Why we keep messing up in the Middle East

Britain’s history of failure in the Middle East is 150 years old. The presence of Britain in the region, first as a superpower, then as an ally of the United States, has been a continual source of chaos and instability. Throughout those years, from the occupation of Egypt in 1882 to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, our failure has had a single cause: we’ve constantly over-estimated the power of military force to create peace and order.

To start with, let’s remember what the weapons that our military fire actually do. They destroy. They annihilate the basic necessities of life. They kill people whose place in the relationships that keeps society going is vital. They demolish buildings that house the functions of life. They create chaos, cause social breakdown, sow disorder. We too readily look at the discipline of the military and imagine the opposite, that armies impose order. But we forget why armies need to be so controlled: unless those who inflict violence are tightly disciplined, they’re be brought down by the chaos they wield on the rest of the world.

Modern forms of military violence were born when war was part of a system of never-ending rivalry between states. We had an army to make sure France, or Spain, or Prussia didn’t get the upper hand over us. We’d do that by making sure we could wreak more havoc on their troops than they on us. The last decades of the nineteenth century saw the same game extended beyond Europe, to Africa and the Middle East. The military occupation of Egypt, Sudan, the Transvaal, Palestine all happened as an extension of European rivalry. What mattered was the military’s ability to defeat others who made claims on the same territory, not the welfare or order of the territory being ruled.

Somehow or other, we came to imagine that the military techniques used to get one over on our European rivals could be used to change societies for the good.

The delusion comes partly from the wrong-headed way we tell the story of our empire. In India, the Middle Aast, Africa, even at the height of empire Britain only ‘possessed’ a few well-defended enclaves. In most of the land painted red on those old maps, Britain’s imperial elite were only interested in collecting tax and preventing major challenges to its power. There was no British interest in peace or prosperity. That’s why when we left, the parts of India, Africa and the Middle East Britain ruled were so poor.

We’re still, all these years on, stuck in the same way of thinking. We treat the Middle East as the site of possible challenges to our security, not a place where real people – people who think and act like us – live and work. We talk about ‘intervention’, instead of thinking about how we might support Iraqis, Egyptians, Syrians, to build their own societies. Perhaps most worrying of all, too many commentators in the Labour Party treat the region as a place where we can prove that we’re hard and tough enough to be trusted in power.

Iraq’s present political crisis now is a consequence of the 2003 occupation. War created chaos, and there was no effort to build a stable society afterwards. As LSE Professor Toby Dodge’s new book shows, the west was more interested in guaranteeing its own security rather than building democracy or peace. Nouri al-Maliki’s security state became increasingly absent from ordinary peoples’ lives. Understandably, they turned to whatever groups of armed men look best placed to defend their interests. The rise of Islamic State and sectarianism were the consequence.

When we debate Iraq now, we need to cut the high-pitched moralism. We need to stop such vague platitudes as a ‘clash of ideologies’ and the ‘urgent necessity of now’. What’s going on in Iraq is a battle for survival in a land scarred by a long succession of wars that we helped to start, not a clash of civilisations.

We can, of course, offer small acts of assistance by feeding starving people on mountains. But we – particularly on the left – need to stop using the Middle East as a vehicle for our urge to be righteous or tough, to prove to ourselves we’re good and strong.

Instead, we need to back organisations which get people together to help them run their own lives – trade unions, anti-corruption campaigns, cross-sectarian parties – just as we would do here.

But above all, we must recognise we have little power to make a difference in the long term. We need to stop imagining that Iraq will go to hell unless we help, and be far more optimistic about the capacity of Iraqis to defeat Islamic State, and rebuild their own society.

Jon Wilson (@jonewilson) is a historian of the British Empire. His book India Conquered. Britain’s Raj and the Chaos of Empire will be published by Simon and Schusterin 2016.