fierceness and belligerence are sometimes less effective than patience and steadiness.

With Vietnam, according to some commentators, there has indeed been a radical, though gradual, change in behavior, despite its previous predisposition to war and conquest, whether in self-interest and self-determination (as when they invaded Cambodia to stop the Killing Fields of Pol Pot in the late 1970s). The Vietnamese proved not immune to the profit motive, and their desire for prosperity ultimately outlasted their Communist fundamentalism.

Now we are seeing similar discussions about Cuba. They didn’t mind being outcasts and pariahs as long as the Soviet Union was doling out largesse. Today it’s a different story. The Pope was allowed to come and lecture and scold, and he was still thanked profusely for just coming. Maybe even the Cuban rulers were acknowledging, however obliquely, the truth of the Pope’s criticisms.

Editor’s note: If we may now play the devil’s advocate: so would the Churchillian policy with respect to Iraq be simply a period of “benign neglect,” in Kissinger’s phrase? And what if that gives them enough time to develop a missile filled with typhus, and the means to deliver it? Reader comment is invited.