The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

by Peter Frankopan

Seen from an American perspective, the chain of events that led to the Declaration of Independence of the United States had a very American context. But from a wider vantage point the causes can be traced back to the tentacles of British power extending ever further in search of new opportunities, and from the efficacy of the Silk Road that had caused disequilibrium by pumping back too much too quickly. London was trying to balance competing demands on opposite sides of the world, and attempting to use revenues generated by taxes in one location to fund expenditure in another, leading to disillusionment, dissatisfaction—and revolt. The pursuit of profits had been relentless, which in turn had spurred a growing sense of self-confidence and arrogance. The East India Company, Clive told inquisitors on the eve of its collapse, was an imperial power in all but name. It ruled over countries that were “rich, populous, fruitful,” and was “in possession…of twenty millions of subjects.”63 As those in the American colonies recognised, there was ultimately little difference between being a subject in one territory controlled from Britain rather than another. If Bengalis could starve to death, why not those living in the colonies, whose rights seemed no better or greater? It was time to go it alone.

The collapse of the European powers opened up the world for others. To cover the shortfalls in agricultural production and to pay for weapons and munitions, the Allies took on huge commitments, commissioning institutions such as J. P. Morgan & Co. to ensure a constant supply of goods and materials.122 The supply of credit resulted in a redistribution of wealth every bit as dramatic as that which followed the discovery of the Americas four centuries earlier: money flowed out of Europe to the United States in a flood of bullion and promissory notes. The war bankrupted the Old World and enriched the New. The attempt to recoup losses from Germany (set at an eye-watering and impossibly high level equivalent to hundreds of billions of dollars at today’s prices) was a desperate and futile attempt to prevent the inevitable: the Great War saw the treasuries of the participants ransacked as they tried to destroy each other, destroying themselves in the process.

With too many people and not enough food, there were two obvious targets who had been demonised in all walks of German life, in the media and in popular consciousness: Russians and Jews. The portrayal of the Slavs as racially inferior, erratic, with a capacity for suffering and violence had been consistently developed before the war. Although the vitriol had been toned down after the Molotov–Ribbentrop agreement was signed in 1939, it started up again after the invasion. As has been forcefully argued, this played directly into the genocide of Russians that started in the late summer of 1941.

So began a chain of events whose scale and horror were unprecedented, the shipment of human beings like livestock to holding pens where they could be divided into those who would work as slave labour and those whose lives were deemed to be the price to pay for the survival of others: southern Russia, Ukraine and the western steppe became the cause of genocide. The failure of the land to generate wheat in the anticipated quantities was a direct cause of the Holocaust.

One result of this was that Hitler’s oppression was deemed worse than that of Stalin. The narrative of the war as a triumph over tyranny was selective, singling out one political enemy while glossing over the faults and failings of recent friends. Many in central and eastern Europe would beg to differ with this story of the triumph of democracy, pointing out the price that was paid over subsequent decades by those who found themselves on the wrong side of an arbitrary line. Western Europe had its history to protect, however, and that meant emphasising successes—and keeping quiet about mistakes and about decisions that could be explained as realpolitik.

Naturally, this provided those in power with valuable political capital: regimes across the Persian Gulf could make grandiose statements that linked the new affluence with their personal power. It was no coincidence, therefore, that as the streams of cash flowing into the heart of the world turned into a torrent, the ruling classes became increasingly demagogic in their outlook. The funds at their disposal were so great that, although they could be used to provide bread and circuses in the traditional method of autocratic control, there was simply too much to lose by giving others a share of the power. There was a marked slowdown in the development of pluralistic democracy and instead a tightening of control by small groups of individuals—whether related by blood to the ruler and the ruling family as in the Arabian peninsula and in Iran, or espousing common political causes as in Iraq and Syria. Dynastic rule became the norm at a time when the industrialised world was actively breaking down barriers to improve social mobility and loudly trumpeting the merits of liberal democracy.

The Middle East as a whole accounted for more than 50 per cent of global arms imports in the mid-1970s.

The more Chieftain tanks ordered by Iran, Mirage jets by Israel, MiG-21 and MiG-23 fighters by Syria, Soviet T-72 tanks by Iraq and U.S. F-5 jets by Saudi Arabia, the better for the economies of Britain, France, the USSR and the USA.44

As Pakistani scientists noted ruefully, “the Western world was sure that an underdeveloped country like Pakistan could never master this technology,” and yet at the same time western countries made “hectic and persistent efforts to sell everything to us…they literally begged us to buy their equipment.”66 As it was, it was not hard to see how stern talk about proliferation from countries like the United States, Britain and France, which refused to be subject to the inspections and rules of the International Atomic Energy Agency, grated with those that did and had to conduct their research in secret; but the real hypocrisy, in the cold light of day, lay in the enthusiasm with which the developed world rushed to earn hard cash or gain access to cheap oil.

The United States decided to bet big on Iraq; this was the square of the board where Washington’s chances of being able to influence what was going on in the centre of Asia were strongest. Helping Saddam was a way of remaining engaged, as well as countering the advance of both Iran and the Soviet Union.

However, even when it became apparent that poison gas had been used against Iran in the course of the Badr offensive of 1985, nothing critical was said in public—other than bland statements that the United States itself was strongly opposed to the use of chemical weapons.101 As such, however, it was highly embarrassing that Iraq’s production capability, as one senior American officer pointed out, was “primarily [derived] from Western firms, including possibly a U.S. foreign subsidiary.” It did not take much to realise that this raised uncomfortable questions about complicity in Saddam’s acquisition and use of chemical weapons.102 In time, even the low-key public comments and private entreaties to high-ranking Iraqi officials about chemical weapons were dropped. In the mid-1980s, when United Nations reports concluded that Iraq was using chemicals against its own civilians, the United States responded with silence. Condemnation of Saddam’s brutal and sustained moves against the Kurdish population of Iraq was conspicuous by its absence. It was simply noted in American military reports that “chemical agents” were being used extensively against civilian targets. Iraq was more important to the United States than the principles of international law—and more important than the victims.

These embarrassing revelations had consequences that ran deep through the Reagan administration, where a slate of senior figures were subsequently indicted on charges ranging from conspiracy to perjury to withholding evidence. They included Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense; Robert McFarlane, National Security Advisor, as well as his successor, John Poindexter; Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs; and a host of senior CIA officers, including Clair George, Deputy Director of Operations. The illustrious roll-call showed how far the United States had been prepared to go in order to secure its position in the heart of the world.135 So too did the fact that the charges turned out to be nothing more than window-dressing: all the leading figures later received presidential pardons from President George H. W. Bush, or had their convictions overturned on Christmas Eve 1992. “The common denominator of their motivations—whether their actions were right or wrong—” read the citation, “was patriotism.” The impact on their personal finances, careers and families, the President went on, was “grossly disproportionate to any misdeeds or errors of judgment they may have committed.”136 Several of those pardoned had already been convicted on charges ranging from perjury to withholding information from Congress, while Weinberger’s trial had been due to start two weeks later. It was a classic case of justice being elastic, and of the ends justifying the ...

“We have no opinion on your Arab–Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait,” replied the ambassador. She went on to clarify what this meant: “Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960’s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.”147 Saddam had asked for a green light from the United States, and he had been given one. The following week, he invaded Kuwait. The consequences proved catastrophic. Over the course of the next three decades, global affairs would be dominated by events in countries running across the spine of Asia. The struggle for control and influence in these countries produced wars, insurrections and international terrorism—but also opportunities and prospects, not just in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in a belt of countries stretching east from the Black Sea, from Syria to Ukraine, Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan, and from Russia to China too. The story of the world has always been centred on these countries. But since the time of the invasion of Kuwait, everything has been about the emergence of the New Silk Road.

On top of that come extra-judicial renditions, torture on an institutional scale and drone strikes against figures deemed—but not necessarily proven—to be threats. It says a great deal about the sophistication and pluralism of the west that these issues can be debated in public, and that many are horrified by the hypocrisy of the message of the primacy of democracy on the one hand and the practice of imperial power on the other. So appalled were some that they decided to leak classified information that laid bare just how policy was created: pragmatically, on the hoof and often with little thought about international law and justice. None of this showed the west in a good light—something felt keenly by the intelligence agencies themselves, which have fought to keep reports of the nature and extent of torture classified, even in the face of direct challenges from the U.S. Senate itself.