Michael Bliss: What the West’s long struggle with communism tells us about the battle with Islamic terrorism

Michael Bliss on some of the lessons of history in combatting communism as applied to ISIS, and the need for appropriate caution:

As a historian I have all sorts of skepticism about simplistic notions that history repeats itself or that the lessons of history are easy to discern and apply, but I do believe that the experiences we have had in the past have to be drawn upon as we consider options for dealing with recognizably similar problems in the present and future. Surely the success of ISIL in Iraq and Syria in 2014 has real parallels with the coming to power of Bolshevism in Russia in 1917. Surely the history of the struggle against Communism in the 20th century supplies us with some markers for dealing with the spectre of Islamic terrorism in the 21st century.

One “lesson” from this past is to be careful not to underestimate the strength and appeal of a radical, messianic movement with deep cultural roots. Like Bolshevism, ISIL has immediately become engaged in a hugely complicated, multi-faceted set of local wars as it tries to consolidate its power. Like Bolshevism it is utterly and appallingly ruthless in its cold-blooded determination to create what it calls the new caliphate. And, also like Bolshevism, the ideology of apocalyptic revolution is proving to be a kind of magnet for true believers everywhere, who make pilgrimages to ISIL territory to fight for their great cause. This should not surprise us. Nor should we be surprised that ISIL-spawned or affiliated Islamic fundamentalist movements are active in many other countries, and might well succeed in taking power in other failed states, ranging from Libya and Yemen through, most worrisomely, Nigeria, and perhaps Afghanistan and even Pakistan. We are dealing at one and the same time with a territorially-based mini-state leading a boundariless international movement.

Given this situation, it’s perhaps no wonder that a coalition of the enemies of ISIL quickly formed and became active in trying to degrade and destroy it. Here the haunting danger is of a repetition of the failed Allied intervention in the Russian Revolution, a destructive fiasco characterized by our almost complete ignorance of a far-off area of the world, strategic incoherence in the face of social collapse and revolution, and the West’s naive habit of claiming moral high ground.

So far, the signs seem to be that we in the West are again stumbling blindfolded into a vastly complex and chaotic situation with only simplistic, confused and uninformed ideas of our objectives and interests. As with the Allied interventions in Siberia, in which Canada played a significant role in the hope of showing off its potential as a young nation, and actually only showed an almost pathetic naivité, there is a distinct possibility that in the short, medium, and long terms we will succeed only in making things worse.

Admittedly, the situation is changing so quickly that it’s quickly becoming almost impossible to keep track of it — particularly as the chaos in Yemen seems to be forcing moderate Islam to become militarily engaged for the sake of its own survival. There is a real danger that the situation might evolve into a great civil war been Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

Generally, it’s probably wise to be cautious in situations in which it might seem like a good idea for the West to wage war against Islamic fundamentalism. We should remember how enthusiastic anti-Communists tended to overreach themselves, from the Korean peninsula through the Bay of Pigs and into the swamps of Vietnam. Already the West has stumbled dreadfully in Afghanistan and in the unbelievably disastrous American invasion of Iraq. With our NATO partners we Canadians were enthusiastically complicit in what we now realize was also a disastrous demolition of order, perhaps even of civilization, in Libya. And yet we still listen to voices urging us to do it all over again, and have just begun airstrikes in Syria without legal justification.

Here at home, jihadist terrorism poses about the same minimal threat to Canada as the international Communist movement did after 1917. We have to think seriously about issues of internal security, but we have to see them in perspective.

Globally, however, the problem is real. Given the appeal of Islamic fundamentalism to even a minuscule fraction of more than a billion Muslims, it is hard to believe that jihadism will be a passing movement, even if it does happen that ISIL is crushed. It’s at least as likely that it will continue to strengthen and spread, take hold of other countries and possibly become caught up in horrendously catastrophic wars and revolution. The prospect is very scary, and almost anything could happen. In fact in some ways Islamic fundamentalism is more alarming than Communist fundamentalism or the other totalitarian movement we had to defeat, Nazi fascism, because its religiously-rooted glorification of suicide makes terrorism, even nuclear terrorism, more feasible.

The West’s long-term strategy against the spectre of Communism was twofold. Militarily the West learned that containment of Communist expansionism was more likely to succeed than futile attempts at conquest. Thanks to the reciprocal restraint that the Communists themselves learned to adopt, for many years there was tacit co-existence between the two great ideological camps, odious as this prospect was to the true believers on both sides.

During periods of coexistence, both sides had to address the root cause of most forms of social disorder, which is people’s inchoate but powerful desire for a better life. As the 20th century wound on, utopian Communism proved corrupt and unworkable in daily life, materialistic capitalism proved flexible and productive, and the Red threat to the economic and social systems of our societies waned and then imploded on itself. As the title of a famous anthology by former Communists put it, theirs had been the god that failed. But, to slightly change the metaphor, it had been a social experiment that probably had to be tried.

I’ve made here an extended argument hinging on an analogy between revolutionary Communism and revolutionary Islamic fundamentalism, and of course it has many limits. But if nothing else our history with the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and the rise of ISIL in 2014 underlines the importance of our realizing how much we need to know about cultures and regions of the world that are profoundly foreign to ours. And how we need to think clearly and carefully about power, its uses, both at home and abroad, and its limitations. Good intentions — the best intentions — are never enough. Understanding the limits of our knowledge, understanding context and contingency, knowing how hard and chancy it is to impose our will on the future, is at least a starting point.

Michael Bliss: What the West’s long struggle with communism tells us about the battle with Islamic terrorism