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Churchill's Folly: How Winston Churchill Created Modern Iraq

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Christopher Catherwood rightly reminds his audience that the course of history results from the decisions and whims of outstanding individuals as well as impersonal forces and inevitable economic factors (pg. 13). In March 1921, Winston Churchill, the newly appointed Secretary of State for the colonies and his advisers re-mapped the Middle East at the Cairo conference to primarily advance British interests in the region from the ruins of the disintegrated Ottoman Empire (pg. 125).

The imperial, pan-Arabic ambitions of the Hashemite family, bone fide senior descendants of Prophet Mohammed, also played a key role in modeling the region (pg. 47, 50-51, 102, 123, 129, 143, 156). The ill-fated Sykes-Pico Agreement made in 1916 between France and Britain to contain Tsarist Russia in the region became meaningless after the fall of the Russian imperial government in 1917 (pg. 56, 64). However, this agreement was not far from the minds of conference participants. The Sykes-Pico Agreement has been perceived in some quarters as both a self-inflicted curse on the British and a betrayal to the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule (pg. 42-43, 53, 61-62, 78-79, 122).

In addition, events outside the direct control of conference participants were shaping the outcome of this conference. The war-weary and very battered British Empire faced severe budgetary constraints following the ruinous Great War. Furthermore, the war between Greece and Turkey waged after the end of WWI represented an additional constraint placed on conference participants, and especially on Churchill whose position in the cabinet depended solely on the goodwill of Lloyd George, his political boss (pg. 107-108, 161). Churchill strongly opposed the disastrous pan-Hellenism of Prime Minister Lloyd George that ultimately resulted in the fall of the government by the end of 1922 (pg. 38-39, 60-61, 80, 198). Churchill sensibly believed in the appeasement of Turkey to avoid a widespread Muslim rebellion in some British colonies, one of the many ironies of his long political life (pg. 70, 82, 98).

One of the legacies of the Cairo conference was the creation of Iraq, the result of the amalgamation of the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul. This creation had disastrous consequences for the Kurds until the instauration of the no-fly zones in 1991 and for the Shia Muslims until the toppling of former President Saddam Hussein in 2003 (pg. 26, 92, 106-107, 125, 135-136, 150, 221-224). At the insistence of Feisal, a Sunni Arab and the first King of Iraq, the British integrated the predominantly Sunny Kurds into Iraq to better balance the Shia Muslim majority in Southern Iraq with the Sunni Arabs in the center (pg. 26). The British wrongly assumed that nationalism was stronger than religion (pg. 229-230).

As Catherwood correctly points out, the real problem was ultimately how to square imperial designs of France and Britain in the region with President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, and especially with the policy of self-determination described in the fifth point (pg. 66, 112, 172-173).

Britain had to do as if the Iraqi people had acclaimed overwhelmingly Feisal, while pulling the strings behind the scene to get the desired result (pg. 96, 124, 131, 151-152, 163, 170, 188). However, the British wrongly underestimated Feisal's determination to become his own man in the eyes of his new subjects (pg. 153, 171, 176, 185-190, 197). Unlike the French, the British did not, however, use force to get rid of Feisal but left him on his throne as the best deal available to them to preserve their interests in the region (pg. 142-144, 174-175).

To the British, having an Arab King in Iraq and having some form of indirect British rule there were not incompatible objectives. The British Empire was largely built on indirect rule that turned out to be a cheap way to run an empire (pg. 58, 142, 212). Surprisingly from the vintage of 21st century observers, oil was the missing factor in British political establishment's decision to become embroiled in Iraq (pg. 66-68, 113). In contrast, the British generals and Americans were not oblivious to the future potential of Middle Eastern oil (pg. 75, 178). However, the British ultimately stayed to obtain the oil of Iraq (pg. 205).

British overreach around the world after WWI and the disastrous British policy in the war between Greece and Turkey pushed Churchill to sensibly privilege budgetary considerations above anything else (pg. 69, 95-96, 116-118, 169, 182). Empire building on the cheap by propping up a friendly regime with the help of the sole Royal Air Force met the fierce resistance of the military establishment and their paymasters who were not enthusiastic about deep cuts in the Army's budget (pg. 72, 77, 101, 137, 165-169). At the same time, Churchill knew that he was weakening the Empire's capacity to crush any eventual rebellion against British interference in the new country as subsequent events proved him right (pg. 74, 81-83, 94). These contradictory considerations about how best to manage an occupied territory for the time needed to foster a friendly regime (read a capitalist democracy) are of course not foreign to the ultimate success of the Operation Iraqi Freedom (pg. 87, 133, 154).

The map of today's Middle East and the problems still associated with this map owe their nature to the decisions made by Churchill and his advisers at the conference of Cairo (pg. 109, 227). A successful transition to a Shia-dominated federal Iraq that preserves the rights and freedoms of Iraqi minorities could be one of the key factors to help isolate the most hawkish Iranian powerbrokers and ultimately facilitate the beginning of a serious dialogue involving Israel, the U.S. and Iran (pg. 227). Furthermore, this successful transition in the core territory of Shia Islam could further foster tolerance between the two ancient branches of Islam in the countries of the region to the benefit of everybody (pg. 227-230).

CHURCHILL'S FOLLY is a great book for ordinary readers.

One point: Catherwood has been at Cambridge since 1978. He lectures for their Institute of Continuing Education, which is part of Cambridge University. He lectured some years ago for courses organised by folk at the University's Centre (sic) of International Studies. Only snobs and pedants would say that the highly rated Institute of Continuing Education is not a full part of Cambridge University. His (very) long acknowledgements make it very clear who he is and for whom he teaches. Cambridge Continuing Education classes have pupils ranging from Nobel prizewinners to housewives.

This book will not win the Pulitzer. Nor does it aim to compete with the Macmillan and similar books, to which Catherwood makes copious references in his own work.

What it does is to give us a helpful snapshot of how Winston Churchill was involved in the creation of Iraq in 1921, something that has been in many newspaper articles in recent months.

Lloyd George was pro-Greek. As Catherwood does tell us, Lloyd George thought that Venizvelos was the greatest Greek since Demosthenes, a quote he got from Macmillan's book (see the numerous endnotes).

I am keeping my copy. Don't let snobs and pedants mislead you. This is a helpful book that you don't need a degree in history to read. That is the point of Continuing Education, and Catherwood fulfills his task.

Some excellent books have been written about the macrohistory of the Middle East, of which the overall history of the region by Bernard Lewis is by far the best. Then as for the reconstruction of the entire Middle East after World War 1, there is Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin.

However Catherwood's book is in an altogether and equally valid historical tradition.

Like the illustrious French Annaliste school, he examines a small part of the overall picture in great detail. This is a close up photograph of a particular tree in the forest, rather than an aerial picture of the whole wood.

In particular he looks at Churchill, and why Winston Churchill acted as he did, and with Churchill's Iraq policy in detail. (Churchill also created Palestine, but as this has been written to death, I presume that Catherwood sensibly avoided it, in order to replicate what is being written on elsewhere).

So this is as much a book on the European/Arab interface as it is on Iraq. It isn't a history of Iraq - and Catherwood helpfully lists many such detailed country specific histories in his extensive bibliography.

Catherwood is clearly a former policy wonk, and that, to me, is what makes the book so fascinating - he evidently understands the political process well and this shines through in the book.

There are, contrary to Green's sad review, maps in this book, and, most important, the one that Churchill himself used.

While Catherwood is careful not to go into too much contemporary analogy, one can all the same get a good idea of how our present rulers must have been acting in recent times.

This is detailed, up close, history at its very best, and with Iraq in the news at the moment it is well worth reading.

the previous review sadly lacks historical perspective. No such state as "Mesopotamia" existed before the First World War, so it could hardly have been "decades" in preparation. The manuscripts Catherwood uses are mainly Colonial Office papers in the Churchill collection. And the present (2004) Bush Administration is hardly mentioned, except in the appendix. Whatever your views on Bush, CHURCHILL'S FOLLY can be read by Democrats AND Republicans alike.

This is a tremendously insightful and thought-provoking book!

Author Christopher Catherwood has done his research well, demonstrating that there is a great deal in the Iraq of the 1920s that still resonates loudly today, as evidenced by Winston Churchill's correspondence of the period:

- On the nature of warfare in Iraq: "Week after week and month after month for a long time we shall have a continuance of this miserable, wasteful, sporadic, warfare marked from time to time certainly by minor disasters and cutting off of troops and agents, and very possibly attended by some grave occurrence."

- On the impact of the news media: "I am quite certain that the loose talk indulged in the newspapers about the speedy evacuation of Mesopotamia [Iraq] earlier in the year was a factor which provoked and promoted the [1920] rebellion."

- On the British military in Iraq: "Our own military forces are extremely weak and maintained with great difficulty and expense, and we have not secured a single friend among the local powers."

- On the threat of a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq: "Please telegraph fully what evidence you have pointing to a Turkish invasion during the present year. I am naturally doing my utmost to procure a settlement with the Turks which will ease our position throughout the Middle East. Evidence tending to show the dangers to our Mesopotamia position by Turkish hostility will be useful.

[Fearing a Turkish invasion of Mosul, Churchill went on to recommend that British forces in northern Iraq not be withdrawn until they could be replaced by Iraqi forces.]

- Churchill's Agenda for a Reduction in Strength of British forces in Iraq: "First, the new ruler; Second, future size, character and organization of the future [British] garrison; Third, the time-table of reduction from present strength to that garrison; Fourth, arising out of the above the extend of territory to be held and administered."

Some of the author's conclusions:

- In modern Iraq religion is stronger than nationalism.

- Any new Iraqi regime will have the same problems of legitimacy that so hampered the Hashemite rulers of Iraq and their successors from 1921 to 1958. During that period the country suffered through no less than 58 changes of government, a sure sign of chronic and unresolved instability

- Genuine democracy means the absolute right of the people to make even the wrong choice. Iraq could end up with a theocratic regime not entirely dissimilar to the one in Iran.

- Under such a regime, the Kurds and Sunni Arabs might wish to withdraw from what would be a majority Shiite state, triggering an unbridled civil war much larger than those in Bosnia and Kosovo.

- Oil, a blessing for Iraq, could become a curse for the region if Iraqi Arabs attempt to take the oil-rich area of northern Iraq from the Kurds, prompting a Turkish military invention.

This book gives a fair explanation of how the country of Iraq came to be. Specifically, the Middle East was under the control of France and England in 1910. Over the next 50 years, both masters would haphazardly carve up their desert empires into nations with very little consideration as to what the locals wanted. A primary example is Iraq's formation by Winston Churchill, who like Donald Rumsfeld now, probably did not put as much time and care into it as required. The formation of Iraq was made partly out of financial reasons (England not wanting to maintain a large presence there) partly out of strategic reasons (buffer regions against not-so-friendly neighbors in the Middle East) and partly out of political reasons (devolution of the colonies was becoming a serious political issue in England). The author addresses all of these issues and their effects on Churchill.

For those who want a solid introduction to modern Iraq's formation, this is the best book to read. I would not suggest this book for learning about Iraq in general. Unlike other books on this subject, there is minimal discussion of Iraq after the British left, and even less on Iraq's history before English colonization.

Kirkus Reviews have given this outstanding book a rave review. I agree - this book is the business. It is clearly written in a way that anyone with a college education can understand, yet is based upon solid research in Churchill's archives. Like Kirkus, I think that this is a book that everyone should read.

This book should have been required reading before we attacked Iraq. It demonstrates how a lack of historical research can result in repeating the same mistakes. It is extremely well written and brings reality to the many false myths that led to the division of the spoils and the creation of present-day Iraq. I recommend it to all readers who really want to know the de-mythologized account of what happened after World War One.

My local bookstore is buying 75 copies of this book. Yes, folks, it really is THAT good. (And it sold 30 copies in the first week!)

If even the great Winston Churchill could mess up in Iraq, what hope for today's political leaders? At least they could try to learn from history. CHURCHILL'S FOLLY should be read by every Senator, Congressman, Presidential candidate and more besides.

Make sure everyone you know has read this timely and well-written book.

Winston Churchill was the greatest statesman of the 20th Century. But he is also responsible for the mess in Iraq today. This outstanding and easy to follow work by one of the most promising Anglo-American historians around today is an indispensable guide to the sorry tale of the origins of Iraq. The fact that is was no less than Winston himself who created Iraq makes it especially interesting, and a valuable insight into a little known part of the great man's career. I cannot recommend this book too highly.