British Diplomatic Oil Crisis: Contemporary Anglo-Saxon Geopolitical Rivalries in the Persian Gulf: Drawing a Lesson? Or Sir Anthony Eden‘s Delusion of Grandeur.
Developing
interests which are blocked in one area try to find an outlet in
another. To this impulse which is a result of physical growth; the name
‘imperialism’ has been given, though in the period since the First World War
that word has come to be questioned. According to F.S. Northedge, the need
to expand or imperialism (in this context) is an
Acquisitive capacity of man, a
permanent inclination of human nature, and
evidence for this is certainly all about us, both in the contemporary world
and in the records of the past. When we make the seemingly innocuous
statement, which is normally made without question in modern industrialised
society, that if taxes were raised too high, the incentive to work will be
reduced, we are in effect taking it for granted that men will not do what
they have no inclination to do, unless their acquisitive interests (we call
them such) are thereby satisfied. Moreover, appeals to the citizen’s sense
of civic duty will not, we assume, act as a sufficient incentive to work
unless there is some cash benefit, and perhaps the promise of more cash
benefit in the future. 2
In literature and history many
examples of this famous and familiar theme
can be found. Thucydides in his
history of the Peloponnesian War details the well known dialogue
between the Athenians and the Hellans in the sixteenth year of the war with
Sparta:
When the Athenians were asked
why they wanted to conquer Helos they replied
that it was a ‘law of nature’ that the strong should conquer the weak and
that was all that needed to be said about it.3
-
2. F.S.
NORTHEDGE, The International Political System,
(London: Faber and Faber, 1976), p. 208.
3. Ibid.
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