The story of Rhodesia is an inherently tragic one. Europeans, who came to Africa in search of economic progress and confident in their power to spread Christian Civilization, soon found themselves swamped by demographic trends and nationalistic political ideas. These trends were the products of the very medicine and education that Europeans had brought to Africa. Of course, things could not have remained forever as they were with a small white minority forever ruling a black majority. Yet the alternative of majority rule in a continent notoriously tribal, corrupt, and inefficient has proven to be a disaster for most Africans. Both white and black Africans have endured wars, mismanagement, corruption, and a decline in every measure of civilization since the emergence of independence in the sixties.
Rhodesia disappeared. It’s now Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. And the last few years have seen the terrorist philosophy he embraced come to fruition. In a last ditch effort to reward his supporters, white farms are being distributed to black Zimbabweans and soon ending up in a state of disrepair. Food is now scarce. And his political opponents, white and black, are increasingly being arrested, harassed, or murdered outright.
Apartheid-style policies were unsustainable and unjust. So too were the communist “class justice” policies proffered by the likes of Mugabe, Mandela, and their peers. As conservatives we should acknowledge that steady and measured change towards greater political equality would likely have been more sustainable than the blood-soaked politics of revolution. And, regardless, we can admire the courage, tenacity, and discipline of the Rhodesian military–a force that attracted adventurers, idealistic anti-communists, and professional soldiers from the world over to fight a an ultimately doomed war against the rising tide of African nationalism in the seventies.
The video above shows some of the peculiarities of their fight: black and white soldiers, side-by-side, fighting for a regime that excluded blacks from political power; modern jets and horse cavalry; and amazing sophistication and improvisation in a nation cut off from aid through UN embargoes. These men ultimately fought for their country and their way of life against an enemy that indiscriminately employed terrorist tactics. But their defeat also shows another fact of modern life: even a fight with flags waving and extraordinary courage and determination can still be lost if the political system to which it is attached is too far out of step with the tide of history. Their extraordinary military effectiveness and amazing kill ratios (25:1 or more) should also give pause to those who believe we can easily win in Iraq if we just “take the gloves off.”
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How exactly does a conservative – especially an actual conservative, such as yourself, come to believe in the “tide of history”? I mean, geeze, man, what would Burke say?
You might enjoy my own elegy for Rhodesia: here.
In my own humble opinion, it was not the “tide of history” that destroyed Rhodesia. It was specific political decisions made by specific people for specific reasons. It is true that these people won. It is not true that they won for any cosmic, mystical reason. They won because they were the stronger force.
It is also true that the US military can’t just “take the gloves off” in Iraq. But this, also, is for specific political reasons. It should not be confused with a belief that the military techniques of an Arthur MacArthur or a Trinquier are somehow, for cosmic and mystical reasons, ineffective. They are working right now for the Russians in Chechnya. And the US in Iraq has in fact found ways to adopt spayed versions of them – they read Galula, not Trinquier – which seem to sort of work.
See also Luttwak: Counterinsurgency Warfare as Military Malpractice. Luttwak agrees with you, and he is certainly right. But today’s US military is a very creative and effective force, and it may have found a way to win despite the appalling political disabilities it labors under.
I appreciate your links and your comments. As for my proto-historicism, it seems Burke was guilty of it too. Consider his view on America, where he thought the fundamental character of the American people was incompatible with colonial rule. So, while I don’t believe in historical laws strictly speaking, I do think that societies, particularly small societies dependent on outside help, must take account of reality, and widely held public opinion is part of reality. After all, didn’t Burke say, “A society without the means of change is without the means of its own self preservation?”
In any case, I enjoyed your thoughts on Rhodesia.
It’s true – we often forget that one of the many reasons Burke’s denunciation of the mayhem in France was so effective was that he was no Tory, but a Whig and a pro-American. I guess no one can be right about everything.
One of the flaws of democratic doxology is that it exhorts us to treat public opinion always as a cause, never as an effect. Lippmann, though hardly a trustworthy source, is a useful corrective on this point.
So in the American rebellion, for example, mob violence was no inconsiderable ingredient. France succumbed to mob tyranny and aristocide. America survived it, at least to some extent. It’s not clear to me that either of these results was too predestined. Perhaps Burke was just lucky in his toss of the coin.
What causes mob violence? I suspect it’s usually just that the mob smells power, and the chance of success. British rule in North America was always a soft target, not least because of all the Whig and Dissenter fellow travelers we had on the other side of the pond. The Interregnum was not such a distant memory. None of the other White Dominions was so identified with a British political faction, and indeed none successfully rebelled.
An interesting insight into this process, which I think you might enjoy, is the Tiananmen Papers which chronicle the events of 1989 from the Chinese leadership’s perspective. There is some doubt about the genuineness of these documents, but they are certainly at least plausible. The success of China since 1989 is a tantalizing hint that if your army proves it’s capable of firing on a mob, many doors swing open for you. Certainly, before June 4 Chinese public opinion – or at least fashionable intellectual opinion, which tends to lead the rest – saw the establishment of multiparty democracy as borne on the tide of history. Yet a whiff of grapeshot turned the water right around.
One of my earliest memories of watching a news broadcast (it must have been sometime in the early 80′s) was a segment on ABC World News describing the success of the former Rhodesia. As I recall from the segment, the people were happy, the economy was good, and whites and blacks lived peacefully together in harmony.
The story of course was a compare and contrast with South Africa, and was supposed to prove how unfounded South Africa’s white population’s fears were. Do you think that the folks over at ABC News still think it is appropriate to draw comparisons between South Africa and Zimbabwe?
The funny thing is that the blood bath was delayed; at first, things went reasonably well. But as they fell apart, the animosity to whites increased. Now South Africa, with its exploding crime and corruption, is headed in the same direction as the rest of Africa and the whites and educated blacks are trying to flee the country.
I’m not sure that is the case yet. I think there was a brain-drain issue in the late 1990′s, early 2000′s, but it doesn’t look like there’s an ongoing exodus.
http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/SAStatistics/SAStatistics2006.pdf
This shows a ten year white population loss of 1.5%, and an Asian population gain 0f 11%.
Well, the Rhodesian militayr crushed it’s main guerilla opposition in the Matabeleland quite effectively. Had they not lost political support in Europe and the commonwealth so thoroughly Mugabe would never have taken over, or crushed the Matabeleland nationalists so much more thoroughly than the Rhodesian governments, white run or elected black before Mugabe’s annointing by “the international community”, ever did.