International Affairs
I never knew that horrific moment of watching the second plane crash into the World Trade Centre. I was travelling by bus to the city of Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico, blissfully unaware of the outside world, as the attacks happened. Only later, in an internet cafe, my travelling companion and I realised what had happened.
As we tried to get our heads around events outside the cafe, uninvited pictures were taken of us by what appeared to be paparazzi. Obviously, we weren’t celebrities but our Caucasian skin probably led to the presumption that we were American and maybe “grieving Americans in Oaxaca” was thought a picture worth having. Our picture, though, didn’t appear in the local newspapers that we bought and which somewhere, probably my parent’s house in Cumbria, I’m fairly sure I retain as a piece of local perspective on an epoch defining event.
For the most part, the Mexicans with whom we had contact were shocked and respectful. I remember a conversation in Spanish in our hotel reception coming to a hushed silence as we returned. The receptionists looked at us, looked at the reports from New York on the TV behind them and looked again at us. We didn’t speak much Spanish and they didn’t speak much English, but their body language communicated a bewilderment and concern that we, as assumed Americans, might be more directly impacted (which, thankfully, we weren’t).
My friend and I graduated from Durham University a few months before and I’d been a know-it-all, smart-arse presence in politics tutorials. In these tutorials, I had a (probably conceited and almost certainly naive) answer to any point of view. As we reflected on events, on the balcony of our hotel room, overlooking the city, with its rich Spanish Empire-era architecture, I had no answers. I had barely anything to say. This strike against the great power of our time was utterly beyond my ken.
The next day the main square of Oaxaca was packed with farmers, with their traditional dress, pitchforks and placards. Primarily, they seemed to be protesting some local issue. The placards that jumped out, though, were those that featured pictures of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the words “a strike against Yankee imperialism” (which even our Spanish was able to decipher). Those pitchforks suddenly seemed more menacing. We left before anyone turned them on us.
Given that the hotel TVs broadcast Spanish language stations and that sitting in an internet cafe all day would have cost a small fortune, our news flow remained relatively patchy over coming days. We’d quickly descend on any TV we came across, seeking out nuggets of information on any developments. The news we were dreading was America letting loose some kind of Armageddon. The possibility of massively violent retribution seemed real.
Between protesting farmers and foreboding about what America might do next, we seemed to have descended to a much more polarised and uncertain world. In this sense, we succumbed to being small cogs in the giant wheel of someone who I had never previously heard of, Osama Bin Laden. Mercifully, his master plan now seems much less on track.
I had this on Labour Uncut earlier this week.
As the national transitional council’s (NCT) grip on Libya tightened, I wondered: What do the Muammar Gaddafi loyalists in their last redoubts want? Having refused the NCT’s generous reconciliation offer, do the Gaddafi loyalists really think that they can recover the whole of their country? As this is implausible, it must be that they remain loyal enough to their barbaric, ego-maniac, delusional leader that they’d rather die in his name than accept Libya’s new reality.
Belief held so absolutely has become alien to most westerners and, thus, inherently terrifying. Willingness to fight to the death is beyond the ken of people unwilling to fight for much besides the TV remote. That’s why it wasn’t just Tony Blair and George W Bush who were mortified by Al-Qaeda. We all were. These ingenuous people would go to any lengths, including sacrificing themselves, to destroy us. What wasn’t to be afraid of?
Well, much less than it seemed. We thought Al-Qaeda’s appalling idea could attract ever more active backers. We suspected that many people, possibly millions, absolutely believed things utterly out of kilter with what we believe fundamentally. And they believed these things with the passion of newlyweds, while the passion of western citizens for the defining values of their states is that of the long married. Not non-existent, but not obviously burning.
While the passionate beliefs of Gaddafi loyalists now bemuse western eyes as much as the passionate beliefs of Al-Qaeda have done, these passionate beliefs are very different, of course. Gaddafi comes from a tradition that starts with Gamal Nasser and hopefully ends with Bashar al-Assad. Upon these strong men Arab states were personalised. Gaddafi was Libya and Libya was Gaddafi. And that just seemed the way things were.
This appeared almost as otherworldly to western eyes as Al-Qaeda, who hoped to replace the secular despotism of the Arab dictatorships with an Islamic caliphate. Ten years after 9/11, revolutions have come, but not those anticipated by Al-Qaeda. Modern freedom was more attractive than returning to the seventh century.
In bravely rising up, the Arabs showed themselves to be not so odd after all. They’ve hungered for the same things that Al-Qaeda want to destroy. Not western values, but universal human values: liberty, democracy, the rule of law, the absence of arbitrary power. Now the Arabs are for the long march through the institutions but with what Hegel called weltgeist on their side. Ultimately, they will arrive at states embodying the universal values for which the Arab Spring strives.
The rise of the rest, particularly China and India, is often taken to mean that weltgeist is passing from west to east. But, while the values championed by the Arab Spring are universal, they have their fullest expression in the west. The power of this advantage is overlooked in the rush to proclaim western decline. Western countries are not convulsed, as China and India are, by the protests of expanding middles classes, no longer prepared to have their rights trammelled upon. Trade with China has often been justified in terms of Chinese economic freedom being a precursor to a more assertive Chinese middle class, which would demand political freedoms.
This argument for Chinese trade is a confident western argument; an argument that believes in the potency of values upheld by the west. Yet, just as the Arabs are inspired by the same values that this now emerging Chinese middle class demands, so underlining the universality and appeal of these values, western confidence seems nowhere.
This diminution was encouraged by needlessly betraying the values that Al-Qaeda assaulted (Abu-Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay). As well as an economic crisis in which the commanding heights of private capitalism were massively subsidised by the taxpayer and, subsequently, banking practices remained unreformed amid widespread public and private deleveraging and horribly anaemic growth rates. But these post 9/11 mistakes and the financial crisis were self-inflicted western wounds. From which we could recover strongly with a fraction of the resolve that the Arab Spring has required.
It wasn’t always so. Britons once volunteered to fight against those who would crush universal values. They believed, as strongly as the Gaddafi loyalists who now cling to their wrong-headed beliefs, that if they could shoot Welsh rabbits then they could kill Spanish fascists. The spread of universal values that the Arab Spring and the rise of middle classes in China and India portends, hopefully, means that we won’t have to fight as the International Brigade did for these values.
Certainly, this spread means that the west should have more confidence in our capacity to build a world that would make these universal values universally enjoyed. A confident west would, amongst other things, now be offering the same kind of carrots and sticks towards enduring democratic change in the Arab world as were offered to Eastern Europe twenty years ago.
It doesn’t just matter that the values that shape the west are universal. It also matters that the west believes in them enough to act upon them.
I had this on Labour Uncut in August.
People make their own history, as Karl Marx knew and Angela Merkel and Barack Obama cannot deny, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. Over hundreds of years America has evolved to a fiercely divided, uncompromising polis wedded to a system demanding compromise. Over decades Europe has achieved monetary union. Thousands of years of history hang over its fiscal consummation, which is required to avoid collapse and further calamity. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
One of the ironies of Marx is that communism was supposedly inevitable, but his tombstone declares that the point is to change the world, not interpret it. What’s to change if history’s terminus is already determined? What was the point of agitating publications like the Communist Manifesto if we were all, in spite of ourselves, destined for communism?
Such publications imply that Marx himself may not have seen communism as quite the iron certainty that rigid interpretations of his writing suggest. But one of the divisions between Marxism and much of the rest of the left concerns the extent to which we are prisoners of history. Parties such Labour predicate themselves on an assumption that the institutions of advanced capitalist democracies can be moulded to serve socially just ends. Ed Miliband’s father, of course, like other Marxists, thought this naive.
Recent economic events seem to vindicate Ralph Miliband. Political leadership seems oxymoronic when our nominal leaders appear only witnesses to events that they can barely fathom, let alone command. (In the non-economic sphere, our Tuscan prime minister is similarly bemused by the revenge of the lumpenproletariat). Nothing has happened to undermine James Carville’s famous wish to come back as the bond market and intimidate everybody. It’s these markets that are in the box seat and our political leaders that are cowered.
What they demand are credible plans from governments to repay their creditors. This isn’t unreasonable. I expect you’d want to see credible repayment plans before you leant non-trivial amounts of money. The governments of the third and fourth largest economies in the eurozone, Italy and Spain, seem increasingly unable to produce such plans. The downgrade of the USA, though unjustified, speaks to a similar lack of confidence in America’s ability to manage its debts.
While events seem to lead towards the largest country in the world that still professes to be communist, China, being an ever more dominant geo-political force, the Marxists should not be too triumphant. The markets are, of course, as powerful as James Carville’s wildest dream and Ralph Miliband’s bleakest nightmare. But they do not remain beyond the capacity of political leaders to have them becalmed. That is if political leaders do what it says on their tin; lead.
This doesn’t mean interpreting opinion polls as immovable. Germany, for example, could swing behind the full steps required to save the euro if Merkel articulated them well enough. It means seeing your electorate as intelligent beings capable of being won over by the force of your argument and your actions. Merkel and Obama can still do this. But only if they stop being intimidated not only by the bond markets but also by opinion polls, their political opponents and their own inevitable failure to hold in their minds every relevant fact and figure.
As the Irish leader, Enda Kenny, has said the answer from Merkel, whether the question is bailouts or debt restructuring, is always no – until it is yes. We all know the big question hanging over all of this: will the single currency underwrite the debts of all of its members? These debts would be eminently manageable under such an arrangement; so long as the political will to enact such an arrangement can be found. It is for Merkel to find this will. If she cannot, then she should say so speedily. The longer she delays the worse the fallout when she confirms her inability to rise to her historic purpose.
In spite of the tea party and the fractious nature of US politics, things are more straight-forward for Obama. He has no unprecedented, continent-wide institution building project to contemplate as a matter of existential necessity. His outlook would suddenly look much rosier if he could only say yes, we did achieve growth rates in 2011 equal to the hardly spectacular rates of 2010.
Can the US really not grow at 2.8 per cent this year? Can unemployment really not be significantly reduced from the historic high of 9.2 per cent? While markets fret over the ability of governments to manage their debts, they are also increasingly worried that the US cannot do better on growth and unemployment. Surely if the social democratic faith in the power of government is justified then Obama can prove them wrong?
Merkel and Obama can rise to their challenges or we succumb to capitalism’s latest crisis. These crises will not, however, give way to something as pleasant as Marx envisaged communism to be. It will be something with much more of a Chinese flavour.
I had this on Labour Uncut last week.
The epoch changing events in the Middle East, lest we forget, were precipitated by Tarek el-Tayyib Mohamed Ben Bouazizi. Just over a month later, Karim Medhat Ennarah, an Egyptian protester told the Guardian, with tears in his eyes, that:
“For 18 days we have withstood teargas, rubber bullets, live ammunition, Molotov cocktails, thugs on horseback, the scepticism and fear of our loved ones, and the worst sort of ambivalence from an international community that claims to care about democracy. But we held our ground. We did it”.
In the intervening period, the most that William Hague could do to respond to the beauty and bravery of these protestors was to mouth almost exactly the same measly words as Hosni Mubarak about an orderly transition. Britain managed to be dismissed as at best irrelevant, as Krishnan Guru-Murthy noted, both by the Mubarek regime and by those risking their lives to overthrow it.
Our Garibaldi, David Cameron, wasn’t content. He set off on a crusade for freedom. He was the first western leader to visit post-revolutionary Egypt. All very noble. But are arms really the first thing required in the birth pangs of democracy? And is the most fundamental right of British citizens not protection from indiscriminate violence?
At least two prime ministers, Anthony Eden and Tony Blair, became defined by the Middle East. The unanswered pleas for assistance of British citizens in Libya to the British government as Cameron set out on his freedom mission are the tragic loop of history. Its farce is the phalanx of arms dealers in which he shrouded himself.
Egyptians thought us pointless during their revolution. Cameron’s mantle of missile manufacturers mean they now think us grubby. Rather than demeaning us in this way, Cameron should have ensured that his government executed the same basic function that every government deserving of the name was capable: getting our citizens out of the hell that Libya has descended into. Turbine engineer, John Rouse, told The Evening Standard:
“We are going crazy because everyone is getting rescued but us. The Chinese, French, the Russians, Americans – everyone’s leaving but the British can’t sort it out”.
To minimise suffering in Libya, the UN should have implemented a no-fly zone at the earliest opportunity. But the ability of our prime minister to be doing what he should have been doing – leading the calls for a no-fly zone – is compromised by him not having fulfilled his duty: to rescue all British citizens from Libya. Our capacity to lead these demands is, obviously, constrained both because we almost certainly need to have further flights into Libya to recover our citizens, and because we therefore have such a pressing incentive not to spark reprisals against Britons by Colonel Gaddafi.
Cameron’s government is still addressing last week’s challenges. By now, our citizens should be safely home and a no-fly zone should be in place. Neither of these outcomes, tragically, has been brought about. The debate should now be focused on how many Libyans have to be killed by Gaddafi before we are prepared to risk our troops for them and how we might end the carnage enveloping that country.
Not that sending in troops is necessarily the best way for us to do this. President Obama is right, however, that all options should be considered. And we should now be assessing our options in this regard, not worrying about our fellow citizens stranded amid Gaddafi’s orgy of violence.
If we really want to honour Mohammed Bouazizi, we should always stand up for freedom. We didn’t do this while Egyptians stood up to Mubarek for their freedom. We lacked the competence to ensure the freedom of our citizens in Libya.
Some say that British foreign policy has lacked direction under this government. That the government’s “approach to foreign policy is to not have a foreign policy”. The truth is now emerging: gutless and inept leadership is painfully and needlessly squandering our most precious commodity.
Which is not arms or oil, but freedom.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy blogged last Thursday of an interview he had conducted with an Egyptian foreign ministry official:
“I didn’t need a diplomatic decoder to work out what he was really saying : “Britain doesn’t matter, who cares what it says?” Out on the streets they don’t have a much higher opinion of Britain with our mother of parliaments and democratic history – the refusal to back the protesters, the following of the Washington line, the use of almost exactly the same phrases as Mubarak about orderly transition, the need to avoid chaos, the dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood and the need for broad based government – it has not exactly left London looking like a beacon of democratic hope. So here we are – 21st century democratic revolutionary thinking spreading across the middle east and Britain isn’t much liked by anyone on any side. That’s a tricky place to be for a declining world power.”
Within 48 hours the front page of the Guardian was reporting that Karim Medhat Ennarah, an anti Hosni Mubarak protestor, had said to them, with tears in his eyes, that:
“For 18 days we have withstood teargas, rubber bullets, live ammunition, Molotov cocktails, thugs on horseback, the scepticism and fear of our loved ones, and the worst sort of ambivalence from an international community that claims to care about democracy. But we held our ground. We did it.”
Surely if William Hague had one iota of the bravery of Ennarah he wouldn’t have been mouthing almost exactly the same phrases as Mubarak about orderly transition?
I am as saddened by Hague’s needless and gutless timidity as I am moved by the spirit of Ennarah and those proud Egyptians like him.
Not all states in the world are democracies or respectful of human rights, of course. That doesn’t mean the UK shouldn’t have economic and political dealings with these states. But these dealings should never be confused with endorsement. And they should always seek to encourage the spread of basic rights. Because all people have democratic and human rights, which the UK should seek, as far as we are able, to have upheld.
The Egyptian protests made obvious that the end-game had been reached by Mubarak and changed the calculus of our engagement with Egypt. In this changed world our foreign secretary shouldn’t have found it so hard to say:
“We believe that all people have democratic and human rights. We always seek to have these respected as far as we are able. We previously encouraged reform in Egypt. It now seems clear that the Egyptian people, quite rightly, are demanding that their democratic and human rights be respected. Plans now need to be brought forward to act upon these demands. President Mubarak either needs to come forward with such plans as command the confidence of the Egyptian people or he needs to stand aside in favour of someone who is capable of doing so.”
If the UK is unable to stand up for fundamental rights in this way the decline that Guru-Murthy writes of will only speed up.
