“Do you like Kipling?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never Kippled!”
Ah yes, a line as timeless as anything the man himself produced. Yet, while classic he may be, he’s also out of favour. “The poet of Empire” is, these days, a mark of Cain even though he penned that perennial national favourite ‘If’.
Well, up to a point it’s a fair cop and one must treat triumph and disaster just the same. What is it they say in advance of any film of vintage these days? “Language and attitudes reflective of the time.”
But it might easily be argued that Kipling was misunderstood. Take, for example, The Man Who Would Be King. Based loosely on the adventures of Josiah Harlan, it’s a tale easily rendered as one of the imperial spirit. A great gamble undertaken by fearless sons of Albion, fame and fortune among the high passes and snowy peaks of the North West frontier. Connery and Caine in a buddy movie of chemistry unmatched outside, perhaps, Redford and Newman in another mountain adventure, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Know the tale though and you know it ends badly. Hubris and nemesis among things half understood and of millennial permanence. Here before you came, here after you’ve gone. Anyone would think it was a metaphor for empire.
Similarly, and here’s the difficult bit, The White Man’s Burden, Kipling’s exhortation for America to join in colonialism and empire and pay the price it demands as the Old World began to show signs of exhaustion.
One way or another, the United States took it to heart. Within 50 years of the Philippines entanglement Kipling was writing about, America had taken advantage of a pre-eminence gained over two world wars to establish, as Niall Ferguson convincingly argues in his book Colossus, an American empire.
Someone transatlantic grimaces and goes all 1776 but how else would one describe a nation boasting the world’s mightiest military garrisoning strategic spots from Berlin to the Far East, holding the world’s largest economy, the reserve currency, the pre-eminent cultural reach and being quite unabashed by using them all to exert its power?
What came with that, of course, was global leadership and all its responsibilities and accompanying resentments. For Pax Britannica, read Pax Americana, and while Europe has been quite happy to live under that Ich bin ein Berliner guarantee, it has never quite forgiven it. Perhaps it was the way they treated De Gaulle as a weird chancer in the latter stages of the war.
Either way, the trick Europe managed to pull, argues Ferguson, was to establish a rival United States of Europe. A collective old world economic force to match the new, eventually adopting its own supranational currency and legislature but working the historically unprecedented stunt of getting the rival empire to pay for its defence.
Now that gig looks up. Kipling, you see, was right. Empire is bloody exhausting and very expensive and, in a moment of supreme irony, the US would be quite happy to see Europe take up the burden of actually defending itself beyond regulating on the beaches and on the landing places. What with Russian shell factories being notoriously disregarding of EU working time directives and all.
Naturally, the finger of social democrat European opprobrium is giving US president-to-be Donald Trump, the full j’accuse. The bellicose blondie has, after all, threatened to feed any NATO payment laggards to Putin’s dogs.
Possibly worth remembering though that the most recent manifestations of US nose- holding over Europe came with Obama, when Crimea was invaded, and it was Joe Biden’s fine disregard for his allies that prompted the come-on of unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan. Putin was less keen to chance his arm when “the Donald” was in power.
Either way, it’s hard to argue that there isn’t a fundamental fairness at play in demanding Europe, finally, “does its bit”, what with China looking to take away Taiwan’s chips and keeping the American head boy busy.
This, I think means it’s time for an overdue attitude adjustment over this side of the Pond. Once, it was, as Kipling put it: “An Englishman’s burden to be misunderstood.” Now, I can’t help but feel, it’s an American’s. To return to film, who better than Marine Colonel Jessup to put us Europeans straight?
“You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall! We use words like honour, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something, you use them as a punchline. I have neither the time, nor the inclination to explain myself, to a man who rises and sleeps, under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I’d rather you just said ‘thank you’, and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn, what you think you are entitled to!”
And, right now, he’d be right.
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