Djibouti, the West’s Geostrategic Base in the Horn of Africa and the Gulf: Whither goes?

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, National politics, Political geography, Regional History

Djibouti is a moderately populated mini-state in the turbulent Horn of Africa region§, it’s contiguous neighbours, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia (including Somaliland), are all countries which tend to experience ongoing conflict and instability, as is Yemen, less than 30km away by sea across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Tiny Djibouti, comparatively, is open for business, and an oasis of stability, or so it seems to many interested foreign onlookers.

République de Djibouti 🇩🇯 Size 23,200 sq km. Pop (est. 2023) 976,000 (image: Pinterest)

Position A, geopolitically speaking: Djibouti’s attraction to the US and other Western powers and more recently, to China, is location. The tiny African republic’s prized geo-strategic location intersects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, plumb in the middle of the vital shipping lane between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, which caters for the transit of 20,000 ships annually and accounts for 30% of world trade [Bereketeab, Redie. “Djibouti: Strategic Location, an Asset or a Curse?” Journal of African Foreign Affairs 3, no. 1/2 (2016): 5–18. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26661713.]🇦

Bab el-Mandeb, oil containers (source: Morocco World News)

Watching the “bad guys”, protecting the West’s interests: Since the 1991 Gulf War and especially since the 9/11 Twin Towers terrorist attack, Djibouti’s importance to the military and security objectives of the US and other world powers has grown exponentially. The imperatives of the “War on Terror” and the upsurge in Somalia-based piracy turned Western eyes to Djibouti, situated ideally at the choke-point on the Suez to Indian waterway as the optimal spot to monitor activity in the Middle East and “the Horn” [‘Port in the Desert: Djibouti as International Lessor’, Jessica Borowicz, Aether: Journal of Strategic Airpower and Spacepower, Vol. 1, No. 3, Fall 2022, www.airuniversity.af.edu]. Today, foreign navies utilise Djibouti’s ports as part of the EU’s anti-piracy operations in the region, the US has a semipermanent base at Camp Lemonnier, with around 4,000 military personnel. France, Germany, Italian, Spain and Japan also maintain bases on Djibouti soil under Djibouti’s “rent-a-space program”. China opened its first base in the country in 2017.

Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti (photo: Facebook)

The rentier state – the Guelleh regime as “big bickies” landlord: Acting as lessor of foreign bases has proved a particularly lucrative earner for the Djibouti government, dominated by authoritarian president Ismaïl Omar Guelleh and his PRP🇧regime. Rents of the bases yield Djibouti an estimated US$119–128m per annum. As noted, “for a country that produces nothing, the income from the military bases has been a lifeline” (Bereketeab), turning round the dire economic prognosis facing the country in the early 1990s.

Ethiopian trade, mutual interest and port leases: An added windfall for the government is the revenues it collects from port leases (Djibouti has seven major ports and terminals). Landlocked Ethiopia is one of its customers, having lost its coastal territory after Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993. Ethiopia then became further dependent on Djibouti cooperation following the Eritrea-Ethiopia War (1998-2000). Ethiopia since this time has been required to lease port facilities from Djibouti, with 90% of total Ethiopian trade channelled through this route. With a shared major railroad and a shared water pipeline Djibouti’s relations with Ethiopia have generally been good (cf. those with Eritrea which have been less harmonious).

Doraleh Multi-Purpose Port (photo: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images)

Djibouti’s prized non-tangible resources: A third source of revenue for Djibouti is the development aid it receives from donor countries, especially the US, France, other European countries and China. All of this cash inflow (rents + aid + loans) amounts to Djibouti having the largest per capita income in the Horn of Africa region (according to the IMF’s reckonings)🇨and a healthy 6.5% annual economic growth rate (Bereketeab).

French foreign legionnaires in Djibouti (photo: Julien Hubert/Armee de Terre)

Djibouti, a stamping ground for the US, France…and the PRC: US military analysts by and large see Djibouti as the best current option in the region for staging military bases, an “anchor of stability in a volatile region” (Borowicz), with some observers even viewing Djibouti as a “front-line state” of America (Bereketeab), so its clearly happy to pay the high tenancy fees. France, with its “small but mighty force” on-site [‘Inside France’s Small But Mighty Force in Djibouti’, Frédéric Lert, Key.Aero, 01-Aug-2022, www.key.aero] and an involvement with the East African microstate that stretches back over 130 years, no doubt agrees.🇩 And the Guelleh regime is certainly happy with its cut of the deal…with China entering the scene, suggesting a potential new theatre for US v PRC rivalry, Guelleh can play one patron off against another for increasingly higher stakes, he has “agency” in the game, which J-P Cabestan defines simply as “the ability of any country to make independent decisions and strengthen its bargaining power” [CABESTAN, JEAN-PIERRE. “African Agency and Chinese Power: The Case of Djibouti.” South African Institute of International Affairs, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep29586.]

China’s Djibouti military base (source: adr1682305408 Thanh, Flickr)

Djibouti a haven of stability?: But is Djibouti really as stable a state as many in the Pentagon seems to believe? President Guelleh for now keeps a tight rein on things internally in Djibouti, effective opposition to the PRP has been neutralised,🇪but what of the future? Below the surface there are a raft of variables that might threaten the status quo. The great mass of Djiboutians have gained virtually nothing from the massive injection of money into Djibouti’s treasury which remains firmly in the hands of Guelleh and his fellow Somali subclan cronies in the political elite. Ordinary citizens wallow in various stages of poverty with unemployment conservatively estimated at 60% but really higher. Disenfranchised, predominantly illiterate, facing the ever-likely possibility of food shortages and drought, for the young Djiboutians a future with little prospects, the further erosion of basic rights and freedom of expression by an authoritarian regime, a combination of these factors might propel the unprivileged masses to demand a real improvement in their lot and failing that, ultimately regime change [EELCO KESSELS, TRACEY DURNER, and MATTHEW SCHWARTZ. “Front Matter.” Violent Extremism and Instability in the Greater Horn of Africa: An Examination of Drivers and Responses. Global Center on Cooperative Security, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep20264.1.]

Horn of Africa (map source: Nystrom Herff Jones Education Division)

Potential external destabilisers, a war-prone region and radical Islam: External factors could equally impact Djibouti’s stability, prompting a rethink by the lessees of the bases as a long-term option. Conflicts and civil wars emerging in Somalia, Eritrea or Ethiopia could spillover into Djibouti, eg, emanating from a sudden surge in refugee numbers.🇫 The affinity of Djibouti’s Issa Somalis and the Afars with their ethnic brothers and sisters respectively in Somalia and Eritrea could worsen this occurrence (Kessels et al).🇫It should also be remembered that Djibouti’s track record in avoiding conflict and violence is not a clean slate…in its relatively short existence the country has experienced civil war (1991-94) and a brief border conflict with Eritrea (2008), and the cause of the 1990s civil war—uneven power sharing by the Issa powerbrokers with the Afars—is an unresolved issue that continues to fester. A further threat of instability to Djibouti lies in the terrorist agenda of Al-Shabaab,🇬a jihadist fundamentalist organisation based in southern Somalia, which perpetrated a suicide bomber attack in Djibouti City in 2014 and has called on jihadists to target French and U.S. interests in Djibouti [Ahram Online (Egypt), 27-March-2021].

Djibouti women and children (source: aho.org)

A “Trojan Horse” for both sides? Maintaining full sovereignty amongst the mega-powers?: With both the US and China now heavily invested in Djibouti and each using it as a conduit to spread its geo-strategic influence, will an escalation of neo-Cold War rivalry played out here upset the balance in Djibouti? While foreign military forces being based indefinitely on Djibouti territory might provide reassurance to the country, there is a downside to Djibouti being completely dependent on big power external support and large foreign forces within its borders for it’s security and survival: Djibouti’s sovereign status as a free and independent nation is questionable…with a host of foreign patrons holding a significant share of the firmament the regime risks becoming compromised and losing support (Bereketeab). Most worrying (in US eyes) is the danger of Djibouti falling prey to “debt-trap diplomacy” due to it becoming over-dependent on China. Beijing is bankrolling many of Djibouti’s major infrastructure projects (water and gas pipelines, railroads, port upgrades, etc) big time! As a result, China has rapidly become the tiny African country’s major creditor (holding 91% of its external debt)(Borowicz; Cabestan). The upshot in the longer term is that the Guelleh PRP regime may end up being viewed by its own citizens as lacking legitimacy, a further pathway to internal turbulence and instability and enforced change.

Xi Zinping hosting Pres. Guelleh (“let’s do business!”) (photo: chinadaily.com.cn)

§ “Djibouti” in the native Afar language means “boiling pot”, an apt name for the country’s hot and arid, sub-tropical desert climate

🇦 around 6.2 million barrels of crude oil per day passed thru the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in 2018 (Borowicz)

🇧People’s Rally for Progress, which has provided both presidents of Djibouti since independence from France in 1977 – Guelleh, preceded by his elderly uncle, Hassan Gouled Aptidon

🇨in an impoverished “Horn” that is of itself not saying a lot

🇩to the tune of a hefty US$720m injection annually

🇪although opposition parties are now legal, all the political cards are stacked in PRP’s favour, opponents has been ruthlessly suppressed, driven into exile or co-opted into the ruling camp

🇪unfortunately it’s always on the cards that Yemen given its perpetual state of civil war could see upsurges in refugee numbers fleeing across the strait

🇫a revival of the earlier Somali “ethno-nationalism”—an attempt to unite all ethnic Somalis from the different East African countries into one Pan-Somali state—could also have a destabilising outcome

🇬Arabic: “The Youth”

Italy’s Acute Case of Empire Envy in the Early 1900s

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Military history, Regional History

Invoking Italy’s heritage: the glory of Rome (photo: ISTOCK.COM/MUSTANG_79)

In the late 19th century the Kingdom of Italy was still in its infancy as a fully-fledged, unified state in Europe, nonetheless Italians were casting an envious eye over the smorgasbord of colonial possessions other European powers were snaffling up (seemingly effortlessly) in the free-for-all known as the “Scramble for Africa”. In a climate of burgeoning nationalist sentiments Italian politicians were quick to underscore the country’s historical association with Ancient Rome by way of its imperial credentials. By the turn of the century Italy had secured a minor foothold in Africa with two East African colonies, in Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, but what it really wanted was a base in North Africa, a prerequisite for expanding its sway into the Mediterranean (mare nostrum – “our sea“𝟷̷). Real estate options in Africa had rapidly dried up however, France had already established colonies in Tunisia, Algeria and (shared with Spain) Morocco, and Egypt was a British “veiled protectorate”. The Italian focus turned to the one remaining Mediterranean territory in North Africa, Libya, then comprising several provinces, the principal ones being the Regency of Tripoli or Tripolitania, and Cyrenaica, both semi-autonomous vilayets of the Ottoman Empire.

Illustrated map of Italian campaign with fleet blockade of Libyan ports (source: Media Storehouse)

Italian imperialist designs: Search for a casus belli
Italian nationalists and imperialists, whipped up by the frenzy created by the jingoistic Italian press, started to agitate for Italy to annex Tripoli. The territory being in close proximity to the southern tip of Italy made it attractive as a base from which to control the central Mediterranean𝟸̷. As the groundswell for war in Italian society gathered momentum and pressured by war hawks in his own cabinet, Italian Prime Minister Gioltti sounded out the European powers, most of whom voiced no objections to Italy’s plan for occupation of Libya𝟹̷. The Italian government tried to provoke the Ottoman regime into war…drumming up pretexts for intervention, eg, the small Italian community in Libya was supposedly being mistreated (highly exaggerated!). On the strength of this Gioltti issued an ultimatum to the Ottomans to immediately cede Tripoli to Italy. The Ottoman government of the “Young Turks” vacillated before asking Rome to accept a Britain/Egypt style solution (the would-be coloniser assumes real power in the colony while the former coloniser retains nominal suzerainty over the colony). Italy refused this counter-offer point blank, declared war in September 1911 and commenced preparing its invasion force.

Port of Tripoli, ca.1910 (image: delcampe.net)

A settler-colonial society
Italy’s motives for acquiring a colony in Libya were not entirely about national pride and resurrecting the glory of the Roman Empire. The Italian state, post-unification, had serious social problems. The underdeveloped national economy was incapable of coping with the exponential growth in population, for which there was insufficient work and insufficient food for all the people. A new colony in North Africa just over the sea, the politicians surmised, would solve this dilemma, a receptacle to drain off surplus Italian population with the emigrants becoming small agricultural producers in Libya (‘The Italo-Turkish War’, Osprey Blog (Gabriele Esposito), 17-Sep-2020, www.ospreypublishing.com).

Italian troops in action, Libya 1911

Italian expectations, strategy and stalemate
When war was declared Italy’s superior navy was easily able to intercept and prevent attempts by Ottoman naval vessels to transport troops and equipment to Libya. Turkish commanders Enver Pasha and Mustafa Kemal and other army personnel had to resort to smuggling themselves into Libya, mainly via Egypt. Italian forces having landed in Tripoli quickly took control of the coastal regions of Libya necessitating the Ottoman military units and Arab Bedouin fighters to withdrew to the interior. Italy had expected a quick victory in the conflict and had counted on the native Arab population welcoming the Italian soldiers as liberators from the Turks, it was wrong on both counts. Arab and Bedouin tribesmen (Muslim Senussi clan), combined together with the Ottoman units to staunchly resist the invading Christians (the Arabs’ irregular forces (hamidiye) proved to be quite effective fighters). The invasion force also found itself fighting the Libyan conditions, harsh landscape, extreme heat, wind, etc described by one historian as scatolone di sabbia (a “box of sand”) (Charles Stephenson, Box of Sand: The Italo–Ottoman War, 1911-1912, (2014)). The Italians were further hampered by the utter inadequacy of its maps of the region (relying on old maps, some of which were from the Ancient Roman era!) The Italian military strategy was to try to draw the defenders into engaging in open, full-scale, conventional battles, the Ottoman and Arab resistance refused to oblige them, rather the defenders resorted to fighting a guerrilla war, a mode of fighting which the Italians failed abjectly to adapt to (‘Italy-Turkish War’, (documentary), The Great War series (2021)). A stalemate ensued…despite putting a force in the field in Libya of up to 100,000 soldiers (including Somali mercenaries), the Italians could not make any military headway inland and yet at the same time the desert-based defenders couldn’t expel the invaders from the country.

Mustafa Kemal with Senussi tribesmen, Tobruk 1911

Air, land and sea
With no progress in sight on the land front the Italians in 1912 opted for a new strategy, launching a naval campaign against the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman possessions in the Aegean Sea—the province of Rhodes and other islands in the Dodecanese chain—were attacked by gunboat and captured. The Italian navy heavily shelled the cities of Beirut and Smyrna in Asia Minor, blocked the Ottomans’ Red Sea ports and even made an unsuccessful assault by sea on the Dardanelles.

Ottoman surrender of Rhodes to Italians (source: La Domenica del Corriere, May-June 1912)

As the costly and increasingly unpopular war dragged on much longer than anticipated, the mounting concern of European states prompted them to initiate peace talks between the warring parties. After a few failures a peace agreement was eventually reached in October 1912 with the Treaty of Ouchy (AKA First Treaty of Lausanne) on terms favourable to Italy. The Constantinople government ceded Tripoli and Cyrenaica to Italy who promised to return the Dodecanese Islands to Turkey, however a turn of events in the region prevented this from ever happening.

Pax (source: Media Storehouse)

Fallout and Aftermath
The Italo-Turkish War’s biggest consequence was to contribute to the destabilisation of the Balkans. The impact of that was felt immediately – one day after the Treaty of Ouchy was signed Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire, with the other member-states of the Balkan League doing likewise a week later, setting in motion a war continuum that would lead to the catastrophic Great War in 1914 and further reversals for the Turks. The Ottoman Empire emerged from the 1911-1912 conflict with its reputation as the “Sick man of Europe” further tarnished. Italy, though the victor, must have had some mixed feelings about its decision to commit to the military adventure. The war dragged on for over a year, drained 1.3 bn lira from the Italian coffers and cost several thousand Italian lives either killed in action or from disease. Yes, it won itself a colony in the North Mediterranean but this in itself brought further headaches for Italy as Arab and Bedouin rebels in the Libyan hinterland doggedly continued their violent resistance to their new colonial masters for decades afterwards (‘The Great War’).

Footnote: A series of martial “firsts”
Despite the Italo-Ottoman War being one of the lesser known international conflicts in modern history, it is significant for a number of innovations in warfare. It was the first war to utilise aircraft in combat missions, and the first to practice aerial bombing of the enemy lines. The Turco-Italian War also marked the debut of armoured vehicles. And it was the first three-dimensional war, ie, fought on land, sea and air. The Italians’ use of airplanes in warfare however was not particularly effective militarily in flight missions. It’s much greater benefit was in their reconnaissance value – aerial photographs, and intelligence allowing the Italians to spy on ground troop movements, etc (‘The Great War’).

Italian airplane raiding Turkish-Arab ground troops (source: suttori.com)

─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─═─

𝟷̷ Mare nostrum, deriving from Roman antiquity, was a concept “deployed to anchor Italian imperialism in Africa” at this time and during the later Fascist period, Agbamu, S. (2019). ‘Mare Nostrum: Italy and the Mediterranean of Ancient Rome in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries’; Fascism 8(2), 250-274. https://doi.org/10.1163/22116257-00802001.

𝟸̷ Mussolini would later describe Libya as impero italiano’s quarta sponda (“fourth shore”)

𝟹̷ Germany and Austria-Hungary were not so positive about the Italians’ move

🇮🇹 🇹🇷 🇱🇾

Big Troubles in Little Hong Kong: Unrepresentative Government and Civil Unrest in a British Colony in the Shadow of Communist China

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Inter-ethnic relations, Regional History

Rioting in Sham Shui Po, Kowloon, 1956 (source: simtang / gwulo.com)

༓༓༓

Social unrest has been the norm in Hong Kong over the last decade as we’ve witnessed the clash between the centre and the the periphery, between mainland China and the people (or at least a very significant chunk of the people) of its regained territory. Such polarisation and disharmony is hardly without precedence in Hong Kong however as a cursory glance at the postwar history of this long-existing Pacific colonial outpost of the British Empire reveals. Confrontation between the state as represented by the colonial government and its unrepresented Chinese citizens has erupted and spilt over into violent rioting and conflict on several occasions.

Double-10th riots (photo: scmp.com)

༓༓༓

“Double Tenth” Riots, 1956
In the 1950s tensions developed between right wing pro-Kuomintang settlers (many of which had fled to the British colony(𝒶) following the Communist takeover of mainland China in 1949) and pro-CCP inhabitants of Hong Kong. What triggered the riots that erupted in 1956 was to observers an act of “petty officialdom”. In the middle of National Day celebrations, an official tore down a Republic of China flag and decorations in a resettlement estate in the city. Enraged Nationalists railed against the police trying to defuse the tense situation but this eventually escalated into widespread rioting by the pro-KMT protesters with gang members joining in…attacks on property, arson attempts, looting, violence against the local police and against leftist workers and trade unionists across North Kowloon and Tsuen Wan. With the HK Police overwhelmed by the rioting the colonial secretary Edgeworth B David (acting on behalf of the governor Alexander Grantham) responded by bringing in a British army unit which eventually quelled the disturbances using force. Although brief in duration the riots resulted in 59 dead (including the wife of the Swiss vice consul) and around 500 injured. Although the Nationalist agents in the riots were politically motivated in their actions, another dynamic in the riots represented protests from the anti-communist refugees forced into overcrowded living conditions and blaming Chinese politics for “forcing them into Hong Kong in the first place”. (Wordie).

(photo: toursbylocals.com)

༓༓༓

Star Ferry Riots, 1966
The Star Ferry riots in 1966 started innocuously enough with a peaceful protest by commuters against the government’s decision to allow the company to increase fares for the cross-harbour journey by 25%(𝒷). As with what occurred ten years earlier, a heavy-handed reaction by the authorities to a minor kerfuffle provoked many Hong Kongers, especially its youth, to protest en mass which led in turn to widescale rioting and looting in Kowloon with police stations and other public facilities attacked and fire-bombed. The police fired tear gas into the crowds. Again, British forces were parachuted in to forcibly impose and maintain a curfew in the city. As a consequence of the disorder and rioting one rioter was shot and killed by police, dozens were injured and over 200 imprisoned.

Hill-side squatter huts, Tai Hang, 1965 (photo: Ko Tim-keung)

༓༓༓

1966, beginning of civic activism
The 1966 riots lacked the involvement of Chinese Triad gangs and rightist KMT malcontents that had been part of the 1956 troubles. Underlying its eruption was a widening disaffection of residents with the status quo in 1960s Hong Kong…in part it can be seen as a protest against the widening discrepancy in HK society between rich and poor and the appalling living and working conditions the masses had to contend with (overcrowding, ongoing housing dilemma, etc.), and a manifestation of the public distrust engendered by the corruption of officialdom and police.

Protesting tram workers clash with HK police, 1967

༓༓༓

The 1967 Riots
The 1966 riots produced perhaps the colony’s first large-scale social movement, however they were a prelude for a much more serious disturbance to Hong Kong society just one year later. What started as a minor industrial dispute involving workers at a plastic flowers factory in San Po Kong, striking over unreasonable work conditions, escalated into full-blown demonstrations, protests and violence by the Chinese inhabitants against the “iniquities” of British colonial rule with the HK governor David Trench taking a hard line with the malcontents.

Military patrol streets after Macau riots, Dec 1966 (Video, Papa Osmubal Archive)

༓༓༓

Spillover from the Cultural Revolution and the Macau disturbances
The political climate in Communist China at the time—Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution was very much on the upswing—played its part in stirring the pot of discontent among left-leaning Hong Kongers and emboldening them to defy their imperial masters. Another source of inspiration for the leftist rioters was the recent success of their counterparts in nearby Macau (themselves encouraged by the energy of the Cultural Revolution) in what became known as the 12-3 Incident. Conflict between the Chinese and the Portuguese authorities, brewing since July 1966, exploded at the end of the year…a dispute over a school building project triggered a series of Macau Chinese protests and rioting with the active participation of Mao’s Red Guards against corruption and colonialism in Macau. The Portuguese colonial police’s violent response to the Chinese protestors resulted in eight deaths and over 200 injuries. Under pressure from Chinese business owners and Beijing Macau’s Portuguese governor was forced into a humiliating public apology for the police crackdown and had to accede to the protestors’ demands. Consequently the balance of power in Macau was altered totally and irrevocably: Red China now had de facto suzerainty over the colony, reducing Portugal’s role in its governance to a nominal one only(𝒸).

Riot police using tear gas against 1967 protestors (photo: scmp.com)

༓༓༓

Smouldering Pearl
As the Hong Kong riots gathered momentum the demonstrators resorted first to strikes and property damage, then to the indiscriminate use of home-made bombs (branded by the government as “urban terrorism”). Governor Trench took a hardline in retailiation, imposing martial law in the colony, responding with tear gas and raiding the pro-CCP protestors’ strongholds like North Point. Whitehall took a laissez-faire approach to the 1967 riots leaving its management to the HK administration and the local police. The terrorist strategy adopted by leftist protestors—random bomb attacks coupled with some targeted assassinations—had the effect of alienating them from the majority of Hong Kong Chinese. By October 1967 Beijing had had enough, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai ordered the Communist protestors to halt the bombing campaign, and by the end of the year things were quiet again in the colony. The riots resulted in 51 dead, 832 injured, numerous arrests and some provocateurs deported to China.

༓༓༓

Trampling the seeds of democratisation
1967 witnessed the bloodiest, most violent riots in Hong Kong’s colonial history. The trauma of a succession of riots in the 1950s and 60s demonstrated one thing, the desperate need for reform of the political system and institutions in Hong Kong. While there was some labour reform and social improvements in the colony as a consequence of the 1967 unrest, overall HK governors overall contributed very little to this cause. One exception to this was Mark Young (governor in the 1940s) whose Young Plan called for wider political participation by creating a new Municipal Council to give the populace a greater stake in the colony. However Young’s plan was sabotaged when his successor Grantham opposed its implementation and it was blocked by the Legislative Council, never getting off the drawing board. Instead, it wasn’t until after 1984 with Hong Kong’s fate post-1997 firmly settled that HK governments made any overtures at all in that direction, by that time the horse has bolted!(𝒹).

Endnote: Chinese takeover of Hong Kong?
At the height of the 1967 riots rumours were circulating in the colony that China was planning to seize Hong Kong, to which the current hostilities were a prequel. There had been such a plan however the top echelons of the Chinese regime had never seriously countenanced it. Beijing was content with adding to the HK authorities’ internal troubles by despatching Chinese villagers over the border into the New Territories to launch attacks on police stations…for Beijing it was not the time for anything more. Perhaps it was as one observer noted, “the Chinese had no desire to take over Hong Kong at that time in their history…their proxy intervention had been no more than a demonstration” (Jan Morris, Hong Kong). And a test! It’s plausible that Beijing through its proxies was testing the HK regime to see if it would bow to pressure as the Portuguese Macau authorities did six months earlier. Ironically, at the height of the riots, Whitehall investigated evacuating Hong Kong altogether but the idea was strongly opposed by Governor Trench and the British Army command in Hong Kong on the grounds that it was deemed logistically too hard to pull off. A further objection was the danger to British citizens in the crown colony if a full-on evacuation was attempted (Yep).

↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼↼

(𝒶) along with a criminal element affiliated with the KMT

(𝒷) the actual trigger for the riots was the spontaneous action of one HK vicenarian—inspired by urban councillor Elsie Elliott who dissented from the price hike decision and organised a petition against it—to stage a hunger strike at the TST terminal of the Star Ferry

(𝒸) the Chinese Communists subsequently moved to eliminate all pockets of Kuomintang influence from Macau

(𝒹) Governor Murray MacLehose was also of a reforming bent but he focused more on eradicating police corruption (establishing an ICAC) than on institutional reform

༺༻ ༺༻ ༺༻

Articles consulted:

‘What sparked Hong Kong’s Double Tenth riots’, Jason Wordie, South China Morning Post, 07-Aug-2016, www.amp.scmp.com

‘Fifty years on: The riots that shook Hong Kong in 1967’, Foreign Correspondents Club, 18-May-2017, www.fcchk.org

‘Whose Sound and Fury? The 1967 Riots of Hong Kong through The Times, Haipeng Zhou, global media journal.com

Yep, Ray. “The 1967 Riots in Hong Kong: The Diplomatic and Domestic Fronts of the Colonial Governor.” The China Quarterly, no. 193 (2008): 122–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20192167.

Strangelove and his Cold Warrior Comrades, Art Imitating Life

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Cinema, Comparative politics, Futurism, International Relations, New Technology,, Popular Culture, World history,

Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 dark satire Dr Strangelove is a classic of the genre which comically probes the collective anxieties triggered in the West by the Cold War at its height in the early 1960s. Kubrick hammers home the utter absurdity of the prevailing nuclear standoff between the US and the Soviet Union and the consequential existential threat to the planet from the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) and “Doomsday bombs”. The movie’s plot involves the unilateral unleashing of a preemptive strike on Moscow by a deranged US Air Force general and the Pentagon’s shoddy attempts at “management” of the crisis.

Sellers as Dr Strangelove

˚
Kubrick and his film co-writers Terry Southern and Peter George give us three dangerously over-the-top, lunatic fringe characters – two gung-ho hawkish military types, generals Turgidson and Ripper, and the eponymous “Dr Strangelove”𝟙. The central figure in the nuclear nightmare scenario, Dr Strangelove (played by Peter Sellers), is a former German Nazi technocrat turned US strategic weapons expert and scientific advisor to the US president Merkin Muffley (also Sellers). Strangelove is creepily sanguine about the prospect for humanity post-nuclear Holocaust, expanding on his vision of a 100-year plan for survival (for some)…a male elite ensconced in an underground bunker where they can sire a selective breeding program with a plurality of desirable females [‘Dr Strangelove (character)’, Kubrick Wiki, www.kubrick.fandom.com].

Wernher Von Braun (Photo: Mondadori via Getty Images)

˚
Strangelove a composite of various personages
Though characterised by caricature and satire, the film’s three wildest characters are recognisable among the actual political, military and scientific figures of the day in America. The heavy Middle European accent of Dr Strangelove, his authoritarian-Nazi mannerisms and regular references to “Mein Führer”, has led some observers to conclude that the character was based on German aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun, instrumental in the Nazis’ V-2 rocket project and after 1945 in the US designing space rockets for NASA (a view given countenance by one of the screenwriters Terry Southern). Others have added émigré Hungarian scientists John von Neumann and Edward Teller as models for Strangelove. Both men worked on the Super-bomb projects (A-Bomb, H-Bomb, C-Bomb) for the US government in the 1940s and 50s, and both were rabidly anti-communist and anti-Russian [P.D. Smith, Doomsday Men (2007)]. Teller in particular shared a number of Strangelove’s traits, eg, volatile nature, Soviet-fixated and obsessed with bombs, possessed of a prosthetic limb. It’s probably a reasonable bet that the there was something of the personality of all three men in Dr Strangelove, but other individuals were also sources of inspiration for the character.

Herman Kahn (Source: Alchetron)

˚
A Megadeath influencer from RAND
Another real-life figure widely associated with the Strangelove character is Herman Kahn, who was a physicist and military strategist with the RAND Corporation𝟚. Kubrick got the idea of a “Doomsday Machine” from Kahn whose 1960 book On Thermonuclear War posited the possibility of a winnable (sic) nuclear war. Kahn has been described as a “Megadeath Intellectual” with his robust insistence that the dangers of nuclear war were exaggerated (this also accords with the outlier position of General Buck Turgidson – see below)𝟛.

Gen. Jack Ripper (Photo: Columbia Pictures)

˚
Military madness
Maverick general in the Strategic Air Command Jack D Ripper (played by Sterling Hayden) is gripped by the all-consuming communist conspiracy hysteria. His belief in the loony notion that the Soviets have been fluoridating American water supplies to pollute the “precious bodily fluids” of Americans leads him to initiate a H-Bomb onslaught on the USSR without consulting the Pentagon. Ripper’s wild rhetoric and blustery style has been compared to Robert Welch, the rabid anti-communist founder of the ultra-conservative and reactionary John Birch Society. Ripper’s loopy claim about Soviet water contamination echoes Welch’s baseless anti-fluoridation allegations (‘How I Learned to Stop Worrying’).

Gen. LeMay (Image: Mort Kunstler / Stag)
˚
Expendable dead
Gen. Buck Turgidson (played by George C Scott) was largely modelled on four-star air force general Curtis LeMay𝟜. Turgidson is an unrepentant war hawk who wants to escalate Ripper’s nuclear attack on the Soviets, justifying it with the outrageous claim that it will result in only “limited” casualties from the ensuing superpower war, which in his estimate equates to 10 to 20 million dead! Like Turgidson LeMay danced to the beat of his own drum, he was well disposed towards a preemptive strike on the Russians and vociferously advocated nuclear strikes on Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis and on North Vietnam during the Indo-China War.

Gen. Turgidson (Scott) in the War Room (Columbia Pictures)

˚
The actions and statements of the clearly psychotic Ripper and morally reprehensible Turgidson convey insights into the level of paranoia gripping the real-life military commanders in the climate of the nuclear arms buildup in the Sixties. [Fred Kaplin, “Truth Stranger than ‘Strangelove‘“, New York Times, 10-Oct-2004, nytimes.com].

Fail Safe (1964)

˚

Footnote: Satirical Dr Strangelove v Serious Fail Safe
Intriguingly, at the same time Kubrick was making Dr Strangelove there was a separate film in the works also about an American nuclear attack on the USSR. Fail Safe dealt with the same subject but as a straight-up drama. In this second film about nuclear Armageddon the trigger to the catastrophic event however is not rogue generals but a technical glitch. Strangelove’s equivalent morality-free scientist character in Fail Safe is Professor Groeteschele (played by Walter Matthau) who draws similar comparisons with Herman Kahn.


𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝟙
Dr Strangelove is broadly based on George’s novel Red Alert (1958), although the character of Dr Strangelove doesn’t appear in the novel
𝟚 mimicked in Dr Strangelove as the BLAND Corporation
𝟛 another Strangelove comparison is Henry Kissinger…suggested by a shared “eerie poise, lugubrious German accent and brutally pragmatic realpolitik” [Gary Susman, ‘Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’, Time, 11-Feb-2013, www.entertainment.time.com]
𝟜 although behaviourally the Ripper character (“cigar-chomping, gruff-talking”) also resembles LeMay’s style