Monthly Archives: November 2013

Zombies in International Relations

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What if the whole world, rather than just some remote hamlets populated by attractive young people with no future in movies, was attacked by zombies?  Daniel Drezner has addressed this question in Theories of International Politics and Zombies (Princeton University Press, 2010).  Drezner analyzes how a zombie apocalypse would be explained by political scientists.

“Realism” holds that conflict is normal as each country pursues its own advantage regardless of what happens to the rest of the world.  Countries can co-operate when they have a shared goal, but only so long as it takes to accomplish that goal and they are striving for individual advantage even when they are co-operating.  What happens inside another country is irrelevant to international relations.  Three of George Romero’s “Dead” movies illustrate this.  In “Night of the Living Dead” (1968), a zombie attack forces quarrelsome people to put aside their disputes and to co-operate.  However, selfish individualism constantly strains the need to co-operate.  Further problem arise from an imperfect understanding of events as they are under way.

In “Dawn of the Dead” (1978), zombies spread faster than can the government response, which always lags behind because of bureaucratic inertia, partisan political infighting, and the resistance of civil libertarians.  In a rip-off of Boccacio’s The Decameron, a handful of doomed survivors take refuge and indulge their worldly desires.  Their reverie is interrupted by an irruption of equally selfish barbarians.  In “Day of the Dead” (1985), a deluded bleeding heart liberal scientist hopes to reform the zombies by first understanding them.  His rival is a vicious, authoritarian Army officer.  People don’t have much of a choice once the crisis hits.

“Liberalism” holds that conflict is abnormal since countries naturally co-operate on matters of shared concern.  The more that “globalization” integrates the whole world into one system, the more co-operation will develop.  This co-operation takes the form of building international institutions and formulating rules of conduct.  From this perspective, one could anticipate the creation of a World Zombie Organization equivalent to the World Trade Organization or the International Monetary Fund.  The internal politics of a government do matter for international relations because governments that are oppressive at home tend to be aggressive abroad.  Unfortunately, humanitarian liberalism would probably produce countervailing groups that argued for comprehension and conciliation of the zombies.[2]  “28 Days Later” (2002),  “Shaun of the Dead” (2004) and “Zombieland” (2009) illustrate liberalism as people are awakened from their selfish individual pursuits by the appearance of danger and co-operate.  The end result is durable community.  In “Shaun,” even the outcome for the remaining zombies also is positive as they are allowed to survive by playing a constructive role in society.  (This is a metaphor for post-1945 Germany.)

“The George W. Bush Administration.”  Do you want to fight the zombies over there or over here?  Better to fight them there to stop them before the start to expand.  Use air power and special forces to the extent you can, but it may be best to invade the central home of the zombies.  Wipe out as many as you can until the others realize the error of their ways and change sides, becoming—I don’t know—Zuslims?  Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, “28 Weeks Later” (2007) is a good example of both the theory and of its unintended consequences: the failure to destroy the zombies in the original site followed by their flight into new areas as they seek sanctuary.

[2] People for the Ethical Treatment of Zombies or Zombie Amnesty.  That sort of thing.  You could start a club.

Keynesianism and Monetarism

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Accepted truth from 1776 to 1929: the “invisible hand” of the unrestricted free market is the best regulator of the economy.  The economy expands, contracts, expands in natural cycles.  Government should stay out of the way, balance its budget (no deficits), and keep taxes low.  This is called “laissez faire” (pronounced lay-zay fare).  These ideas are most associated with the British economist Adam Smith who wrote a book called The Wealth of Nations (1776).

Then came the Great Depression from 1929 to various points in the Thirties.  Thousands of bank failures, tens of thousands of bankrupt businesses, millions of unemployed people, and year after year of hardship with no hope in sight.  The “invisible hand” seemed too invisible for most people’s liking.

Accepted truth from 1933 to 1973: Recession (bad) and Depression (worse) result from a shortfall in Demand (people wanting to buy stuff) compared with what the economy can actually produce.  Government should make up the difference by spending money to buy stuff.  Also, if a government ran a budget deficit in the process of reviving the economy, it was all right and not the end of the world.  So, the government could manage the economy, do lots of things for citizens, and let the politicians decide how much to spend on what.  These ideas are most associated with the British economist John Maynard Keynes (pronounced Kanes) who wrote a book called The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936).  So this is called “Keynesianism.”  By the mid-Sixties everybody was a “Keynesian.”

Then came the Seventies.  The “oil shocks” of 1973 and 1979 caused world-wide “stagflation”: a combination of high inflation and high unemployment.  In economic theory, this could not happen.  In economic reality, it could happen.  People observed that big government deficits dumped gasoline on the fire of inflation, while lots of government control of the economy blocked adapting to new conditions.

Accepted truth from 1973 to 2008: the money supply and interest rates really govern the economy.  Deficits are bad because they either dump excess money into the economy (fueling inflation) or “crowd out” businesses that want to borrow money (smothering economic progress like a wicked step-mother).  The government should balance budgets, cut spending, cut taxes, keep interest rates low, and let the natural economy function.  These ideas are most associated with the American economist Milton Friedman who wrote a book called The Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 (1971). So this is called “Monetarism” (rather than “Friedmanism”).

Then came the “Great Recession” of 2008-201_ (fill in blank when you get a job).  Unregulated bankers did a lot of, you know, silly things.  The world financial system almost collapsed.  We’ve got seven percent unemployment.  Monetary policy isn’t working: the interest rate is at about zero, but the banks still aren’t lending; my 401(k) is only now back to where it was in 2008.  So, what is to be done?  Ask Keynes.

Hitler’s War

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Adolf Hitler created the Second World War.  He didn’t just start the war, he repeatedly took the initiative to expand it and to point it in new directions.  For this reason it is best labeled “Hitler’s War.”

The war really began in late-August 1939 when Hitler made a deal with Russia to divide Eastern Europe.  This led to the rapid conquest of Poland (Sept. 1939).  In late 1939 Hitler decided on war in the West at the first opportunity.  In April and May 1940 German forces over-ran Denmark and Norway.  In May and June 1940 they over-ran Holland, Belgium and France, driving the British army off the Continent.  Hitler was master of Europe!  Except that the British had now concluded that Mr. Hitler was not a very nice person at all.  (See: Charles I, Louis XIV, Napoleon I, Kaiser Wilhelm II.)  The British fought on, defeating Germany’s planned invasion by winning control of the air over the English Channel in the Battle of Britain.  The Germans then turned to starving out the British through submarine warfare in the Battle of the Atlantic.  This, too, failed.

Hitler’s victory forced other countries to make choices they didn’t want to make.

Italy declared war just as France fell, then found itself at war with Britain in the Mediterranean.  The German conquests in Europe created a vacuum of power in the Far East.  Japan sought to exploit this to establish its own supremacy.  Germany’s defeat of France and the weak position of Britain terrified the Americans, who began to supply military assistance to the British (Lend-Lease) and to take a strong line against Japan.

Hitler widened the war in1941.  He responded to a local challenge by conquering Yugoslavia and Greece in Spring 1941.  In June 1941 he launched a huge surprise attack on his Russian ally, capturing millions of prisoners and conquering huge swaths of territory.  Alarmed that the war would end without their having any claim on territory, the Japanese attacked.  The air raid on Pearl Harbor was followed by the conquest of the Philippines, British Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies.  Soon after Pearl Harbor Hitler declared war on the United States.  Also in 1941 Hitler ordered the “Final Solution of the Jewish Problem”: this would involve the murder of millions through mass shootings in Russia and the construction of death camps in Poland.

The further course of the war is best summed up in the term “ocean barriers and land bridges.”  American forces had to cross vast oceans to reach their German and Japanese enemies.  An armada of ships had to be constructed and control of the seas won.  Worse still, the Americans and the British divided their resources between the European war, which mattered, and the Pacific war, which did not.  In contrast, Germany and Russia had no water barriers between them; they were in continuous contact from Summer 1941 to Spring 1945.  Neither side could break off, so the great majority of German casualties were suffered on the Eastern Front, while the British and the Americans made less of a contribution to the defeat of Hitler.  Until Summer 1944 the bombing of Germany destroyed cities without harming the German war effort.

The war rushed to an end from Summer 1944 to Summer 1945.  The Americans and the British invaded France (June 1944) just as the Russians unleashed a gigantic attack on the Eastern Front.  Hitler’s empire crumbled, while the Americans banjoed the Japanese in a remarkable war fought across trackless ocean and trackless island jungle.

War had ruined virtually the whole world, and had revealed that people were capable of anything (Auschwitz and Hiroshima).  There would be no easy peace.

Dengue Fever

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The Aedes aegypti type of mosquito likes humans.  It likes to lay its eggs in artificial water containers, like in flower pots or old truck tires lying on the ground in the rain, rather than in puddles or ponds.  It likes to feed on humans, not on other animals.  Scientists call it “domesticated,” like dogs and cats.  It’s nice to have friends.

The Aedes aegypti type of mosquito likes Spring Break.  They live between 35 North latitude and 35 South latitude, and below an elevation of 1000 meters.  So, warm to hot places close to the shoreline.  So, all your favorite resorts: Panama City, Florida; South Padre Island, Texas; Cancun, Mexico; Lagos, Nigeria, Jakarta, Indonesia; “Soi Cowboy” in Bangkok, Thailand (if that’s how you roll).

The Aedes aegypti type of mosquito likes Capitalism.  The mosquitoes broke out of Africa between the 15th and the 19th Centuries as a side effect of the massive expansion in the slave trade.  In the many days ago, ships carried their drinking water in wooden barrels.  Probably the A. aegypti were passengers in the holds of the ships.  Slave ships crossing the Atlantic to the Caribbean carried the skeeters to the Americas.  Probably ships trading between the Americas and the Far East carried them to Asia.  Then the range of A. aegypti greatly expanded between 1960 and 2010 because of global warming (not stuck between 35 N and 35 S any longer), the growth of towns and cities[1], and increased international migration/travel.

Other than the fact that they are kind of hard to keep as pets (try buying a mosquito leash), the big problem with A. aegypti is that they carry dengue fever.[2]  (“Dengue” is a Spanish word that may have begun as an African word brought to the Americas by slaves.  Nobody knows what it means.)  The symptoms are fever around 103 degrees, torrential sweating, headaches that make you feel like your eyes are going to pop out of your head, muscle and joint pain, and an ugly rash.  It used to be called “breakbone fever” if that gives you a clue.

The first recorded dengue epidemic washed over Asia, Africa, and North America in 1779-1780.  One of the places hit hard by dengue was Philadelphia, because an unusual weather pattern had pushed the range of the A. aegypti farther north that summer.  There weren’t a lot of world-wide epidemics after that, but dengue kept killing people on a smaller scale all the time.  Once Western people started building empires in Africa and Asia in the 19th Century, dengue and other tropical diseases came to their attention.  Europeans used to call Africa “the white man’s graveyard.”  Generally, disease posed a greater danger than did native resistance.  So, scientists and sawbones got busy trying to deal with diseases.  In 1906 doctors confirmed that A. aegypti transmitted dengue; in 1907 doctors confirmed that dengue came from a virus.

Dengue evolved (I’m not sure that this is the correct term for a virus) in some fashion around the time of the Second World War.  Dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome began to be identified in Asia and the Americas.  You got deader sooner.

Dengue now is endemic (never goes away, but never kills everyone, in a specific place) in more than 100 countries.  Between 50 million and 100 million people get it every year.  On average, 25,000 of them die each year.  Scientists haven’t come up with a way to prevent infection (a vaccine).  Until they do, the chief method is to reduce the skeeter habitats.  Failing that, they kill them with bug spray.  That’s fine with me, but don’t tell PETA.

[1] Towns and cities have in-door toilets instead of out-houses or lush shrubberies where you squat in the nightime.  A.aegypti just loves the stagnant water found in toilet tanks as a place to lay their eggs.

[2] To be fair, they also carry yellow fever.

The Perils of Adventure 2

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Charles George “Chinese” Gordon had some odd helpers in extending the British Empire.

Romolo Gessi (1831-1881) had an exotic background (his father was an Italo-Armenian employed on the Levant in the British consular service) and an adventurous disposition.  He served as an interpreter with the British Army during the Crimean War (1854-55).  Here he first encountered Gordon.  In 1859 he fought as a volunteer with the Sardinian Army against the Austrians.  After the completion of the “Risorgimento” he started a business in Rumania, where he again met Gordon.  In 1873, when the khedive of Egypt appointed Gordon governor of the province of Equatoria in the Sudan, he invited Gessi to join him.  On Gordon’s orders Gessi circumnavigated Lake Albert.  Bent out of shape by perceived slights from the Egyptian government, Gessi resigned.  In 1877-1878 he tried to reach western Ethiopia from the valley of the Blue Nile.  This expedition came to nothing, so he answered a new call from Gordon who had been appointed governor-general of the whole of the Sudan.  He made Gessi governor of the Bahr al Ghazal province and ordered him to suppress the slave trade.  The leading figure in that trade was Suleiman al-Zubayr.  Gessi chased Suleiman, then killed him in battle.  Meanwhile, Gordon had been replaced by an Egyptian governor who dismissed Gessi.  Gessi had fallen ill and died at Suez on his way home.

Eduard Schnitzler (1840-1892) had a mundane background and an adventurous disposition.  He studied medicine, receiving his degree in 1866.  Unlike most doctors–German or otherwise, now or then–Schnitzler had no interest in a comfortable life, social respectability, and an early tee-time.  No sooner had he graduated from the University of Berlin than he signed up with the Turkish government.  From 1866 to 1875 Schnitzler was in Ottoman employment in the Balkans.  Not only did he kick over the traces by rejecting conventional employment, but he also took a Muslim name, Mehmed Emin.

In 1875 Gordon hired him as medical officer for Equatoria in the Sudan.  Emin impressed Gordon with his administrative abilities.  In 1878 the Khedive of Egypt appointed Emin as governor of Equatoria province when Gordon resigned.  In 1881 the Mahdist revolt began farther north.  This cut off Emin from all contact with the outside world.  Emin continued to rule Equatoria for the next seven years.  In 1888 Henry M. Stanley arrived to “save” Emin in the same way that he had “saved” Livingston.  Unlike Livingston, Emin went down to the coast with Stanley.  Then the German government, belatedly becoming interested in Africa, asked Emin to lead an expedition to establish German territorial claims around Lake Victoria.  The expedition did not work out well.  Eventually, Emin sent most of his caravan down to the coast to safety, while he remained behind to take care of those members of the expedition who had fallen ill.  Arab slave traders murdered him in Kanema.

Rudolf Slatin (1857-1932) just had an adventurous disposition.  He grew up in Vienna and studied business.  His father died when he was sixteen, so the boy got a job in a bookstore.  In Cairo, Egypt.  Cairo seemed exotic, but not exotic enough.  He went up the Nile to Khartoum with a German businessman, then to Kordofan with a German ornithologist, then back to Khartoum because of a rebellion.  He met Emin Pasha, who promised to recommend him to Gordon, but Slatin had just turned 21 so he had to go back to Austria for his army service.  After fighting in Bosnia, Slatin accepted an invitation from Gordon to come to the Sudan.  Slatin served as governor of Darfur (1879-1883), then was a prisoner of the Mahdists (1883-1895), then made a daring escape, then wrote a good book, then helped defeat the Mahdists (1898), and then helped govern the Sudan (1899-1914).  The rest of his life was quiet.  Comparatively.

The Perils of Adventure 1

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John Nicholson (1822-1857) was the son of a Scotch-Irish Protestant doctor.  He went to a boarding school whose motto was “Perseverando” (Persevere, Winners Never Quit and Quitters Never Win).  Nicholson learned that part of the lesson, but he had an awful temper: he flipped-out when opposed by anyone and often became violent.  Now, he would be on meds.  Then, in 1839, his family got rid of the boy by getting him appointed as an officer in the “Indian Army”–a force defending the British East India Company’s possessions.  Indian troops under British officers.  He fought in the disastrous First Afghan War (1839-1842).  Here he came to the attention of Henry Lawrence, who was building a British Empire in India, regardless of what the clowns in London wanted.  Lawrence gave Nicholson command of a district in Afghanistan.  First the local Afghans hated him: he was a foreigner, not a Muslim, he was brutal and oppressive, and violent when crossed.  Then the Afghans loved him: although he was not a Muslim, he was brutal and oppressive, and violent when crossed.  Just like them.  He once chased a horse-thief for a week through hostile country while being shot at from hill-tops along the way, killed the thief and his companions, then stabled his horse in the dining room of a local inn that had earlier refused him a room, pulled the thatch off the roof to feed his horse, and then set fire to the place when he left.  He kept this up for a while.

When the Indian Mutiny broke out he left Afghanistan.  Many tribesmen followed him because they wanted to share in the plunder and, besides what would happen later if Nicholson decided you weren’t there because you didn’t like him?  He was killed storming the rebel city of Delhi.  For half a century afterward Afghan tribesmen built shrines to the local god “Nikal Seyn.”

William Stephen Raikes Hodson (1821-1858) was the son of an Anglican clergyman in Gloucestershire.  He got a good education and decided not to put it to any use.  All his life Hodson was aggressive and self-confident to an obnoxious degree.  Modern human relations staff would probably fire him for being a disruptive presence in the organization.  However, the British were building an empire, not holding a bake sale.  He became an officer in the “Indian Army.”

Hodson fought—bravely, ruthlessly–in the First (1845-1846) and Second (1848-1849) Sikh Wars.  Powerful men took a shine to Hodson, thinking “yeah, that’s the ticket.”  However, peace did not agree with Hodson so well as did war.  He was snotty to just about everyone above or below him, and he didn’t pay attention to his paperwork.  Between wars he sat around drinking brandy and fuming under the tropical sun.  This did nothing to improve his temperament.  Many people couldn’t stand him.  In 1854 and 1858 he was wrongfully accused of fraud.

“In case of emergency, break class and pull lever.”  When the “Indian Mutiny” broke out in 1857 Hodson played an important role in its bloody suppression.  In September 1857 he arrested the last of the Mogul emperors, Bahadur Shah II, the figurehead leader of the rebellion.  The rebels had talked much of creating a united India under the Mughals.  This was mostly talk, rather than reality.  However, Hodson was a soldier, not a historian.  The next day he arrested two of the emperor’s sons, then personally shot them, and a grandson as well.  In March 1858 he was shot storming the rebel city of Lucknow.  It was his thirty-seventh birthday.  He died the next day.

The Origins of al Qaeda

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In the beginning all Muslims were supposed to belong to one community, not to many communities, and there was to be no division between politics and religion.  By the start of the Twentieth Century the Ottoman Empire expressed these unities.  At the same time, the Ottoman Empire—called the “Sick Man of Europe”—fell farther and farther behind Western countries, while the Turks bullied the Arabs inside the empire.

Then secular (non-religious) nationalism (which divided Muslims into Egyptians, Syrians, Iraqis, Saudi Arabians, etc.) created the first countries in the Muslim world.  Secularism and nationalism were Western ideas, so this amounted to Westernization.  Turkey provided the example here after the First World War.  Many other countries followed it after the Second World War.  Unfortunately, many of these governments did not serve the interests of their people.  The early nationalist leaders held on to power in ways that looked like dictatorship.  Economic development and the opportunity to make a better life did not keep pace with population growth.  Countries often seemed to cringe before the Western countries.

The dissatisfaction with secular nationalist governments made their religious critics the natural alternative in the eyes of many people.  Religious feeling became increasingly strong throughout the Muslim world.  However, the emergence of leaders with a strong religious motivation did not begin in the Arab world.  Rather, the movement which overthrew the Shah of Iran in 1978-1979 put power into the hands of religious leaders.  Subsequently, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 sparked a rebellion by Afghans which drew in many Muslims from all over the Middle East to wage “jihad” against the Russians.  Among them was a Saudi Arabian soccer enthusiast named Osama bin Laden.  ObL’s father was rich, but he wasn’t.  He fought some, but mostly he organized people to fight and raised money to give people the weapons with which to fight.  In 1989 the Afghans succeeded in driving out the Russkies.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia ObL suggested that the “Afghan Arabs” who had defeated the Soviets should now fight the Iraqis.  The Saudis preferred to put their faith in the Americans.  Enraged by allowing these “unbelievers” into Islam’s holy land, bin Laden turned his attention to the “far enemy”—America.  Again he served as an organizer/fund-raiser.  (A National Endowment for Inhumanity.)

First, he based himself in Sudan.  When that got too hot, he moved to Afghanistan.  The Taliban, a movement of Muslim fundamentalists which had gained control of Afghanistan, protected ObL.  From these bases he organized the simultaneous bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanganyika, then the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, an American warship visiting Yemen.  Then he agreed to support the “planes operation,” which had been pitched to him—purportedly—by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad.  This—purportedly–involved hijacking a bunch of planes in America and crashing them into buildings and hijacking a bunch of planes over the Pacific and crashing them into the ocean.  The second part of the plan had to be abandoned because the CIA snagged a bunch of the Pacific Ocean plotters in the Philippines.  Bin Laden concentrated on the American part of the operation.

On 9/11/2001 the attack came off as planned.  The Americans then invaded Afghanistan.  ObL fled to the lawless border regions of Pakistan.  Then the US invaded Iraq in 2003.  Eventually the Americans killed ObL.  The war in Afghanistan goes on to prevent the Taliban from coming back.

Yemen and Nomen

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The Christmas Day 2009 “Underwear Bomber” brought attention to a little-known, impoverished, physically desolate, ill-governed, violent corner of the world.  No not Detroit.  Yemen, on the southwestern tip of the Arabian peninsula.

Conditions in Yemen are miserable.  Yemen consists of mountains and deserts and tribes.  Furthermore, there are fewer than thirty million Yemenis, but they own sixty million guns.  Then, the economy is dead: about half the population lives in poverty and over a third of the work force is unemployed.  What little oil there is won’t last much longer.  There is a shortage of water that will only get worse.  Yemeni women have an average of six children, so the population is rising rapidly.

Political conditions make this dire situation even worse.  First, the recetn President of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was seen as a crook and a tyrant.  After two successive presidents had been assassinated, the army put him into power in 1978.  He quickly entrenched himself.  Then, in 1990 his government managed to get control of the southern region, which is home to the oil resources of the country.  Since then it has bled the region of the oil revenue while starving it of resources.  So there is an insurgency underway.  Then, in the north there are Shi’a Muslims who dislike being ruled by a Sunni government.  So there is an insurgency under way.  Then, because the economy is in poor shape, unemployed young men tend to have a lot of time to kill.  Fundamentalist religious preachers abound, usually spewing stuff about Islam establishing its world predominance through struggle. One of these preachers was the Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, who was in touch via internet with Major Nidal Hasan before he killed thirteen soldiers at Fort Hood in November 2009, and he met with the “underwear bomber” before his mission in December 2009.  Guy appeared to be in a rut.

So, it is a natural environment for Al Qaeda.  The first Al Qaeda people showed up as early as 1992.  In 2000 Al Qaeda bombed the USS Cole when it was entering port in Yemen.  Later on, Yemeni jihadists went to fight the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Many of the survivors of those adventures have returned home over the years.  When the Saudi Arabian government stomped down on jihadists sympathizers after 9/11, many of them fled to Yemen.  Right now it is estimated that anywhere from 300 to 500 committed Al Qaeda fighters are somewhere in Yemen.  (For obvious reasons, it’s a little tricky to go door to door doing a proper census.)  More recently the British and American embassies in the capital city of Sanaa were attacked.  Most recently, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian Muslim studying in Yemen, was recruited as the “Underwear bomber.”  So, the place is a pain-in-the-neck for the United States.

Generally, Yemenis don’t like the United States as an abstract concept.  The government is less anti-American than are the people generally, but people don’t like the government either.  If the government co-operates too openly with the United States in opposing Al Qaeda, it will become even less popular than it is now.  The result may be that it will be over-thrown by people who are pro-Al Qaeda.  So, we can let the situation sort of fester in hopes that nothing worse will appear, or we can push for action against Al Qaeda and make that worse situation appear.  I suppose we could invade the place to bring them hope and change, just like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan.  “How’s that hopey changey thing working out for you?”

“Terrorism’s new hideout,” The Week, 22 January 2010, p. 11.

The Perils of Seafaring 1

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The Portuguese had pioneered the sea voyages to the Indian Ocean.  Along the way they had constructed fortified trading posts on the coasts of Africa and on the key entrances to thee Indian Ocean (Straits of Hormuz, Malacca).  This gave them control of the spice trade.  (See: “We’ll be rich as Nazis!”—Montgomery Burns.)

In the 17th Century the Dutch desired to challenge the Portuguese for control of this trade.  They short-circuited the Portuguese control of the sea lanes by building ships that need never touch land before they reached the East and by selecting routes that took them well out of the established shipping lanes.  The course followed by their ships ran down the central Atlantic, then ran east across the lower end of the Indian Ocean, in the belt of high winds known as the “Roaring Forties.”  They were many months out of sight of land.  (See: green drinking water; see: biscuits with weevils; see: stir-crazy.)  With their advanced navigation systems, the Dutch East Indiamen were the 17th Century equivalent of the space shuttle.  Still, as with the space shuttle, accidents do happen.  (See: Insurance, origins of.)

In 1629 the ship “Batavia” left Holland for the East Indies, carrying a rich cargo and over 300 passengers and crew.  While qualified officers operated the ship on a day-to-day basis, the ship was commanded by Francisco Pelsaert, a merchant.  His chief assistant was Jeronimus Cornelisz, a psychopathic pharmacist.  (See: CVS.)  On the long voyage eastward he plotted a mutiny.  He hoped to seize the ship and turn pirate.  (See: any little boy.)  However, one night the ship struck a reef off the western coast of Australia.  Once daylight came, about 200 passengers were ferried to a little island nearby.  Pelsaert and some others soon set off in the ship’s boat to try to reach the Dutch colony in Java.  Pelsaert left Cornelisz in charge of the shipwrecked passengers.

It took Pelsaert a month to reach the port of Batavia in Java, 2,000 miles away over uncharted open seas.  (That works out to 2.5 miles per hour, with no iPod or PS2.)  It took another month for a ship to rescue the survivors.  In the meantime, the demented Cornelisz established a reign of terror on the little island that they had come to call “Batavia’s Graveyard.”  He and the followers he had recruited for the mutiny they had planned before the shipwreck killed off 125 of the 208 surviving passengers.  Their intention seems rather like building a cult: people had to identify with the group in order to stay alive; once they had participated in a killing they had no choice but to continue supporting Cornelisz.  (See: fraternity/sorority.)  His plan was to capture the rescue ship and turn to piracy.  In the meantime, they would reduce the number of mouths that had to be supported from the limited supplies of food and water.  (See: Darwin.)

When the rescue ship finally arrived, a few of the survivors managed to warn the crew about Cornelisz.  He and the ring-leaders were arrested, tried, and hanged.  (First they chopped off Cornelisz’s hands with a hammer and chisel.)

You can read about this story in Mike Dash, Batavia’s Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History’s Bloodiest Mutiny. (New York: Three Rivers Press. 2003.)

Somalia a little while ago.

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Richard Burton, the explorer not the actor, went to Somalia in the 1850s.  He got a spear through his face for his trouble.  Things aren’t much different now.  The British claimed the territory as part of their drive to protect the “lifeline to India” that ran through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea.  They never managed to turn its tribes and regions into a coherent country before granting it independence.  The country disintegrated in 1991, with two regions (Somaliland, Puntland) seceding and the rest of the country falling prey to robber bands.  The economy fell apart and over a million people fled their homes to escape danger or starvation.  Nobody in the outside world cared very much about this catastrophe.  However, international television journalists discovered the place and broadcast the human suffering all over the world.  In 1992 President George H. W. Bush sent in some troops to try to restore some order.  Then an international peace-keeping force came in.  In 1993, under President Clinton, “mission creep” appeared as the Americans tried to batter the local war-lords into line.  This ended in the “Blackhawk Down” disaster.  Americans became very shy about intervening in tropical hell-holes.

Eventually, many people turned to radical Islamists who didn’t approve of robbers and had the guns to do something about it.  The Islamic Courts Union established control of most of the country by 2005.  However, in the wake of 9/11 the US had developed a strong dislike for radical Islamists.  The intervention the 1990s hadn’t gone too well and American forces were busy with other wars (Iraq, Afghanistan).  So, in 2006 the US encouraged Ethiopia, which had its own territorial ambitions, to invade Somalia and toss out the Islamic Courts government.  Before pulling out its troops in January 2009 Ethiopia didn’t entirely succeed in getting rid of the Islamic Courts, but it did enough to wreck any the progress that had been made.  Somalia is ungoverned and attracts anti-Western radical Islamists.  A third of Somalis live from internationally-supplied food rations.  A million people are in refugee camps or wandering around dazed.

Under these conditions, many Somalis living near the coast turned to piracy.  The original British motivation to occupying Somalia arose from the important shipping route between the Persian Gulf-Indian Ocean and the Red Sea-Suez Canal.  The British Empire is gone, but shipping still uses the route.  Somalia is awash in weapons.  Put merchants ship and automatic weapons together with poor people who know small boats, place in a law-less environment, and you get instant piracy.  By early 2009 the pirates were seizing three ships a week and they made an estimated $100 million in ransom in 2008.

“Somalia: A state of failure,” The Week, 22 May 2009, p. 11.