Attempting to understand the world without regard to the role of colonialism is like trying to play cricket without a wicket.

A terror group operating in Pakistan, allegedly connected to the Taliban, has finally hit a target that arouses emotions. Not a Christian church or US bases or a resort hotel with western tourists. They attacked a cricket team, from all places Sri Lanka, where domestic political violence is a long-running national sport of its own. Hitting a visiting British or Commonwealth cricket team seems more appropriate for a terrorist group seeking to make a point. But no matter, the Sri Lankan team was the target. But there is one connection: Sri Lanka too was once part of the British Empire.

News coverage of the attack appeared most prominently on the BBC World Service, heard regularly in the US via National Public Radio. But do Americans have any idea of the role of cricket in the world, and most especially its antecedents? Cricket and the English language – prominently used in India and Pakistan – are a legacy from the days of the British Empire, proving that old bonds still tie former colonies to the mother country.

It is doubtful Americans understand any of this. Even academics in security studies – the only conservative curriculum on campus in the age of multiculturalism and post-modern theory – will not approach the subject of the old British Empire for fear of contamination by actual, rather than theoretical history

I can testify directly to this attitude. The three major universities in the Research Triangle community of North Carolina – UNC-Chapel Hill, NC State University and Duke University – formed the Triangle Institute for Security Studies as an "interdisciplinary consortium" to study security policy in 1958. It is a lively relic born in the teeth of the Cold War that has survived the fads in higher education to retain at least the remnants of traditional scholarship.

To celebrate the group's 50^th birthday, top scholars in the field were invited to Duke and the UNC Rizzo Center for three days to examine the relatively new field of American Grand Strategy after the major wars of the 20^th century. Yale's John Lewis Gaddis, who fathered the field of Grand Strategy, kicked off the "research conference." He described the three-semester course he still teaches by emphasizing the necessity to commence each course with a study of the classics in history and even literature (to add a human dimension as he puts it). In other words, college students, deprived of traditional western teaching, require remedial reading, says Gaddis, to avoid "being swept away because they lack conceptual gravity" after 30+ years of radical scholarship from K through college.

Following Gaddis, top security scholars from Notre Dame, Stanford, Duke, UNC, Penn, Columbia, Cornell and Marine Corps University outlined their previously submitted papers on the subject of Grand Strategy and US presidents. Three panelists praised or criticized their points before the audience was allowed to ask questions about whether or not US presidents implemented any strategy at all, and if so, did it work?

Here is where I dropped a stink bomb. I simply asked why one of the speakers maintained that the atlas of the world today demonstrates the wisdom of the American strategy under FDR to run Britain out of its colonies after World War II. I said, "what about Africa? The continent is falling into chaos. Was it wise to run off European colonizers before assuring stability? Couldn't we have supported Britain as it worked to move the former colonies to commonwealth status and independence? Isn't America constantly engaged in the Middle East to fill the vacuum left by the colonizers?"

I may as well have stripped and mooned the assembled scholars. I had mentioned the C-word, colonialism. Yet, all I suggested is that to ignore the imperial era was to obliterate the historical perspective necessary to create a Grand Strategy in the modern era. But no, a thousand times no. The consequence is that security scholars, who end up advising the National Security Council, the Department of State and the Pentagon, are making judgments applying dysfunctional perspective. Attempting to understand the world without regard to the role of colonialism is like trying to play cricket without a wicket.

Which brings us back to Pakistan and the fall-out from the attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team: The first consideration is the reality that India and Pakistan and most of Africa are the premiere coverage areas for the BBC. Why? Because people there speak English.  And why do they speak English – and play cricket with passion, thus elevating the attacks to the hot front burner of conflict. Because they are former British colonies.

The recent phenomenon of the success of the film Slum-Dog Millionaire owes much of its appeal to the fact that Indians (and Pakistanis) speak English. I doubt the film would have burst into international significance if set in Kazakhstan. The fascination in the West with India's ancient and complicated secular and religious history is largely based on the bridge of a common language. India, The recent 4-part documentary on public television by the excellent researcher and presenter Michael Wood, never makes the connection that the only reason he is there is due to the bonds created by a common language. To mention it would smack of colonialism, and we know what happens if the subject is even mentioned.

Outside the academic medieval castles and their wide moats – as John Lewis Gaddis put it – there are researchers who realize the era of colonialism is in drastic need of study. Niall Fergusson's book Empire comes to mind, though he fell on his sword and denied his own work in a TV documentary when he realized he had violated the taboo on the subject. But empirical and current evidence abounds that scholars and policy-makers must address the legacy of colonialism in order to deal with the disintegration of key regions of the world. Africa and the Middle East come directly to mind.

Including the colonial era in the study of modern day relationships between nations would balance out the emotionally fraught ignorance that colors the subject and ferret out the true events that created empires. It would soon became apparent that the majority of colonial occurrences evolved from the same issues that plague diplomacy today: one ethnic group seeking assistance to protect against the predations and genocides of another group; the need to provide security for trade routes – like the current issue of piracy in the Indian Ocean in the sea lanes where oil is transported; strategic alliances to keep the peace in volatile areas of the world with nuclear weapons hovering on the horizon; protection of foreign property and citizens in dangerous locales; building and maintaining infrastructure, such as electrical grids, railways and airports; helping implement democratic entities and free elections; and providing access to modern health care and sanitation facilities.

That's how colonialism took hold in most cases. And it's exactly what the US is finding itself doing across the globe. Does it not make sense to learn from how it used to be done? 

I wrote 20 years ago that if I were Rwandan or Zimbabwean or Kenyan or Palestinian, I would fall on my knees and beg the British to reestablish relations with their former colonies. With the cultural, commercial and language links already in place from the bad old days, weaker nations in dangerous situations can maximize their natural resources, stabilize and grow out of Third World hopelessness and perhaps evolve into healthy and free members of the leading nations of the world.

After 60 years of anti-colonial rhetoric, and the attendant rise in indigenous values that institutionalize warfare and chaos in unstable areas, can this happen? It should, before more and more of the world becomes more inaccessible, more dangerous and more of a threat to us.