February 3, 2011
Egyptian Presidential Palace
As We Wait for the Tsar to Abdicate
The past week as I have watched events unfold in Egypt and other parts of the Islamic world, I have had the same overpowering, sick sense I used to have reading history books, when I got to the brink of appalling, catastrophic events--whose consequences few men of that time could even imagine. It's natural enough to expect a basic continuity in life, to think in times of prosperity and peace that these conditions are impregnable, the baseline "norm" of human life, to which wars, famines, tyrannies, fanatical persecutions and blood purges are brutal, eccentric interruptions.
There is no other attitude to have, when you have grown up in a wealthy nation at peace--one that dominates world events (the U.S.) or lives largely disarmed as its friendly dependent (Western Europe). Apart from relatively minor conflicts like Vietnam, the West has enjoyed such a peace for almost 70 years: a lifetime, and time for two (nearly three) new generations to have been born. That isn't as long as the great "truce" that prevailed in Europe from the fall of Napoleon in 1815 till August 1914, but we have managed to become quite as complacent.
I fear that what we are watching now occur throughout the Arab world is of the same order as the buildup to World War I. If you read history books, and scan the diplomatic correspondence that preceded the rush to war, or the comments by public figures, or the statements in the press of France, England, Germany, Austria, or Russia, you will see that almost no one imagined the apocalyptic violence that would overwhelm the continent. (Pope Pius X did--but no one listened to that old "fool.") Secure in the order that had in most places (outside France and Russia) remained secure since 1848, the men who led these nations blithely assumed that the war on which they embarked would last at most a matter of months, and end in the transfer of a few provinces here and there. Austria would "humble" Serbia. France would regain Alsace-Lorraine. Russia would keep up her prestige as defender of the Slavs. Britain would defend Belgian neutrality, and preserve the balance of power on the Continent. Germany would gain influence in the Near East, and build a fleet to rival Britain's. Each of the nations that declared war began with limited, rational aims. Once the great gears of the war machines began turning, their momentum grew ever faster, and the logic of total, modern war demanded actions that would have seemed inconceivable in 1913. Christian monarchies used pesticides to poison each other's troops. Fleets closed ports with the full intent of starving civilians by the millions. Troops shelled ancient cathedrals. Imperfect, but serviceable regimes that had held for centuries were suddenly discredited, and would soon be replaced by ideological cranks with utopian programs that would claim the lives of still more millions.
One reader commented generously on my last piece about Egypt, pointing out I wrote about historical events of 100 years ago with such emotion, it almost feels as I were an eyewitness. He's all too close to the mark. Sometimes, of late, I've felt as if I were an Austrian in August 1914, watching the fragile order of a fundamentally good society dancing on the brink of destruction. But perhaps that's an exaggeration. The United States is still some ways away from the kind of ruin that fell on Central Europe in the wake of the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary.
Perhaps a better metaphor is this: Westerners watching the fall of imperfect, autocratic regimes in the Middle East are like Englishmen reading in newspapers of the abdication of the Tsar. All around us, fatuous liberals (like that excitable Yank, Woodrow Wilson) are venting their glee at the end of the Okhrana, the refusal of the Cossacks to fire on the crowd, the opening of the (rather mild) Tsarist jails, the release of political prisoners and their arrival in St. Petersburg. While comrades Lenin, and Trotsky, and Stalin mount the rostrum, the liberals assure us that they lack the support of the people. True, they are tightly organized, fanatically dedicated, and armed for combat. True, in the midst of chaos, they are the only group that clearly knows what it wants and how to get it. But surely an organization this fanatical, this out of touch with how the "real," modern world works, can never win the allegiance of millions of people. Once the autocratic system that has been repressing the popular will is removed, it will become clear that what the oppressed masses of this country want... is exactly what we modern Englishmen want: a little plot of land where they can grow their vegetables, their rights under Common Law, and a decent cup of tea.
