Download The Twentieth Century dawned to the slogan “God is dead

The Twentieth Century dawned to the slogan “God is dead.” It ended with the
discovery that God had merely moved. The twentieth century was not the twilight
of the Gods, but the twilight of Europe. European culture had merely confused its
own decadence with that of everything sacred. That was understandable. The
end of the twentieth century had coincided with the collapse of the center of the
world, a center that had reigned, if not peacefully then continually, for half a
millennium. Everything that European man believed to be true and beautiful was
shattered in the twentieth century. But the end of twentieth century did not mean
the end of everything. It meant only the end of one civilization and the
emergence of another: the American.
The Europeans were barbarians, smashing down barriers so powerful that they
seemed not even to be there. They respected nothing but power, money and
their own beliefs. They created a world and that world lasted until the end of the
twentieth century.
The new is, by definition barbaric. It lacks sophistication and moderation. It is
precisely this barbarism, the simple and immoderate appetites hat allows
someone to remake the world. Civilized people know their limits and decadent
people are comfortable living with in them or within even narrower bounds. The
Europeans were the greatest barbarians the world had known. They created a
savage global regime that excluded no one and therefore included everyone. At
the beginning of their time, as they sacked ancient civilizations carrying off their
wealth and culture with them, it would have been easy to see their barbarism as
their permanent condition.
But barbarism leads to civilization. The triumph of Macedonian barbarism was
that it was limitless but engulfed the small world it knew. Nothing was alien from
it. The same could be said of European civilization on a much grander scale. Far
more than simply taking European religion—civilization—the Europeans bought
world civilizations to Europe. To be more precise, they forged a global civilization
with Europe at the center, sucking in the ideas of the rest of the world.
This was Europe’s triumph and its downfall. Europe first discovered that the earth
was not the center of the universe and that the world was round. The first
discovery gave rise to science, which challenged Christianity’s belief that the
world was governed by a benevolent God who cared about the fate of man, with
the idea that the earth was an insignificant speck in the universe. If that was so,
then so was man and if man was insignificant then how could he be made in the
image of God, and if he wasn’t in His image, then where was God?
If the world was round, then Europe was not the center of the world—the world
had no center. This superficial metaphor had a precise meaning. The conquest of
the world forced Europe to confront the fact that most of the world had never
heard of Jesus Christ and certainly did not regard him as their lord and savior.
The world had many Gods, even if they were false.
If the Europeans kept their self-confidence, the multiplicity of Gods would have
no meaning. But science created a massive crisis of confidence within European
civilization. As Europe moved from barbarism to a civilized opulence based on its
conquest of the world, it moved from confidence in the certitudes of its culture, to
profound doubt. The greatest efflorescence of European thinking—the
Enlightenment—lived in profound tension with the existential core of European
civilization—Christianity. The enlightenment taught scientific skepticism.
Christianity taught a sure and certain hope.
The collision between enlightenment and Christianity created a vacuum in which
the multiplicity of Gods turned from a hierarchy to a jumble. If the Enlightenment
was right, then religion was merely culture while science, the highest form of
thought, provided only doubt. If religion were culture and science could not
distinguish between cultures, then no culture was better than another. If no
religion was better than another, then Christianity was merely one religion among
many. And if that were true, then European civilization had no intrinsic superiority
over any other.
Europe moved from civilization to decadence. It came to doubt its right to rule.
When an empire doubts its right to empire, two things happen. On the one side, it
savagely rejects the doubt, trying to crush it with force. On the other hand, it
knows that the suppression of doubt by force must inevitably fail. The twentieth
century was the century in which the Europe played out the twilight of its idols.
This process was inevitable. The European conquest of the world depended on
science, understood as the discovery of fundamental natural principles and their
technological application to political problems. These in turn were driven by
geopolitical considerations. To be more precise, Europe was confronted by a
geopolitical challenge which drove it to conquer the world. It was able to carry out
the conquest by using science and technology in novel ways—much of it stolen
from subject civilizations. This in terms created the geopolitical reality of
European global hegemony. It also embedded a cultural hand grenade in
European civilization that led to its fall. At the same time, a geopolitical problem
insoluble by technology led to Europe’s geopolitical fall. By the end of the
twentieth century, the cultural and geopolitical problem led to decadence and
collapse.
To understand this, we must answer this question: why was it that the
Portuguese and Spaniards—Iberia—began the process of global conquest and
why did it happen in the 15th century. Why didn’t it happen if the 5 century BC in
Greece or in the 10th century in China. Why didn’t the Inca’s do it. Why did it
happen then and why did the Iberians do it?
1492—the year that Columbus set sail, was not the beginning of the age of
European conquest. That had been going on for decades, led particularly by the
Portuguese King, Henry the Navigator. Nor was it the year that Muslims were
finally expelled from Europe. Except for a small toe-hold, they had lost their
position in Iberia decades before. But it is a useful symbolic point from which to
begin. 1492 was both the year Columbus sailed and the year that the Muslims
were expelled form Iberia.
Atlantic Europe was, compared to much of the world, backward and
impoverished. When the Muslim’s developed a list of great civilizations of the
world, Europe did not appear there. Those who knew of Europe, did not hold it in
high regard as a civilization. The rudeness of European civilization did not
prevent it from waging war effectively. Quite the contrary, it was the very
barbarism of Europe, its lack of refinement, that released the constraints that
made it so effective. There is no question but that the Europeans were
barbarians compared to the sophisticated Muslims. There is also no question but
that the Muslims were defeated in Europe by a much less sophisticated
civilization and that that civilization ultimately, centuries later, came to dominate
and fragment the Islamic world. Barbaric Europe defeated decadent islam.
Wars of conquest may ultimately be turned to profit, but that takes time. In the
14th Century, the war with the Muslims, far from enriching the Iberian
monarchies, was impoverishing them. There was little to be stolen from the
Muslims who were being expelled. They had also spent their fortune on their
retreat. The war had left the Iberians militarily powerful, particularly in Europe. It
had also left them in economic crisis. Europe’s problem was to use its military
power to generate wealth, before poverty undermined that military power. The
Iberians were under intense pressure to move quickly.
Geography did not favor a quick solution. The Iberians needed gold first and
foremost and then they needed spices. The need for gold is obvious. The need
for spices less so. Spices were the primary means of food preservation in the
pre-technological world. Meat was a luxury consumption item. It takes about 7
grams of grain protein to create one gram of animal protein. Eating meat was the
instrument of conspicuous consumption of Europe’s upper classes. However, in
order to preserve meat in palatable form, preservatives are needed. Pepper,
cloves and other spices serve this function. Spices also served a range of
medicinal and aesthetic purposes. Like gold, they had uses. They also were a
preserved form of wealth. Pepper in particular was valued at the weight of gold
for its functionality. Spices were, in effect, luxury and currency. They, along with
gold, were wealth.
The ideal mode for the acquisition of gold was conquest. The cost was confined
to warfare, ideal for a society whose primary asset was the ability to fight. Spices
were also best acquired by conquest, but price differentials made trade for them
possible. However, the Iberian problem was simple. There were no known or
imagined sources of either gold or spice near at hand. It was assumed that gold
was available in Africa while Spices were known to be available in India. The
problem that the Iberians had was that they were not only very far away from
either, but that their access to each was along lines of supply and
communications dominated by Muslims. Expelling the Moors from Iberia was one
thing. Fighting their way through the Islamic world to get to India or central Africa
was quite another thing.
Take a closer look at European geography in the 15th century. Iberia was
surrounded by emptiness, poverty and power. To the north and northeast were
England and France and beyond them, the massive poverty of the European and
Scandinavian hinterlands. An immediate invasion of any of these, toward the end
of the 15th Century at least, would have solved none of the economic problems
even if it increased Iberian power.
To the south was the North African and the Mediterranean. North Africa was still
held by Muslims, whose decline had not left them helpless. Power projection
directly into North Africa would have been difficult and could well have been
defeated. The land routes—the historic caravan trails that bought Asian wealth
to Europe were in Muslim hands and while they were prepared to do business,
the Europeans weren’t economically able to pay the price.
The Mediterranean was also closed to them. An emerging Muslim power, Turkey,
was battling the Italian City States for domination of the Mediterranean. As was
to become a hallmark of European geopolitics, the Italians were fighting each
other at the same time. At various points in the 15th Century, Catholic Venice
allied itself with the Turks in order to protect itself from the other Italian cities.
That meant that navigation of the Mediterranean as far as the Levant or
Constantinople, was impossible. It might have cut the price of spices to take
delivery that far east, but it wouldn’t solve the economic problem itself. They
couldn’t get there and if they did, it wouldn’t be much help.
The only path open to the Iberians was to the West—the Ocean Sea as they
called it: the Atlantic. But it was more complicated than that. Traditional forms of
maritime navigation were built around coastal vessels. Sticking close to the coast
solved many problems. Land was available for use as a reference point.
Provisions were available on land so the ships didn’t have to be particularly large
in order to hold provisions for long voyages. Coastal traffic mean two way traffic.
Trade could take place without going all the way to the source or market.
But in this particular case, given the geopolitics of the day, coastal navigation
wasn’t possible. The Muslims controlled the African coast and the Mediterranean
was filled with hostile powers—Christian as well as Muslim. If the only alternative
for the Iberians was the Atlantic, then the only alternative for them was a radical
new form of navigation—deep water navigation. Deep water navigation required
new technologies. It required a means to locate the ship without reference to
land. It required larger ships able to sustain its crew without frequent recourse to
the land. It required weapons systems that could make it effective when it did
come into shore or port. It required a revolution in warfighting technology that
would lead to a commercial revolution.
By and large, deep water navigational technology was enhanced by the Iberians,
but it did not originate with them. Compass, sextent, firearms, vessel design and
the rest had existed before. Indeed, the Chinese had perfected deep water
sailing ships in the 14th century. The Chinese had certainly sailed deep into the
Indian Ocean and there is some evidence that they had rounded the Cape of
Good Hope. A good deal of what they did was coastal navigation, since the south
China Sea, and the Indian Ocean permitted it, but the size of the vessels clearly
indicated a broader mastery of technology.
The Chinese had the technology, but they deliberately decided in 1433 to stop
long range exploration. It is extremely important to understand why the Chinese
did not turn this into global hegemony. The reason was geopolitical. The Chinese
government during the Ming Dynasty was facing issues on land. There was
political instability, dangers along the frontiers that forced them to increase their
land forces and reinforce the Great Wall. Moreover, the long-range trips of the
great Treasure Ships of the Ming Dynasty were not economically supportable,
when compared to more near at hand trading opportunities east of the Straits of
Malacca.
The Chinese and Iberian geopolitical positions determined behavior, not
technology. Technological capabilities probably favored the Chinese intrinsically.
However their internal geopolitical position and their external trade position made
further investment in deep water navigation irrational. The geopolitical position of
the Iberians in particular and the Atlantic Europeans in general made it rational.
Indeed, deep water navigation was needed so badly that it was urgently
developed under government auspices. Iberia needed to get access to India
without having to pass through Muslim territory. The overland route to China
explored by Marco Polo was too long, dangerous and still involved passing
through Muslim territory. The only alternative to this northern route was the
oceans.
There was an additional geopolitical dimension to this. Christianity saw itself as
locked in a complex struggle against the Islamic world. Even while fighting
among themselves, there was a core understanding that European security
depended on the destruction of Islam’s military power. Europe also understood,
centuries after the Crusades, that its ability to both project military power into the
Islamic world and maintain control once there was severely limited. Islam’s
strategic depth could not be overcome by Europe along, at least not with the
military capabilities Europe could imagine having.
One of the enduring beliefs in late medieval Europe was that there was a vast
Christian kingdom somewhere in Africa to the south of Muslim held territory. It
was said to be ruled by the Prester John, and was said to have an enormous
Army. If European Christians could make contact with the Prester John and join
in a coordinated war against Islam, the Islamic world would crumble. One of the
very serious aims of the Iberian voyages, beginning with Henry the Navigator’s
voyages down the west coast of Africa, was to make contact with the Prester
John and arrange joint operations.
There was in fact a Christian Kingdom where they thought it was—Abyssinia or
today’s Ethiopia. There had been limited contact with them during the 15th
century, including an Ethiopian delegation to Lisbon. Obviously, its strength was
nowhere near what Christian legend would have it, but it indicated three things
that are revealing. Information did “leak” around the world. The information was
inaccurate. Geopolitics drove the explorations that took place, ranging from
strategic ambitions to commercial requirements.
Technology followed geopolitics. The Caravels that the Iberians sent around the
world were the physical manifestation of global geopolitics in the same sense
that space satellites represented the geopolitics of the twentieth century. The
Portuguese and Spanish governments, first in order to circumvent Arab
geography, later as they competed with each other, force fed the technologies
needed for effective power projection. The ships size increased with their
armaments and with the number of men on board. Navigational tools, particularly
cartography, underwent rapid improvements. The shape of naval and land
warfare was changed.
This meant that when Vasco Da Gamma passed into the Indian Ocean via the
Cape of Good Hope, and sailed north to Calcutta, he was not only able to sustain
his fleet, but was able to intimidate and even overwhelm native forces on land via
land bombardment. When Cortes and Pizarro arrived with a handful of men in
South America, they were able, using firearms, to force the capitulation of
existing regimes. The force they bought to bear was irresistible.
The global balance of power shifted in two ways. First, the Iberians forced
themselves into every continent and through their commercial enterprises,
created a global economy. Second, by doing this they began the process
whereby European countries dominated the economies and the internal political
life of cultures that had hitherto been, at best, vaguely aware of the existence of
the Europeans. The process became iterative. European military power
generated economic power, which in turn generated more military power.
There was, however, a fundamental weakness in the European imperial system.
Europe waged an interminable civil war while simultaneously conquering the
world. Where the Chinese, facing internal strife and external challenges
abandoned deep water maritime adventures, the Europeans continued it. Put
differently, the fact that there was ongoing struggle between European nations
increased the pressure to continue empire building. Given the poverty of Atlantic
Europe, a nation without an empire could not hope to compete. Empire became
the key to power in Europe as well.
Had this resulted in the conquest of all of Europe by a single power, this might
have ended in an even more extended global hegemony. But there was a built in
equality in the process. Imperialism generated so much wealth for relatively little
investment, that even the smallest nations could engage in it. The Netherlands is
a prime example of a tiny nation that became a global power, giving it
disproportionate influence in Europe. This created an unexpected consequence
among the larger nations as the emerged to maturity. The competition for empire
was sufficiently balanced that no one power could ever emerge preeminent.
This could be seen at the very beginning, with the competition of the Spanish and
Portuguese. On paper, Spain should have been able to crush Portugal. But
Portugal—farthest west and first to expel the Muslims—had a substantial lead on
the Spaniards. That meant that they could use their wealth to compensate for
their geopolitical weakness. In effect, they could buy power in the form of
mercenaries and the ability to manipulate Spain.
In the end, the Portuguese and Spaniards were unable to defeat each other and
were forced into an historic compromise. In 1494, only two years after Columbus
established Spain’s maritime capabilities—and made it clear to the Portuguese
that their temporary monopoly on maritime imperialism was at an end—Portugal
and Spain signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, brokered by the Pope. The Treaty
divided the globe—its size not fully appreciated—into two spheres of influence.
Spain dominated one and Portugal the other. The languages spoken in Latin
America today, and their geographies, memorializes this treaty.
The Treaty had a far more important effect than dividing the world along a line
that wouldn’t hold. It prevented an all out fight between Europe’s most dynamic
powers, preventing a united Iberia and therefore protecting the rest of Europe
from the imperial ambitions of Spain. It permanently diverted Spanish strength
toward Portugal, at least to the point where both had declined relative to the rest
of Europe. In negotiating a stalemate, the Treaty guarantee an ongoing an
insoluble European civil war.
The Treaty of Tordesillas set the stage for the problem, but the heart of the
problem was geography. In order to conquer continental Europe, the focus had to
be on land forces. The force required to both conquer Europe limited naval
capacity to what was needed to maintain colonial power. But there was one
European power that could not be taken by land power—England. The English
Channel was only thirty miles wide at its narrowest point, but the strongest
European Army could not force its way across the Channel, even if once there,
they would sweep the British Army away. Even if all naval forces were
concentrated against Britain, they proved insufficient to achieve successful
lodgement. And the process of focusing that force made the rest of the empire
vulnerable to poaching.
Three times in the five hundred years of the European Imperium, powers sought
to conquer Europe and even succeeded. Three times they were defeated by the
English Channel. First, the Spanish Armada was destroyed in a storm in the 16th
century. Then Napoleon’s Navy was defeated at Trafalgar. Finally Hitler’s
invasion was stopped at the Battle of Britain. In each case, total hegemony over
the continent was insufficient to force the British to capitulate. European history
turned on that fact.
The British, for their part, took full advantage of this geopolitical reality in two
ways. First, they manipulated the European balance of power to prevent the
domination of the continent by any one power, who could use its secure power to
build a massive navy. Second, they used the ongoing continental wars that
diverted continental Europe’s maritime strength, to this weakness to build their
own empire out of the rubble of preceding ones.
Understanding the British concept of the balance of power is critical both to
understanding why Europe failed and how the U.S. uses balance of power
manipulation on a global scale.