Deja Vu

By Henry Butterfield Ryan

Here is a quiz. What Christian leader invaded a mainly Arab Muslim country to rid it of a tyrannical government, or so he said? Here are some clues. He claimed his troops were not invaders but liberators. Furthermore, he had no argument with Islam, which, he said, he deeply respected.

His forces, far superior technologically, easily defeated the defenders. He then set up councils of local inhabitants to help govern the country and even asked some of his former enemies to help out. He planned major aid projects to modernize this economically underdeveloped society, hoping, also, that his country’s ideals would take root and spread in the region.

The population accepted his troops quietly, but sullenly, and within a few weeks a guerrilla war broke out led by members of the former regime with followers who resented this Christian occupation. Meanwhile, his campaign was highly controversial at home, and many of his troops wanted to leave a place they came to hate, but no-one had yet considered an exit strategy.

The man was Napoleon Bonaparte, who led a French army into Egypt in 1798 to overthrow the Mamelukes, rulers of Egypt for centuries.

There are plenty of differences between the French in Egypt and the Americans in Iraq. Nevertheless, the similarities are remarkable and worrisome. In 1799, the year after the invasion, difficulties in Europe caused Napoleon personally to leave Egypt. Without his guidance, the French occupation faltered, something that could happen in Iraq, even more than it has, if Washington’s attention, like Napoleon’s, focuses elsewhere. If that seems unlikely now, we should remember how we slipped away from involvements with the South Vietnamese in the 1970s, the Afghans in the 1980s, and the Iraqi Shiites after our first war in Iraq in the 1990s.

In Egypt, Great Britain, having already destroyed Napoleon’s fleet, joined the Turks to force the French out. The French, by now happy to leave, agreed to go if the British would take them and their weapons home, which the British did. Chaos reigned for four years after the French left Egypt, and then a worse tyranny than that of the Mamelukes emerged—that of Muhammad Ali. The same could happen in Iraq.

American policymakers should study Napoleon’s Egyptian experiences. Had they done so earlier, they might not have expected to be hailed as liberators in Iraq and might have calculated more accurately the forces they would need.

A commentary by Henry Butterfield Ryan, Associate of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University, and Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. The commentary was played by Talking History, on November 29, 2004, a half-hour radio show carried on some twenty-five National Public Radio stations and the Voice of America.