Ocidentes e Impérios

Henrique Raposo num post sobre "O Centro de gravidade da política mundial está a mudar para a Ásia." recomenda uma leitura.

"E já repararam nos países deste Ocidente oriental: EUA, Índia, Austrália e Nova Zelândia. Não faz lembrar nada? Exacto: o Império Britânico. Para se perceber o génio político anglo-saxónico, leia-se “Empire”, de Niall Ferguson, um dos maiores livros dos últimos tempos. Apetece usar uma expressão cinematográfica: um clássico instantâneo."

Ainda não o livro mas lembro-me de ler vários textos sobre o The Pity of War de Niall Ferguson, num assunto favorito e aqui largamente referenciado (até porque marca o fim do Liberalismo Clássico): a Grande Guerra. E aqui deixo uma das análises desse livro:

"(...) Professor Ferguson, however, has written an iconoclastic attack on one of the most venerable patriotic myths of the British, namely that the First World War was a great and necessary war in which the British performed the noble act of intervening to protect Belgian neutrality, French freedom, and the empires of both the French and British from the military aggression of the hated Hun. Politicians like Lloyd George and Churchill argued that the war was not only necessary, but inevitable.

(...) Not only does he answer in the negative, but concludes that the world war was not necessary or inevitable, but was instead the result of grossly erroneous decisions of British political leaders based on an improper perception of the "threat" to the British Empire posed by Germany. Ferguson regards it as "nothing less than the greatest error in modern history."

He goes further and puts most of the blame on the British because it was the British government that ultimately decided to turn the continental war into a world war. He argues that the British had no legal obligation to protect Belgium or France and that the German naval build-up did not really menace the British. (...)He argues further that the Kaiser would have honored his pledge to London, offered on the eve of the war, to guarantee French and Belgian territorial integrity in exchange for Britain’s neutrality.

(...) The author writes that "The First World War remains the worst thing the people of my country have ever had to endure."

One of the most important costs of the war, which was prolonged by British and American participation, was the destruction of the Russian government. Ferguson contends that in the absence of British intervention, the most likely result would have been a quick German victory with some territorial concessions in the east, but no Bolshevik Revolution.

There would have been no Lenin – and no Hitler either.

"It was ultimately because of the war that both men were able to rise to establish barbaric despotisms which perpetrated still more mass murder."

Had the British stayed on the sidelines, Ferguson argues, their empire would still be strong and viable; instead, their participation and victory "effectively marked the end of British financial predominance in the world." He believes that the British could have easily coexisted with Germany (...)" The Crime Called World War I by John V. Denson

PS: O Império de facto cresceu após a Grande Guerra alargando-se ao Médio Oriente (os resultados não foram muito bons...desenharam um iraque multi-étnico mas fizeram nascer o Koweit, tiveram que bombardear tribos iraquianas, prometer a mesma soberania a árabes e judeus na Palestina, intervir no Irão depondo um Presidente eleito, o canal de Suez, etc...), mas viu chegar as repúblicas comunistas, fascistas sob as cinzas das antigas e comparativamente mui civilizadas monarquias europeias e ainda inúmeros problemas de fronteiras, nacionalidades e reparações. Na Segunda, perseguindo o seu objectivo de derrotar (total e incondicionalmente e de vez...) a Alemanha (os Prussos, e não propriamente só Hitler), conduziu o Império Britânico ao seu fim, emergindo o comunismo na Europa e Ásia (a derrota incondicional do Japão...) por 50 anos. Uma guerra a mais conduz os impérios ao seu fim. E será sempre uma guerra onde são evocados altos princípios e honra do império, mais do que realidades práticas de soberania e defesa.