*(I don't really mean that literally because I admire and usually agree with most of Oliver Kamm's writings but I cannot resist a snappy headline. Should have worked for "The Sun - We Love It!")
To be hoist on one's own petard is both embarrassing and ludicrous. I thought perhaps this unfortunate circumstance might have happened to me as I read a post dated 8th March entitled Freedom fighter on Oliver Kamm's site which was a reprint of an essay he had written for Progress, the magazine of Labour modernisers. I urge readers to take a moment now and read what Oliver has to say. My momentary flutter was caused by his insistence that British national self-interest was the driving force behind the Blair/Bush policy of regime change (Oliver insists that that is the correct order of the author's names). As regular readers will know, it has long been my contention that national self-interest is, or should be, the 'onlie begetter' of any foreign policy. Morality does not enter the equation, any more than immorality does. (I am forced to add that extra and obvious clause before yet another tedious critic drags up the Holocaust and I am forced to remind them that Britain did not go to war in 1939 in order to rescue the Jews, nor even to help the Poles. In fact, had Hitler left the Poles and later, the French, alone it is doubtful if we would have entered the war at all!) But I digress ...
At this point I will paraphrase Oliver's views as accurately as I can. He points out that the last century (and now this one, too) have seen a series of assaults, either real or threatened, on western democracies from totalitarian powers. The reason for this continual pressure lies in the nature of the totalitarians, themselves. Such governments cannot live with democracies not least because "everywhere the huddled masses are yearning to breathe free" and the unstoppable nature of global communications leaves them increasingly able to compare their lot with others. The actual nature of these varying regimes is very different, ranging from Soviet communism, to Fascist militarism, to Serbian nationalism and, today, militant Islam. According to Oliver, all these forces are antithetical to democracy and so it behoves us to pursue a policy of regime change as a matter of national interest.
It is at this point that I felt myself pulled into the air by my own petard for the reasons stated above. However, a closer examination of Oliver's proposition soon brought me back down to earth! For example, he dismisses the real-politik notion that states are like billiard balls and "[a] billiard ball’s internal composition is opaque and unimportant; what matters is how the ball interacts with others on the table. It is a model entirely inappropriate to current foreign policy debates, where, if we are to safeguard our security, we need to engage in the battle of ideas." I would suggest that, on the contrary, the weight, the mass and the velocity of the billiard ball bearing down on one is of critical importance and it matters not a jot whether it is a red or a black, or even if it is decorated with a scimitar! What matters is building up both military capabilities and friendly alliances, or to put it in plain words that Oliver would abjure; good, old-fashioned, balance-of-power politics. Indeed, Oliver complains that "[i]n the cold war, American administrations were prone to ally with authoritarian regimes as a bulwark against communism". Too bloody true, they were, and thank God for it! The Americans had realised that in the case of the Soviet Union, regime change was not a 'goer'. Instead it was necessary to build coalitions to surround, as much as possible, the Soviets and their puppets. There-after, it was only necessary to 'hold the line' until communism collapsed under it's own "internal contradictions" - oh, such a delicious irony in those words considering their author! And talking of which, Oliver, too, suffers from similar contradictions in that his policy of attacking militant Muslim states will inevitably require the help, or at least, the quiescence of some very unsavoury neighbouring countries.
To be fair, Oliver then continues, albeit somewhat confusingly given his sniffy remark above: "What overcame communist totalitarianism in eastern Europe was partly collective security involving alliances and military preparedness. But, at root, it was the power of an idea: the appeal of an open and liberal society, as opposed to a closed and sclerotic one that won the Cold War." Here we must differ. In my view it was economics, not political philosophy that proved to be decisive. Put simply, the Soviets were broke! This came, so I believe, as an immense shock to the CIA but it is necessary, when considering the young analysts of our intelligence services, to remember that they were, and still are, educated at our socialist-riddled universities and are therefor unlikely to be aware that socialism, particularly of the communist variety, is incapable of running a whelk stall. There was no need to wage a real war or even an ideological one against the Soviets, it was only necessary to use power-politics to hold the ring until the inevitable happened. (It has always been a matter of huge enjoyment to me, to watch and read the 'Trot-lot' desperately trying, against all the evidence of the last 150 years, to convince us that communism is anything but a complete recipe for disaster dreamt up by a vicious, half-mad, old German-Jew with an in-built hatred for all Mankind. I mean there's 'dumb', but after all the experiments, today, there is only 'dumber'!)
Moving nearer in recent history, Oliver castigates, what I would call the 'Old Tory' policy of real-politik, as conducted by former Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, in the early days of the Yugoslav civil war. I confess here and now that there are probably few people as ignorant as me on the subject of south Balkan politics. I call the recent upheavals in that benighted area a "civil war" deliberately because there has grown a perception that somehow it was all to do with Serb expansionism. Undoubtedly that is a truth but not, I suspect, anywhere near the whole truth. When Yugoslavia fell to pieces every politician in the region, be he Orthodox, Catholic or Muslim set out to ensure that their people got as much as they could grab and keep. I shrugged and turned away after a while, finding the carnage sickening and the ludicrous sight of various European 'Pantaloons' strutting their preposterous stuff on the world stage as disgusting beyond description. One of the few aspects of John Major's awful administration that I admired was Hurd's tenacious refusal to 'risk a single Grenadier's bones' in an area that had virtually no British interests. This patrician disdain infuriated Oliver but, by displaying it, he inadvertently also displays his own contradiction. He cannot claim that British interests were to be served by military intervention because, to all intents and purposes, there are no British interests. He might claim that the prevention of a war in Yugoslavia which might drag in Greece and Turkey was an obvious and pressing interest to Britain. If so, I can't see it. None of the countries concerned are, so to speak, big billiard balls on the international table. None of them are rich enough or strong enough to fight an extended war for any length of time. Of course, those of our "European partners"(!) whose borders and trading links are very much closer to the region than us, and a significant part of whose population are Turkish, might feel differently. So let them spend some of their 'blood and treaure' trying to sort it out! They are usually the first to complain of American (and British) imperialism, so we and the Yanks could afford to sell them the pass.
Of course, Oliver and other interventionists will point to the outcome as a confirmation of their better judgement, to which I could only respond by pointing in the general direction of Kosovo where the very ethnic cleansing that they abhored has taken place with a vengeance and the result is a tiny vestige of the original Serb population living precariously under UN 'protection' - the inverted commas are deliberate! Here is yet another atrocity myth to go down in legend along with all the others that have kept this benighted region in a state of internecine hatred and warfare for centuries. If Oliver thinks that this intervention has done anything other than put yet another lid on a boiling pot, he's in for a surprise when Lord 'Paddy' Ashdown, UN High Representative, no less, hands over power in his particular fiefdom, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
But now we must turn to the middle-east where Oliver's policy of regime change has been well and truly tested. I should start by admitting that I was in favour of invading Iraq because I believed that Saddam was seeking a WMD ability. (I suspect that even Saddam believed it and was probably more surprised than anyone when he found out that his scientists, who were probably paid and rewarded handsomely, turned out to be just like him and his regime, another bunch of lying Arabs! ) In addition, I supported the war because I thought that Bush and Rumsfeldt were determined to install a 'Saddam Mk.II', grip the place with an iron fist and turn it into an American base ready to exert pressure on Saudi, Syria or Iran. I hope I live long enough to find out what and who went wrong! However, one thing is for sure in this disastrous imbroglio, Oliver's ideas of teaching the grateful natives the benefits of democracy is a busted flush. As I wrote at the time, the possibility of a democratic Iraqi polity emerging would be a very desirable, if optional, extra, but I wouldn't be holding my breath. I'm still not!
(At this point, aware of the ever-watchful 'Race Thought Police', let me clarify my remarks concerning Arabs. They lie a lot! This is a characteristic they share with every other race on the planet. The difference between Christians and Arabs is that the former develop a conscience over it where-as the latter see it as just a normal manifestation of being human. Similarly, I do not look down on Arabs for their failure to develop democracy. As I look at the appalling state of western society under the supposed benefits of democracy, a tiny part of me yearns for the Muslim invasion - er, but not for long! I do not feel it incumbent or even sensible to try and impose democracy on other peoples, not least because, as I hinted above, I do not think our system is necessarily superior to theirs, it's only that, despite my misgivings, on the whole I prefer ours to theirs.)
I have been trying to think of any country where democracy has been successfully imposed. Only three spring to mind, two of whom share similar circumstances. Both Germany and Japan were utterly and completely defeated in a world war of monstrous proportions that almost literally brought them to their knees and forced them to start again. Under occupation, they both accepted democratic practices and have stuck with them. The other example is India which, whilst not being ruined and then occupied, nevertheless, was subject to British rule for around two hundred years. In effect, they watched as we slowly felt our way to democracy and they followed suit. With those 'special three', as I think of them, in our minds, what are the chances of teaching or imposing democracy on an Arab society like Iraq steeped in a theocratic tradition going back over a thousand years? Also, a tradition that has produced schism in their religion leading to violent clashes over the centuries plus, if that was not bad enough, a tribal society with deep, localised loyalties. In view of this, a system as sophisticated (I use the word deliberately) as democracy in which one set of sworn enemies grants power to another on the trusted promise that in 5 years time a free election will give them a chance to gain power, has, I would suggest, about as much chance as the proverbial snowball in hell!. Even less so, if the situation is such that every male over the age of 12 has access to a Kalashnikov! It is not that the Iraqis aren't intelligent enough to value a vote, but what they have done, in the main, is to vote for the armed gangsters who are most likely to protect or further their particularist interests. Oliver's enthusiasm is a chimera.
Even worse, the whole enterprise, when stripped of the hideous mistake/lie (take your pick!) over WMD, has now proved to be a folly of potentially catastrophic proportions. There were two main 'Arab' military powers in the middle-east; Iraq and Iran. Both had the potential to be extremely vexatious to western interests. It is obvious that the sensible, 'Bismarkian' policy was and is to keep both in existence and play one against the other. (I say 'Bismarkian' because it was always the aim of that wily, old Chancellor to keep France and Russia divided and it was only the psychotic foolishness of Wilhelm II who drove them both into each others arms.) However, now we have destroyed Iraq as a power and possibly allowed it to drift into a situation in which it will implode. The nation that stands to gain the most from this is Iran which is now promoted, courtesy of the west, to being the main player in the area, and just as it brazenly announces that it is going nuclear. I am only slightly satirical in suggesting that we release Saddam and place him back in power!
This, I suggest, is what results from the folly of allowing personal morality to interfere with judgements concerning power-politics. And that leads me to one more criticism of Oliver Kamm's crusade. He is guilty, I fear, of deception. I hesitate to write that because he strikes me as a man of total probity, an exception to that golden City rule that when a man tells you his word is as good as his bond, always take his bond! Oliver is not deliberately setting out to deceive us, for the simple reason that he has already deceived himself. What he is proposing is no more or less than the old-fashioned belief and practice of 'muscular Christianity'! The 'Trot-lot' juveniles always dismiss the British empire builders as a collection of megalomaniac thieves and exploiters. The fact is that vast numbers of them went to the furthest reaches of the globe at great risk and danger to themselves armed with their faith in the British way of life and with an idealistic mission to instill this into the natives in order to better their prospects. Oliver, I suspect, is uneasily aware at the edge of his being of harbouring similar feelings but in this much more cynical world he is forced to put up a show of real-politik. He may succeed in kidding himself but he don't fool me!
Recent Comments