OP-ED: They create a desert and call It peace – Lessons from two millennia of failed interventions

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As negotiators struggle to maintain the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, as tensions escalate over Venezuela’s disputed waters, and as great powers jostle for influence across the Pacific, an ancient warning echoes through the centuries. In 83 AD, before Roman legions crushed Scottish resistance at Mons Graupius, the chieftain Calgacus reportedly declared: “They create a desert and call it peace.”  Whether Calgacus actually spoke these words or the Roman historian Tacitus invented them matters less than their enduring truth. They describe a pattern that has persisted from Roman Britain to modern Iraq, from colonial Africa to contemporary Afghanistan: the powerful destroying in the name of order, then declaring victory over the ruins. Calgacus described the Roman method with brutal clarity. The empire was driven by greed no territory could satisfy. “Robbery, butchery, rapine, the liars call Empire,” he declared. And then: “They create a desert and call it peace.” Rome claimed to bring civilization—Calgacus saw exploitation. Rome promised security—he saw subjugation. Rome spoke of law and order—he saw villages burned and populations enslaved. The Romans would call their conquest pax Romana. Calgacus saw only the desert left behind. The battle was a slaughter. Rome declared victory and called it peace. Tacitus himself seemed sympathetic to the critique, perhaps because he had seen enough of empire to recognize the gap between its rhetoric and its reality.

The Modern Playbook

The pattern is remarkably consistent. A crisis emerges—real or manufactured. Leaders declare that “something must be done.” Military action is presented as the only serious option, with diplomatic alternatives dismissed as appeasement or weakness. The intervention will be quick, we’re assured. Technology will ensure precision. Democracy will flourish. Consider the record: In Iraq (2003), we were promised a swift victory and grateful liberation. Twenty years later, after
4,400 American deaths, over 200,000 Iraqi civilian casualties, and $2 trillion spent, the country remains fractured and unstable. In Libya (2011), NATO’s intervention to prevent a humanitarian crisis created a failed state that became a breeding ground for extremism and a hub for human trafficking. In Afghanistan (2001-2021), the longest war in American history ended with the Taliban’s return to power, despite 176,000 deaths and $2.3 trillion in costs. Yet each time, the same arguments resurface. Each time, we’re told this intervention will be different.

The Language of Deception

The machinery of intervention requires careful language. We don’t bomb—we conduct “kinetic actions.” We don’t kill civilians—we create “collateral damage.” We don’t occupy—we “nation-build”. These euphemisms serve a purpose: they make the unpalatable acceptable, the violent sanitary. This linguistic sleight of hand extends to how we frame choices. Military action becomes synonymous with “doing something,” while diplomacy, sanctions, and international pressure are recast as “doing nothing.” This false binary—bomb or abandon—ignores the patient work of conflict resolution that, while less telegenic than missile strikes, often proves more effective.

The Desert Emerges

The desert doesn’t appear immediately. In the first flush of victory, with statues toppling and leaders declaring “mission accomplished,” the intervention seems justified. But deserts grow in the aftermath. They manifest as power vacuums filled by extremists more brutal than those they replaced. As infrastructure destroyed in days that takes decades to rebuild. As generations radicalized by grief—a UN study found that 71% of recruits to extremist groups in Africa cited government action, including the killing of a family member, as their primary motivation. The desert is Syria’s 13 million refugees and internally displaced persons. It’s the 37 million people displaced by America’s post-9/11 wars. It’s Yemen’s cholera epidemic amid bombardment, Somalia’s cycle of intervention and chaos, the Sahel’s expanding instability following Libya’s collapse.

When Intervention Might Be Justified

This critique shouldn’t obscure the genuine dilemmas faced by policymakers. Rwanda’s genocide in 1994, where 800,000 died as the world watched, haunts the international conscience. The siege of Sarajevo, the massacres in Darfur, the use of chemical weapons against civilians—these horrors pose real moral challenges. Military intervention isn’t always wrong. The NATO intervention in Kosovo arguably prevented ethnic cleansing. The UN intervention in Sierra Leone helped end a brutal civil war. The international coalition against ISIS prevented genocide against the Yazidis. The question isn’t whether force should never be used, but whether we’ve honestly reckoned with its limitations and consequences. Too often, military action becomes the first resort rather than the last, driven more by domestic politics and the illusion of control than by clear strategic thinking.

Breaking the Cycle

What would a different approach look like? First, it would require humility about military force’s ability to reshape complex societies. Second, it would demand serious investment in diplomatic capacity—the U.S. military budget exceeds the State Department's by a factor of 15. It would mean strengthening international institutions rather than undermining them when convenient. It would require patience—accepting that some conflicts require generation-long engagement rather than election-cycle solutions. It would demand addressing root causes: poverty, injustice,
and governance failures that create conditions for conflict. Most importantly, it would require honest accounting. When interventions fail, we must acknowledge failure rather than rebranding it as success. When we create refugees, we must accept responsibility rather than treating the crisis as someone else’s problem. When our actions radicalize populations, we must recognize our role rather than expressing surprise at the “inexplicable” hatred directed toward us.

The Eternal Choice

Calgacus lost his battle against Rome. His warning, preserved ironically by his conquerors, outlasted their empire. Today, as new crises emerge and familiar voices call for military solutions, his words pose an uncomfortable question: Will we keep creating deserts and calling them peace? The pattern isn’t inevitable.

We choose it, crisis by crisis, intervention by intervention. We choose it when we accept false urgency over patient diplomacy, when we mistake destruction for resolution, when we prioritize the politically expedient over the morally necessary.

Two millennia after Mons Graupius, the fundamental challenge remains unchanged: Can we resist the seductive simplicity of force and embrace the complex work of genuine peace? Or will future historians, surveying the deserts we leave behind, wonder why we never learned? The powerful have always dressed up conquest as liberation, violence as order, domination as peace. The genius of the formulation is that it names both the act and the lie. Not just that Rome creates a desert, but that it calls it peace.

The answer lies not in ancient Scotland but in the choices we make today, tomorrow, and in every crisis to come. Each time we’re told that bombs will bring peace, we face Calgacus’s question anew. Each time, we can choose differently. An updated version of Calgacus’ words might be, “they create deserts with members only oases and call it development.”

Prof. C. Justin Robinson, a Vincentian and UWI graduate, holds a BSc in Management Studies, MSc in Finance and Econometrics, and PhD in Finance. With over 20 years at UWI, he has served in various leadership roles, including Dean and Pro Vice Chancellor, Board for Undergraduate Studies. A Professor of Corporate Finance with extensive research publications, he is actively involved in regional financial institutions and is currently the Principal of The UWI Five Islands Campus in Antigua and Barbuda.