"Peace operations are not so much part of a new world order, but the resurrection of the old world order which was temporarily suspended during the Cold War." (P.211)

So concludes Douglas Porch on the last page of his lavishly illustrated book, Wars of Empire. Porch is being intentionally provocative. His conclusion, therefore, does not mean all of what it says. Porch never really argues his case. At no point does he compare one of the wars of empire with one of the recent humanitarian operations, so as to show the reader the points of continuity and discontinuity. Surely the 1994 French intervention during the Rwandan genocide, Opération Turquiose, was not the same as the 1873-4 Ashanti campaign by the British.

Thus the challenge of reading Wars of Empire is to absorb the stories that Porch does tell about European imperial expansion and then to extract from them both the similarities and differences between yesterday's wars of empire and today's humanitarian operations.

Imperial Age of Empires (1394 - 1700)

As Porch has organized his analysis, this first period of four sets the stage. Porch emphasizes the way in which trade led the Europeans to exploration and discovery and then to conquest and empire. Except in the New World these conquests were initially minimal, amounting to the establishment of a string of "factories" at strategic points along the coasts of Africa and Asia. In North and South America the conquests were much more extensive, especially by the Spanish. These conquests were greatly facilitated by the toll that Old World diseases took on New World peoples (p18). In both cases, a certain greed and ruthlessness was required, but as Porch points out, the Europeans held no technological advantage in land warfare to account for their successes. The unmatched superiority of their ships gave them an unequalled strategic mobility - the ability to project power and to protect and reinforce these scattered factories by sea when besieged by land.

European command of the sea meant that the Europeans could always bring the fight to the indigenous peoples, while the indigenous peoples were never able to bring the fight to the Europeans. This is the first and perhaps the most important similarity between the imperial wars of yesterday and the humanitarian operations of today: the economic and technological might that produces command of air and sea meant that the French forces could easily deploy to Rwanda during Opération Turquiose, while no possibility ever existed of the Hutu forces deploying to France.

Colonial Warfare in the Pre-Industrial Age (1700 - 1870)

What sets the second period off from the first was a spectacular growth in trade, propelled by an insatiable European demand for spices, gold, sugar, tobacco, coffee, tea, palm oil, and opium, this last for sale in China. An unfortunate side effect of global trade was increased political instability in Africa and Asia. Political instability among indigenous peoples was exacerbated by the way in which European rivalries and wars became world wide during the eighteenth century, with the conquest and re-conquest of colonies becoming an increasing adjunct to the battles in Europe proper. To cope with this instability or to beat out rivals, ambitious and independent-minded officers in the colonies eagerly claimed increasingly large portions of the world for the mother country (p18; 50-1). Again, Porch emphasizes that the Europeans held no technological advantage in land warfare over indigenous forces during this period.

As important as organizational and naval technologies were, they cannot by themselves account for the success of European arms against indigenous forces. Indeed, the primary reason for European success in these colonial wars had nothing to do with matters military. Rather, it was the lack of social solidarity and political cohesion among the indigenous peoples. Riven by all sorts of geographic, tribal, ethnic, cast, or clan disputes, the indigenous societies were easily divided and conquered by the Europeans. Always able to find ready allies and willing local recruits, the Europeans were able to compensate for their military weakness on land. Consequently, what finally accounts for European success of arms is indigenous weakness and the lack of solidarity in the face of the European threat: "...their bonds of common culture weak, a unified response based upon a shared sense of self-interest, when it could be mustered, seldom survived the first military debacle." (p140; 21-3; 139) Indigenous societies lacked a national spirit during a time when only a unified nation would have been strong enough to fend off European encroachments. A national spirit - what the Europeans came to call nationalism - was what separated the conquerors from the conquered during this period.

The Renaissance of Imperialism (1870 to 1905)

This period was the high point of Europe's mission civilizatrice, also known as the white man's burden. Idealists throughout Europe sincerely proclaimed the virtues of free trade, Christianity, science, and European administrative skills, which would bring peace, order, and civilization to the rest of the world, "Through imperialism, poverty would be transformed into prosperity, the savage would be saved, superstition would vanish into enlightenment, and order would be imposed where once only turmoil and barbarism reigned." (p16) The United States and Japan also joined in the imperialist race during this period. This brief period saw the development of an uncontested European military superiority. More important, though, were the developments in railroad transportation, food preservation, sanitation, and logistical abilities in general (p97). When combined with the lack of political cohesion and social solidarity among the indigenous peoples, European armies were now virtually unbeatable.

The only blemish on this idyllic period was the Second South African or Boer War, 1899-1902. Britain won with the aid of the newest military technologies, including the newest of them, the concentration camp. But the cost of victory was very high. For the 116,000 interned in the camps by 1902, 20,000 Boers and 12,000 Africans died, and most of these were children under sixteen (p169; 171). Of the 448,437 British soldiers sent to South Africa, 22,000 died. The costs in both pounds and lives, especially, the lives of children, did not go unnoticed. The adverse publicity prompted J.A. Hobson to invent the term imperialism. The anti-war agitation sparked by excesses of the Second African War demonstrated just how thin public support for colonial and imperial adventures was. The German colonial society boasted only 17,000 members in 1889, and its French counterpart less than half that. Observations such as these lead Porch to remark that,

"Imperialism was not the highest stage of capitalism, as Lenin believed, but the highest stage of nationalism. While imperialists were nationalists, not all nationalists were imperialists. Imperialism's natural constituency was small, confined largely to men of military or journalistic disposition who grasped at empire as an antidote for national decline or as a vision of a new world order." (p 34)

Lacking a deep wellspring of public support, colonial adventures could be continued 1) only if their costs were small and hence easily hidden from the public and 2) if colonial wars were also fought without significant costs in either lives or money. The Second South African War brought this harsh reality home as never before.

This war had been so costly because the Boers had a national spirit. They were motivated by a Boer nationalism that other indigenous peoples lacked at the time and that gave the Boers the social solidarity and political cohesion to resist. The Boers were eventually defeated, but their spirit of nationalism also meant that they were willing to face the greatest hardships and suffer enormous pain, more than the British public was willing to inflict. With the force of nationalism demonstrated, the stage is set for the final phase of Porch's story.

Imperial Twilight? (1905 - present)

This last phase includes both the de-colonialization of the European empires after World War II and Porch's provocation, the "revival of imperialism" after the Cold War through peace and humanitarian assistance operations. Agitation for independence can usually be traced to the aftermath of World War I. However, the fight for independence in colonies of Asia and Africa did not usually begin until sometime after World War II.

Whenever that fight began, the first two of the three reasons for its eventual success should be clear by now: First, the colonial administrations, including the European education provided to the indigenous elite, created the national spirit that had been missing. This newly acquired nationalism provided the social solidarity and political cohesion - at least during the struggle for independence - that made the colony not just unprofitable, but enormously costly (p198-201). Second, with this dramatic increase in costs, public opinion soon tired of imperial glory and demanded an end to the whole business. The metropolitan governments, no matter how attached they were to grandeur and their mission civilizatrice, soon had to admit their inability to impose their imperial will on a once subservient people now energized by nationalism (p201-2).

The third reason for success has to do with the Cold War. The well kept secret to a successful struggle for independence is outside intervention. Independence struggles that receive outside support succeed: those that do not, fail. This was true in the nineteenth century when the American Revolution, the Mexican Revolution and the Second Cuban Revolution were all won through outside interventions. In the twentieth century, insurgencies in the Philippines, Malaya, and Greece all failed due to lack of such intervention, while Chinese, Vietnamese, Algerian, and many other insurgencies all succeeded due to outside interventions (p196-9; 208). Needless to say, the Cold War provided the perfect environment for insurgents to seek and find external support for their cause. Assuming that their spirit of nationalism was strong, they were almost guaranteed to win their independence, even with the most minimal outside support, as the history of de-colonialization demonstrates.

The success of independence movements during the Cold War, of course, does not substantiate Porch's claim that today's peace and humanitarian operations are simply a continuation of yesterday's wars of empire. To argue that case, one must identify the similarities and the differences.

Conclusion: Yesterday vs. Today

 The main similarities between yesterday and today are twofold: First, vast disparity in wealth and transportation technologies give the West command of the air and sea. The interveners can get there, but the people intervened upon cannot get here. This strategic asymmetry leads to the second similarity, that Western military (i.e., American) will prevail in any intervention that involves combat, except when the indigenous force has captured the spirit of nationalism and has secured outside support, both diplomatic and material.

These two similarities offer little support for Porch's thesis. The reason for this is that they are less about the workings of imperialism than about the way in which wars have been won or lost throughout the millennia. As Clausewitz has noted, the moral is more important than the material in war. Consequently, power counts, but moral usually decides.

One would be inclined therefore, to conclude that Porch is wrong: today's peace operations are significantly different from and unlike yesterday's wars of empire. This inclination, however, fades as soon as one begins to consider the purposes and the ideology that animates both. Both yesterday and today, the most frequent purpose for military intervention is political disorder that affects important parts of the international system. No one thought to intervene in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, except in the Former Yugoslavia, where the transition led to unacceptable disorder. Likewise, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda prompted no intervention as long as it could plausibly be characterized as an internal matter, but as soon as the Hutu refugees began spilling out into and disordering neighboring countries, intervention was not long in coming.

Yesterday's wars of empire and today's humanitarian interventions also arise out of analogous ideologies. While the ideologies differ in content, they are fundamentally similar in motivation and effect. Thus while the mission civilizatrice of yesterday preached free trade, Christianity, science, and European administrative skills as the gifts that would bring peace, order, and civilization to the rest of the world, today's peace and humanitarian operations preach neo-liberal economics, human rights, rule of law, and democracy as the gifts that will bring peace, order, and civilization to the rest of the world. An example of their essential similarity is the recent concern of Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, that the Afghan Northern Alliance was treating its prisoners with something less than their full rights under the Geneva Conventions, an attitude and a sentiment that any nineteenth century Christian missionary would immediately recognized and applaud.

Thus, Porch must be counted as half right. The political context and the political goals of yesterday's wars of empire are entirely different from today's interventions. No longer do interveners think in terms of "effective occupation" to establish effective sovereignty over an indigenous people. Yet, the fundamental purpose - order - and the justifying ideology of today's peace operations are entirely similar in spirit, if not in specific content, to yesterday's wars of empire. Perhaps, one should conclude that today's humanitarian interventions are, to paraphrase an old Cold War slogan, "Imperialism with a Human Face."

Brien Hallet is an Associate Professor for the Matsunaga Institute for Peace, University of Hawaii.

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