By Robert Charles
While complicated, a look at turmoil in Sudan offers lessons. Factions of Sudan’s military government are warring, aftershocks of a 30-year dictatorship ending, many divisions. Instability invites crime, terrorism, hopelessness, and cascades, often getting out of control. The opposite is leadership, hope, and finding a way out of the darkness – a way others follow.
Lesson one is that history repeats itself, sometimes with eerie similarity. For almost a thousand years, Sudan has struggled for stability, sometimes getting a taste, never more than a bite. In 1899, Winston Churchill – just in his 20’s – was there, and decried British disrespect for Sudanese culture, such as it was.
To him, Sudan was a troubled, tumultuous land, hardly Great Britain – but that did not entitle Britain’s Sir Kitchener to destroy “the Mahdi’s tomb” – a leading architectural and cultural symbol of 19th century Sudan. To Churchill, cultural conflict might be inevitable, but humanity was bound by formative principles. The future depended on succeeding generations seeing these principles, including intercultural respect, or we would gradually degrade ourselves, grind each other down, perish.
The young Churchill wrote to his mother about what he saw. On one hand, he was an optimist, and thank goodness. His optimism and belief in Western values, such as individual liberty, self-determination, a loving God, the “Good Fight,” and positive outcomes – later saved the world.
But in 1899, he was more circumspect. It bothered him that the Sudanese culture was being wrecked, and that British leaders felt wrecking it was permissible. He wrote his mother from Sudan that, for no reason, the former leader’s tomb was “profaned and razed to the ground.”
So, lesson one – ironic for a future wartime leader: Destruction may be necessary, but if it is not, it disgraces the party doing it, and sows resentments hard to undue.
Lesson two. Whether we know it or not, we can find similarities, unexpectedly positive commonalities, with cultures that at first blush seem wildly different from ours.
Here, the young Churchill – just 24 – got lyrical in a letter to his mother. His lyricism, unfortunately without context, is often remembered – but context matters. Always a student of history, Churchill was taken by the Sudanese Mahdi, who was totally different from any British youth and had been orphaned as a child.
Without a strong father or mother, the Sudanese Mahdi might just as well have perished – but he did not. He became, instead, a revered leader. Why? Wrote Churchill, “Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong … and a boy deprived of a father’s care often develops, if he escape the perils of youth, an independence and a vigor of thought which may restore… the heavy loss of his early days.”
What Churchill saw in a deceased Sudanese leader was – ironically – a reflection of his own life, a father who should have played a major role but did not. Churchill’s father was largely absent from the future prime minister’s young life. So, “solitary trees, if they grow at all …”
Lesson three. Perhaps most importantly, Churchill realized that the world is a big place, yet certain realities recur during the same time and across time. They are timeless, crosscutting all cultures, and thus worth recognizing for that sake of future peace and stability.
Even now, as we watch Sudanese factions again war, there is a sense of déjà vu. What are we seeing? An absence of Western engagement, disinterest in modeling genuine leadership, and – predictably – another retreat. Like the stumbling, ignoble, chaotic and deadly retreat from Afghanistan, we are not learning as Churchill did, nor paying attention to the lessons he taught.
The nub: Young Churchill learned every day, in every way, from all he saw. He sometimes taught himself unlikely lessons, never stopped learning, reading or writing.
From a dead leader of Sudan, whose monument was wrecked by Churchill’s own countrymen, Churchill learned a lesson that stood by him. Holding firm to values, fighting for them, turning circumstance your way by fortitude, energy, determination, and faith changes everything.
Of course, Churchill learned similar lessons from his own life, WWI, politics, memorizing Shakespeare’s Henry V and Hamlet. He was a voracious reader, writer, and believer in the idea that destiny is reeled in by those who fish for it, those who never give up the quest.
Maybe that is the point within the point: Destiny is part God’s Hand, part what we make it. Global leadership, like opportunities to contribute to peace and stability closer to home, only comes to those who want it, work for it, step up to it, listen, learn, lead, and seek the role.
Churchill did that, taking his youthful lessons to the apex of global leadership. Americans are cut from that same cloth – leaders, willing to listen, learn, and lead.
Recently, in a global and personal way, we have forgotten these lessons. History is forgiving but it is time to relearn them. We may not be able to save Sudan, but we can distinguish truth from untruth, leadership from lack of it, get up and out of the dark, leave a mark.
What Churchill did not say, but likely meant, was this: “Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong …” because they resolve to live, thrive, persevere, and stay alive. They turn circumstances to their will, find a way to keep going, and show others how to do the same. That is our mission, too. America can lead or retreat, but not both.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism”.