The recent Portuguese election results were wholly unsurprising for anyone paying even minimal attention to European politics over the last five years: an electorate tired of career politicians who continually ignore the most concerning issue for the future of their country – uncontrolled immigration – get behind a populist who addresses the issue unabashedly (if admittedly not always articulately).
The only mildly surprising aspect was that there was relatively little hysteria in the world press and even less here in Portugal. Indeed, with the exception of one or two sore-loser socialists on election night muttering grim portents of “dark times for democracy”, the general agreement among the commentariat was that the Portuguese had sent a clear message to the governing class and that the other parties needed to accept the will of the people whom they serve and try to work with Chega – the ‘far Right’ populist party that took a remarkable 48 of 230 seats, up from 12 last time.
Predictably though, the Guardian is not happy with the voice of the people being heard and has published a hand-wringing article about Chega and its leader André Ventura that deserves a brief rebuttal. For context, I am an (English) immigrant who lives, works and has a young family here in Portugal, and therefore I fully understand why good people would vote Chega. Indeed, my wife did vote Chega, albeit reluctantly. She was reluctant because, quite frankly, they’re a bit clownish. But they’re also the only party to talk seriously about reducing immigration, and unfortunately that one issue trumps all the others – even above the crippling taxation we suffer under and which multiple parties ran on reducing.
To understand the scope and speed of the immigration change, just 10 years ago my wife knew all of the residents of her road by name, everyone greeted each other in the street and I would not think twice about letting her walk home alone at midnight. Now we know almost no-one, being nearly the last native residents in a road of Airbnbs and low cost Third-World-immigrant rentals. The gentle sound of Fado music every Saturday morning from one elderly neighbour’s radio has been replaced with the repetitive, repellant bass of Kizomba. All but two of the small local stores in the area that were run by Portuguese and sold fresh vegetables, fruits and smoked meats are now run by South Asians who speak only broken English (and not a word of Portuguese) and sell only alcohol, tobacco and junk food. The central café is now a kebab shop. It no longer feels like Portugal. For us, as extortionate and unfair as the taxation is here, it is still of less importance than ensuring that the country our children grow up in will be safe and decent.
When one questions these changes brought about by unprecedented immigration levels the answer from the old guard such as my father-in-law is that immigrants contribute six times what they take (or seven times, according to the Guardian article). The provenance and accuracy of this oft-repeated statistic is dubious, but even if true should not the question then be “Okay, but which immigrants”? I am an immigrant, I contribute an exorbitant amount of tax and take almost nothing in return (we even have private healthcare), so should I really be counted in the same statistic as the South Asian women who come here simply to give birth in publicly funded hospitals? Moreover, even if it’s true that immigrants increase our GDP, many of us would happily be a little poorer if we could return to the sleepy, low-crime, culturally homogenous Portugal of the past.
Of course, the Guardian article doesn’t even attempt to address the legitimate concerns of one million Portuguese who have seen their country completely transformed in the last decade and voted en masse against it, but instead it relies on the relentless repetition of the weasel-word “racist” to hammer home its point. It mentions as evidence André Ventura calling for a serving black MP –Joacine Katar Moreira – to be returned to her own country. The statement itself is correct, but the impression given by the Guardian is that Ventura said this in all seriousness to a respectable black MP, which simply isn’t the case. “Joacine” was a hyper progressive prima donna who brought such chaos to Parliament that she was fired from her own party (despite being its only MP) after a matter of months. Her most salient characteristic was that she was almost completely incomprehensible due to an extremely severe stutter, but that could perhaps have been forgiven had the words she did manage to get out not been the most childish grievance politics imaginable. Ventura’s comment came after the endless dramas caused by her almighty ego and sense of entitlement had led pretty much everyone, everywhere just wanting her gone so we could discuss serious things again. When she requested that every item in Portuguese museums be returned to their country of origin, Ventura made an obvious, low-brow joke that rather than the priceless museum pieces being returned, perhaps she herself should be returned to her native country (she was born in Guinea-Bissau) for the sake of a peaceful Parliament.
It was a stupid thing to say, politically speaking, but then that’s why people vote for populists – they say out loud the kind of dumb, reactionary things that sometimes cross the minds of us plebs. Indeed, the article goes on to say that Ventura “initially carved out a national name for himself through a series of sustained attacks on the Roma community, accusing them of exploiting welfare benefits and alleging there is a ‘chronic problem’ of ‘delinquency and violence’ in the community”. It’s true that’s how he made his name, but what he said is exactly what the average person here actually knows to be true. Yes, some Roma do integrate well and are accepted (Ricardo Quaresma is a national football hero and proud Roma), but most don’t and have no desire to. Everyone watching the news knows the ethnic reality behind the euphemism ‘large family’ when there’s a story about them terrorising a school or hospital, and Ventura was simply the first politician to speak openly about it. Perhaps he did so opportunistically and cynically knowing it would get him press and votes, but even so, at least the problem was finally being discussed.
The remainder of the Guardian article is a defence of the (comparatively small) Muslim communities here, which are naturally presented as benevolent and charitable minorities running a wholesome community sportsground and cooking meals for the poor. Charming. But we do have television and the internet here and have seen what has happened to much of Europe over the last decade, so many of us agree with Ventura that we should perhaps have a cost-benefit analysis before importing vast numbers of people whose religion is diametrically opposed to our Catholic-based culture.
Unfortunately, although Chega annoys all the right people like the Guardian, it’s unlikely to be the permanent solution we need. For starters, the other parties have explicitly ruled out doing any kind of deal with Chega, so we’re in a political stalemate and probably nothing much of importance will happen until a new election is called. Secondly, more generally, the populists are not our saviours. It may be that each country needs its own ‘balls of steel’ straight-talking egotist to break down the taboos, but to actually effect change requires serious politicians willing and able to negotiate and compromise and having the integrity to carry the message of national sovereignty to a wider audience. This is unlikely to happen with Chega. The raucous world of populist politics attracts the wrong type of people, and it will only take one or two newly elected Chega MPs causing scandal for the more moderate voters to get squeamish. If any are found to have links to the true far Right then the press will be able to say “see, we told you, anyone against unlimited immigration truly is a Nazi”, and the issue will once again become taboo, perhaps until it’s too late.
Let’s hope not, and I wish Ventura well, but I’m not optimistic about the future here.
Granger is a pseudonym.
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Being an expert these days appears to be determined by the time spent studying and/or applying oneself to something, regardless of outcomes.
Nothing could be more stupid.
Professor Ferguson of Imperial College London being a prime example
Exactly. You might “know a lot” about something, or appear to, but if your “knowledge” leaves you unable to reliably predict outcomes or unable to produce useful outcomes then “knowledge” isn’t very useful.
Whatever you think you might know, there is more you don’t know and whatever little you might now know, is out of date, fallible, or liable to be displaced more quickly than you believe.
None of these ‘experts’ or ‘scientists’ understand that simple fact and few if any have any humility, wisdom, morality or a real understanding of anything. Except money, power and privilege.
Couldn’t agree more with these comments. Just because one knows a lot about a niche subject or area, doesn’t confer any wider wisdom about how to act in the world. On the contrary, being cloistered in a self-regarding ‘expertocratic’ ecosystem often succeeds only in detaching oneself from the reality of how most people think, which ultimately causes the ‘expert’ – ironically – to misunderstand their own societies. Thank for the comments – MR
Fergusson is a physicist among other things. Being non medical he”didnt have a feel for the figures”
PS he also had an abysmal record on forecasting
The UK Government strategy of dealing with a pandemic had been in place for years. But a week of ‘political events’ up-ended it.
So with a week being a long time in politics and a strategy possibly needing a decade or more to unfold, the quick and dirty political reflex will win every time. And ‘magically’ no politician will suffer for their stupidity.
Not true. The government had a strategy for dealing with an influenza epidemic which it believed could result in up to 750,000 deaths. Governments had been advised by the WHO in 2005 before it became a Chinese puppet to develop strategies for influenza AND for a MERS/SARS pandemic. Successive governments played down the MERS/SARS pandemic with each iteration of its response plan such that the final pre-covid version did not even mention it by name but referred to an unspecified disease that might kill less than 100.
Yes, very true, in my view. One of the handmaidens of terrible strategy is no accountability for failure, and we’ve seen that each and every time over recent decades. In fact, on the contrary, the more politicians, bureaucrats and academics fail in their predictions and their strategies, the more they seem to get elevated in public life. So long one is on the ‘correct’ side of the ideological debate its seems no amount of failure or ineptitude will hold you back. Hence the term ‘ineptocracy’ to describe the current regime.
“Armed with Ivy League degrees…”
…Therein lies the problem.
And under no circumstance to commit their precious Ivy League offspring to the sharp end of the War on Terror. Sacrifice as I say, not as I do. The old lie lives on – Dulce et decorum est.
A good point to add to the understanding of what constitutes bad strategy: those who advocate the need to sacrifice blood and treasure almost never bear the cost of their advocacy. The ‘Ivy League’ brigade can be the worst exemplars of this.
One can contrast this with the policymakers of yesteryear who often had much experience of serving in the armed forces and fighting in wars. Who’s to say whether it always made them better decision makers, but it did give them a seriousness and gravitas that you can’t really say characterises politics in the modern era. MR
Excellent article.
Wars create “money” and “power”.
Politicians crave power.
Capitalists crave money.
There is also a revolving door between the two.
It is easy to manipulate the population into believing anything.
There are so called sceptics on here who don’t even know they are being manipulated.
Liberalism and the mantra that “something must be done” leads to manufactured conflicts that benefit the few.
The elite have been using Problem, Reaction, Solution for eons.
Agreed great article. Military planners always want an exit strategy. Unfortunately they rarely get one, and thenhave to grin and bear it. There wasn’t a decent one in former Yougoslavia, nor Gulf War 2, nor Afghanistan, nor Libya. Yet politicians still press on and then wonder why things don’t work out. (Of course many get slung out of office and leave the mess to the next person).
Starmer must be totally insane to talk about ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine. There are so many problems (political, practical, economic) with this idea that it’s almost impossible to know where to start. The key problem is we have Minsters who would struggle in a Parish Council.
Thank you for the kind words, GlassHalfFull and Solentviews.
The point about the Problem/Reaction/Solution paradigm is well taken. The notion of strategy as ‘problem-solving’, while of course understandable up to a point, can also lead to bad strategic outcomes as you imply, often just seeing the immediate surface issue to be dealt with(eg. Russian aggression), while not thinking through the longer term questions, such as ‘what are we trying to achieve’, ‘what is the plan’ and ‘what is the exit strategy’, as Solentviews perceptively notes – MR
Too much generalisation here.
Some Politicians crave power, but it’s been the Collectivists, or Ex-Collectivists that have been calling the shots, quite literally, Political Idealists, using the patriotic Military, for their own ends.
And Capitalists craving money?
Just because you crave money, doesn’t make you a Capitalist. Just look at the Nationalised Industries, and how they sucked up cash! Look at those Ultra-Liberal Left receivers of USAID money. When you ‘run out of other people money’, war can be used to generate financial activity.
And the underlying problem is the spell, “It’s your duty to vote at every general election’. While it may be true, that is all that happens. It results in having two candidates from the Uni-party, one in a red tie, the other blue.
That’s the problem. And those that are truly Wealth Creating become Engineers (Medical doctors are a sort of Engineer), Manufacturers, Businessmen and Businesswomen, have a Trade or Craft. And the Money Printers appear to find Politics just fine!
Good stuff.
The problem is in the machinery itself. The modern state is huge and designed to control every aspect of human activity. Not just that. It is designed to expand and take over more and more areas of human activity. That is the nature of the machinery.
So it isn’t an issue of the people running the machine, their moral compass, their ability or lack thereof, their wisdom, the legitimacy of their objectives. Mo matter what people are plugged into the machine, the machine is going to produce what the machine is designed to produce: to control and seek out new things to control.
If we want different outcomes, then the machine (the state) needs to be scaled back massively.
The little hope that I have for Trump and his presidency is only based on whatever he is able to do to pare back the state. And as a natural disruptor he has as good a chance as anyone I’ve seen in my lifetime.
Apart from Milei n Argentina I don’t see anyone else with that clear idea in mind.
In the UK and Europe we have no chance yet. The population has not suffered enough and does not have enough of a freedom instinct to demand actual change. I’m afraid we are going to get a lot more of the same for some time to come.
I think it’s partly evolution rather then design – these things tend to take on a life of their own because the people involved in them want to keep and expand their status. I think the design bit has been malign intentions to expand the machinery for ideological reasons. I also think that it does make some difference who is running the machine, but agree that it’s not the root of the problem. In some ways I would say the problem is not the nature of the machinery but the fact that people accept it or approve of it or don’t see it – as you say, we’ve not suffered enough (though I feel I bloody have!).
I’ve seen many well intentioned people go into situations that inevitably transform them. The systems of incentives are such that they drive people to the same outcomes regardless of their initial intentions.
The system of incentives produced by the state and its institutions don’t allow any other outcome.
Yes I imagine it’s very hard to resist the direction of travel.
Masks being imposed in the office comes to mind. Not sure how far someone would get just saying “I disagree with the science” but asking for some sort of cost benefit analysis could’ve worked if only enough people demanded it perhaps?
If enough people dig their heels in then things get interesting. But they tend not to.
We were asked to do “mandatory sexual harassment training” at work by HR, who had I think advised the boss that this was a “reasonable step” we needed to take to cover ourselves in case we got sued by an employee, in light of recent changes to employment law in this area (thanks to “socialism”). I refused. I got away with it because I am very important to the firm. As far as I know, everyone else just did it.
That sort of thing is so insidious.
These things are always framed in such a way as to make it very awkward to refuse.
Who doesn’t want to learn how to be less racist or less bigoted or less discriminatory? Only bad person who refuses to become a better person.
It seems to occur to very few the implicit accusation in being “invited” to these courses, that you are a bit racist or in the case of your course too gauche to realise you might be acting inappropriately when engaging with others.
The people who push this stuff are evil grifters
I appreciate all these comments…thank you. The general points made about the all encompassing nature of the state machinery, and the way it manipulates and coerces people into controlled behaviours, can be seen as one of the insidious outgrowths of the total war mindset, which holds that entire populations, in both times of war and peace, should be thoroughly conditioned and prepared for future conflict.
Erich Ludendorff’s exposition, Der Total Krieg, was one of the earliest tracts that extolled this line of thinking though we can see the long term working out of the impact of the ‘total state’ thinking arising out of both world wars, in massively expanded state bureaucratic institutions that seek to regulate so much of our lives. Analysts have often called this the growth of the administrative state, or the national security state, but it is very much an extension of total war thinking.
Erich Ludendorff’s exposition, Der Total Krieg, was one of the earliest tracts that extolled this line of thinking though we can see the long term working out of the impact of the ‘total state’ thinking arising out of both world wars, in massively expanded state bureaucratic institutions that seek to regulate so much of our lives.
Ludendorff was seriously late to the party in this respect as he had been military commander and not civil politician/ administrator during the first world war, when this concept had to be improvised into practice almost overnight because the British sea blockade had cut off Germany from the rest of the world.¹ Try Helfferich’s Der Weltkrieg I – III for a much earlier version (1919). And this wasn’t a theoretical discourse by militant statists (sillyterm not having been invented by then) but an experiment these people had to make – to a large degree against their very convictions which were more in favour of free enterprise and free trade – because of dire necessity.
¹ And improvised it was and it enabled to Germans to continue fighting until they had burnt through most of their manpower reserves in late summer 1918. Afterwards, the same soldiers fought a civil war for control of Germany against communist revolutionaries who had violently disposed of the existing state governments, all while the command economy had to be maintained because Germany remained cut off from international trade until the Versailles treaty got signed in 1919.
Indeed, though in our case the intention was merely “compliance” with a perceived requirement of recent legislation, to cover ourselves, so refusing in my case could more be criticised as potentially undermining us financially, in the same way as my objections to our CSR and DEI policies could have jeopardised a big contract we are bidding for. I did manage to get the “DEI” words removed from our “DEI” draft policy – actually there was no pushback on that, so it now amounts to “we will comply with all relevant legislation” – idiotic really. The assumption used to be that a firm would, er, comply with the law and an employee would know not to sexually harass people, without having to say so or demonstrate it in advance.
I took advice from the FSU about the sexual harassment “training” – they advise you pretty much have no choice but to do it or face disciplinary action – I expect they are right. They advise to note problematic aspects of the training in case of problems. I found the whole idea of it repulsive so I didn’t do it, though apparently the boss said it was full of woke BS. Hopefully we won’t rush into something like that again. I am no expert on employment law but I actually don’t think it’s necessary to force people to do training, just to deal with actual incidents in a sensible manner should they occur, but I reckon HR advisory firms like the one we use probably tell people to tick all the boxes they can think of because it’s safer – probably the advisors worry they will get sued by us if something goes wrong. A climate of fear all round – quite intentional.
The Medical profession used to held in high esteem: not so much now, of course. They don’t deserve it.
Truss tried, and was spat out.
Indeed. I suspect in hindsight knowing what she does now she would approach things differently, though that may not have been sufficient. She was ultimately betrayed by her fellow Tory MPs.
“Why does this keep happening? Western backing of Ukraine appears poised to join the long list of strategic debacles – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen – each a masterclass in self-inflicted disaster”
Julian Assange might have an idea, and it doesn’t involve ‘failure’, with so much money to be made. Plandemics, Wars etc are great ways to flood economies with cash.
It is certainly true that the conjunction of financial and corporate interests can fuel unnecessary and ‘unwinnable’ wars. War can very much be racket, as Gen. Smedley Butler once said back in the 1930s. As we know, warnings of the pernicious influence of the ‘military industrial complex’ go back over nearly some decades with President Eisenhower’s farewell address. MR
They should really teach professors of strategic theory some useful basic skills. Like addition. According to
https://www.worldatlas.com/society/the-largest-standing-armies-of-the-european-union.html
the total number of soldiers of the ten largest armies of European NATO members is 1,627,000. Hence, the claim that the European armies are too feeble to stand up to Russia without the less than 500,000 soldiers the USA has in its army is obvious nonsense. But I guess addition is just militantly statist¹.
¹ Whoever invented this term has admirably conserved his total cluelessness about a few thousand years of human history outside of the USA for posterity to enjoy forever.
You have a point—maths was never my forte. That said, on paper, NATO vastly outnumbers Russia (assuming we’re still casting them as the USSR’s understudy). In theory, if Europe got serious about defence, it could stand as a credible bulwark—though getting an alliance spanning from Iceland to Turkey to move in unison is about as easy as herding caffeinated cats.
Numbers, however, mean little in a fragmented alliance that, without the US, lacks serious combat power. The British Army, for instance, might struggle to field a division, let alone muster 25 working tanks. With mismatched equipment, logistics, and doctrines, superiority on paper rarely translates to battlefield dominance.
And in the actual theatre that matters—Ukraine—Russia holds the upper hand, because that’s where the bulk of its forces are.
You speculate that whatever effort the European NATO members would make, that it wouldn’t work in the end. That’s obviously possible but until the attempt has been made, we don’t know. But that’s not due to the forces themselves being too feeble theoretically. All of these individually relatively small armies were never meant to do anything alone.
On a more practical note, the existing NATO structures are all geared towards the USA taking the leading role and any NATO efforts rely on US military intelligence, especially in the area of satellite reconnaissance. That’s just not the kind of division of labour that’s emphasized very much because Our allies are ready to put their boots on the ground but we refuse to lead them! is not the kind of story Donaldimir Putrump would like to tell to his supporters as these are supposed to feel as if it was them getting a raw deal and not the others.
Addition: I didn’t read Ludendorff’s essay and don’t plan to, at least not now. However, as opposed to Michael Rainsborough (or, for that matter, Clausewitz), Ludendorff had practical experience with waging war based an economy on war-footing which had a need to mobilize every internal force it could muster because it was cut off from all the world westward of the Baltic Sea¹.
¹ As chief of staff of the supreme commander in the East from 1914 – 1916 and chief of the German general staff until his dismissal in October 1918 because he thought the negotiated peace effort had gone seriously sour while the military situation had stabilized, something the politicians hoping to profit from a German defeat, the nice fellows from the SPD, weren’t willing to stomach. As the emperor had already surrendered his supreme command of the armed forces to a parliamentaty committee in the vain hope that this would lead Wilson (US president) to some actions towards ending the war instead of more demands for Germany to dismember itself voluntarily, this committee then essentially fired him and continued to move towards its planned destination — a German republic by grace of the western Entente powers.
^^
Deputy chief of the general staff (Generalquartiermeister), the actual chief of staff was v. Hindenburg but this was essentially a titular position for someone who had a lot of support among the German people.
It isn’t really that complicated.
Biden’s strategy to weaken Russia and restrict its future capability to invade its neighbours has been a great success; the Russian debacle in Syria an added bonus.
That strategy looks set fair to deliver Putin to the negotiating table. He needs a pause.
But Russia will go again, as many said he would in 2014.
Unilateral disarmament is a stupid strategy; always has been.
Far from weakening Russia it has made Russia much stronger with new alliances around the world.
Russia still has its ports in Syria.
Russia doesn’t need a pause, they are on the front foot.
Russia are no threat to anyone.
Broadly, I agree. Russia prepared for over 10 years to withstand Western sanctions, and as an exporter of primary source materials its economy has not been significantly affected (or at lest not as damaged as Western powers hoped). Its de facto alliance with China and other nations doesn’t indicate that Russia is especially isolated internationally.
Unilateral disarmament, I agree, is a stupid strategy, but has Russia actually been weakened? Moreover, what was the purpose of ‘Biden’s strategy to weaken Russia?’ Why do it, what’s the purpose of seeking that goal in the first place. And importantly at what cost? Thousands upon thousands of lives in order to bring ‘Putin to the negotiating table’ when he’s already in control of 20% of Ukraine? Doesn’t seem like a very good outcome to me… more like a complete debacle to add to the long list. MR
While I agree with the apparent Trump strategy, which questions why the USA would want to involve itself in a war in a country with a dubious democratic past, especially when you will need the friendship and support of the Russian ‘enemy’ in the almost certain economic and possibly military showdown with China, I do challenge the JD Vance statement about participants in a peacekeeping force. When you look at American involvement and final outcome in all post second world war conflict, they haven’t had a single successful outcome, so he can hardly sneer at those countries. Better then, surely, to have been like our European cousins and keep disdainfully out of conflict that is really none of our business and not to have squandered the blood and treasure that we have.
Interesting points for sure. One of the issues about ‘prudence’ in the construction of ‘good strategy’ is discerning which conflicts one should engage in and which ones one should keep well away from. That is, I reckon, one the points underlying J.D. Vance’s critique, not just of the the Ukraine war, but the course of US foreign policy generally since the end of the Cold War.
It is all true but we all bear responsibility. We sold our birthright for a mess of pottage and ths the ineptocracy was born. It is the insane result of a corrupted value system. It wasn’t always thus. There were some quite formidable political figures in the post-war years and many had experienced warfare themselves.
Indeed, and that generation with war experience has long departed. One consideration of the formation of ‘bad strategy’ is whether those who are all too ready to push for war in this day and age, lack any kind of what it means in reality. One notable feature is that they certainly tend to keep both themselves and their families out of harm’s way. MR
A really excellent piece.
2 observations:
Too many graduates, not enough engineers
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you; it’s what you for certain that just ain’t so.
From one dog to another, thank you for the kind words. I concur that there are too many self-styled foreign policy/strategy ‘experts’ who credential themselves as such just by virtue of being graduates of a particular prestigious university and who then seek to glad-hand their way around the corridors of power. MR
Most people these days would claim to have always been against the second Iraq invasion. But market trends suggest otherwise. People were getting together to buy pizzas in order to watch the bombing in the same way that they watched a football match. It was all funny. Baghdad Bob and the rest. There was very little objection to David Cameron’s attack on Libya. Not to mention false flag chemical attacks in Syria. You accepted the dogma for a very long time and at great human expense.
I remember the first Iraq invasion, the staff member woke us up with the news of the bombing, all the kids cheered.
Very true for many of us… how naive we were back in those days…
A fair point, and I would include myself as someone who initially gave a pass to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the assumption that the UK government a) would not intentionally lie about the pretext for the invasion viz. the existence of WMD, and b) would have reasonably well-worked out plan to occupy and stabilise the country afterwards. Disabused of both these assumptions, leads one to question the whole basis of Western strategic formulation, especially when it subsequently repeats itself time and again. MR
Setting aside the conflict’s origins, battlefield realities and the merits of Trump and Vance’s diplomacy (all topics worth scrutiny), the loudest voices in media and politics seem allergic to a basic question: Why does this keep happening?
I imagine it keeps happening because UK is reluctant to admit it is no longer an imperial power. This role was partly robbed of us by USA during and after WWII, but it was partly also a tiredness on the part of the British population in assuming an everlasting superiority over other nations. We thought it was time for the other nations to enjoy independence, rather in the sense of parents realizing their children are now adults.
But this left a vacuum and I think we have not yet adjusted to a new role, which nobody has really defined. We only recently forced a definition of our nation on our politicians by demanding Brexit, i.e. a desire to become a truly independent country. But our politicians are once again ignoring our wishes.
Our first duty, in my opinion, is to avoid conflicts. Why do we believe we are superior to others? Why do we believe our democracy, our beliefs, our way of life, must be imposed on foreign countries? There are other attitudes to government, other beliefs, other ways of life that suit other countries, and which really are no concern of ours. If other people want to live differently to us then fine, why not?
Again, because of the vacuum left after the demise of the British Empire, we ended up tagging ourselves along, clutching the skirt of the new Emperor, the United States of America. This has been disastrous in leading us into all those conflicts the author has listed, and these were not our fights in the first place.
In my opinion, the solution to all these problems is to offer friendship and assistance to all other countries, to develop a healthy trade with every possible country in the world without placing demands or conditions on that trade or on that country’s government or population. In this way, we could become the useful and universally admired nation that we once used to be.
Certainly, I think that one of the attributes in returning to the ‘art’ of good strategy is to exercise prudence and that starts with the capacity to ‘know yourself’ as the ancient Chinese strategist, Sun Tzu, once said. Quite possibly it is, as you suggest, the case that significant segments of the British elite haven’t yet come to terms with the loss of great power status since World War II and therefore have a tendency to believe that they should act out on the world stage by getting involved in conflicts without thinking through the consequences. One of the basic points is not that one shouldn’t be prepared to defend one’s interests with force when necessary, but that one needs to be very careful and precise about which conflicts one chooses to get involved with. British policy makers, I would contend, possessed that capacity up to the late 1990s… but then it all went off the rails after 1997… I wonder why…? MR
I confess to being rather shocked by the long list of UK conflicts in Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_Kingdom) but I suppose that comes hand in hand with ruling an empire. I think the Falklands war was justified but after that we could have left the world to sort itself out. John Pilger, in his book The New Rulers of the World, presents very uncomfortable reading on the role of UK in Iraq, for example. Killing civilians in foreign lands is definitely not honourable and, as I wrote, there is no reason to attempt to convert Iraq into some sort of suburb of UK.
Basically I believe we should not be choosing which conflicts to get involved in at all unless they directly involve the safety of UK citizens, but rather ensure such conflicts are resolved by diplomacy. War is expensive and destructive. ‘Judge Napolitano’ and Larry Johnson are currently in Moscow and comparing the city to New York. As Johnson reported (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GW_9IUcg-M), instead of spending their money the last 25 years on “needless foreign wars”, Russia has invested that money in building up the country. Johnson said the result is there is no rubbish in the streets, no homeless people or drug addicts living in tents, and you can walk safely at night without worrying about being mugged. UK may not be as bad as USA but you get the drift. Peace enables governments to lavish their money on issues useful to their own citizens, rather than spreading destruction and despair in foreign corners of the world.
Probably quite simple – left leaning liberal governments.
End of history liberal ideology has a lot to answer for, I agree.
At school in the 1970s, I was taught an expert was someone who knows more and more about less and less, until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.
Ironic, but so true.
The answers to your last three questions are Yes, Yes and Yes. The reason for these grotesque failures is profound and yet simple. Western academics (and others) have inappropriately over-valued abstract, analytic thinking. See ‘The Bug in our Thinking” https://www.hughwillbourn.com/book
Thank you for the book recommendation, Hugh W. I’ll be sure to get it and read with interest.
A very interesting read.
I see lots of people online supporting Ukraine, and of course our own government, but I’ve seen no one explain what exactly we are supporting i.e. what is the plan. It’s clear Ukraine isn’t going to win.
People rubbish Trump but he seems the only one with a clear aim, to end the war swiftly and peacefully.
Thank you for reading the piece, and your kind thoughts. I share your views that only a clear sighted plan to end the conflict in Ukraine is better than wishful thinking that wants to continue the war indefinitely in the hope that something might turn up. As your comment suggests, how is that realistic, let alone moral? MR
Or, how to kick the can down the road
Excellent well reasoned article. Thank you.
Thank you! I’m grateful for you taking the time to engage with the piece.
It seems to me that a university degree rather than being the opening to life long learning and an awareness of what is not known is the justification for certainty and hubris. If our present cabinet ministers and there recent predecessors are anything to go by then the PPE degree, rather than an indicator of intelligence and competence, should be a warning to all.
The police force is a prime example of the dangers of university degrees. PC plod would have known what a crime was yet now we have shoplifting given less priority than hurty words.
Well done Michael thankyou for your essay
Thank you for taking the time to read such a relatively long piece. I appreciate it. Your comment raises an intriguing and – to my mind – under researched theme, which is why supposedly educated people can come to believe in so much rubbish, and do so much damage with their ideas. Writers as varied as George Orwell and Malcolm Muggeridge regularly argued that people could be educated into stupidity. The substacker Gurwinder wrote something really good on this not so long ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Peima-Uw7w – thanks again, MR