Upon receiving the news that the British embassy in Tehran had been stormed, its windows smashed, and the Union Jack ignominiously burned and replaced with an Iranian counterpart, a question popped into my mind: What would Lord Palmerston do?
Henry John Temple — more commonly known to posterity as the 3rd Viscount Palmerston, or simply “Pam” — was notoriously intolerant of any action abroad that threatened British interests, or even individual British subjects. As both foreign secretary and prime minister, Palmerston readily eschewed diplomatic niceties, preferring, in Winston Churchill’s famous phrase, “to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”
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“Taking a wasps’ nest,” he told Parliament in 1841, “is more effective than catching the wasps one by one.” He was serious. When the Chinese had the temerity to restrict trade with the West — in particular by blocking opium exports from British India — Palmerston sent gunboats up the Yangtze River, indiscriminately destroying the small towns along the banks with such confidence that the Chinese quickly changed their minds. The result was the Treaty of Nanking, by the terms of which various trading posts were ceded to the British, and restrictions on imperial trade were summarily lifted.
Under Palmerston, British opposition to slavery was extended beyond the traditional jurisdiction of nation and empire. The Royal Navy was employed to intercept and destroy slave ships, regardless of their origin (Niall Ferguson estimates that by 1840, 425 such ships were captured and condemned), a blind eye was turned to officers who destroyed slave quarters on the West African coast, and the policy of other nations was heavily influenced by British pressure: When Brazil refused to follow Wilberforce’s example, Palmerston sent a gunboat to deliver the message. The Brazilian government got the idea and banned the practice two years later.
In an early show of power, concerned about the prospect of the French taking over the Netherlands and using it as “a dagger poised to strike at the heart of Britain,” Palmerston was instrumental in the creation of a new independent country. Independent Belgium was created in 1831, and the British were determined to keep it neutral as a bulwark against those who might have nefarious desires to follow in the footsteps of William the Conqueror.
But Palmerston was not solely concerned with grand strategic matters, and it did not take a wasps’ nest to rile him. British interests were British interests — wasps, if you will, were wasps. And so, when a British subject living in Athens, Don Pacifico, had his property destroyed in an anti-Semitic riot (whose perpetrators included the son of a government minister and which the police watched from the sidelines) and the Greek government refused to compensate him, Palmerston sent enough warships to the port of Piraeus to maintain a naval blockade until they gave in. “Wherever British subjects are placed in danger,” he noted in 1846, “thither a British Ship of War ought to be . . . to remain as long as . . . may be required for the protection of British interests.”
Palmerston's near contemporary was Andrew Jackson (1765-1845) another nationalist firebrand offering headaches to the Spanish in Florida. James Monroe mulled the idea of appointing Jackson ambassador to Russia but he wasn't prepared to accept the possibility that Jackson would very likely trigger a war against that country if if the Russians insulted American honor. A British comentator heard both President Jackson adressing Congress and Duke of Wellington adressing the House of Commons. He noted the personalities were similiar. President Jackson coerced the French to pay off the debt for Napoleonic deprecations against American shipping. A coersive act that the worldly John Quincy Adams could not achieve. Palmerston held a deep antipathy toward the United States and hoped the southern Confederacy would win the Civil War. Ambassador Charles Francis Adams adroit representations wrt Northern interests thwarted Palmerston's prediliction. Pam's "gunboat diplomacy" style would find its major proponents in the administrations of WIlliam McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Civius Americanius sum
Oh, the poor, pathetic British today would never tolerate such a man. They would prefer to cry over Dianah than stand up to an enemy. They want to be loved by other nations so they would never resort to such a display of power. They would rather wait for their enemies to display that power with a nuclear bomb in one of their cities.
He understood human nature. If the same action were taken today, you would end up with the same results assuming you had the military to back your actions. The West was feared then by the world. It is not feared today.
There is a famous cartoon by Puck showing Palmerston passing Jefferson Davis on a street and musing to his walking companion. "Hmm we may have to recognize him some day". In response to the Trent affair Palmerston dispatched troops to the Canadian border. Lincoln almost had a simultaneous war against Britian and the Confederacy at the same time.
Antietam caused Palmerston to back away from a joint declaration with Napoleon III for recogniztion of the Southern Confederacy. Duing the Civil War Indian cotton began to replace the long southern staple but after 1865 America emerged as the major competitor against Britian in the world markets.
Apparently Iranian nuclear "reasearch" has been suffering multiple "technical setbacks" in recent days. One wonders whether their current saber rattling and public incantations about the ultimate fate of Israel as a nation may have precipitated some of these "malfunctions".
Destruction of wasp nests tends to be rather effective in the control of the aggressive pest.
We -- the U.S. -- have twelve aircraft carriers, three of which are on deployment -- ready for war -- at any one time. Bought and paid for. Within 24 hours we could take out any Iranian infrastructure we choose. Or - again within hours - our ships and submarines could launch cruise missiles. Iran would bend over backwards in submission shortly if we did that. But our so-called leaders have no will or guts, and our enemies know this all too well.
Drill here. Drill now. We solve all of our political problems when we use our own oil, recovered by American companies, and sell the excess to whatever friends we have left around the world. We deprive Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, etc of their largest oil market: the U.S. Money for Hamas, Hezbolah and whoever else will be harder to come by. Then it will be easier to have the "nerve" to destroy the hornet's nest. Also, the muslim's will have their wish: there will be no need for the U.S. to be in the Middle East, and they can go back to living in the fourth century.
One of the primary reasons the Soviet Union finally fell is that President Reagan lifted restrictions on drilling in this country, causing the world price of oil to plummet. Deprived of their oil revenue, the Soviet Union admitted defeat in the arms race and went bankrupt in just a few years. The same tactic would work very nicely with Iran today (and the nascent New Soviet Union).
Jim: You must mean all of those FREE missles. I forgot about FREE missles. I was mistaken cause I thought those missles cost almost $1,000,000 (one million US) each.
And aircraft carriers evidently run on pixie dust and all by themselves without crew, food or any other item that costs US dollars.
Does this mean that our leaders have no guts or that we have not the money? C'mon dude, you have to do better than this.
"We live in different times, and the situation in Iran is more sensitive now than when Britannia ruled the waves."
The "situation" isn't really "more sensitive." It's pretty basic: the government in Tehran has greenlighted an attack on & humiliation of Great Britain and, indirectly, the United States.
But the cultures of Great Britain and the United States defintiely are "more sensitive." In fact they are effeminate cultures, where emotion, talking, more talking, and excessive caution are prized; reason, rightous outrage, action and immediate justice are suppressed. Why? Obviously there is a huge female voting block in the U.S. and G.B. And the liberal media, out of self-loathing, detests manly virtues -- so it celebrates liberals and liberalism. The culture votes for weak liberal/progressive leaders; and the leaders make the failure to do anything their policy. It's a consequence of the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote - a more effeminate country in a decidedly nasty man's world.
I offer an alternative explanation. Multiculturalism in the wake of seeing the dangers of extreme nationalism from the NAZI party. Elites in their ivory towers are apt to say that no culture is superior to another and therefore we should not try to assert our interests abroad. This is what they call American Imperialism and they believe it justifies actions like the Iranians have taken in the last few days.
I don't think giving women the right to vote has anything to do with it--though this country has seen "manly virtues" being made fun of by Hollywood, that's driven largely by pandering men, not women.
Admiral Yamamoto stated that he feared American women's reaction to war. They wouldn't give up and go home, he reasoned--they'd tell their men and sons to go fight, and then head to the factories to help them do so. It's also a bit of insult to our fighting women, who have performed exemplary actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Give me the name of one British or American politician who has the guts to teach Iran a lesson. They can't even get the OWS people to go home. They don't want to hurt their feelings. We are governed by wimps not men.
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