Posts Tagged ‘Iran’
Europeanism: Culture First, Politics After
Posted by: Peter Sain ley Berry in EU on February 9th, 2010
It has been one of those weeks when the grand themes of European politics have promised much but delivered little. The French have given Lady Ashton a bashing, but few people, including Lady Ashton herself, appear to have taken much notice. Mr Van Rompuy has remained below the parapet (though doubtless doing valuable work down there).
The Ukrainian elections have been declared free and fair (or thereabouts) and though the result has been close it now looks likely that Prime Minister Iulia Timoschenko will have conceded defeat and arranged an orderly handover of power before you read this.
The European Parliament looks likely finally to approve the new European Commission. Which has about it the feel of being distinctly underwhelming. There are worries about the euro collapsing; but then there are always worries about the euro collapsing. The euro won’t collapse and life will go on.
What the week has offered is more evidence that the Iranians are closer than ever to building a bomb. I wrote various things about Iran last week in a blog that attracted 67 comments, none, so far as I could see about Iran.
What I said then in a nutshell was that it would be sensible to recognise that Iran had legitimate security concerns, being as it was surrounded by nuclear armed states and with American troops in two countries on her borders. The response of trying to acquire a nuclear weapon seems to be as rational as anything the Iranians have done. As someone pointed out the other day it is not the states with nuclear weapons – like North Korea – that are invaded; it is the states without such weapons, like Iraq, that are.
I cannot conceive for a moment of Iran using a nuclear weapon aggressively – for to do so would be certain suicide. A retaliatory strike would wipe out Tehran in an instant. I may be in something of a minority of one but I would rather we didn’t fuss over whether Iran actually acquires a nuclear weapon and instead concentrate on making available to the Iranian government the technology to help prevent accidents of any sort and the leakage of nuclear material to terrorists.
(While Iran has sponsored terrorism – it seems unlikely she would take the risk of providing terrorists with nuclear material. The biter could too easily be bit).
The blog I wrote last week did indeed attract many comments. Apart from Iran, very few of them had anything to do with anything else I wrote either. (Indeed more than two-thirds of the comments were supplied by just two individuals who appeared to be having their own private discussion).
As far as I could gather this thread – in which others joined from time to time – was essentially about whether ‘Europeanism’ – that is a natural shared sense of identity between Europeans – exists.
That is indeed a question that crops up on many blogs. And it seems to me one of those futile arguments that can never be settled. Some people feel ‘European;’ others don’t. It is something subjective. It is not something that can be demonstrated by arguing whether one country is more or less like another. I think European, therefore I am European; or not as the case may be.
What we can be pretty sure of is that however you define ‘Europe’ you will find a majority of people prepared to defend this concept of Europeanism. That doesn’t mean they reject the nation state in which they live (although they may do this). Most feel a national as well as a continental identity and of course they have other more local allegiances as well, determined by geography, tribe or clan.
The allegiances are voluntary. No one makes me European, or British, for that matter. It’s what I choose to be, though living here and having European ancestry helps. And if this majority – and repeated opinion polls have shown a majority – chooses to co-operate economically, politically, culturally to give effect and purpose to this shared identity in the knowledge that more can be achieved in collaboration with others, then of course this is legitimate.
Those of us who espouse the European cause may indeed disagree on all sorts of things to do with the way Europe is being built. I have written repeatedly of my dissatisfaction at the democratic deficit at the heart of European government; I am infuriated at the lack of strategic thinking about the long term evolution of the European Union and the taking of decisions in a manner that without knowing these long term goals is often ad hoc. But that does not make me doubt my basic identity.
Those who disavow the concept of Europeanism and deny it exists are in the minority. But this is politics. We are all in minorities in something or other. Democracy cannot exist without there being as many minorities as majorities. Politics would not exist if people did not disagree.
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I have to confess that I contributed one of the 67 comments on last week’s blog myself. I was trying to stand up for the Little People – specifically the Leprechauns, which I feel obliged to do seeing as my Grandmother came from Ireland. I have always felt a particular attachment for this species of fairy folk about whom much has been written.
Anyone wanting to make their acquaintance could do worse than to read James Stephens delightful book ‘The Crock of Gold,’ written now a century ago in that sunny interlude between the ‘Entente Cordiale’ and the sad events of Sarajevo that started the First World War. It is still in print and available cheaply in paperback from online booksellers. It is a part of our European heritage.
The book is loosely about a dispute between a Philosopher and his neighbouring leprechauns in which the police become involved. The account of a posse of frightened and truculent policemen guarding the Philosopher whom they have arrested and are marching down a dark country road somewhere in middle Ireland only to be attacked in the blackness by a group of leprechauns is one of the finest passages of comic writing anywhere in the English language.
It is Irish writing, indeed, but it is also European writing. And it is from this and from ten thousand other such passages and from our heritage generally that our common European culture – our Europeanism – springs. Culture first, politics after.
Photograph is of James Stephens
Ashton, Iraq and Iran
Posted by: Peter Sain ley Berry in EU on February 2nd, 2010
Here in Britain we are being kept interested or aggravated by the inquiry the government is holding into the decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003.
Ever since that ill-fated invasion, and indeed even before it, a growing number of people have wanted to indict its authors – and in particular Britain’s then Prime Minister Tony Blair – on charges ranging from incompetence to war criminality.
Despite there already having been several inquiries into this imbroglio and there being few facts that have not already been disclosed, the Government has yielded to pressure and allowed the present full inquiry under Lord Chilcot.
Plenty of people, including Baroness Ashton now Europe’s High Representative for Foreign Policy, were convinced at the time by Mr Blair’s rhetoric. Many now claim they were misled and that had they known then what they know now, they would have have behaved differently. ‘Blair lied to us about Weapons of Mass Destruction, having already ‘signed in blood’ a secret deal with George Bush to topple Saddam.’ Or so they allege.
This language of Victorian melodrama was indeed employed by Blair then and is being retailed now. Its colour might have given some souls a clue to its veracity. The claim that mass destructive weapons (which included simple gas shells) could be launched in 45 minutes, for instance. Blair also declared bravely that Saddam had rockets capable of reaching British bases in Cyprus, though why Saddam should ever have wanted to attack a British base in Cyprus was not explained. Perhaps someone supposed he was in the pay of bin-Laden!
Indeed, those who believed Blair’s suppositions seem also to have a singular faith in the guidance capability of Saddam’s non-existent rockets. To hit the island of Cyprus would, after all, have been some achievement; the idea that Iraqi rockets could be targeted to hit the NAAFI building at Akrotiri, was just fanciful.
Even the 45 minute claim was melodramatic. What is the point of a weapon of mass destruction if you can’t launch it in 45 minutes, you might reasonably ask? The three-quarter hour ‘warning’ – so reminiscent of the Cold War – struck me as a desperate attempt to frighten us into submission.
All this was pretty clear before the fatal vote for war. So claiming that you were misled is really just sophistry. Besides, there was the little question of legality.
For members of the European Union, going to war must surely only be something undertaken with the full-hearted consent of the United Nations. This clearly wasn’t the case with Iraq.
Any competent lawyer can make a case out the muddy vacuum of several oblique United Nations resolutions. Especially when the lawyer will never have to defend his client in court. But because a case can be made, it does not mean that the case is justified. No resolution to authorise war was put because it would have failed. The war was illegal.
This bothers me though others are more concerned about the loss of life – both the lives of British and Allied servicemen and the lives of Iraqis, though at the time few seemed to foresee that an invasion would trigger a sustained insurgency; that the overthrow of Saddam and the Baathists could not be compared with the overthrow of communism in eastern Europe.
Nor how terrible and destabilising this insurgency would become to the whole Middle East. From being a bulwark against Al-Quaeda, Iraq became a gateway. From being a counterpoint to Iran, it provided a weapon for Iran to wield against the West.
Yet this is not to say that there would have not also been pain if the invasion had not taken place. It seems erroneous to assume that if there had been no invasion politics would have stood still; that people would not have died, violently; that the Middle East would have been stable. Yes, the coalition drew a low card – but we cannot guarantee that other cards would definitely have been higher.
One aspect of the war that did much damage but which I suspect will not be tackled by the inquiry is the European dimension. The war split ‘old Europe’ from ‘new Europe’ and indeed even ‘old Europe’ was far from united. Europe’s disunity suggested that while a Common Foreign and Security Policy might be fine in theory it evidently wasn’t so in practice. In this respect the war has set Europe back as a force for peace, order and moral authority, for at least a generation.
So Europe has to learn to act together again and to act within the UN system to promote better governance at the global level. The job of repairing this legacy is now in the hands of Baroness Ashton. She has to show the leadership that will convince Europe’s member states to pull together. It wasn’t exactly encouraging when she admitted to having few ideas on UN reform during her recent hearing before the European Parliament, but there is time to learn. The lessons of Iraq in particular.
The stakes are pressing: the Middle East, from Gaza to Kabul, remains an active volcano; Iran rumbles the seismometer everyday. Dealing with Iran will require above all unity – but also intelligence and sensitivity too. It is Cathy Ashton’s big task.
Were we playing some diplomatic board game and you were playing Iran, then it would be entirely logical for you to seek a nuclear weapon, not for aggressive purposes, but for deterrence. You are, after all, surrounded by nuclear states, while two countries on your borders have been invaded in the last decade by American Presidents seeking regime change. Just because you are a hardline, repressive, fundamentalist state doesn’t mean you don’t also have genuine security concerns.
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Those who read what I wrote recently supporting Blair for the Council Presidency will perhaps accuse me now of hypocrisy, or at least of turning my coat. No! Despite not exonerating him for his part in the Iraq war, I still think that Blair’s skills would have helped Europe. Would Blair (even as a designate) have seen Europe left out of the Copenhagen accord, for instance? Sometimes even your adversaries have skills you need.
Photo, courtesy of Wikipedia, shows the Red Arrows display team performing over the RAF base at Akrotiri.
