Curtis Harris
Should all nations fear America's military power?
By Curtis Harris
In a previous column, I discussed America's three-front war as being military, economic, and cultural. The military front of this war is the war on terrorist groups and the countries that support them, as well as rogue nations that threaten world peace. Predictably, there is a fairly active anti-war movement, in America and abroad, that seeks to undermine our success in the fight against terror. In addition, the governments and/or people of several other developed nations are expressing various levels of concern about America's military superiority. They seem to have an automatic fear of our power and our intent to create a more free and peaceful world.
That the concern comes from countries like China, North Korea, and Iran is not surprising. The same concern from the countries of Old Europe and Russia — our supposed allies — is puzzling, if not surprising, and worthy of explanation.
Fear can be split into two categories — fear of the known and fear of the unknown. There is no reason for our allies to fear America's military power because of anything they know about our use of that power. The record shows, with two relatively minor exceptions in the 19th century, America uses military power for self-defense and to restore world peace. In the cases of Old Europe and Russia, we used our military power to save them from themselves several times in the last century. So we are left with the unknown as the source of our allies' fear of America's military power. They are afraid of what America might do with its military power in the future.
Human nature is to use past experience as a guide when trying to anticipate future events. We expect patterns of behavior to be consistent over time. We regard dramatic variation from these patterns as exceptions and eliminate them from consideration. So past experience with countries that have achieved military superiority is a likely explanation for the European and Russian fear of America's military power. They regard America's beneficial use of military power in the 20th century as an exception. Let's look at a few examples from the histories of Europe and Russia for some insight into their fear.
Europe's first super power was the city-state of Rome in the years 200 B.C. to 250 A.D. At the height of its power, the Roman Empire included all of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea on the north, south, and east, as well the lands now known as Britain, France, and Spain. Roman dominance of these lands made them sources of Roman wealth. Their cities were looted, their economies were heavily taxed, and people were taken as slaves. When the Romans slipped into laziness, corruption, and immorality as a result of all their wealth and power, they were attacked by barbarians from the North and their empire fell apart.
Local, regional, and national warfare within Europe was a standard feature of life after the fall of the Roman Empire and continued until modern times. The Dark Ages, roughly 500 to 1300 A.D., were plagued with feudal warfare among the ruling classes of Europe. In addition, there were the Christian Crusades between 1100 and 1300 A.D. European armies invaded the Holy Land to take control away from the Muslims.
Beginning in the 1400s, European nations — primarily Britain, Spain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands — used their military power to colonize the less developed areas of the world, particularly North and South America, Africa, and South Asia. The European nations stole the natural resources of these lands, taxed their economies for the benefit of Europe and used slavery as a primary source of labor. European colonization upset or destroyed existing cultures and tribal governments. In the cases of Africa and the Middle East, as the European nations' power declined from 1800 to 1950, they left these colonies with unstable economies, artificially drawn borders, and barely functioning governments. Much of the misery in these two areas of the world is the result.
Even though examples of French military power are rare, there is one. Napoleon Bonaparte took control of post-revolutionary France in 1799. Over the next 15 years, he conquered much of continental Europe. He captured Moscow in 1812, but the Russian winter defeated his poorly supplied army. He escaped exile on an island near Italy and returned to France to lead another army. He was defeated at Waterloo in 1815 and died in exile six years later.
World War II was the result of the last time Germany had superior military power in Europe. Hitler wreaked death and destruction all over Europe, North Africa and western Russia. He also killed 6 million Jews in his concentration camps. We think of Hitler in terms of the war years, 1940 to 1945, but the effects of his Third Reich lasted from the early 1930s well into the 1950s in what was West Germany. In East Germany, the effects lasted until the late 1980s.
The former Soviet Union (now Russia) used its military power against its own citizens prior to World War II. Stalin murdered millions of people through intentional starvation, purges, the Gulag death camps, and state police actions. World War II gave Stalin the opportunity to invade Eastern Europe and establish totalitarian communist governments. Rebellions against Soviet rule, as in Hungary in 1956, were crushed without mercy. The Soviet Union was a constant threat to world peace and freedom until its collapse in the late 1980s.
Essentially, America's critics in Old Europe and Russia have no standing. They do not have histories of their superior military power being used for good purposes. Their fear of America's military power is a result of their knowledge of what they would do if they, themselves, had the power. What they need to understand is that America is a different, more advanced society. Our founding principles are built upon lessons learned from their failures. When people in Old Europe portray their societies as superior because they prefer endless diplomacy over the use of military power, and suggest that America be more like them, they should really be thanking God and Americans that we are not behaving like they did when they possessed superior military power.
© Curtis Harris
In a previous column, I discussed America's three-front war as being military, economic, and cultural. The military front of this war is the war on terrorist groups and the countries that support them, as well as rogue nations that threaten world peace. Predictably, there is a fairly active anti-war movement, in America and abroad, that seeks to undermine our success in the fight against terror. In addition, the governments and/or people of several other developed nations are expressing various levels of concern about America's military superiority. They seem to have an automatic fear of our power and our intent to create a more free and peaceful world.
That the concern comes from countries like China, North Korea, and Iran is not surprising. The same concern from the countries of Old Europe and Russia — our supposed allies — is puzzling, if not surprising, and worthy of explanation.
Fear can be split into two categories — fear of the known and fear of the unknown. There is no reason for our allies to fear America's military power because of anything they know about our use of that power. The record shows, with two relatively minor exceptions in the 19th century, America uses military power for self-defense and to restore world peace. In the cases of Old Europe and Russia, we used our military power to save them from themselves several times in the last century. So we are left with the unknown as the source of our allies' fear of America's military power. They are afraid of what America might do with its military power in the future.
Human nature is to use past experience as a guide when trying to anticipate future events. We expect patterns of behavior to be consistent over time. We regard dramatic variation from these patterns as exceptions and eliminate them from consideration. So past experience with countries that have achieved military superiority is a likely explanation for the European and Russian fear of America's military power. They regard America's beneficial use of military power in the 20th century as an exception. Let's look at a few examples from the histories of Europe and Russia for some insight into their fear.
Europe's first super power was the city-state of Rome in the years 200 B.C. to 250 A.D. At the height of its power, the Roman Empire included all of the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea on the north, south, and east, as well the lands now known as Britain, France, and Spain. Roman dominance of these lands made them sources of Roman wealth. Their cities were looted, their economies were heavily taxed, and people were taken as slaves. When the Romans slipped into laziness, corruption, and immorality as a result of all their wealth and power, they were attacked by barbarians from the North and their empire fell apart.
Local, regional, and national warfare within Europe was a standard feature of life after the fall of the Roman Empire and continued until modern times. The Dark Ages, roughly 500 to 1300 A.D., were plagued with feudal warfare among the ruling classes of Europe. In addition, there were the Christian Crusades between 1100 and 1300 A.D. European armies invaded the Holy Land to take control away from the Muslims.
Beginning in the 1400s, European nations — primarily Britain, Spain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands — used their military power to colonize the less developed areas of the world, particularly North and South America, Africa, and South Asia. The European nations stole the natural resources of these lands, taxed their economies for the benefit of Europe and used slavery as a primary source of labor. European colonization upset or destroyed existing cultures and tribal governments. In the cases of Africa and the Middle East, as the European nations' power declined from 1800 to 1950, they left these colonies with unstable economies, artificially drawn borders, and barely functioning governments. Much of the misery in these two areas of the world is the result.
Even though examples of French military power are rare, there is one. Napoleon Bonaparte took control of post-revolutionary France in 1799. Over the next 15 years, he conquered much of continental Europe. He captured Moscow in 1812, but the Russian winter defeated his poorly supplied army. He escaped exile on an island near Italy and returned to France to lead another army. He was defeated at Waterloo in 1815 and died in exile six years later.
World War II was the result of the last time Germany had superior military power in Europe. Hitler wreaked death and destruction all over Europe, North Africa and western Russia. He also killed 6 million Jews in his concentration camps. We think of Hitler in terms of the war years, 1940 to 1945, but the effects of his Third Reich lasted from the early 1930s well into the 1950s in what was West Germany. In East Germany, the effects lasted until the late 1980s.
The former Soviet Union (now Russia) used its military power against its own citizens prior to World War II. Stalin murdered millions of people through intentional starvation, purges, the Gulag death camps, and state police actions. World War II gave Stalin the opportunity to invade Eastern Europe and establish totalitarian communist governments. Rebellions against Soviet rule, as in Hungary in 1956, were crushed without mercy. The Soviet Union was a constant threat to world peace and freedom until its collapse in the late 1980s.
Essentially, America's critics in Old Europe and Russia have no standing. They do not have histories of their superior military power being used for good purposes. Their fear of America's military power is a result of their knowledge of what they would do if they, themselves, had the power. What they need to understand is that America is a different, more advanced society. Our founding principles are built upon lessons learned from their failures. When people in Old Europe portray their societies as superior because they prefer endless diplomacy over the use of military power, and suggest that America be more like them, they should really be thanking God and Americans that we are not behaving like they did when they possessed superior military power.
© Curtis Harris
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