Reflections on the Seven Years War

The United States, as we know, is currently fighting two conflicts abroad, one in Iraq and another in Afghanistan. One could see these wars as in fact two theaters of the same “War on Terror” or separate them into entirely different issues. The common thread is of course the struggle between United States and al-Qaida, even if other NATO powers, affiliated terrorist organizations, and Islamic regimes participate in it. Though the analogy can’t take us too far, we see a similar situation in the Seven Years War (1756-63) and what we know in American history as the “French and Indian War” (1754-63).

The common thread in these two 18th-century contests is Anglo-French rivalry in Europe and abroad. In the course of the 1750s and culminating in the Treaty of Paris (1763), Britain embarked on the path toward world-empire status on which “the sun never set.” Contrariwise, the French empire started a protracted, slow decline, ultimately giving way to Anglo-American hegemony in the modern era—and the French are still smarting over “paradise lost!” In addition to the expansion of its possessions abroad, the two European powers had vested interests in the mercantile wealth of the Low Countries. On the continent the core of the conflict was a rivalry between Prussia and Austria over territory in central Europe. The “diplomatic revolution” involved an alliance between Austria and France to put the German state, an aspiring newcomer, in its place. Perhaps with “enemy of my enemy is my friend” calculation at the fore, Britain felt drawn to Prussia. Of the remaining superpowers, Russia was the “wildcard” in the conflict, alternately opposing and supporting Frederick II.

The victor on the continent was clearly Prussia, which concluded favorable peace terms in the Treaty of Hubertusburg. Frederick’s aggressive policies had paid off; Prussia had increased its territory and became a major power. A more impressive victory belongs to Great Britain who seized French possessions in the New World and India. (The term Great Britain, used more commonly at this time, referred to England, Scotland and Wales and dates back to 1603. It referred not to national might but geographic distinctions; its opposite, “Little Britain,” was Brittany, a duchy in western France that England had claimed since the Middle Ages.)

Too often military historians feel compelled to label many pre-World War I conflicts as world wars: the Thirty Years War and Louis IV’s wars of the late 17th century, for instance. We shouldn’t forget that World War I (1914-18) is so named for good reason. Nonetheless, the Seven Years War was truly the first European war that had generated regional conflict throughout the globe and had global implications. It led indirectly to the two great revolutions of the modern world: the American Revolution (1775-1783) and the French Revolution (1789-1799).  Both Britain and France (victor and vanquished) suffered from financial hardships after the war. To pay for the debt, the British crown and Parliament required the English colonies of North America to pay greater taxes. The French crown was in a tougher bind. King Louis XVI had the unenviable task of taxing the independent nobility or the overburdened common folk.  His decision helped spark a revolution.

The Specter of Genocide

On 6 April 1994, someone fired a rocket into a plane carrying the president of Rwanda as it was about to land at the Kigali airport. Hours later one of the worst genocides in world history was underway, as Hutu killers begin to massacre any political leader, Hutu or Tutsi, who had supported an earlier peace agreement between the government and rebel Tutsi forces. Historians of genocide call this eliticide, the murder of the elite of a target group so as to demoralize followers and prevent an organized response. But the perpetrators didn’t stop with the leadership; ultimately, 800,000 people lost their lives in this systematic, carefully planned slaughter. I’ve already written about the Rwandan genocide on a few occasions and don’t want to retread old terrain. I’m currently teaching a course on genocide for the University of Mantua (pseudonym) and have divided up the curriculum into five units or case studies. For these next two weeks we’re focusing on Rwanda; as it turns out, the genocide begin in the month of April (and lasted for three months). Then again, two earlier genocides that we have discussed in this class, the Armenian genocide and Cambodian genocide, also started in April!

For those of you who like to keep up on U.S. foreign policy, especially given our far-flung military commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere, you should know a thing or two about Rwanda. Just over a week ago President Obama invoked the specter of genocide in the explanation of his decision to take action in Libya. He didn’t name Rwanda or Bosnia or Saddam Hussein, but these dark episodes in recent history were in the backdrop of his statement:

In the past, we had seen him [Gaddafi] hang civilians in the streets and kill over a thousand people in a single day. Now we saw regime forces on the outskirts of the city. We knew that...if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world. It was not in our national interest to let that happen; I refused to let that happen.

Granted, this was only one of his arguments, the moral issue, but appealing to the prospect of our “stained conscience” was a big one.  I don’t want to address the question as to whether assisting the anti-Gaddafi rebels via air strikes is a foolhardy undertaking or the proverbial “right thing to do.”  That’s an issue for another post.  His critics on the far left and on the right—the latter somewhat disingenuously, I might add—rightly ask why we have intervened to stop a ruthless dictator in North Africa when the world is filled to the brim with such loathsome regimes (e.g., North Korea, Ivory Coast, Congo, Myanmar, Zimbabwe).  The age-old question arises: Are we the Policeman of the world?

I will say, however, that the President’s allusion to the prospect of genocidal massacre on the part of the Gaddafi regime, should the international community not intervene, resonated with me. After all, ever since the Holocaust some seventy years ago, the international community has continually cried out “never again!” ex post facto.  More recently, the great powers of the world, the United States above all, turned a blind eye or made the situation worse when genocide broke out in Bosnia and Rwanda.  Then there was Darfur within a decade!  I plan to post my thoughts on our involvement in Libya in the future, but this part of President Obama's address captured my ear.  Of course it’s not the most solid foundation for one’s argument to rely on the absence of evidence, and it certainly won't satisfy his critics.  Like President Bush who warned about a Saddam Hussein with nuclear capabilities, President Obama is claiming to prevent a massacre that would break out if NATO does not get involved.

Humans Everywhere

I see humans everywhere.  I can’t seem to avoid them.  I’m not complaining, mind you, just stating a fact.  Don’t believe the hype.  Contrary to what you might have heard about me, some of my favorite living creatures are humans; they’re not all bad.  But sometimes I’d like a little respite from these wonderful biped mammals, so I can enjoy some quality Der Viator time alone.

For instance, I went to the coffeehouse on Monday for a mocha and cinnamon scone with the intention of gathering my thoughts and working through issues.  So far so good, right?  Well, let me finish please.  Once I got inside the place, I found myself in a Lion’s Den of humans.  One of them, a portly male in his fifties, was coughing into his morning paper, while two females at another table were cackling so loudly that I earnestly feared I’d bust an eardrum.  When I went to the grocery store last night for a carton of milk, I suddenly felt lost in a sea of humanity.  Again, humans were everywhere, pushing their carts into mine, grabbing for cans of this and bags of that.  I went to the park this past weekend because the weather was so nice, and what did I find there in great abundance?  You got it: humans!  So much for enjoying nature!

To give you an inkling of the problem, here is a list of places I visited this week that humans tainted with their ubiquitous presence: the bookstore, Manny’s Bar & Grill, my daughter’s soccer game, my other daughter’s track and field meet, McDonald’s, a Turkish bathhouse, a military base, the gas station, the bank, Wal-Mart, the Turkish bathhouse again, the DMV, an auto parts store, the gym, the university, yet another trip to the Turkish bathhouse, Dairy Queen, and a rock concert.  Humans everywhere!  Today I caught myself in the mirror and was reminded of my own humanity.  Perhaps these humans that annoy me so much are not too different from myself, I thought.  Why should I begrudge them for filling up space when I too seek the same experiences?  After all, these loud, hairy creatures are simply going about their business as I do.  Once I stopped looking in the mirror, however, I came to my senses.   That’s bullshit.  Humans are everywhere!

On Martin Luther King

When crazed or hateful assailants cut down a popular leader or politician in the prime of life, especially when the slain individual was leading a reform movement of some kind, the person inevitably becomes a saint immediately upon death and followers start taking up the pen to write their hagiographies. Hero worship is endemic to our species. We’re looking for someone to praise, someone to point to for inspiration. Usually the martyr is a divisive figure and his immediate followers are partisan.  As the years roll on and the culture gradually embraces the once revolutionary ideas, these divisive issues fall by the wayside and the deceased hero attracts respect from a broader range of the population.  The Romans and Jews didn't recognize Jesus as the prophet or incarnate God that so many embrace today.  Abraham Lincoln wasn’t universally liked until he died, and southern and northern scholars interpreted his historical significance differently for decades to come.  This impulse to venerate icons is not ipso facto a bad thing, but we should be mindful of its shortcomings.

I used to consider MLK a “man of God,” but I no longer refer to any of my fellow primates as such, no matter how noble their actions and lofty their ideals.  If King David in the Bible was “a man after God’s own heart," a absolutist monarch who committed grievous crimes and was perhaps a borderline psychopath, I suppose just about anyone can be a “man of God.”  Moreover, Dr. King was not without his share of blemishes.  He had a voracious (extramarital) sexual appetite and plagiarized significant portions of his Boston University Ph.D.  One might argue, additionally, that MLK, along with other male leaders of the African-American civil rights movement, pushed women aside and took credit for their hard work.  Upon close inspection, of course, our God-like heroes are just mammals with self-consciousness. JFK sure looked good and his "Ask Not What Your County Can Do for You" speech resonated with the American public, but in truth his presidency was rather lackluster and he did nothing to avoid the Vietnam War, notwithstanding the lame attempt by his apologists in recent years to suggest otherwise.  His brother, Robert, for all his expressed concern for minorities and the poor as a presidential candidate, didn't have a strong political record on this score.  While I believe Lincoln in his heart of heart was an abolitionist, we all know by now that he was a pragmatist who was willing to allow slavery in certain states so long as Johnny Reb came back into the Union.

I still rank MLK among the true heroes of American history.  For all his personal blemishes, what makes MLK an exceptional Mensch is his moral courage and his casting of a wide net. He looked beyond the struggles of one particular race, it seems to me; rather, MLK, nourished on the teachings of Gandhi and Bonhoeffer, encouraged all Americans to treat each other with love and mutual respect.  And like many great historical figures, MLK's status as hero came about largely from the eleventh hour of his life.  His mountaintop speech captures one of those rare moments in time when God's prophet seemed poised between heaven and earth.  I’d like to think that Jesus, in his sermon on the mount, and Martin Luther, in the defense of his writings at the Diet of Worms, spoke with such conviction and power.  MLK was not a saint, but a flawed man who rose above himself for the sake of God and man.  Alas!  He paid the price for such audacity.

Dealing with Issues

It's probably an understatement to say I have issues.  I have issues upon issues, growing, festering, metastasizing—a Hydra head of serpentine issues that, try as I might to stamp them out, keep rearing their ugly heads.  One might argue that life is as complicated as we choose to make it, but I believe this view of things is too simplistic.  Being “the master of my fate, the captain of my soul” sounds good on paper, Walt, but I’m too much of a Calvinist and part-time Darwinian to believe it.  So I take only partial blame for the aforementioned “issues.”  There are some things in life that you just can’t resolve.  Either way you turn is a dark, lonely street.  Resolution is nowhere in sight, and resignation is the only game in town.  I can only withdraw into myself, the dilapidating fortress of solitude—not the refuge of a man of steel, but a last holdout against the winds of emotional pain and “what could have been.”

Twizzlers or Red Vines?

Decisions, decisions, decisions.  I like to think of myself as a decisive person.  What guy doesn’t, especially when you’re in a position of leadership?  Truth is, I couldn’t decide my way out of a paper bag.  Life is just so darn full of dilemmas and I find myself sitting on the fence, unable to act, getting utterly frustrated.  It’s debilitating.  Should I stay or should I go?  Should I follow my head or follow my heart?  Is that shit or Shinola?  To be or not to be?  Should I pop in the Lamb of God or Michael Bublé CD?  Should I choose paper or plastic?  Coke or Pepsi?  Twizzlers or Red Vines?  Wear underwear or go commando?  Should I devote more of my energy to the military or academia?  I’m currently on the precipice of an important career decision.  Then again, it feels as though perpetual change has been a constant refrain throughout my adult life.  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.  Given the current economy, and the potential shutdown of the government, I must balance that which I want to do with that which is more lucrative.  Yes, I’m on the horns of another dilemma, even though I feel more like a lone stalagmite standing erect in a dark cavern.  Or maybe I’m more like a suspended fourth chord that won’t resolve.  I can’t decide.

On the Reading of Books

When I was a wide-eyed teenager trying to make sense of the world and envisioning an exciting future for myself, I saw before my mind’s eye a few life choices: drugs, male prostitution, alcohol, or books.  I rejected the first option because I could not afford it.  I dispensed with the second option, for I was just too darn shy and withdrawn to be successful in that line of work.  The third option, alcoholism, was clearly out because I believe that the drinking of alcoholic beverages is a sin.  Books, however, offered me a chance to broaden my horizons and escape reality.  I think of Machiavelli’s words in a letter to a friend when he describes his time alone among books in his study: “There I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reasons for their actions; and they in their humanity reply to me.  And for the space of four hours I feel no boredom, I dismiss every affliction, I no longer fear poverty nor do I tremble at the thought of death.”  Indeed, reading a good book is like drinking a fine wine, except that instead of tasting a fermented liquid, you’re looking at a bunch of words on a page.  And apart from the fact that reading involves a degree of concentration whereas the drinking of wine is a simple act of consumption, and if you ignore the fact that reading and drinking are technically quite distinct acts that don’t seem to have anything in common, there is, I  think, a similarity.  (Part of me now wishes I hadn’t brought up the whole wine-book analogy; besides, I’ve never tasted wine before, what with the consumption of alcohol of any kind being a sin and all.)

As I get older and career and family responsibilities keep me busy, I must be selective these days when it comes to reading; the book I choose has to be a good one.  I recently found a paperback romance novel entitled Torrid Tangle in Tallahassee at a used bookstore.  What attracted me was the cover: a muscle-bound Italian-looking youth with long, flaxen hair appears to be ravishing a blonde woman who's wearing nothing but a black negligee and wanton eyes.  In the background is a mansion with a Lamborghini parked in the large driveway.  People who meet me, I should add, instantly recognize me for a romantic.  Anyway, I figured that such a book would give me some wonderful lessons for life.  When the leggy Becky had rejected Scott, the handsome young MBA groomed by her father to take over the corporation, for the swarthy Fabio-like Jacko, who rode motorcyles and sported tight leather pants and seemed attentive to her deepest needs, I knew I could gain some important insights about the human condition.  As much as I love books, though, there's a few things—and only a few—that you can't learn from a book, like living life or whatever.

One of my favorite thinkers, René Descartes, arrived at the same conclusion when he discussed the “book of the world” in his Discourse on Method.  “I entirely abandoned the study of letters,” he writes.  “I spent the rest of my youth traveling, seeing courts and armies, associating with people of different temperaments and circumstances, gathering various experiences, testing myself.”  Now that I think more upon it, books are a waste of time.  Moreover, they’re deceiving.  Why is it that you’ll be more apt to accept a viewpoint as the Gospel truth if it’s in print than otherwise?  And who exactly are these ubiquitous authors?  They're pathetic creatures who feel a need to share their thoughts and use readers for their therapy.  And we poor saps keep showing up at Barnes & Noble, Borders or the library like starved dogs returning to their vomit.  Or maybe these book writers are just arrogant bastards who like to inform benighted readers, from their putative font of wisdom, of what life is all about.  I was at the coffeehouse the other day reading a couple of books.  Two guys are walking out and one of them stares at me before turning to his buddy.  “George, check that dude out!  Who reads books anymore?”  I wanted to stab him in the face for his rudeness with the Swiss Army knife attached to my keychain, but he had a point.  Book reading is so passé.  For all these reasons, I've decided to host my first book burning shindig this coming Saturday.  I told my friends to bring beer, brats, and books (marshmallows too!).