308 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN “ALWAYS ON TOP”? THE “RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT” AND THE PERSISTENCE OF COLONIALISM Jessica Whyte 1 Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate. 2 —Edward Said In light of history, it is difficult for representatives of developing countries to take at face value altruistic claims by the West. 3 —International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty “SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS” In 2002, during the lead-up to the war on Iraq, Edward Said wrote a short review with the title “Always on Top,” in which he drew attention to a new sympathy for classical imperialism amongst contemporary intellectuals. 4 In the wake of “years of degenera- tion following the white man’s departure,” Said argued, there was now less tolerance for the decolonizing “disorder and tyranny” instigated by anti-colonial leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, and Gamal Abdel Nasser. Said observed that expressions of admiration for the capitalist development, security, and order suppos- edly enabled by colonial rule had become more prevalent, and, in the wake of the degeneration that followed decolonization, “the empires that ruled African and Asia didn’t seem quite as bad.” 5 Said situated this revisionist account of empire in the wake of the collapse of anti-colonial movements and the Soviet Union, which had produced not the “end of history,” as Francis Fukuyama had maintained, but the end of “think- ing about history in a consequential way.” 6 It was time, according to this revisionist argument, for the people of former colonies to put colonialism behind them, to let the past be past, and to own up to their own responsibility for the postcolonial disorder and violence of their societies. In contrast, Said stressed the afterlife of colonialism and the continuing effort that was required to account for the extent of its effects on former colonies. “Who decides,” he asked, “when (and if) the influence of imperialism has ended?” 7 Said’s challenge to revisionist historians of empire was not merely a debate about how best to characterize the past; rather, he stressed that the promulgation of a 15031-0124-1pass-r04.indd 308 03-06-2016 13:56:22