Imperial Follies
Atlantic, The, January, 2007 by Christopher Hitchens
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Fifty winters ago, Russian tanks were demolishing buildings in Budapest, and British warplanes were bombing Cairo International Airport. The coincidence of these two crimes and disasters made a fool out of the nascent United Nations, gave birth to the New Left, put an end to European colonialism, curtain-raised the fall of Communism in 1989, and confirmed the United States as the postwar superpower.
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In retrospect, the twin episodes of hubris seem almost irrational. Yet hubris has its reasons, too, and they are worth examining. “If a particular cause, like the accidental result of a battle, has ruined a state,” wrote Montesquieu in considering the role of chance and contingency in the Roman case, “there was a general cause that made the downfall of this state ensue from a single battle.” Though this insight may verge on the tautologous, it is nonetheless superior to the view—pungently expressed by one of the ...
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