His account of how and why the Brits let various parts of their empire go is very illuminating to me about what is now going on in Iraq (and Afghanistan). Essentially, what Bush and Co. are trying to do there is to reprise what the Brits did -- establishing an imperial presence and then retreat when that presence became untenable -- but in an extremely compressed time frame, months or a few years (they hope), rather than decades.
Judging by their public pronouncements, at least, Perle, Wolfowitz, et al. wanted to set up a "new world order" which would have all of the benefits of the British Empire, stabilizing the world order for the benefit of the mother country, without its drawbacks -- actually having to hold down the subject populations by their own efforts. As Lapping says, empires have traditionally only been able to maintain themselves by performing massacres of subject populations now and then to show who was in charge. Once that became distasteful to the British public, especially to the Labour segment of it, the Empire had to go.
In most parts of the Empire, they did it relatively smoothly by training up a generation of native civil servants and gradually turning administration duties over to native councils, which formed the nuclei of the new governments. What Perle and Co. have been trying to do, apparently, is to compress this gradual process into as short a period of time as possible (originally they were talking about 2 or 3 months, now they are hoping a few years). In reality, what is happening is that they are trying to build up their empire and tear it down at the same time. Or to put it another way: they don't quite have the ruthlessness that was required to build the British Empire in the beginning, because they have to operate in the world opinion climate of 2003, not 1703, but at the same time they don't have the leisure to gradually turn control over to the "right" natives that the London Colonial Office did.
No wonder they are stuck in a contradictory, chaotic situation.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ "I believe in seeing two sides to an issue so as I can show the other guy where he is wrong." -- Archie Bunker