When Bad History Leads to Bad Politics: ‘The Graveyard of Empires’

When a major political event happens, politicians and scholars usually cram desperately to fit the event into a simple framework: ideological, historical, or another type. Sometimes this is done to explain the events in a general pattern. Alternatively, it is done to fit the event into a set worldview (something often done by politicians). ‘The Graveyard of Empires’ is one such example of a thesis used to explain political events. This theory has been an essential part of the Western understanding of Afghanistan since its conception in 2001 by Milton Bearden. Bearden, reflecting mainly on the experiences of the British and Soviet Empires, asserted that the unruly geography and peoples of the country made any imperial project in Afghanistan doomed to fail. Contextually, he wrote this thesis around the start of the US invasion as a warning for the dangers of US intervention in the country, a warning that has formed a crucial part of the Western understanding of Afghanistan. President Biden, for instance, directly used the thesis to explain why his withdrawal of US troops was necessary. In his speech recently he echoed Bearden and attributed the clear failure of US statecraft in Afghanistan to the ungovernable nature of the land itself.

There are multiple issues here, all stemming from one major problem that is often overlooked: the thesis is not true. Afghanistan, over its history, has not been a ‘Graveyard of Empires’, indeed it has been far from it. Professor Alexander Hainy-Khaleeli has shown how the country was the heartland of many great empires across history, including even empires often used as supporting evidence for proponents of Bearden’s thesis. Alexander the Great’s empire, used by Bearden as an example in favour of his argument, successfully ruled Afghanistan for over one hundred years, and the often-cited British experience ignores the broad success of British policy after the Third Afghan War. When imperial missions did fail, it was not due to the overriding lawlessness of the Afghan terrain or peoples but instead a variety of case-specific factors.

Thus, Bearden’s thesis is a case of bad history, with Afghanistan’s past stuffed into an overly simplistic historical framework. Its usage by politicians is therefore problematic, as it means public policy and discourse is based on incorrect perceptions and knowledge. For example, by describing Afghanistan as ‘the Graveyard of Empires’, Biden oversimplifies the complex failure of the American project in Afghanistan. It assumes that the failure of American statecraft is not a failure of Washington but a result of Afghanistan’s unique nature. By imposing Bearden’s framework, it assumes no imperial policy in Afghanistan could ever be successful regardless of what the imperial power does. Biden’s speech was overwhelmingly centred around this idea – an inevitability of failure that no policy of his could ever rectify.

US and UK troops leaving Afghanistan. (Credit: U.S. Department of Defence)

This has three significant implications, demonstrating the danger of basing politics on flawed historical theory. Firstly, it stifles the development of effective policy. When addressing an issue that you deem impossible to benefit from, policy becomes solely about mitigation. Biden’s long-held belief that the US was doomed to fail in Afghanistan in line with Bearden’s thesis means that he has approached Afghanistan from a position that the US needed to leave the ‘graveyard’ irrespective of the consequences, explaining, for instance, the unnecessary withdrawal of American contractors that led to the complete collapse of the Afghan army. It also explains the frantic nature of the evacuation effort because the clear urge to withdraw as soon as possible meant that there was little planning for, say, the evacuation of the Afghans who had helped US personnel.

Further, through basing politics on a largely flawed historical framework, there is a real possibility that we will not learn the correct lessons from the Afghan war. By attributing blame for the operation’s failures on the nature of Afghanistan and not bad policy, the US risks failing to understand the reasons for the failures in the country over the last twenty years, and thus fail to make the necessary changes. In an era where the American Empire is under threat from another would-be hegemony China, failing to learn the correct lessons could be costly. As such, it is more important than ever that the US takes a nuanced look at its role and activity in the global system, which will be significantly hindered by viewing its largest single project over the last two decades through an overly simplified and ignorant framework.

Finally, the oversimplification of Afghanistan and the blaming of it for the West’s failures is deeply immoral. The graveyard thesis crams Afghan history into how it relates to predominantly European Empires, denying it credit outside the framework of imperial history. In reality, Afghanistan has had a fascinating and proud history outside of its relations with the European powers, and thus the promulgation of this thesis risks making discourse around Afghanistan incredibly demeaning. Moreover, calling it the ‘Graveyard of Empires’ suggests that the primary victims of imperial projects in the country are the Empires – British, Soviet, and now American – and not the people of Afghanistan. The country’s people have faced endless war and persecution due to Imperial ends and are the actual victims of the country’s recent past. By framing Afghan history as a one of imperial failure, political discourse is prejudiced in favour of the West at the expense of the true victims of imperial policy.

These are, unfortunately, inevitable consequences of applying a single and incorrect historical framework to contemporary politics: it can be profoundly immoral but also practically ruinous. Further, it can cloud the judgement of policy makers looking to draw lessons from past failures. As such, while there are good reasons to base politics on history, when that history is incorrect, the results can be ruinous.

Julius Balchin, Summer Writer

Has the United States Fallen Victim to the Graveyard of Empires?

Recent events in Afghanistan have been tinged with a saddening inevitability. After twenty years, the United States are withdrawing from Afghanistan, and in concurrence the Afghan government they propped up has fallen to the Taliban. It seems that everything the US had set out to do in Afghanistan has been undone, and the US’ worldwide reputation has been gravely damaged. A look at Afghanistan’s history makes the events of the last few months seem like a familiar story in the so-called ‘Graveyard of Empires’. This sobriquet has been applied to Afghanistan due to the immense difficulty foreign powers face in trying to completely conquer and administer it.

An American soldier in combat gear. (Credit: Image: The US Army via Creative Commons.)

Afghanistan has proven a difficult challenge for many empires. Alexander the Great’s army suffered immense casualties in taking Afghanistan. During the Muslim conquests, it took two centuries for Arab Muslims to defeat the Zunbils of Afghanistan whereas it had taken only decades for them to bring down the empires which had dominated the Middle East since antiquity. When the Mongols swept through Asia and Europe, they faced strong and effective resistance from the groups living in Afghanistan. The casualties inflicted upon the Mongols included Genghis Khan’s favourite grandson.

In more modern times, the British waged three disastrous Anglo-Afghan wars from 1839 to 1919 while competing with Russia over influence in Central Asia. The most infamous of these conflicts was the Second Anglo-Afghan War, in which the entire British force in Afghanistan— which totalled about 16,000 people— was completely wiped out in their retreat bar one survivor. In the end, the British failed to take Afghanistan, only making pyrrhic gains which were undone following the Third War in 1919.The Russians subsequently also suffered defeat in Afghanistan. In 1979, the USSR invaded Afghanistan to support the newly-established Communist government against insurgents. Like the British, the Soviets suffered heavy casualties against local guerrilla fighters, with their death toll reaching 15,000 with 35,000 wounded by the end of the war. In both instances, the invading forces heavily outnumbered the local fighters and yet they still took huge casualties.

Similar patterns played out in 2001, when a coalition of Western powers, led by the United States invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban government, which had been hosting terrorist groups including Al-Qaeda. Western troops faced difficult resistance from the Taliban, who, once routed, waged war sheltered in fortified Afghan hills, from where they were ultimately unable to dislodge them. And yet, the US, unlike the British or the Russians, was able to take Afghanistan and establish a new government there. Yet this government collapsed eventually and was only ever nominally in control of the entire country. So, to affirm whether the US’ defeat is simply due to the factors which plagued previous invading powers, whether it was a victim of the ‘Graveyard of Empires’, warrants examination of why Afghanistan has been awarded that title.

In conquering and administering Afghanistan, the key challenge is terrain. Afghanistan hosts some of the highest mountains in the world. The Hindu Kush mountain range runs through the country, isolating communities and dotting the map with caves and easily fortifiable positions. This isolation makes it difficult for a central government to have control over local areas. Communities have tribal power structures and local tribal leaders are the power brokers. But this Afghan tribalism is primarily a product of Afghanistan’s vast diversity.

Through the centuries, Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and other ethnic groups have all settled in Afghanistan and thus have produced a very divided nation. Many Afghans identify with their local ethno-cultural group rather than the nation of Afghanistan, which grew out of an eighteenth century empire rather than being formed from nationalist ideas and shared culture such as Italy or Germany. In earlier centuries, diversity resulted in lots of conflict, and so much of rural Afghanistan is heavily fortified. This has been exacerbated due to Afghanistan being in constant state of conflict since the 1970s. And so, Afghanistan is hard to administer, traverse, and conquer, and its people are hard to unite, especially behind a central government such as the US-backed Republic.

These factors may suggest that American failure was inevitable and a prolonged presence in Afghanistan was folly. Yet this is not necessarily the case. Many empires in the past did manage to conquer and administer Afghanistan. Indeed, for most of its history, it has been a part of a foreign empire. It’s more successful rulers, such as the aforementioned Mughals, understood and took advantage of local culture and power relations and governed Afghanistan quite loosely. While the United States did attempt to use local power relations to their advantage, these attempts, such as supporting local warlords, often backfired and undermined confidence in the central government.

But more damagingly, the US’ main focus was to transplant an American-style political system and social structure to a country where it was fundamentally alien. The recent report published by SIGAR— the body which oversaw the US’ reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan— details numerous instances where the Americans in dealing with corruption, solving local disputes, and training the army among other things, assumed that such issues could be dealt with in Afghanistan in the same manner as they would in the United States. The US did construct a more democratic Afghan state and there were improvements under this state, but it was dysfunctional and it would have been perpetually reliant on the US. If the US had been more attuned to local culture, they would have still made an improvement in Afghanistan, which, importantly, would have been far more sustainable. The general difficulties encountered by foreign states in Afghanistan did make administering the country a hard task for the US, but it was their own approach to doing so which led to their failure. The United States has not fallen victim to ‘the Graveyard of Empires’ but rather to a serious deficit in pragmatism.

Jonas Balkus

Temporal over Spiritual Power in the Medieval Church? Part I: Pope Innocent III and the Politicisation of Crusading

The Catholic Church was one of the most powerful entities in Christian Europe in the mid-late medieval period. Commanding the fealty of the majority of Europe, the Church was able to muster vast swathes of men to partake in the religious wars known as ‘The Crusades’. Traditionally, these Crusades had been used to unite men from Christian nations against Islamic forces, first against the Saracens who had conquered Jerusalem, and later the Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula during the centuries-long Reconquista. Under the influence of Pope Innocent III and his successors, however, the limits of what the Pope could call Crusades against began to expand, first to a broader definition of the enemies of Christendom, and later, perhaps more cynically, to any enemies of the papacy, regardless of their creed.

Ascending to the papacy at the end of the twelfth century, Lotario di Segni, who would take the name Innocent III, was arguably the most powerful medieval pope of them all. Presiding over the Catholic Church at the height of its power, Innocent sought to greatly increase the temporal power of the Church and establish its pre-eminence over all secular nations. Although he would be responsible for a great many accomplishments during his tenure as Pope, it is perhaps in his part in the changing and expanding role of Crusades that was his most striking legacy in the centuries following his death. His firm belief in ‘papal primacy’ and his desire to increase the temporal power of the papacy, combined with the recent fall of Jerusalem to Saracen forces in 1187, made for fertile soil in which an interest in crusading could take root. He began to draw up plans for the Fourth Crusade within a year of his appointment, issuing the papal bull Post miserabile to this effect. Criticising the current state of affairs in Europe, the bull called for a new crusade to retake the Holy Land. At this time, Christian Europe was riven by civil conflict. War between England and France had broken out once again, with the papacy’s typically closest ally, the Holy Roman Empire, estranged and undergoing its own succession crisis. As a result of this, the call for a Crusade against external forces served as a papal attempt to unify the forces of Christendom against a foreign enemy, emphasising the increasingly political nature of crusading under Innocent III.

Pope Innocent III. *(Credit: Martin Kuilman via Flickr*)

However, despite the fact that the Fourth Crusade had rampaged through Christian lands, including the port city of Zara, culminating in the sack of Constantinople, this had not been the intention of the papacy at the Crusade’s inception. Instead, it was the Cathars of Languedoc, in southern France, that would gain the dubious honour of being the first sect of Christianity to be explicitly declared the target of a Crusade by the papacy. Having been declared heretical for their dualist creed in 1176, they had long been a target of Innocent III for their defiance of the papacy. Only a minority in the region, the promise of indulgences to assuage any guilt that the Crusaders may have had about killing innocent, devout Christians alongside Cathars is a clear sign of how the Church increasingly valued the temporal power afforded by the success of the Crusade over any spiritual qualms.

This also set a precedent for a widening scope for Crusades, which went along with the growing power of the papacy in the thirteenth century and its increasing desire to involve itself in the secular as well as the spiritual realm. For the Pope, Crusades became a way to exert dominance over Christian Europe as a whole. Rather than just a unifying force as they had previously been, they swiftly became a way to remove political threats. By declaring those who had earned the ire of the papacy as heretics, this gave the Pope justification under the precedent set by Innocent III to call a Crusade against them. This was first seen little more than a decade after Innocent III’s death, in the papal conflict with the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II of the Hohenstaufen. Differing interpretations of the ‘two swords doctrine’ that defined the relationship between the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy, with Frederick seeing them as equals who attended to separate spheres, whereas the papacy saw itself as the ultimate arbiter over both temporal and spiritual power, with any power held by the Emperor merely granted by the Pope, saw Innocent’s successors call two Crusades against the excommunicated ruler. Although these were risky ventures by the papacy, these Crusades, combined with papal machinations, ultimately resulted in the destruction of the Hohenstaufen and a weakening of the Holy Roman Empire for centuries to come, serving to remind the rest of Europe of the temporal power of the papacy and the supremacy of the Pope in matters both temporal and spiritual.

The legacy that Innocent III left on crusading was profound, with the decisions that he made influencing his successors for generations to come, though he would not live to witness the true extent of the consequences of his actions. The increasing willingness of the papacy to use Crusades to achieve their own personal goals in the name of gaining more temporal power had largely proven useful for the Catholic Church, allowing it to use these Crusades to assert its authority throughout Christian Europe, especially given the loss of all Christian lands in the Holy Land following the fall of Ruad in 1302. However, the reliance on French intervention to end the Albigensian Crusade had strengthened the French monarchy at the expense of the papacy, leaving an indelible mark on the relationship between the French Crown and the papacy. This led to France taking increasing liberties in their relationship with the Church, assured by their own strength in contrast to the other nations of Christian Europe, and by the end of the thirteenth century, this would reach a head, with devastating results for the papacy.

Henry G. Miller, History in Politics Summer Writer

Why Does History Help Explain Geo-Political Conflicts?

The construction of historical narratives and the pedagogic authority they hold has been vital in cultivating a sense of legitimacy with those engaged in violent practices in a geo-political conflict. In fact, these narratives are part of violence itself. Although media and education systems usually hold a significant grip on the dissemination of the teaching and learning of history, displaced and diasporic families have offered important resistance to otherwise dominant versions of history. History becomes the defining factor of national consciousness and therefore legitimacy for that nation state to dominate, kill, plunder and extract.

I believe it important to note that both the dominant imperialist and colonialist nations dominated the education systems where they ruled. The significance of this cannot be understated. Imperialists and colonisers quite clearly wanted more than land and natural resources; they want hegemony. In Ireland, the Irish language was almost completely eradicated by mandatory English-speaking schools. The attempt to integrate colonised peoples into a British identity was not only about dominance but control. In fact, jailed Irish republicans used Irish to communicate covertly. Knowledge of one’s own national history and culture has long been a weapon of the oppressed.

A drawing depicting men and women captured to be sold as slaves. (Credit: WELLCOME IMAGES via. WIKI)

Similarly, history is weaponised in the study of archaeology in Palestine. The discipline has been used as a tool to legitimate colonisation through a history explicitly based on ethnonationalism. The enmeshing of religious history from thousands of years ago with a modern-day nation state’s claim to land is a perfect example of Benedict Anderson’s argument that nationalism is an “imitation of simultaneity across homogenous, empty time”. This claim, however, is overshadowed by the history of the Palestinians who have been dispossessed of their land and of which they have emotional and practical ties to within living memory. These personal histories will be passed down orally through families and will be the spark for resistance to the colonisation process for generations to come.

History can seem like a dry academic investigation of a static past; however, the stage is set for the morality play of history in the mainstream media often. Britain seems to be obsessed with an overly simplistic version its history. When representations are narrow and limited to mostly excavations of world war two, a rare occasion in which Britain made a positive impact through contributing to the defeat of German fascism, it is easy to see how the identity of ‘Britons’ on the world stage can appear as a trans historic moral force to some. This is important to understand how people in the army understand their role as a historical agent and can believe they are doing their duty to a higher moral power, their civic religion: nationalism. It is for this reason that people can participate in imperialist wars such as the invasion of Iraq and keep a personal sense of morality and justice.

Although a new generation is questioning the authority of these narratives. This nationalism is outdated for a country that is home to people from previous colonies of Britain. Eric Williams argues that “the British historians wrote almost as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery for the satisfaction of abolishing it”. In fact, the cultural homogeneity that supports history as national morality play is swiftly broken by the curiosity, doubt and challenge of a new generation. The petition to teach the empirical truth of colonialism has garnered massive support and shows that a new generation will attempt at establishing their own history. The question that lingers is: will this be based on a new kind nationalism?

Finlay Purcell

Why Events in the Gulf Still Matter: Implications of Peace Between Israel and the UAE

There’s a joke that goes as follows: ‘…and on the eighth day, God created the Middle East, and said “let there be breaking news”’. In this constant stream of events it can be hard to distinguish between the important and irrelevant – but make no mistake, mutual recognition between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is as important as it gets.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu making a joint statement with Senior US Presidential Adviser Jared Kushner about the Israeli-United Arab Emirates peace accords, Jerusalem, 30 August 2020. (Credit: Reuters)

With the exception of Israel, every Middle Eastern country is Muslim. More importantly, with the exceptions of Iran and Turkey, every country is Arab. In the early years of the 20th century, this relationship wasn’t contentious – indeed, the first Iraqi Minister of Finance was Jewish. However, Zionism and the Arab reaction to it, in concert with the destabilising effects of latter-stage colonialism, fuelled a rise in animosity and Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948 was met by a declaration of war by its Arab neighbours.

The next 25 years saw two more wars and – in the midst of the Cold War – the US formed a strategy to protect what it viewed as an outpost of Western liberalism. American foreign policy united around providing Israel with a qualitative military edge over other Middle Eastern states. Accordingly, Israel won every major Cold War conflict, and territorial gains they made in these wars forced Arab neighbours to coalesce around a new strategy of ‘land for peace’. This saw Israel return the Sinai to Egypt in 1977 in exchange for recognition, and grant limited Palestinian autonomy in exchange for peace with Jordan in 1994. Eight years later, the Arab League declared that its members would collectively recognise the State of Israel in exchange for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

At the same time, two key events took place. The 1979 revolution in Iran turned a staunch American and Israeli ally into an anti-Western, anti-Arab power and the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 created a regional power vacuum. The last two decades have seen an Iran-Arab cold war across the region. Saudi Arabia, along with its Arab allies, is currently waging a war of influence against Iran across the Middle East. Yemen, Syria and Lebanon in particular bear the fingerprints of this struggle.

Now, for the coup de grace. In 2015, the US signed a deal with Iran, trading sanctions relief in exchange for Iran scaling back its nuclear programme. Israel and the Arab World were united in their fear of Iran and animosity towards the deal, which allowed Iran to funnel more money to proxy groups in the region. President Trump upended America’s approach, seeking to unite Israel and the Arab states by opposing Iranian regional influence. This bipolar strategy enabled the US to bring Israel and the UAE closer together and on August 13th, the two nations signed a deal mutually recognising each other’s existence.

So why the UAE, of all Arab states? In one respect, the Emirates are keen to bolster their military position. The US may be more willing to sell technologically-advanced weapons, including the coveted F-35, to seemingly less belligerent Arab powers. Israel is also a regional leader in technology, which the UAE may stand to benefit from.

Yet the UAE also benefits from its demographics. Nearly 60% of its population are South Asian foreign workers, employed in massive construction projects in Dubai; only 11% are Arab Emirati citizens. This corporate state structure makes the Emirati monarchy highly stable in comparison to its Arab neighbours, who are populated by citizenries that are generally hostile towards Israel.

Saudi Arabia, in particular, will likely wait and see if other Gulf States follow the UAE’s lead before making its own peace deal with Israel. The primary objective of all Arab autocracies is domestic stability, and Saudi Arabia’s conservative Muslim population might view public overtures towards Israel as a sell-out by the state’s monarchy. The Arab populations in Africa are generally less conservative but they make up for it with anti-imperialist sentiment, and would be unlikely to recognise Israel whilst the occupation continues.

This brings us to the one Arab entity that will not be making peace in the near future – Palestine. Arab states have largely given up on the Palestinian cause and instead come to fear Palestinian freedom, lest it bring to power a people’s government that undermines their fragile authoritarian legitimacy. Until recently, Palestinians still had one bargaining chip. Previously, the Arab League had almost unanimously withheld recognition of Israel. When it did come, as in the case of Egypt and Jordan, it was in exchange for significant concessions. Now that the UAE has agreed to recognise Israel with no significant conditions, Palestinian leaders will feel as if the rug has been swept out from under their feet. The UAE has given an official seal of approval to the occupation; expect to see it remain for a long time.

Seth Weisz

Trapped in History: The Plight of Lebanon

The explosion that ripped through Beirut on the evening of the 4th August 2020 is estimated to have had one tenth of the power of an atomic bomb. It immediately left over 300,000 people homeless, and destroyed or damaged more than 70,000 buildings.

By the next morning, the main fire caused by the explosion was mostly extinguished, and a desperate attempt to locate the missing in the ruins of the city was well underway. Scores of people were physically trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings. Metaphorically, most of the country faces a similar snare, trapped under the rubble of a history of broken government and corruption.

An aerial view of the port destroyed after the explosions in August. (Credit: Hussein Malla via AP)

The cause of an explosion of such magnitude can be traced back to a history of negligence and corruption. Some 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, used in explosives and fertilisers, had been stored in a warehouse by the port for over six years, and a fire triggered the substance to explode. Only six months earlier, inspectors had warned that the ammonium nitrate could “blow up the whole of Beirut”. Between the ammonium nitrate being seized from a boat heading to Mozambique and the explosion, six letters were sent from the director of customs to a judge warning of the dangers of the substance and asking for instructions on how to handle it. Both Lebanon’s prime minister and president were informed of explosives at the port in July.

Prime Minister Hassan Diab called the storage of such a substance ‘unacceptable’, and President Michel Aoun has insisted an investigation will take place whilst at the same time rejecting an international inquiry. It is clear that, whoever the blame eventually lands on, the government will not be the culprit.

The neglect and dismissal of such concerns could be expected in a government with a history of serving its own interests over that of the population. In theory, the political system, a product of colonial rule, represents all religious groups within the government. However, in practice, it causes much divide and delays over decision making, and is well suited to political patronage and money laundering. This system traps those it claims to serve in economic hardship, and only benefits those directly connected with the government.

Colonial rule contributed to the formation of Lebanon along the lines of various people groups, and its Civil War 1975-1990 gave military warlords a hold on government that has never truly been severed. Once combined with external influence that remains prominent in Lebanon, from Iran and Palestine to Israel and the United States, it is clear the people of Lebanon are trapped in a history that offers them next to no priority or say.

The Lebanese government is just as aware of these trappings – and can exploit them for their own purpose. The rebirthing of the same corrupt government under a different face has been occurring for years. In February 2005, when the former prime minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated, hope for a new political government was quickly dashed. Similarly, in October 2019 when the former prime minister resigned following mass protests over a newly introduced tax on WhatsApp, there were promises within the government of change, that came to nothing. Such occurrences reaffirm that the recent resignation of the cabinet will do nothing to free the country from corruption – the same members of government will stay on in caretaker form and find new roles within a new government they can still control, whilst making promises that change is coming.

Lebanon is now facing a great humanitarian and economic crisis, with 25% of the country in extreme poverty, and the failed state having defaulted on its loans in March. The government is aware that they can keep a hold of power, and the people are aware they are trapped. Protests are already thinning and the cycle continues.

Maddy Burt