Slavery in America: How It Started

The societies which inhabited North, Central, and South America prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus can be measured both by their strengths and by their weaknesses.

Pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas made advances including agriculture, irrigation, metalwork, astronomical calendars, and architecture. Some of their building projects indicate a mastery of geometry.

But there were less appealing aspects to pre-Columbian cultures. They routinely committed human sacrifices; large numbers of healthy young people were killed to satisfy the spirits which these cultures imagined. Women had little to no legal standing; they could be physically captured and forced to marry the men who captured them; they could be bought and sold.

The societies in the Americas prior to 1492 practiced cannibalism. The two ideas — human sacrifice and cannibalism — were sometimes united in a single event. Historian Nathaniel Knowles writes:

Cannibalism apparently invariably accompanied torture among all Iroquois speaking people. It was also most important to eat at solemn feasts the flesh of the woman sacrificed to the war god.

Centuries before any European contact, the natives of South America used cocaine for both medicinal and recreational purposes. While the medicinal applications were beneficial, the recreational usage brought about many of the usual problems of addiction. Some of the communities fell into neglect as their residents made imprudent decisions under the influence of the drug. The warriors of these societies often consumed cocaine prior to battle, which energizes the user even as it impedes rational decision making. The natives obtained cocaine by chewing the leaves of the coca plant, sometimes mixing coca leaves with tobacco leaves.

The Native Americans (“Indians”) also used peyote. While cocaine is a stimulant, peyote contains a psychoactive drug. It alters the user’s perceptions of sights and sounds.

The use of cocaine, peyote, and other drugs slowed the improvement of civilization.

Diplomatic relations between tribes were often uneasy. Warfare between tribes was ubiquitous. Given both constant armed conflict and an inability to unite politically, the isolated tribes devoted large amounts of energy and resources to military activity, with little left for refining civilization. Population levels failed to grow and social structures developed little.

“Slavery between tribes existed before the coming of Europeans,” writes David Treuer in the Los Angeles Times.

Involuntary servitude was deeply ingrained in the pre-Columbian societies of North, Central, and South America. It pervaded cultures from the Arctic Circle to the southern tip of South America.

“Slavery was practiced by the Native Americans before any Europeans arrived in the region. People of one tribe could be taken by another,” agrees historian Joshua Mark.

By the time Columbus set foot on Hispaniola, millennia of bondage had shaped the societies of the Americas.

“Europeans did not introduce slavery to this continent,” writes Rebecca Onion. “The Native groups in the land that later became the United States and Canada practiced slavery before Europeans arrived.”

These many defects of pre-Columbian American cultures were connected. The natives who practiced one of them also practiced others. These social flaws encouraged each other in a vicious circle.

“The pre-Columbian world was a place where slavery, trafficking, sexual exploitation, oppression, and even genocide was commonplace prior to any European contact,” writes David Barton. He gives an example:

Take briefly for instance, the Carib tribes who had widespread institutions of perpetual slavery, captive mutilation, and even villages dedicated to the sexual exploitation of captured Taino women forced to produced children which their masters then ate.

Archeologists and scholars continue to unearth more evidence of social problems which the original Americans inflicted upon each other.

In an NPR radio interview, University of California Professor Andres Resendez said:

What we do know is that there is plenty of archaeological and pictorial evidence, as well as some of the early chronicles of the New World depict the enslavement of natives prior to the arrival of Europeans. In the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, Iroquois peoples waged wars on neighboring groups for the purpose of avenging their dead and replacing them with captives. In the Pacific Northwest, elite marriages were often sealed by providing slaves. So we know that these activities went on.

After thousands of years of slavery, the arrival of Columbus in 1492 and the subsequent European presence in the Americas marked the beginning of change. By November 1542, European governments were beginning to enact laws to eliminate slavery. By 1652, abolishist Roger Williams led the legislature of Rhode Island to illegalize slavery. In 1863 Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and by 1865 slavery had been eliminated in the United States.

Other countries, inspired by the United States, also abolished slavery. By 1888, there was no more slavery in the Americas. The last country to abolish slavery in the Americas was Brazil, 23 years after the U.S. had done so.

After more than 5,000 of institutionalized slavery in the Americas, it took less than 500 years for the effects of European contact to erase slavery from the Western Hemisphere.

Ending a Decade of Diplomatic Stalemate: Applying Maximum Pressure to North Korea

Since 1945, North Korea has been under the repressive regime of a three-generation hereditary dictatorship. In succession, the grandfather, the father, and the son have oppressed the citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The name of the country is unintentionally ironic: the government is not democratic, it’s not chosen by the people, and it’s not a republic.

Kim Il-sung was placed into power by the Soviet Union, which obtained the northern half of the Korean peninsula in a post-WW2 agreement. The USSR wrote the constitution for North Korea and created the structure of the state, which was officially codified as the DPRK in 1948. Kim Il-sung led the provisional government from 1945 until 1948, and then led the DPRK from 1948 until his death in 1994.

In 1994, Kim Jong-il became the leader of North Korea, inheriting the power from his father.

By 2006, the DPRK had developed a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program, and the growth of that program was significant and troubling. World leaders were divided on how to deal with this situation. Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense at the time, advocated placing significant economic pressure on North Korea. But Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, argued for continued purely diplomatic talks, without concrete actions. Rumsfeld recalls:

Instead of offering inducements of financial aid and heating oil, I thought there might be a remote possibility that if we put enough diplomatic and financial pressure on the country, some of its senior generals might overthrow Kim Jong Il. By 2006, Rice and the State Department envoy to North Korea, Christopher Hill, made clear that North Korea was the State Department’s issue alone, and that the views of the Defense Department would carry little weight. Rice and Hill seemed to believe they could obtain an agreement with North Korea to end its WMD programs. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Lawless, a veteran expert on the region with years in the CIA, was no longer included in discussions.

So it was that talks continued, but no concrete actions were taken to make the DPRK feel the consequences of its bad behavior. In fact, after 2008, some of the few economic sanctions which had been enacted against North Korea were relaxed.

Kim Jong-il died in 2011, and his son, Kim Jong-un became the DPRK’s dictator.

From the time North Korea achieved nuclear weapon capability in 2006, a decade has passed. During those years, the DPRK continually conducted weapons tests: either exploding a nuclear warhead, or launching a long-range missile. These tests were not primarily “tests” in the sense of determining whether the technology would function correctly. These “tests” were threats to other nations: a belligerent saber-rattling exercise.

These tests became more and more dangerous, and the world’s diplomats, organized as NATO, the UN, the G7, the G20, and the Six-Party Talks, hoped to persuade North Korea to abandon the continuous testing.

While various nations, in the organizations listed above, or in other ad hoc organizations, or individually, were persistent in their efforts to dissuade the DPRK from its bullying behavior, they were also ineffective in those efforts. North Korea was not influenced by words. Diplomacy was futile. The nations of the world would need a different approach if the DPRK’s warmongering was to be moderated.

From January 2017 to December 2018, Nikki Haley was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. During that time, she would be instrumental in developing and applying a new strategy. This “maximum pressure” strategy would employ more than words. The collected nations of the world would inflict economic pain on North Korea. The pain would be presented as a consequence of the DPRK’s belligerence, and the pain would be removed when the warlike behavior stopped.

Various nations would impose financial penalties on North Korea as a consequence of its weapons development and weapons testing programs. These penalties — called “sanctions” in diplomatic jargon — would make life uncomfortable for the ruling elite in the DPRK, as Nikki Haley explains:

At the center of the pressure campaign was sanctioning the North Korean regime — making Kim Jong Un and the ruling elite “bleed” until they finally agreed to serious, unconditional negotiations that would ultimately eliminate their nuclear weapons. After the North Koreans launched their first ICBM capable of reaching the United States on July 4, we began to work at the United Nations on the first of what would be three sanctions packages.

Nikki Haley presented the “maximum pressure” approach to the UN Security Council. “When I took to the Security Council chamber to announce our new, more aggressive approach,” she recalls, the torture and murdered carried out by the DPRK was “very much on my mind.” Statistics reveal the millions of people arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and executed by the North Korean government. A single case can give a human face to impersonal numbers: she spoke to the UN in July 2017, only a few weeks after an American college student named Otto Warmbier died as a result of the physical abuse he’d received from the DPRK. Warmbier had been touring North Korea as part of a study trip to several east Asian countries.

The North Korean government had arrested and detained Otto Warmbier for allegedly taking a poster off the wall in his hotel. Whether he in fact took the poster is unclear. What is clear is that the DPRK organized a trial — dictatorships tend to present “show trials” or “mock trials” in “kangaroo courts,” events with no legal legitimacy, but which serve as a pretext for imprisoning and killing anyone who displeases the dictatorship. Warmbier was declared guilty after this meaningless trial. The court sentenced him to fifteen years of hard labor, but less than two years after his conviction, he was released to the U.S. government. He was in a coma, and had been for some time. In June 1017 he was flown back to the U.S., where he died only a few days after landing.

Nikki Haley alluded to Otto Warmbier in her speech at the U.N.; she spoke to those present in the assembly, but she was aware of the larger audience as excerpts of the speech would be televised:

I spoke directly to the American people about the unique evil of the North Korean regime.

“Americans had seen how barbarous the North Koreans treated” a college student who had deserved no such treatment. It was a crystalizing incident, and Warmbier gave a human face to those millions of people who’d been tortured and killed. Brutality on an individual level was indicative of brutality on a massive scale: why would the world allow North Korean to continue to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons? Nikki Haley writes about the case of Otto Warmbier:

It was a sign to all of us that the Kim regime was capable of barbaric acts on a much larger scale.

The DPRK’s profile among the world’s nations was, and is, shaped by two factors: its relentless drive to build a significant WMD arsenal, and its brutality toward both its own citizens and other individuals.

After a decade of diplomatic stalemate from 2006, when North Korea had its first fully operational nuclear weapon, to 2016, when Nikki Haley was nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a new tactic was implemented. The “maximum pressure” campaign did not rely on words alone, but on real-world economic measures which affected the daily functioning of Kim Jong-un and his dictatorship.

After Haley was confirmed and took office in early 2017, and after the implementation of the maximum pressure strategy, some detectable progress was made: North Korea dramatically reduced both the number of nuclear weapons tests and the number of long-range missile tests. After dozens of missile tests in 2017, the DPRK performed none in 2018.

North Korea exploded atomic bombs in 2016 and 2017; it exploded none in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.

In addition to a significant reduction in weapons activity, diplomatic progress was made in the first-ever summit meetings between a member of the Kim dynasty and a U.S. president. Summit meetings occured in Singapore in June 2018, in Hanoi in February 2019, and in the DMZ in April 2019. The DMZ is the demilitarized zone, a strip of land along the border between North Korea and South Korea.

The actions taken by the world’s nations, acting together, prompted by the U.S. policy of maximum pressure as presented by Nikki Haley, made a measurable and quantifiable difference.

In 2022, however, the DPRK resumed both missile tests and nuclear weapons tests. This was apparently in response to a perceived laxness which had crept into the implementation of the maximum pressure strategy.

Roman Military Success: Strategy, Not Tactics

Around 27 B.C., the Roman Empire replaced the Roman Republic. The republic had already begun an era of amazing expansion, growing from the city-state of Rome, to much of the Italian peninsula, to other parts of Europe, to North Africa, to the British Isles, and to the Ancient Near East.

Indeed, one of the factors in the morphing of the republic into an empire was the need for a new form of government which could manage this large and growing territory. The republic was a type of government best suited to a city-state which had a modest amount of surrounding land under its rule. A large, multi-continental required a different governmental structure.

Although not as sharply distinguished as in the twenty-first century United States, it can still be said that in the Roman Empire there was some distinction between the civilian government and the military. To be sure, that distinction was at times blurred, as in the case of the civil wars between 49 B.C. and 27 B.C. which led up to the end of the republic and the beginning of the empire.

The Roman military featured private armies which owed their primary allegiance to their commanding generals, and not to the nation or government.

While the military devoted attention to tactics — the different types of weapons and how they were used, various formations of soldiers in combat, etc. — historian Edward Luttwak argues that it was not tactics, but rather strategy, which primarily shaped the Roman armies and which led to their victories and defeats.

Luttwak writes that the successes of the Roman military were achieved, not because of their tactics, but rather despite their tactics:

Had the strength of the Roman Empire derived from a tactical superiority on the battlefield, from superior generalship, or from a more advanced weapons technology, there would be little to explain, though much to describe. But this was not so. Roman tactics were almost invariably sound but not distinctly superior, and the Roman soldier of the imperial period was not noted for his élan. He was not a warrior intent on proving his manhood but a long-service professional pursuing a career; his goal and reward was not a hero’s death but a severance grant upon retirement. Roman weapons, far from being universally more advanced, were frequently inferior to those used by the enemies whom the empire defeated with such great regularity. Nor could the secular survival of the empire have been ensured by a fortunate succession of great feats of generalship: the Roman army had a multitude of competent soldiers and a few famous generals, but its strength derived from method, not from fortuitous talent.

Over time, there were shifts in emphases: At some times, the Romans looked more toward fortifications — walls, watchtowers, fortresses — to solidify the borders; at other times there was less emphasis on such structures, and more emphasis on keeping mobile groups of soldiers ready to move into regions of sudden or unexpected conflict. Likewise, there were variations between times in which the army was composed mainly of Romans, and other times in which many of the soldiers were mercenaries, foreigners, or both.

Changes in the priorities of the civilian government led to changes, Luttwak asserts, in the strategies employed by the military:

Three distinct methods of imperial security can be identified over the period. Each combined diplomacy military forces, road networks, and fortifications to serve a single objective, functioning therefore as a system up to a point, albeit with local variations, interruptions, and exceptions. But each addressed a distinct set of priorities, themselves the reflection of evolving conceptions of empire: hegemonic expansionism for the first system; territorial security for the second; and finally, in diminished circumstances, sheer survival for the imperial power itself. Each system was based on a different combination of diplomacy, direct force, and fixed infrastructure, and each entailed different operational methods, but more fundamentally, each system reflected a different Roman world view and self-image.

This tripartite division of the imperial era can be illustrated with examples. The first, expansive, phase is seen in, e.g., the conquest of Gaul, or the invasion and occupation of the southern half of Great Britain. The second phase, securing the borders, led to the construction of structures like the limes between the Rhine and the Danube, or the construction of Hadrian’s Wall between England and Scotland. The final phase, during the gradual contraction of the empire, included defensive fighting against Germanic tribes, Huns, and Persians.

While the five centuries of imperial military activity make for a rich and complex narrative, Edward Luttwak’s identification of these three stages creates a useful larger framework for understanding both the military history of the Roman Empire, as well as the interrelations between the civilian and military histories.

Understanding Saudi Society: The Role of Women

An anonymous woman, publishing her story anonymously, gives keen insight into the lives of women in Saudi Arabia. Publishing under the name Sultana, this woman worked with author Jean Sasson to present powerful but painful information about the daily lives of Saudi women.

As someone whose family has lived in Arabia for centuries, she can give an authentic insider view of her experience, and the experiences of her sisters, cousins, and friends. She presents evidence which makes it clear that Saudi women are utterly controlled, first by their fathers, and ten later by their husbands. She writes:

This absolute control over the female has nothing to do with love, only with fear of the male’s tarnished honor.

For readers in other societies — Europe, Australia, the Americas, etc. — she offers data which are shocking and counterintuitive. Saudi men are legally allowed to kill their wives or daughters if those women have done something which the men consider to be dishonorable. The Saudi man is prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner — all in one. There is no defender.

The authority of a Saudi male is unlimited; his wife and children survive only if he desires. In our homes, he is the state. This complex situation begins with the rearing of our young boys. From an early age, the male child is taught that women are of little value: They exist only for his comfort and convenience. The child witnesses the disdain shown his mother and sisters by his father; this open contempt leads to his scorn of all females, and makes it impossible for him to enjoy friendship with anyone of the opposite sex. Taught only the role of master to slave, it is little wonder that by the time he is old enough to take a mate, he considers her his chattel, not his partner.

Women are considered as property, a notion which settles comfortably in the minds of Saudis, who didn’t abolish slavery until 1962, and whose current system of permanent servitude for foreign born domestic workers differs little from slavery.

The double standard is clearly enshrined in Saudi society: men are allowed as many wives as they want and adulterous relationships are permitted, as are the men’s visits to brothels.

On the other hand, women will suffer punishment or even death for merely speaking casually to any man who is not an immediate family member.

This dysfunctional society warps and distorts every human relationship, as our anonymous author explains:

And so it comes to be that women in my land are ignored by their fathers, scorned by their brothers, and abused by their husbands. This cycle is difficult to break, for the men who impose this life upon their women ensure their own marital unhappiness. For what man can be truly content surrounded by such misery? It is evident that the men of my land are searching for gratification by taking one wife after the other, followed by mistress after mistress. Little do these men know that their happiness can be found in their own home, with one woman of equality. By treating women as slaves, as property, men have made themselves as unhappy as the women they rule, and have made love and true companionship unattainable to both sexes.

Even the official paperwork of the Saudi government codifies the inferior status of women:

The history of our women is buried behind the black veil of secrecy. Neither our births nor our deaths are made official in any public record. Although births of male children are documented in family or tribal records, none are maintained anywhere for females. The common emotion expressed at the birth of a female is either sorrow or shame. Although hospital births and government record keeping are increasing, the majority of rural births take place at home. No country census is maintained by the government of Saudi Arabia.

Women in Saudi Arabia need written permission from a male relative to travel or get married. The police can, and do, arrest women for wearing skirts which expose their calves.

It is difficult for readers in the ‘Western World’ to imagine the oppression under which Saudi women live. Even walking from home to a small shop a few blocks away is forbidden unless the girl or woman making this trip is accompanied by a male family member.

The publication of these experiences by Jean Sasson and the anonymous ‘Sultana’ has truly revolutionized the West’s understanding of Saudi Arabia.

Madagascar: Surprisingly Important

Most people have trouble finding Madagascar on a map. (Hint: it’s an island off the eastern coast of Africa.) If they’ve heard of Madagascar at all, it’s in conjunction with an animated film for children. But this French colony played at least one major role in World History.

In the early phases of WW2, Germany had invaded most of France. The parts of France not directly controlled by the German army were controlled by the French collaborationist government — called the ‘Vichy’ government, named after its capital city — which complied to Nazi demands and wishes. France’s colonial empire therefore also fell indirectly through the Vichy bureaucracy into Axis hands, from Algiers to Vietnam. Part of that empire was Madagascar.

The Vichy government managed most of the imperial territories and colonies, but was careful to do so in a way pleasing to the Axis.

The Free French government was a government-in-exile, headed by Charles de Gaulle, and located largely in England. It was the legitimate authority over France, but unable to directly manage events in France, or in most of the empire, during the time between mid-1940 until late 1942. After that time, it slowly began to assume meaningful authority over small bits of the empire as they were liberated by the Allies. The Free French government had its own military, which fought in concert with the Allies.

Historian Richard Overy describes the beginning of the Allied effort to free Madagascar from the Vichy regime, i.e., from Axis control:

Late in March 1942 a small convoy of ships steamed south from the Clyde estuary in Scotland destined for the invasion of French territory. Convoy WS17 carried two thousand Royal Marines and a wide assortment of naval and military supplies. The ships were a motley collection, small armed escort vessels swaying side by side with smart passenger liners crudely converted to the dull costume of war. Mercifully unattended by submarines, the convoy plowed on, past the continent of Europe, past the Azores and on into the South Atlantic. On 19 April the convoy arrived in Cape Town where it met up with the rest of the invasion fleet, the aircraft carriers Indomitable and Illustrious, an aging battleship and two cruisers. The 34 ships left for Durban, on the east coast of South Africa. In the last week of April they sailed in two separate groups to take part in Operation ‘Ironclad,’ the invasion of Madagascar.

The history of WW2 includes many invasions: The Axis powers invaded Poland, France, Belgium, and other countries. The Japanese invaded China, the Philippines, French Indochina, and islands around the Pacific. In reply, the Allies invaded and liberated the nations of North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France in the European theater, and likewise carried out liberating invasions of the Philippines and other islands.

The liberation of Madagascar was one of the very first Allied invasions, and was the first amphibious invasion carried out by the Allies. As such, it set the stage, and provided important experience, for other later amphibious invasions. The concept of amphibious invasion was relatively new, having played little or no role in WW1, and was a pivotal factor in the ultimate Allied victory. The invasion of Madagascar was, therefore, a groundbreaking moment in military history.

At first, Madagascar might seem like an odd choice of target. France, Italy, North Africa, or the Philippines are more obvious goals. But Madagascar had a strategic importance. The Japanese, having secured the South China Sea, were eyeing the major shipping routes through the Indian Ocean. Madagascar, on the western edge of the Indian Ocean and on the eastern edge of Africa, would have been a good staging and refueling station for the Japanese, who would have good reason therefore to occupy the island.

The mission of convoy WS17 was to liberate Madagascar from Vichy control and from Axis control, and to prevent a Japanese occupation there, as Richard Overy explains:

Their destination was the northernmost tip of the island, Cap d’Ambre, which was almost separated from the rest by a deep inlet that formed the natural harbor of Diego Suarez. This large sheltered anchorage was used by the French as a naval base. It was overlooked by the small port of Antsirane, where the French garrison and a handful of aircraft were stationed. This colonial backwater might well have remained untouched by the war save for the threat from Japan. Following the rapid Japanese conquest of southeast Asia and the East Indies it was feared that Japanese forces would fan out into the Indian Ocean, seizing Ceylon or Madagascar in order to cut the vital shipping lines that sustained Britain’s fragile war effort in the Middle East and India. Madagascar suddenly became the key to British survival, and Churchill signaled his strong approval of its occupation.

The amphibious landing was a new tactic. Few military leaders anywhere had experience in such operations. Operation Ironclad was a test of whether such a technique was possible or practical. The outcome was uncertain, but the threat of Japanese submarines being resupplied and refueled so close to the European theater required the attempt. Richard Overy details the difficulties:

Ironclad was a tricky operation. The island was protected in the north by natural fortifications of shoal and reef. The harbor itself was dominated by large naval guns set in coastal fortresses, and its long winding entrance was easy to defend. Armed with the element of surprise, the task force was detailed to land on the undefended western coast and attack the port from the rear. D-Day was fixed for 5 May — every operation had D-Day and H-Hour to signal its beginning — and the flotilla arrived punctually off the coast at two in the morning. Minesweepers marked a channel through the treacherous waters and the small transport vessels gingerly steered past the buoys to reach the undefended beaches of Courrier and Ambararata bays. Three mines exploded in the approach but no one on shore noticed. The landings were carried out unopposed, for the French regarded the western shore as unnavigable. Not until the marines had advanced 3 miles towards the port did they suddenly meet stiff resistance. Any hope that the defenders might come over to the Allied cause evaporated. For most of the following day the British were pinned down with heavy casualties. The operation was rescued from disaster only by an act of desperation. The destroyer Anthony was sent with fifty marines aboard to run the gauntlet of the harbor guns and seize the port under the noses of the French forces. In darkness and in swirling seas Anthony rose to the occasion; the marines were disembarked on the jetty and seized the naval depot and the commanding general’s house. Attacked from the rear the startled garrison began to crumble. By 3 a.m. on 7 May resistance was almost over. The port was surrendered. A brief naval bombardment the following morning silenced the harbor guns.

Operation Ironclad was a success, but only barely. Although the port and harbor at the northern end of the island had surrendered, the remainder of Madagascar, heading south overland, had to be liberated over the next six months.

The invasion of Madagascar proved that the Allies could complete an amphibious invasion, but it also revealed that the Allies were far from being ready to do such a landing on a large scale or against serious opposition. The Vichy army which resisted the liberation of Madagascar was an amateurish outfit compared to the Japanese army which would oppose any liberation of the Philippines, or compared to the Axis troops who would put up a fight against any Allied liberation of Italy, France, Sicily, or North Africa.

The Allies had managed to prove that they could do an amphibious invasion, but it was clear that they had a long way to go before they would be ready for a bigger version of such a liberation.

Richard Overy examines the record of Operation Ironclad:

The seizure of Diego Suarez effectively forestalled the Japanese. It was the first successful amphibious assault of the war for the Allies, and the first genuinely combined operation, using aircraft, ships, and soldiers working together. It came at a dark time in the war for the Allied cause and was, Churchill later recalled, the only bright spot in Britain’s war effort ‘for long months.’ But it was small comfort. The whole operation had come close to disaster. The ships supporting it had almost run out of fuel and water by 7 May; casualties were surprisingly heavy, 107 killed and 280 wounded, some 20 percent of the attacking force; and contrary to expectations the French governor of the island not only refused to surrender but continued hostilities. The doughty Monsieur Masset retreated south with his forces leaving behind a trail of blown bridges and booby-trapped roads. He survived the fall of his capital in September. South African forces, depleted by illness and plagued by clouds of dry red dust, finally cornered the remnant of the French army in the very south of the island. Here the governor solemnly surrendered on 5 November, exactly six months and one minute after the onset of hostilities in May. Under French law the island’s defenders were now entitled to higher pay and awards for enduring more than half a year of combat.

Looking at the operation in the macro-context of WW2, historian Hubert Deschamps notes:

World War II brought economic crisis with the cessation of exports. The island declared for the Vichy government in 1940, and to prevent its invasion by the Japanese it was occupied in 1942 by the British, who handed it over to the Free French authorities in 1943. It had been considerably distrubed by these events.

Operation Ironclad not only had a military value, but also had a value related to morale on the home front. It was one of the few victories during the early part of the war to which the Allies could point. It gave credibility to the Allied cause.

This would become even more so, for shortly after the liberation of Madagascar, the infamous Raid on Dieppe worked against Allied morale. While some military and political leaders considered the Dieppe Raid, named Operation Jubilee, a success, it didn’t seem that way to the general public. Historians continue to debate the value of the Raid on Dieppe, but at the time, the victory at Madagascar was much-needed to maintain morale, as Richard Overy writes:

It would be unkind to argue that Ironclad was the best the Allies could do in the summer of 1942, but it was not far short. For all those critics of British policy, then and since, the invasion of Madagascar is a salutary reminder of just how slender were British resources in 1942, and how inexperienced were its forces for a major amphibious assault of the kind that Stalin urged against German-held Europe. The British Chiefs-of-Staff were even hostile to an operation as modest as Ironclad because of the disruption to shipping. As it was, the Royal Naval task force at Gibraltar had to be severely depleted to support the Madagascar invasion. If the Japanese navy had chosen to intervene, Britain could have done little to obstruct it, and the whole operation would have produced a strategic nightmare. How much greater were the risks and costs of a cross-Channel assault against a strongly defended coastline with limited resources. When later in the year a substantial raid was mounted on Dieppe by Canadian forces stationed in Britain the outcome was disastrous. Until the landings in North Africa later in the year, the invasion of Madagascar remained the one solid victory for the Allied cause, and it was fought not against hardened soldiers of the Axis but against an assortment of French colonial troops who had started the war as Britain’s allies and had little stomach for conflict.

The Allied military experienced a direct line of development, planning, and maturation from the invasion of Madagascar in May 1942 to the invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Operation Ironclad was a fragile and small version of Operation Overlord; the former was the ancestor of the latter.

Richard Overy conceptualizes the weakness but ultimate success of Operation Ironclad:

The western Allies knew that at some point they would have to invade Europe and face their most dangerous enemy. But in the summer of 1942 they were not even sure they could save themselves against the onrush of Japan in the Pacific and Axis forces in North Africa. The choice of Madagascar was an admission of weakness, not strength. Ironclad disrupted the war effort elsewhere but was ultimately successful. The invasion of France in 1942 was operationally impossible. It took another two years before the secretive, hazardous assault on the beaches of Cap d’Ambre was writ large in Normandy.

The narrative of Madagascar’s liberation is not often featured in major histories of WW2, but in context, it represents an important step in the growth and coming-of-age for the Allied military.

The liberation of Madagascar was an indispensable step on the road to the liberation of Paris.

Is a Peaceful North Korea Possible?

As a country, belligerence seems innate to North Korea. The nation was created by the USSR, shaped by the harshest versions of Stalinism, and responsible for starting the Korean War with a surprise attack on South Korea. Millions of people died in that war. North Korea, which was founded in 1945 by the Soviets and ruled by their chosen dictator Kim Il-sung, formally became the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1948.

The DPRK has been identified by global organizations — the UN, NATO, SEATO, the G7, the G20, and others — for its brutal inhumanity. It arrests, beats, imprisons, tortures, and murders its citizens for offenses like possessing certain books or failing to be sufficiently enthusiastic about the regime. That regime started with Kim Il-sung in 1945, was inherited by Kim Jong-il in 1994, and inherited by Kim Jong-un in 2011: a hereditary dynasty of dictators.

Recalling the North Korean situation as it stood during the first decade of the new millennium — the decade in which the DPRK realized its dream of obtaining functioning nuclear weapons — Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wrote:

As long as Kim Jong Il was in power, I thought we had little prospect of inducing his regime to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Every day Kim and his officials focused on ways to consolidate and protect their dictatorship. Their disastrous policies spawned famine, torture, and oppression. The inhumane leadership of North Korea seemed to believe that the surest hold on power was the pursuit of weapons programs.

North Korea has long isolated itself from nearly every nation on earth. Its original allies — the USSR and Mao’s PRC — developed in ways which drew them away from the DPRK. The Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, abandoning its doctrinaire Marxist ideology. China tweaked its definition of communism in ways which made it less similar to North Korea. So the DPRK has no true allies. But it does retain at least working relationship with China.

So it is that diplomats from around the world look to China to communicate with North Korea. The global community hopes that China will be able to at least persuade the Kim dynasty to see reality. It is probable that the Chinese hierarchy sees the DPRK as a problem, and sees the leadership of the DPRK as unrealistic. Certainly, it would make life easier for China if the North Koreans were at least a bit rational.

At the same time, however, China does not want to be triangulated into the role of being the spokesman for the world community. China will not simply present the world’s demands to North Korea, and thereby become simply a messenger. So this is the tension: China wants the DPRK to improve its behavior, but it does not want to be seen as falling in line with the consensus of the globe’s nations, as Don Rumsfeld writes:

I thought it worthwhile to try to get China to work diplomatically to persuade North Korea to change its nuclear weapons policy, based on the view that our countries had a shared interest in keeping the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, China seemed more interested in blocking U.S. efforts against North Korea than in keeping the Korean peninsula nuclear weapons-free. The outcome the Chinese seemed to fear most was a collapse of their neighbor. Then they would be forced to deal with refugees and a failed Korean state on their border. As long as Kim Jong Il had China as a patron of sorts, I was not optimistic that negotiations with North Korea involving the Chinese, known as the six-party talks, would succeed.

So, during the first decade of the new millennium, the team which hoped to confront and reform the DPRK — the team which included the UN, NATO, SEATO, the G7, the G20, the Six Party Talks, and others — did not always receive much help from China.

Regarding China’s stance, Don Rumsfeld wrote:

China may one day regret its position if Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan decides to pursue nuclear weapons to counter the North Korean threat.

Moving from the first decade of the new millennium to the second decade of the new millennium, the global community adjusted its approach to the DPRK. Where words had failed, actions would have an impact.

But the perennial question facing the diplomat is this: If one seeks to employ actions instead of words, how does one avoid war? How do the agreed nations of the world take action against North Korea without starting a war?

Nikki Haley was the United States ambassador to the United Nations from January 2017 to December 2018. She was one of the leaders who helped to implement a new approach by the UN and the US:

The new policy came to be called the “maximum pressure” campaign. Part of the new policy was military preparedness. Although we were committed to finding a diplomatic solution, the president never took the possibility of military action off the table. We would deliver a devastating blow if North Korea used its missiles against the United States or our allies. And we made sure the North Koreans knew it.

The “maximum pressure” strategy included both military strength and economic leverage. A concerted enforcement of economic sanctions denied large amounts of income which North Korea would have otherwise received from its export of goods. The two factors — economic pressure and military muscle-flexing — did not replace, but rather joined, the diplomacy of the previous decades, as Nikki Haley writes:

We also exerted pressure through diplomacy, encouraging other nations to cut off political and trade ties with North Korea.

The new tactics had measurable effects: the number and frequency of nuclear weapons explosions and missile launches in North Korea declined detectably from 2017 to 2020.

North Korea and the United States held their first-ever summit-level talks, when Kim Jong-un met with President Trump on 12 June 2018 in Singapore. This was followed by two more summit meetings, in Hanoi in February 2019, and in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North Korea and South Korea on 30 June 2019.

Starting in early 2021, this trend reversed itself, and North Korea began increasing its dramatic public displays by detonating nuclear weapons and launching missiles.

Negotiating with North Korea: Words Are Never Enough

Since its inception — or, rather, because of the nature of its inception — North Korea has been seen both as a danger and as a violation of human rights by the nations of the world. All major global gatherings — the UN, NATO, SEATO, the G7, the G20, etc. — have not only issued statements condemning North Korea’s behavior, but also have undertaken economic sanctions as an effort to persuade North Korea to respect human dignity and to desist from belligerent actions.

North Korea was organized in 1945 as a Stalinist satellite state, an extension of the USSR, under the rule of dictator Kim Il-sung, chosen by the Soviets to run the puppet state for them. It formally became the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1948.

The DPRK represented the harshest form of Stalinism, and maintained this posture after the death of Stalin in 1953, and after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Identified as one of the most repressive regimes on earth, North Korea routinely arrests, beats, tortures, imprisons, and executes its citizens for the slightest offenses. People have been sentenced to decades in prison for merely possessing a Bible. Women have been forced into slavery.

The militaristic nature of the DPRK led to the surprise attack in 1950 on South Korea. The resulting Korean War caused the deaths of millions, and was a direct consequence of the actions of the Kim Il-sung regime. In 1994, he died, and his son Kim Jong-il inherited the role of dictator.

During the reign of Kim Jong-il, North Korea energetically pursued the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons and the missiles needed to deliver them to nations around the world. The DPRK wanted not only to bully South Korea, but rather also to bully any country on the globe.

The intelligence agencies of various nations soon discovered North Korea’s atomic weapons program. Diplomats used both the carrot — promised rewards for desisting from weapons development — and the stick — promised economic punishments for continued construction of nuclear weapons. Neither approach succeeded.

Eventually, the DPRK revealed its new weapons to the world. While the exact timing was a surprise, North Korea’s acquisition of atomic weapons had been an inevitability for some years.

One reason for the date of unveiling of the DPRK’s nuclear capabilities was the fact that the world’s attention had been elsewhere. Problems in Iraq and Syria dominated both diplomatic talk and the news media. Like his father and his son, Kim Jong-il didn’t like it when he wasn’t on the front pages of the world’s newspapers. At atomic explosion would quickly fix that.

In October 2006, Vice President Richard Cheney — better known as Dick Cheney — learned of North Korea’s surprise. He recalls:

In the fall of 2006, as violence in Iraq was still escalating, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test, setting off an explosion at the Punggye test site some two hundred forty miles northeast of Pyongyang. When the blast was detected, it was Sunday evening, October 8, in Washington, D.C. The next morning President Bush went before the cameras in the Diplomatic Reception Room to condemn the test and issue a warning.

An atomic weapon “test” is not actually testing anything: the scientists know how it will work. It is a gesture designed to intimidate other nations.

President George W. Bush perceived that the DPRK posed two problems. First, its own nuclear arsenal. Second, its ability to sell nuclear weapons to rogue states and to terrorist groups. During a televised address, he said:

The North Korean regime remains one of the world’s leading proliferators of missile technology, including transfers to Iran and Syria. The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences of such action.

Bush’s concerns were justified. The DPRK wasted little time before it began selling nuclear technology to bad actors. Dick Cheney writes:

Six months later we received intelligence that a threat of this nature had materialized. I learned about it in detail one afternoon in mid-April 2007, in National Security Advisor Steve Hadley’s office. I was seated in one of Steve’s large blue wing chairs and he was to my left. Two Israeli officials were on the sofa to my right. Meir Dagan, director of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, pulled materials from his briefcase and spread them on the coffee table in front of us. For the next hour, Dagan showed us photos of a building in the Syrian desert at a place called al-Kibar. It was a nuclear test reactor.

Intelligence agencies were able to confirm that both supplies and expertise from North Korea were being used to start a nuclear weapons program in Syria. In September 2007, the Isreali military destroyed the site.

That was a significant setback to the Syrian atomic weapons program; indeed, possibly the end of that program. The site, also known as Dair Alzour, was investigated by United Nations officials, who confirmed the nature and purpose of the site.

While the Syrian threat was neutralized, the North Korean threat grew.

A decade later, the situation had not changed substantially. North Korea was still belligerent, threatening other nations. Its nuclear arsenal was larger, and it had developed missiles capable of traveling greater distances. In 2011, Kim Jong-un had become the dictator upon the death of his father, Kim Jong-il.

The world’s diplomats had shown that diplomacy would not affect the DPRK. Spoken and written words were largely meaningless coming from the North Koreans or going to them. The DPRK would agree to any terms and sign any agreement, even as it was violating the treaty it was signing.

An effective policy toward North Korea would consist of actions, not words.

In January 2017, Nikki Haley became the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. She recalls her assessment of the North Korean situation at that time:

The Trump administration’s approach to North Korea, more than any other country except Iran, represented a fundamental break from the past. For over twenty years, both Republican and Democratic presidents had tried various strategies to stop the regime’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs. These strategies consisted mostly of trying to bribe Pyongyang into good behavior. What was worse, these bribes were not conditional. North Korea had to do nothing but promise to change its behavior in order to receive aid from the United States. Only after the regime had gotten what it wanted did the United States realize that their promises would not be kept.

As ambassador, Nikki Haley helped to enact economic measures against North Korea. Various nations, by refusing to accept goods exported from the DPRK, reduced North Korea’s import income by more than $1 billion dollars.

She also helped to coordinate a diplomatic framework allowing joint operations by the militaries of various nations. These operations were a show of force in direct response to DPRK missile launches.

Nikki Haley’s actions were part of the new approach to North Korea. Substantive actions made more of an impression on Kim Jong-un than diplomatic verbiage. She writes:

The Trump administration took a fundamentally different approach. The policy of “strategic patience” proclaimed by President Obama was over. We would no longer rely on a policy of appeasement to try to persuade the Kim regime to give up its nuclear program. U.S. presidents had been kicking the can down the road on North Korea for years. There was no longer any road to kick the can down.

When it became clear to Kim Jong-un that his actions would have consequences, and that those consequences would be more than mere words, he became amenable to change. Some historians mark 12 June 2018 as a turning point: on that date, the first meeting between Kim Jong-un and President Trump resulted in a significant decline in the number of missile tests conducted by the DPRK.

The Singapore summit was the first ever meeting between a U.S. president and a North Korean leader.

Kim Jong-un was convinced that, in contrast to the previous decades, there would now be advantages for the DPRK if it behaved more peacefully. Two more summit meetings followed, one in Hanoi in February 2019 and one on 30 June 2019 on the border between South Korea and North Korea.

North Korea is still a problem. Kim Jong-un is still a problem. But it has been shown that progress can be made if specific concrete actions are taken. In diplomatic relations with the DPRK, words alone will never be enough.