The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate pdfdrive com

particularly cold-blooded not to realize the monumental effect on individual
lives in such different outcomes. Moreover, what would have happened in the
region, and to America’s reputation for power, had we so withdrawn? How
would such quick withdrawals be carried out? Don’t ever say that things cannot
get much worse than they are, because they can.
Truly, withdrawing precipitously from Iraq or Afghanistan would be
irresponsible because—like it or not—merely by invading these places and
staying there so long, we have acquired substantial stakes in the outcomes.
Nevertheless, it would be unfair to judge these analysts and others who agree
with them solely on the minutiae of Iraq and Afghanistan. For the wellspring of
emotion behind their beliefs is that we never should have gotten involved in
these countries in the first place. No matter how Iraq eventually turns out, the
body count, both American and Iraqi, will haunt American foreign policy
debates for decades, just as Vietnam did. They constitute more than just
l’histoire événmentielle
.
To be sure, these analysts are not concerned about what to do next in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead—again, merging their thoughts—they are asking
themselves, what has been the cost of our blunders already? Can we as a great
power be salvaged? And where do we put our best efforts, in terms of highly
selective military deployments and civilian aid, so that America can help
preserve the balance of power in Eurasia and not be inundated over the decades
by Mexicans fleeing a troubled state? As Jakub Grygiel puts it: “Geographic
isolation is a strategic blessing and should not be squandered by an expansionary
strategy.”
5
So how much have we squandered already? Michael Lind, a scholar at the
New America Foundation in Washington, agrees with Bacevich about the
foolishness of both the Iraq War and the escalation of the war in Afghanistan.
But he parts company with Bacevich on whether America can afford such
conflicts. Lind argues that relatively little of the national debt is the result of
military spending, let alone of two simultaneous wars, and that reducing health
care costs is far more central to America’s fiscal solvency than recent imperial-
like adventurism, as much as he opposes it.
6
In fact, a look at some of the
blunders of empires past may put the debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan in some
perspective, both in terms of their effect on U.S. foreign policy already, and their
effect on our ability to deal with the future challenges in the Middle East, China,
and Mexico throughout the course of the twenty-first century.
In 1449, returning from a failed campaign in Mongolia, the army of Ming China

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was surrounded by Mongol forces. Without water, the Chinese panicked.
Trusting in Mongol mercy, Grygiel writes, “many shed their armor and ran
toward the enemy lines.” As many as half a million Chinese soldiers were
slaughtered and the Ming emperor became a prisoner of the Mongols. The Ming
army adventure in Mongolia marked the start of the long decline of the Ming
Dynasty. The Ming army never again attempted to confront the Mongols in the
northern steppe, even as tension with the Mongols would sap the energy of the
Ming leadership. This led to China’s retreat from maritime Asia, which would
help encourage the entry of European powers into the Rimland.
7
Nothing so disastrous has occurred following the America adventure in Iraq—
our military and economic position around the world, and especially in East
Asia, is sturdy and shows no signs of retrenchment, let alone retreat. We lost
under 5,000 troops and 32,000 seriously wounded, a terrible price, but not an
entire invasion force of half a million. The U.S. Army, which bore the brunt of
the Iraq fighting, stands at almost half a million active-duty personnel, and
precisely because of its experience in irregular warfare in Iraq is now better
trained, doctrinally more flexible, and intellectually more subtle than ever. The
same goes for the Marine Corps.
Not in Iraq, nor in Afghanistan, did the United States make the kind of pivotal
blunder that late medieval Venice did. It wasn’t only Venice’s privileged
geographical position between western and eastern Mediterranean trade routes
that allowed it to create a seaborne empire; rather, it was the fact that Venice was
protected from the Italian mainland by a few miles of water, and protected by
invasion from the sea by long sandbars. One cause of Venice’s decline starting in
the fifteenth century was its decision to become a power on mainland Italy. By
going to war repeatedly against Verona, Padua, Florence, Milan, and the League
of Cambrai, Venice was no longer detached from “deadly” balance-of-power
politics on land, and this had an adverse effect on its ability to project sea
power.
8
The Venetian example should cause alarm among American
policymakers if—and only if—the United States were to make a habit of military
interventions on land in the Greater Middle East. But if America can henceforth
restrict itself to being an air and sea power, it can easily avoid Venice’s fate. It is
the permanence of small wars that can undo us, not the odd, once every third of a
century miscalculation, however much tragedy and consternation that causes.
In this light, Iraq during the worst fighting in 2006 and 2007 might be
compared to the Indian Mutiny against the British in 1857 and 1858, when the
orientalists and other pragmatists in the British power structure, who wanted to
leave traditional India as it was, lost some sway to evangelical and utilitarian

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reformers who wanted to modernize and Christianize India—to make it more
like England. But the attempt to bring the fruits of Western civilization to the
Indian Subcontinent were met with a revolt against imperial authority. Delhi,
Luknow, and other cities were besieged and captured before being retaken by
colonial forces. Yet the debacle did not signal the end of the British Empire,
which expanded even for another century. Instead, it signaled the transition from
an ad hoc imperium fired by an evangelical lust to impose its values to a calmer
and more pragmatic empire built on international trade and technology.
9
Ancient history, too, offers up examples that cast doubt on whether
Afghanistan and Iraq, in and of themselves, have doomed us. Famously, there is
the Sicilian Expedition recounted by Thucydides in the Sixth Book of