Dur­ing a Dai­ly Tele­graph read­ers Q&A to launch Johnson’s new book, The Churchill Fac­tor, Tele­graph Head of Books Gaby Wood asked the May­or what “we could take from Churchill today” and whether Islam­o­fas­cism was an equiv­a­lent threat to the Nazis.

Mr. John­son said he did not know whether Churchill would get involved in Iraq. But, he added, “I think he would have been in favour of air pow­er. I think air strikes but not boots on the ground is my hunch on where he would have been because he wasn’t obsessed with for­eign entanglements.”

Foreign adventures

Well, he was obsessed enough in the 1930s to argue for for­eign entan­gle­ments (France, Rus­sia, USA) when his coun­try was in dan­ger. But Mr. Johnson’s the­o­ry does have some basis in ear­li­er his­to­ry. Dur­ing the 1920s Churchill favored air pow­er not troops to quell rebel­lious tribes­men in Iraq. Of course, air pow­er and “boots on the ground” were rather more prim­i­tive oper­a­tions nine­ty years ago, and the sit­u­a­tion is not at all congruent—which is why Mary Soames always empha­sized her Commandment.

If you want to con­sid­er what Churchill thought then, you are cor­dial­ly invit­ed to do so. Whether it has any appli­ca­tion now you may decide for yourself:

There is some­thing very sin­is­ter to my mind in this Mesopotami­an entanglement….[We seem] com­pelled to go on pour­ing armies and trea­sure into these thank­less deserts….Week after week and month after month for a long time to come we shall have a con­tin­u­ance of this mis­er­able, waste­ful, spo­radic war­fare, marked from time to time cer­tain­ly by minor dis­as­ters and cut­tings off of troops and agents, and very pos­si­bly attend­ed by some very grave occur­rence. (Unsent let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Lloyd George, 31 August 1920.)

We are pay­ing eight mil­lions a year [£200 mil­lion today] for the priv­i­lege of liv­ing on an ungrate­ful vol­cano out of which we are in no cir­cum­stances to get any­thing worth hav­ing. (Dit­to, 1 Sep­tem­ber 1922.)

Reality check

Want a bit of gen­er­al Mid­dle East phi­los­o­phy? That mightbe worth con­sid­er­ing, I rec­om­mend also a per­son­al favorite, to his Pri­vate Sec­re­tary in 1958:

The Mid­dle East is one of the hard­est-heart­ed areas in the world. It has always been fought over, and peace has only reigned when a major pow­er has estab­lished firm influ­ence and shown that it would main­tain its will. Your friends must be sup­port­ed with every vigour and if nec­es­sary they must be avenged. Force, or per­haps force and bribery, are the only things that will be respect­ed. It is very sad, but we had all bet­ter recog­nise it. At present our friend­ship is not val­ued, and our enmi­ty is not feared. (Antho­ny Mon­tague Browne, Long Sun­set, 166-67.)

Col­or­ful politi­cians will­ing to say what they real­ly think are rare prizes. But pub­lish­ing a book on Churchill doesn’t con­vey the right to judge what he would do today. The answer Lady Soames always gave when peo­ple said such things was: “How do you know?”