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Postscript. Some events and reports since the book was published.
Big Brother is watching you.
(October 2008). The Government’s withdrawal of the Bill for 42-day detention without charge was a small tactical retreat to disguise a major advance in another sector. (The Home Secretary has another Bill in waiting, to be introduced in the emotional aftermath of the next terrorist incident). A new Counter-terrorism Bill provides for an ‘Interception Modernisation Programme’ - a giant database which, in addition to the already extensive data already collated, will record, for everyone for life, details of every letter and email sent, every phone call made and every web-site visited. Privacy will be a thing of the past. At present, permission is needed to open mail, tap phones, bug houses etc. but permission is now granted routinely by civil servants. Requests for surveillance are not confined to cases of suspected terrorism. In 2007 around 500,000 (sic) permissions were given, the vast majority for suspected non-terrorist offences, including benefit fraud, fly-tipping or organizing protests at motorway expansion. Many people were unjustly suspected on the basis of the anonymous denunciations that are now encouraged.
When the giant database has been set up, a member of the public dealing with an official will know that the official can easily find out - unless, of course, s/he has carefully covered his/her tracks - with whom s/he ever had business/social relations, whether s/he ever made enquiries about abortion, sexual problems or alcohol/drug rehabilitation, whether s/he has ever had money problems, what social/political websites s/he has visited. S/he will also know – as is, indeed, already the case – that the official can easily have him/her put under surveillance. The scope for intimidation, or the fear of intimidation, is evident. The relation between the citizen and the state will be profoundly altered. The Information Commissioner has for some time warned that Britain is ‘sleepwalking into a surveillance society’.
Once this database is accessible from computers in public and private organisations throughout the country, it will certainly be used for identity theft and blackmail. Even now, Ministries regularly lose computer records containing personal details of large numbers of people. Geoff Hoon, now Minister for Transport, says that the Government is prepared ‘to go quite a long way’ in restricting civil liberties and that not creating the database would ‘give terrorists a licence to kill’.
The Bill also contains provisions for extra punishment without trial beyond the original sentence, a new offence for volunteer workers of not giving information about clients to the police, and a new offence of publishing information about the armed services. Some critics believe that this provision will become another convenient tool against the peace movement. It could, for example, be used – as similar laws have been used in other countries – against non-embedded war reporters or scientists who publish estimates like one that a Trident discharge could initiate a nuclear winter. (Philip Webber, ‘Trident’s Nuclear Winter? The Spokesman 99, 2008). The bill’s provisions may, it is thought, allow long-term travel bans and daily reporting for anyone convicted under terrorism legislation, irrespective of the seriousness of the offence, or even whether it was connected with terrorism at all. ‘Terrorism’ legislation has already been used by the police to prevent peaceful demonstrations, and by Gordon Brown to seize Icelandic assets when the bankrupt Icelandic Government did not compensate British depositors after the failure of Icelandic banks. Critics argue that these plans have more to do with New Labour’s passion for control than with terrorism, and that legal rights fought for and won over the centuries will be swept away.
Bosnia
(October 2008). Myths about the Yugoslav civil wars and the Nato air war on Serbia still influence policies or proposed policies. A recent article referred to ‘the Serb invasion of Kosovo’. Examinations of the aftermath in Kosovo by the columnists who so passionately called for war on Serbia have been noticeably absent, and books that question the official line either receive no reviews or are sneered at. (For an account of how the wars affected ordinary people see Dervla Murphy, Through the Ashes of Chaos; Balkan Journeys, John Murray, 2002). An article by Paddy Ashdown and Richard Holbrooke begins, ‘Thirteen years ago, American leadership brought an end to the Bosnian War through the Dayton peace agreement’(‘Bosnian tensions are set to explode’, The Guardian, 22.10.08). The sub-text is the widely held view that the US bombing ended the ‘appeasement’ of the Serbs by Britain and France and forced the Serbs to agree to a settlement. (For a somewhat different account, and the authors’ role in the Bosnian, Kosovo and Iraq wars, see European Security-- Chaps. 4, 5, 6). The Dayton Agreement was not imposed by US bombing. It happened because the war had reached a stalemate and all three main parties realised that they would gain more from a settlement than by continuing the war. The Bosnian Serbs were losing ground and, a year earlier, had proposed a partition similar to that agreed at Dayton. Once the USA abandoned its support for a unitary state under the mainly Moslem ‘Bosnian Government’, the Moslems also realized that they had nothing to gain by continuing fighting.
Ashdown and Holbrooke argue that the ‘Bosnian state’ is on the verge of collapse, which must be prevented; this is understood in Washington but not in the ‘sleepwalking’ EU. They blame Milorad Dodik, Prime Minister of the Serb ‘entity’, Republika Srpska for undoing the ‘real progress over past thirteen years’ and call for ‘resolve’ and ‘transatlantic unity’. However, the federal institutions set up at Dayton were the icing on a cake which had been cut into three pieces. They have never worked as intended, and nor has democracy within the entities, which is characterised by ‘ethnicity-based party-politiking, confrontational discourse, political pressure on the press and media, reform stalemate, inflammatory political rhetoric, and perpetuation of political crisis’ (Denise Spajlic-Maglic, ‘EU democratization of BiH’, www.soros.org.ba/, 2007). Ashdown and Holbrooke are right in stating that Haris Salijdjic, the Moslem senior President of all Bosnia, and Dodik loathe each other. Until recently, the Serbs have been the strongest supporters of the Dayton Agreement. Salajdjic, when PM of the Bosnian Government during the war, waged a mendacious media campaign, with the aim of inducing a Nato war against the Serbs, so as to achieve a unitary Moslem-led state. He secured his return to political life by strong opposition to a package of constitutional amendments designed to make the Bosnian arrangements more functional. His main argument was that the package did not go far enough in ending the autonomy of Republika Srpska which, in his view, should be abolished altogether. In response, Dodik called for a referendum on the separation of Republika Srpska from Bosnia.
It would be desirable to preserve the bare bones of federation, in the hope that future politicians will breathe life into them. More important, however, are practical issues such as keeping trade and transport links open, ensuring that ethic minorities in the entities are at least not killed, installing peacekeeping forces at points of conflict, and tackling the endemic corruption and organized crime. (The need for a permanent corps of civilian peacekeepers, continually opposed by the British Government, is clear). The EU should link aid - at least aid to official bodies - to progress on these issues. Substantial progress will probably require a generational change, after the retirement of politicians like Salajdjic and Dodik who are obsessed with grievances stemming from the war.
There have been few successful federations. In the 1960s, Britain set up federations in many parts of the Empire; they all failed. In Bosnia, a federation would be desirable but peaceful co-existence with ‘cross border arrangements’, like those between Ulster and the Irish Republic, would be a reasonable objective. There is not going to be a return to the Bosnian war, but there will be tensions for the foreseeable future. Outsiders can help, above all by not adopting the kind of self-interested and prejudiced policies which played a role in the Yugoslav tragedy. However, what happens in Bosnia will be mainly determined by its ‘three nations’. The idea that sufficient resolve, backed by armed force, by outsiders can force people in divided societies to behave in a rational and cooperative way is the enemy of the limited amount of good that can be done. As George F. Kennan wrote, with reference to the ‘distracted Balkan region’;
‘In the long run, no region can solve any other region’s problems. The best that an outsider can do is to give occasional supplementary help in the pinches’ (European Security -. p.168).
South Ossetia
(November, 2008). A ‘File on 4’ radio programme on 1.11.08 gave a report by the BBC correspondent, Tim Whewel, who was the first foreigner to enter South Ossetia after the August war. His report from Tskhinvali, the main town, calls in question the account given by the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, of how the war started. His report demonstrates both why BBC foreign correspondents are irreplaceable and perhaps why they are an endangered species.
South Ossetia, before August, had a population of around 120,000; the majority were ethnic Ossetians, many with Russian passports, but there was a substantial minority of ethnic Georgians. Tskhinvali is just inside the border with the rest of Georgia. The only armed force in South Ossetia, apart from the Russian peacekeepers, was a gendarmerie of around 200 men, armed with rifles. On the evening of 7.August, people in Tskhinvali were watching TV in their homes when the Georgian Army, which had entered South Ossetia with tanks and artillery, began shelling the town, killing about forty people and destroying a number of houses and the Parliament building. The population fled. Russian forces arrived in the night of 9/10 August. When the population returned, young Ossetian men set fire to houses owned by Georgians, forcing them to flee over the border. (During the war in the 1990s, South Ossetians in Georgian villages were forced out, and their houses destroyed. After that, Georgians and Ossetians were socially segregated but continued to trade with each other. The attack by Georgia, like Nato’s Kosovo War, destroyed any hope of peaceful ethnic co-existence).
Georgian spokesmen claimed that the Russian Army and Air Force began the war and that Russian forces had been moving into South Ossetia for several days before 7. August. One would have thought that the USA, from its world-wide surveillance, would have been informed of military movements in the area but US spokesmen said that they had no intelligence. However, the US Defense Secretary was sceptical of the Georgian claims about Russian troop movements. It is also quite likely that President Saakashvili (like Saddam Hussein before the invasion of Kuwait!) would have consulted the US Administration; the comments of some State Department officials that the USA ‘advised caution’ to Georgia may mean that he did.
The Foreign Secretary said in the programme that the war started when ‘Ossetian fighters attacked Georgia’ and that the Georgian action was ‘tit for tat’. This raises several questions. The term ‘fighters’ implies a para-military force. Why should such a force have been formed to attack Georgia when South Ossetia had enjoyed peaceful de facto independence for fifteen years? What did the fighters attack Georgia with? What did they attack in Georgia? How could such an attack have triggered an immediate advance by Georgian tanks and artillery, which would have taken days, if not weeks, to prepare, and would have required a political decision at the highest level? Tim Whewel did not ask the Foreign Secretary these questions. He did, however, pose the question whether Britain’s perceived strategic interests had led the Government to accept uncritically the Georgian version of events. He also concluded that nothing had been learned from the war.
The Three Trillion Dollar War
(November 2008). General Loquai argues, with reference to the Kosovo war, that war is not only the cruelest but also the most expensive way of settling disputes (European Security---, p.163). However, governments thinking of embarking on aggressive wars always underestimate the cost to their nation and over-estimate the expected benefits, as well as ignoring the usually disastrous consequences for the country attacked (op.cit. pp.188/9, Chap.8). Two American economists have made a meticulous study of the costs to the USA of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Joseph. F .Stiglitz & Linda J. Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War, Norton, 2008).
‘Given the human suffering the war in Iraq has caused, it may seem callous to even think about the financial cost. Dry numbers will not capture the pain of those killed and maimed and scarred for life. But we believe that understanding the cost of war is essential’.
Before the war, the Congressional Budget Office put the cost of the invasion at $6-13 million. The Secretary of State for Defense put it at $200 m. but believed that this would be more than covered by the benefits of controlling Iraq’s oil. The Head of the Agency for International Development put the cost of reconstruction at $1.7 billion and said that the war would be ‘good for business’.
Stiglitz and Bilmes lump the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan together, because the Administration’s figures do not allow a separation. They state that the Administration’s accounting methods are opaque and misleading, and that a private firm using them would be prosecuted for deceptive practices. They use information from various sources to estimate the budgetary cost to the American taxpayer over forty years, the social costs of death and disability going beyond budgetary costs, and wider macro-economic costs. They reach the following totals – in 2007.
| Cost in billions of $ | Best Case | Realistic/Moderate |
| Budgetary costs | 1,721 | 2,680 |
| Social costs | 295 | 415 |
| Macro-economic costs | 263 | 1,900 |
| TOTAL | 2,279 | 4,995 |
Excluding the more imponderable macro-economic costs, the total is $3,095 bn. for the ‘realistic’ and $2,016 bn. for the ‘best case’ scenario. These figures exclude unquantifiable costs, such as the stimulus to anti-American feeling and terrorism. The authors mention that the USA holds 26,000 ‘combatants’ in long-term detention outside the USA and Iraq. (Many have been tortured, and Britain has played a key role in their ‘rendition’)
The ‘best case’ is thus roughly $2 trillion; the ‘realistic’ is $3 trillion plus $2 trillion macro-economic costs. (The figure of $3 trillion is similar to the value of assets recently destroyed by US and British banks and, according to some estimates, less than the annual cost to the world of deforestation.) It makes this war the most expensive that the USA has fought, apart from WW2, which cost around $5 trillion (in 2007 dollars).
The authors point out that the $18 bn. voted by Congress for the reconstruction of Iraq was in fact spent on military purposes and that US administration was marked by massive corruption. Moreover, the privatisation of the military – a policy also being adopted by Britain – not only undermines democracy and leads to atrocities but is also extraordinarily expensive. The authors argue that the USA can afford $3 trillion but that the money could have been better spent.
The authors discuss the devastating human cost to the Iraqis but sensibly do not try to quantify it. Iraq has been destroyed, and it is hard to see how it can be rebuilt.
There is a short section on Britain. The authors point out that the British role was crucial in achieving popular American political support for the war. Tony Blair was considered to represent ‘sensible world opinion’. Gordon Brown, as Chancellor (who shared with the rest of the Cabinet the responsibility for supporting the plan to invade Iraq, and for dispatching British troops), set aside £1 bn. for the cost of the war. The authors estimate the budgetary costs so far at £18 bn. plus £2 bn. social costs. (The callous treatment of soldiers broken in the wars has been similar to that in the USA, and the damage to the British Army perhaps even greater than that to the US Army).
Parliament, through its Select Committees, did not undertake any examination of how Ministers came to make demonstrably false statements to Parliament before the invasion, of the British role in the occupation (when the Army had an impossible task and was humiliated) or of the rationale and progress of the war in Afghanistan. On Armistice Day, the Defence Secretary, John Hutton, likened that the threat to the world from the Afghan insurgents to that posed by Imperial Germany in 1914 and the Nazis in 1939; many British officers in Afghanistan have come to a different assessment. Although this war, like the Iraq War, is a Nato war, it has become Britain’s Fourth Afghan War. (The main US role is now air attacks on villages, often by unmanned aircraft. There have been repeated bombings of wedding parties, killing women and children and alienating the population). The Mother of Parliaments appears to have abdicated any serious role in foreign policy.
Stiglitz and Bilmes make several recommendations for giving Congress better information on the cost of US wars. Although desirable, this would do little in the absence of political will. Congress failed to ensure that the money it voted for the reconstruction of Iraq was used for this purpose, or to investigate the extraordinary blunders, massive corruption, systematic torture and the ruthless flattening of cities that marked American rule, because Republican members did not want to do so.
‘The Russian Threat’
(November 2008). President Medvedev of Russia has outlined plans for a security pact to ban the use of force in Europe and decrease the increasing tensions between Moscow and Nato. He promised that Russian troops would leave ‘security zones’ in the undisputed areas of Georgian territory. EU observers in Georgia confirmed that Russian forces had dismantled 17 checkpoints, one signals post and one military base in zones adjacent to the ‘breakaway regions’. ‘We are absolutely not interested in confrontation’ Medvedev said, outlining a new European security treaty that he proposed earlier in the year. The new pact would include a ‘clear affirmation of the use of force – or of the threat of force – in international relations’ and would be based on the territorial integrity of independent nations. It would also prevent ‘the development of military alliances to harm the security of other members of the treaty’.
This plea for a rapprochement fell on deaf ears in the USA and Europe. The plans for Georgia and Ukraine to join Nato are on track. The incorporation of these, respectively, irresponsible and divided countries will mean a commitment to defend them if ‘attacked’ and to help Georgia recapture the ‘breakaway regions’. Saakashvili has promised to do so, and the Ossetians expect Georgia to devise a pretext for a third war. Ukraine’s membership will presumably cut off Russia’s access to the Black Sea. An anti-missile shield (which US strategists have never pretended is purely defensive or aimed at Iran) and nuclear missiles aimed at Russia have been installed in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia has sought to neutralize this threat by moving nuclear missiles to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic, and is following the lead of the USA and Britain in developing new nuclear weapons. We are back with Able Archer. The ‘best case’ scenario for the foreseeable future – assuming that US strategy remains essentially unchanged and that Europe continues to accept it unquestioningly - is an unnecessary new Cold War and nuclear arms race, the inflaming of nationalist sentiment in Russia, more support for savage attacks on minority groups in countries where the Government is ‘friendly’ to the USA and for minority insurrection where it is not, more terrorist attacks, and a heavy burden of military expenditure in all countries. How have we reached this sorry pass so soon after the collapse of the Soviet bloc held out hopes of a more peaceful world?
The new Cold War had its origins in the early 1990s when the Clinton Administration decided to abandon arms control agreements and the principles of the UN Charter and OCSE, and to enlarge Nato up to Russia’s borders. That this would lead to conflict with Russia was not a concern, given the USA’s overwhelming military superiority. In 1999, the Clinton Administration was quite prepared to start a shooting war with Russia, in order to break the agreement to include Russian troops in the peacekeeping force in Kosovo. War was prevented only by an extraordinary act of insubordination by a British general; see European Security --, p.160.
The US strategy was clearly expounded by Brzezinski in The Grand Chessboard. In his words, it was to expand the American Empire, first through the Balkans and then through the ‘Asiatic Balkans’ – the huge unstable area stretching around Russia’s Southern flank from the Caucusus through the Levant, Iraq and Iran to Afghanistan. Nato would be the main instrument. Nato membership means putting national armed forces under US command. This was agreed to by Britain in 1948 because of a false assessment of the Soviet threat and its mistrust of France and Germany but Nato was originally defensive; it was given an aggressive, interventionist remit. The methods used would be a combination of cultural and economic imperialism, bribery of elites, guarantees of military support against external attacks or insurrection and, if necessary, war. (The fourth Nato war produced the client state of Kosovo and the largest US air base outside the USA). President Bush continued this strategy but tilted the balance towards war in a way that Brzezinski has criticised (‘Turbulence in the Global Balkans’, The Spokesman, 99 2008).
Writers like Brzezinski and the more hawkish Bobbitt, Kagan and Thomas Friedman - heirs to a tradition stretching back to Alexander Hamilton – have justified this strategy in terms of Realpolitik but it has been sold to the public (in the USA and in its vassals, as Brzezinski puts it) in terms of countering ‘threats’, ‘defending liberty’ and ‘God bless America!’. Before the Kosovo and Iraq wars, government-sponsored media operations in the USA and Britain successfully portrayed Milosevic and Saddam Hussein as Hitlers who could be stopped only by war. (In Germany, during the Kosovo war, there was an appeal to rather different history; a WW1 song ‘Serbia must die’ was revived). There are signs that a similar campaign about Russia has begun. Writers close to the British Government portray Russia as irrationally aggressive state which, as its completely unjustified attack on Georgia shows, plans to dominate, or at least ‘Finlandise’, all Europe. This is an even grosser exaggeration than that of the military ‘threats’ from the Soviet Union and Vietnam during the Cold War, when there was at least an ideological conflict and when the Soviet Army controlled half of Europe. In Britain, ‘defence’ policy since the run-up to the Kosovo air war has been justified with lies, misleading statements and Newspeak (‘We were not at war with Serbia’) on an unprecedented scale. Politicians brought up in the advertising/PR methods which now dominate politics seem incapable of understanding the difference between what is true and what is expedient, while the scope for rational and independent thought - in political parties, the Foreign Service, the media, the Universities - has been narrowed; see Peter Oborne, The Rise of Political Lying and The Triumph of the Political Class.
Political lying has become sophisticated and ingenious. The CIA has long told its political masters what they wanted to hear, so that they can say ‘The experts have told me ---‘. In Britain, the Joint Intelligence Committee has followed suit, even to the extent of endorsing known CIA forgeries. The forgery reported in European Security, fn.252 has since been confirmed by investigative journalists. In future, reports of skullduggery, torture, rendition etc. will be suppressed if a proposal by the Intelligence and Security Committee is implemented – that the Government be given the power to censor any report which ‘endangers national security’. Such a law, or the secret inquests which the Government would like to introduce, would have prevented the revelations at the Menezes inquest. The ISC, which is supposed to supervise the ‘secret state’, has produced a report that is beyond satire; op.cit. p.273. Who will guard the guardians?
What are the driving forces behind the ‘culture of lies’ – in the words of the ‘Yugoslav’ writer Dubravska Ugresic? One of the reasons for the ‘nightmarish growth of nuclear arsenals’ was pin-pointed in 1986 by George F. Kennan - the Cassandra of US foreign policy from the formation of Nato to the invasion of Iraq. The dominant and uncontrolled ‘military-industrial complex’ needed foreign threats.
‘Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unaltered, until some new adversary could be invented’.
Gulf War
Thanks to the research for a ‘docudrama’ (The House of Saddam, BBC2, August 2008) we now know that the US Administration
not only failed to warn Saddam against invading Kuwait, but actually gave him the green light. Saddam was worried that
Kuwait’s expansion of oil production was driving down prices and threatening the Iraqi economy. He gave clear signals that
he was considering invasion. Shortly before the invasion, the US Ambassador, Ms April Galspie, told him,’We do not have
a view on Arab-Arab’ disputes’. (Saddam taped the interview). He took this as an assurance that the US would not react to
an invasion of Kuwait, which it clearly was, although Ms Galspie has denied any such meaning.
Obama
After he won the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama for the first time made some substantive statements on foreign policy.
It is now clear that, under his Presidency, unconditional support for Israel’s ‘security’ policies would continue; US troops
would remain in Iraq, although normally in bases; the war in Afghanistan would be intensified, without any informed political
strategy; the long-running undeclared wars on Cuba and Iran would continue. Obama’s foreign policy advisor is Madelaine (‘What’s
the point of this wonderful military machine if you don’t use it?’) Albright. The outcome of the Presidential election seems
unlikely to lead to any significant changes in US foreign policy.
Georgia
In August 2008, the dangers of extending Nato up to the Russian border, of which George Kennan warned in the 1990s (see European
Security---, p.51ff) became apparent. The Georgian President Saakashvili started a war to conquer the ‘breakaway’ provinces of
South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russian forces intervened and drove back the Georgian forces, bombing military and civilian targets
in Georgia. As in Kosovo, the war had disastrous outcomes for the regional minorities, mainly Georgians. The ‘Russian aggression’
was denounced by the USA and the EU, which demanded immediate withdrawal, with the threat of ‘serious consequences’. (Proposals
have been made to remove Russia from international bodies). The British Prime Minister described the Russian intervention as
‘a completely unjustified violation of Georgia’s territorial integrity’, a view endorsed by the Conservatives and the Liberal
Democrats. The media coverage created the impression that the war had been started by Russia. It appears to have been as successful
as the media campaign which convinced most Americans that Saddam was behind 9/11.
Although the Russian use of force was excessive and clearly had wider aims in Georgia, it was President Saakashvili who started a
war that was completely unjustified. Georgia, with its present borders, never had the conventional requirement for diplomatic
recognition, namely that it controlled all its territory - a sound convention which the EU foolishly ignored in Bosnia. Before
1990, ‘Georgia’ was merely an administrative region for the Communist Party (whose only virtue was that it was multi-racial). The
border was drawn by Stalin, cutting through the Ossetian region. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Ossetians and Abkhazians, who
were determined not to be ruled Georgians, set up autonomous governments. When Georgian forces attacked, they fought back and - with
Russian help - gained de facto independence, monitored by Russian forces. This arrangement remained reasonably peaceful and satisfactory
for eighteen years. South Ossetia/Abkhazia was never part of Georgia in the way that Kosovo was part of Yugoslavia.
Saakashvili sought to end the independence of South Ossetia/Abkhazia with a new war. The USA, from its ’sigint’ (signals
intelligence), would almost certainly have known about the planned attack in advance, even if Saakashvili did not inform the USA
and receive the green light, as he may well have done. A well-informed schoolboy could have told the US Administration what the
Russian response would be. If Britain had a border with Kosovo and a large Kosovan population, and Serbia sought to reconquer Kosovo,
it would have done the same; indeed, it did the same without this justification! If the US Administration really was surprised by the
Russian response, its ’humint’ (human intelligence) is as abysmal as it was throughout the Cold War. And the assertions by the British
Foreign Secretary that the enlargement of Nato (with its US air bases, nuclear missiles and anti-missile shield) does not represent
an American zone of influence and a threat to Russia is breathtakingly disingenuous.
The starting point for a rational European policy would be to recognise the legitimate fears of some of Russia’s neighbours as well
as Russia’s legitimate security concerns. (The planned incorporation of Ukraine into Nato would be a greater threat to Russia than
Soviet missiles in Cuba were to the USA). It would also recognise that the collapse of Communist rule has produced regional
minority/majority problems which cannot be dismissed by simplistic slogans. Such a policy would also be ready to criticise the
authoritarian and kleptocratic elements in the regime in Russia - and in most countries of the world, including some in the EU - while
also considering the policies best calculated to encourage democratic and liberal forces.
In both Kosovo and South Ossetia/Abkhazia, the best solution would have been an internationally enforced ceasefire and autonomy,
with guarantees for the regional minorities. This solution - which the American diplomat Christopher Hill was trying to negotiate
for Kosovo - was rejected by the US Administration, which encouraged the Kosovo Liberation Army to go on fighting for independence.
After Serbia‘s capitulation, the USA was prepared to fire on Russian troops and shoot down Russian planes to prevent the agreed
participation of Russian troops in the peacekeeping force K-For. The prize of an ‘aircraft carrier’ (Camp Bondsteel) in the Balkans,
and now of an oil-strategic Georgia in Nato, has overridden all other considerations
If Russian forces withdrew from South Ossetia/Abkhazia, without an effective international system for guaranteeing the independence
of these regions, the Georgian forces would, perhaps after a decent interval, march back in again. Saakashvili has said that he will
‘never accept the sacrifice of a square kilometre of Georgian territory’.
However, the ‘Russian aggression’ has provided a heaven-sent opportunity to make a media case for bringing Georgia and Ukraine
into Nato and generally ‘being tough with the Russians‘. The ‘indignant morality’ which was used to justify a ’coercive’ air war
on Yugoslavia, to protect the majority ethnic group in Kosovo (and drive out the minority groups) is now being used to denounce
a war to protect the majority ethnic groups in South Ossetia/Abkhazia. Politicians and journalists have shown a remarkable
facility to switch their moral fervour from a people’s ‘right to secede’ to ‘the inviolability of territorial integrity‘.
European leaders have once again failed to adopt a realistic foreign/military policy and have abdicated responsibility for matters
of war and peace in favour of the Americans. We are now in 1914. Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia/Abkhazia was a miscalculation
similar to Austria’s invasion of Serbia.To bring Georgia into Nato while recognising the borders it claims would mean an commitment
to support the use of armed force to impose Georgian rule on peoples who have successfully resisted it, and a war with Russia to
bring this about.
The new Cold War began, not in August 2008 but in the early 1990s, when President Clinton decided to extend Nato up to Russia’s
border and break international arms control treaties by installing a missile shield in Eastern Europe. Cold War II has already meant,
throughout Europe, a huge diversion of resources into military uses which are badly needed to deal with social problems and the
imminent threat of climatic disaster., not to mention the non-negligible danger of a nuclear war by miscalculation - as nearly
happened on at least two occasions.
The few people in Britain who have questioned the Western response to the conflict in Georgia (or been able to make their views
known) have been subject to the same epithets as those who criticised the Vietnam, Kosovo and Iraq wars (’anti-American’,
’fellow-travellers of dictators’, ‘Lefties’ etc). Neal Ascherson, one of most knowledgeable British journalists on Eastern Europe,
has written.
‘It’s time the West stopped talking about ‘Georgian territorial integrity’ and about ‘breakaway regions of Georgia’ as though their
‘illegal secession’ can somehow be reversed. It cannot. That useless dream is dead. The question now is quite different. It is how
their independence can be recognised and made real. Only in that way can the outside world make it harder for Russia to use them as
pawns in the game of crippling Georgian freedom.
It may not be possible to rescue South Ossetia, tiny and without resources, from becoming a Russian protectorate or even part of the
Russian Federation - and most of its people seem to want that. But Abkhazia, with its once-flourishing holiday coast and rich agriculture,
can be a perfectly viable Black Sea state. The European Union has a Black Sea neighbourhood programme. It’s time for the EU to stop
pretending that Abkhazia does not exist, to integrate it into the programme and to give it vigorous help.
And Georgia, that marvellous little nation that contains some of the world’s most talented people, and some of its worst politicians,
must change. It is not Georgia which has been defeated, but a particular Georgian policy which has again and again played into Russian
hands.
We now know that Russia’s revival as a big power is under way. Outside competition for influence over the ex-Soviet nations is going
to be fiercely resisted. After Georgia come Ukraine, where attempts to join Nato could end by splitting the nation and, with the Russian
fleet still based in Crimea, bring about a terrifying confrontation.
Nato, with the Americans, can protect its own members against blackmail by standing firm. But the brutal truth is that if Nato is
to survive, it must not sign up nations for which at heart it is not prepared to figh. The best way to prevent war is not windy
condemnation but clear, credible, rules of engagement. Bluffing can be fatal.’ (The Observer, 18.08.08).
Iraq.
In February 2007, the USA and Britain put strong pressure on the Iraq Government - which was in no position
to refuse - to pass a law allowing the country's oil reserves to be sold off to multinational firms. (The
Observer, Feb 25 2007).
The US Congress had authorised a former Secretary of State to make a study of the situation in Iraq and
the options for US policy. His report ( The Iraq Study Group Report; The Way Forward, James A Baker et
al, Vintage, 2007) made proposals for a phased withdrawal and dialogue with Iran, but warned that sending
more US troops could worsen the security problem by strengthening the view that the US presence was intended
to be a long-term occupation. These proposals were rejected by the Administration and the Democrats. The
Administration, with Democrat support, sent more troops to Iraq and stated that it intended to remain there
because of the importance of the Gulf area to the USA.
The most comprehensive and informed account of the events before and after the invasion is given in Ali A.Allawi,
The Occupation of Iraq; Winning the War, Losing the Peace (Yale UP, 2007). The author was an Opposition leader
who became Minister of Defence and Finance. In judicious and understated prose, he gives a daming assessment
of US/British policy. His only lacuna is to describe the shooting-down of the Iranian Airbus as 'unexplained'.
The USA and Britain are making making increased use of mercenaries, whose actions are virtually unaccountable.
In Iraq, British troops are being replaced by mercenaries (or, since this term is disliked, private security forces).
There is also evidence that British soldiers who have been physically or mentally disabled in Iraq and Afghanistan
have been have been abandonned without care or support.
Bosnia
In February 2007, the World Court ruled that Serbia had not committed genocide during the Bosnian War, although
it criticised Serbia for not stopping the Srebrenica massacre, which it categorised as genocide.
Tiri (www.tiri.org)
Studies carried out for Tiri, an NGO committed to integrity in public affairs, conclude that international aid
to countries following interventionist or civil war - including Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and
Lebanon - has often been wasted, as it is linked to the interests of the donors rather than the recipients, or
directed to favoured groups. The need for the rule of law, a non-corrupt civil service, independent media, an effective
legislature and an accountable executive has generally been ignored. In Bosnia, Lord Ashdown's 'enlightened despotism'
did nothing to develop representative home-grown institutions. Sierra Leone still suffers from the corrupt autocratic
government, politicised civil service and judiciary, and a muzzled press which ruined the country.
H.M.The Queen.
In May 2007, the Queen effectively told an American audience that she was the Head not of a sovereign state but of a
US vassal. With apparent reference to the Iraq war, she said that Britain should always act in concert with the USA.
The Queen's self-abasement merely set the royal seal on a political commonplace. David Cameron, and others, have said
that, as the USA had decided to invade Iraq, Britain was right to join in. The alternative view, put by ex-President
Carter, that 'Blair's -- almost undeviating support for the ill-advised policies of President Bush on Iraq has been a
major tragedy for the world' has found little support among British politicians or journalists. (And the Brown government
does not represent any change of substance in British policy).
France.
Nicolas Sarkozy's victory on 6 May -- marks a turning point in the history of the fifth republic. -- The programme presented
by Sarkozy, and the forces he sought to gather around him, represent a major change of direction, making him the first
French President to be at once authoritatarian, neo-liberal, pro-American and pro-Israeli'. (Le Monde Diplomatique, May 2007.
Sarkozy's ministry includes at least one strong supporter of 'humanitarian intervention' like the Iraq war. For the next seven
years, one can expect France to be almost as keen as Britain to support America's and Israel's wars.
'1983 The Brink of Catastrophe'.
(see Chap.1).The story of how Europe narrowly escaped an accidental nuclear war was told in a Channel 4 programme on 4
January 2008. The head of the KGB believed that the USA was using an exercise, Able Archer, as a cloak for an attack on the
Soviet Union, as Germany had done with Operation Barbarossa. The programme clearly brought out three things. (a) The insanity
of the Nato war game, which assumed a Soviet desire to overrun Western Europe which no Soviet leader had ever had, and ended
after Nato had created 24 Hiroshimas in East Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union, ignoring Soviet retaliation. (b) The
military on both sides misinterpreted the plentiful 'sigint' because of a complete misunderstanding of the other side's
psychology. The only people who told the truth were two honest spies, Gordievsky and 'Topaz', who told the Kremlin that
there were no Nato preparations for immediate war. (c) The dangers of automatic devices. Col.Stanislav Petrov, who was in
charge of the Soviet early warning system, disclosed that (at a time when Soviet missiles were on highest alert, ready to
be fired once they received the codes), the warning sounded for an imminent missile attack. A satellite had reported the
launch of five nuclear missiles from the USA. Petrov, relying on his training that a US first strike would involve hundreds
of missiles, did not believe it, and overruled the system. He was soon proved right; the 'missiles' were clouds, but he was
dismissed. Events in recent years suggest that nothing has been learned from 1983.
Kosovo.
In 2007 the political wing of the KLA (Democratic Party of Kosova), led by Hashim Thaci (see Chap.6), won an election. In
December 2007, UN-sponsored talks between the Kosovars and the Kosovan Serbs broke down, and it was expected that Thaci, as
Prime Minister, would unilaterally declare Kosova's independence in January 2008, with at least tacit US support. The EU will
give diplomatic recognition to Kosova and it is likely that, in one way or another, it will drive out the 100,000 remaining
Kosovan Serbs. The success of the Kosovan Albanians, with Nato help, in obtaining secession and carrying out 'ethnic cleansing'
is likely to give encouragement to other secessionist movements in Eastern Europe.
The Triumph of the Political Class. (May 2009)
How could the invasion of Iraq, which was unpopular in Britain, and which people with any knowledge of Iraq knew
would be disastrous, be propagated by the Government using demonstrable lies, and supported by both main political
parties and virtually the entire British press? Why are official statements so often untrue, misleading, meaningless
or pure Newspeak (‘We were not at war with Serbia’. ’We will leave Iraq a better place’)? Why are British governments
becoming more oppressive, incompetent and corrupt? Why are the British police, once the citizen’s friend and helper,
increasingly using ‘police state’ methods to suppress all public dissent? Why is the Mother of Parliaments more often
the object of ridicule than of the respect and attention it once received?
The answer – or a large part of it – is provided by Peter Oborne in The Triumph of the Political Class
(2007). Together with Oborne’s earlier The Rise of Political Lying, and Anthony Sampson’s Who Runs this
Place? (2004), this book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to know how, in the twenty-first century, the British
constitution actually works – as distinct from the traditional account, as taught to applicants for British citizenship.
Oborne writes eloquently and documents his argument with anecdotes which will not endear him to many of his fellow
journalists.
He argues that the ‘British constitution’ – the role of the Cabinet, Parliament, the civil service
etc. – was largely created in the Victorian era, although the judiciary and Parliament originated in the Middle
Ages, and Parliament came into its own in the 17th century. Over the past thirty years, this constitution, which on
the whole worked pretty well, has been under constant attack from ‘modernisers’. It has now been largely
destroyed and replaced by a different, dysfunctional constitution.
Oborne begins by reviewing British politics in the 18th century. The historian Sir Lewis Namier demonstrated that the
previously conventional view that there was a two-party system was a myth. Parties were largely a fabrication; changes of
government were the reshuffling of cliques; MPs, dependent on a few large landowners, were motivated by venality and
self-interest. Public administration was corrupt and incompetent. The only power of ordinary people was through riots.
From the 1850s onwards, there was a moral and constitutional revolution. Although the franchise was still limited, MPs
began to represent grass-roots parties and a range of economic interests and popular movements. Local political parties
had a large active membership (which rose later in the century and in the early 20th century, peaking in the decade after
1945). Local authorities, with considerable autonomy, were set up. A professional police force, under local authority supervision,
and a non-political civil service, chosen by competitive examination, were created. Ministers who proposed new policies were
advised by civil servants with experience of different governments, who would point out pitfalls and effective methods, but
would loyally implement the Minister’s decisions. Conventions were established on Cabinet Government, agreed minute-taking
for committees, and the important role of Parliament. Autonomous Universities and self-governing organisations in law, medicine
and engineering were established. These institutions and conventions both ensured competent government and protected individuals
from the overbearing power of the state.
This ‘unwritten constitution’ – unlike the American, which started from the same tradition but developed
differently – depended not on a formally independent legislature and a written constitution enforced by a
constitutional court, but on institutions and conventions ensuring the separation of party and state and of the public
and private spheres. The power of the executive was moderated by a non-political civil service, government by the
Cabinet rather than the Prime Minister, respect for the opinion of Parliament, and a free and informed press.
This ‘unwritten constitution’ was underpinned by a moral revolution. In schools, Sunday Schools and youth
movements, virtues such as honesty, truthfulness, loyalty, consideration for others, and ‘playing the game’
were inculcated, often more by example than by pedagogy. There was, of course, hypocrisy and wrong-headedness,
especially in the sexual field, but also an immense change for the better.
In the last thirty years, the constitutional institutions and conventions have been largely destroyed – with notably
little public protest and the collaboration of ‘Petains’ in the civil service, the Universities, the Army and
other institutions. A new, self-seeking, unrepresentative ‘political class’ has emerged which is deeply hostile
to the traditional checks and balances. The organisational underpinning of professional ethics, probity in banking, and
academic freedom in Universities has been removed. Professional civil servants have been replaced by ‘special
advisors’ who tell Ministers what they want to hear. Procedures for examining policies in the Cabinet and Parliament
have lapsed, and policies are propagated by spin doctors, who have become the most important officials. The mass-membership
political parties, which reflected public concerns and from which MPs emerged, have shrunk to insignificance. If aspiring
politicians find favour with the Government, they are found safe seats or are made Ministers in the House of Lords. As
Edward Gibbon wrote of the Emperor Augustus, who emasculated the Roman Senate by nominating its members.
#8216;The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost when the legislative power is nominated by the executive’.
The executive now faces no independent bodies which can scrutinise its actions and warn it of ill-considered moves; Parliament
has less influence than at any time since the reign of James II. One of the outcomes is a ‘culture of incompetence’,
which is only too apparent in both domestic and foreign policy. We now have a top-down, bullying system of Soviet-style
‘targets’ which causes huge inefficiency and, in hospitals, kills people; a serious deterioration in the handling of
taxes and benefits (as anyone who has worked for the last fifteen years in the Citizens Advice Bureau can confirm); the ubiquitous
use of hugely expensive and usually disastrous ‘management consultant’ cronies; egregious blunders in pensions,
financial regulation, taxation and much else.
Foreign policy has become largely a series of knee-jerk reactions by the PM. In the run-up to the Iraq War, the Foreign Office
was not consulted and the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Cabinet never met. The place of the Foreign Office has been taken by
MI6, which has become an agent of government propaganda, even to the extent of using known forgeries (Hallett op.cit. p.240, fn.252).
Alongside the ‘political class’, a new ‘media class’ has emerged, whose forbear was Edward Bernays,
the inventor of ‘public relations’, rather than the great journalists and editors of the past. (Bernays’
greatest success, working for the United Fruit Company, was to induce President Eisenhower to authorise a CIA coup in Nicaragua,
followed by genocide and civil war). The new media class colludes with the political class more often than scrutinising its
actions ‘without fear or favour’. The undermining of the press by electronic media and free newspapers, multi-channel
TV, the growing American ownership of British media, and the abandonment of the teaching of English have all contributed to a
decline in informed criticism and the infantilisation of public debate.
New Labour has replaced rule by Parliament with direct influence on the public through the media. New policies, which were once
announced in Parliament, are made in information to favoured newspapers or ‘exclusive interviews’. Client journalists
are granted preferential access to news. The government has given honours to newspaper proprietors in return for support, and
has been able to veto the appointment of editors who were too independent. It has dealt with critical journalists either by
circulating libellous reports about their private life (as has also happened to MPs and Ministers who were not ‘online’)
or by making persistent complaints to their employers, including the BBC. The BBC itself, Britain’s unique bastion of
integrity, has been betrayed by its Governors and gravely weakened – over a radio report on the ‘dodgy dossier’
that was essentially correct.
‘Journalists became instruments of government. Reporters and government joined a conspiracy against the public to create a
semi-fictitious world whose most striking features were media events and fabricated stories. -- During this period, whose long
apotheosis lasted from 1997 until the disaster of the Iraq war became apparent in 2004 but lasted long after that, political
reporting became almost wholly removed from reality’(p.242).
The collaboration between Ministers and the media changed the nature of government.
‘The Government accepted the embedded media preference for the dramatic over the mundane, the sensational over the
prosaic, sentimentality rather than compassion, and the short-term solution.’ (p.307).
Oborne cites the Observer columnist Andrew Rawnsley as an example of a journalist who, in his handling of the
Government’s case for the Iraq war, ‘crossed the line between an independent journalist and a Number 10
insider’ (p.277). It might be added that, in the run-up to the Kosovo war (see below), Rawnsley divided the war’s
opponents into;
‘the Serb media militia, ‘the apologists for Slobodan Milosevic’, ‘the Not-Our-Problem
Brigade’, the proponents of the ‘specious sovereignty argument’, ‘liberal fretters and worldly-wise
military chaps’ and the ‘Why just Kosovo corps’.
At other times, he has shown great insight, as in how not to respond to the expenses affair (‘A climate of
loathing towards all MPs is bad for demmocracy’, The Observer, 24/5/09).
New Labour techniques were explicitly based on Bill Clinton’s second Presidential campaign, which involved
‘triangulation’ – the blurring of ideas so as to capture ground from the opposition. The science of
psephology has also had a perverse effect on policy-making. It has been discovered that only a small number of people,
who can be located by geographical and social characteristics, are ‘swing’ voters. Policies are therefore
not based on the great issues of the day but on the interests of this small group. The two main parties adopt the same
blurring and targeting techniques and are engaged in ‘cartel politics’ rather than a contest of ideas.
At the same time, the pursuit of success at all costs has licensed lying, deceit and corruption. Honours, political
favours and Ministers‘ ears are effectively for sale. Conflicts of interest for civil servants, and mutual
back-scratching with private firms, are now commonplace. The supposed overriding importance of ‘democracy’
has been used to dismiss the virtues of liberty, tolerance, fairness and legality which developed before universal
suffrage and are more fundamental to a free society.
After 18th century aristocracy and 19th/early 20th century representative democracy, we have now entered a third phase
characterised by a sharp divide between an arrogant and self-seeking ruling class and the mass of the population. There
is some similarity with the first phase, in that the new ruling class uses the resources of the state for personal gain,
but there is the important difference that the aristocracy had a status and an income from sources outside politics.
The new ruling class depends solely on the state, like the Soviet nomenklatura. To ensure its survival, it has to increase
its power by emasculating the power of Parliament, suborning the judiciary, consolidating its hold over the media, widening
the alliance with big business, strengthening the powers of the ‘intelligence services’ and attacking the
freedoms of ordinary citizens.
The more honest members of the political class are quite open about their abandonment of representative democracy. Jack Straw
has called the new system ‘executive democracy’. The rise of the political class is not confined to Britain.
In Italy, a very popular Prime Minister owns most of the TV stations and passes laws exempting himself from legal prosecution
for crimes.
If a criticism can be made of Oborne’s thesis, it is that, in his justified emphasis on the amorality, mendacity and
self-seekingness of the political class (specifically New Labour) and its odious spin-doctors, he underplays the role of
dogmatic ideology. Since 1979, this has meant market fundamentalism (with tokenistic gestures to its failings) and ‘My
USA, right or wrong’. Oborne cites John Major as an old-style, pre-political-class, politician. Yet he devastated the
British railway system because of mindless dogma. There were earlier examples, such as the ‘prices and incomes
policies’ of the Heath and Wilson governments, and the Suez war; the failures of these well-intentioned policies
produced reactions in British politics from which we are still suffering. Similarly, some of the eminent columnists who
preached a crusade against Serbia and Iraq, and denounced its opponents as fools or knaves may - as we knaves or fools
would hold - have been lacking in historical understanding, poorly informed, blinkered and naïve but not hypocritical and
time-serving.
Oborne seems to have some admiration for Mrs Thatcher because she believed in what she did. This is not a virtue in
politicians if their beliefs are misguided. Mrs Thatcher initiated most of the attacks on the British Constitution that
Oborne condemns. And although her economic legacy is in tatters, her economic ideas still dominate British (and EU) politics.
Oborne rightly castigates the hard-sold lies on Iraq but Blair and his Cabinet may well have believed that it was essential
to back the USA (a view shared by David Cameron), and that some departures from the truth were a small price to pay for
this greater good. However, as Oborne brought out well in The Rise of Political Lying, concepts such as truth and professional
integrity, and procedures such as honest debate and proper minute-keeping, have become so sidelined that it hardly makes
sense to ask what politicians really believe, or whether they know that they are not telling the truth.
In his conclusion, Oborne suggests that there may be a reaction against the political class (which may have happened, with
ominous calls for a ‘Cromwell’!) but does not propose a way forward. It is easier to destroy institutions and
conventions than to build them. However, as in other fields, the essential first step is to reach agreement on what has
gone wrong.
The war on terror was a mistake – official! (May 2009)
Sir Michael Howard, the military historian, wrote, shortly after it was announced by General Powell following 9/11, that
the ‘war on terror’ was ‘a terrible and irrevocable error’ (Hallett op.cit. p.236ff). ‘I
can only suggest that it (to eradicate terrorism by bombing) is like trying to eradicate terrorism with a blow-torch’.
He warned of the disastrous effects on the moral prestige of the West of a continuation of the war in Afghanistan. After
eight more years of that war and other devastating ‘wars on terror’ (Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza), the Foreign Secretary,
David Miliband, has admitted that the ‘war on terror’ was a mistake, because terrorism cannot be countered
by war and attacking civil liberties – not to mention, as he does not, ‘contracted out’ torture.
(President Obama, more cosmetically, has instructed his officials not to refer to ‘the war on terror’ or
‘the long war’ but to ‘overseas contingency operations’).
The Foreign Secretary’s rather surprising admission seems to have had no effect whatever on Government policy.
Other Ministers regularly invoke the ‘war on terror’ as a justification for restricting civil liberties and
the rule of law, and for the Afghan war.
The defects of the ‘war on terror’ – and, arguably, of ‘faith schools’ - are illustrated by
the, until recently, unreported civil war in Pakistan (‘Pakistan’s Taliban Generation’, Channel 4, 17
March, 2009). Pakistan’s rulers – who have all basically represented the military or the large landowners –
have spent huge sums of (Pakistan’s and American) money on conventional and nuclear arms but have allowed the
state education system to collapse. Poor people who want their sons to have an education can only send them to the madrasas,
or Islamic schools, which have mushroomed, with virtually unlimited Saudi finance. The schools are free, and sometimes
pay parents an allowance. The boys spend most of their time memorising the Koran – in Arabic! They are taught
a punitive, puritanical, misogynistic, Wahhabist version of Islam; killing infidels (broadly interpreted) will ensure
their entry into Paradise. Rather surprisingly, there are also some madrasas for girls.
In its war with the Taliban, the Pakistan Army, in the words of one injured soldier, is using ‘American methods’,
utterly destroying villages and even a city. The Americans, from Afghanistan, launch attacks by unmanned bombers
(‘drones’) on houses where Taliban leaders are believed to live; as these houses are in villages, the attacks kill
significant numbers of civilians. They have been specifically endorsed by President Obama. (Mr Sadiq Khan, the Minister for
Social Cohesion and first Moslem M.P., has spoken of the ‘anger and pain’ among young Pakistanis caused by these
attacks, and called for Britain to disassociate itself from them. After his earlier criticisms of Sharia courts, his future
in New Labour must be in doubt). A million people – before the latest offensive - have been displaced, and many are
living in tents; this is the largest displacement of population since partition. The thousands of boys whose parents have been
killed by the Pakistan Army or US drones provide highly motivated recruits for the Taliban.
In the Swat Valley, the Pakistan Government agreed a peace deal with the Taliban but the Obama Administration denounced it
as a betrayal. President Zardari has now ordered an offensive, with heavy shelling and bombing, to regain the Taliban-controlled
areas. The fighting has reportedly caused a million people to flee. The way the regime in Pakistan is relying on massive
firepower to deal with guerillas, while handing over its youth to the madrasas, seems likely to ensure a humanitarian catastrophe
and a protracted war.
In Afghanistan, the original objectives of the American ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ were to capture bin Laden and
overthrow the Taliban regime that had given him shelter. Now the official Nato objective is ‘to assist the Afghan Government
in exercising and extending the its authority across the country, paving the way for reconstruction and effective
governance’ (www;nato.int. 27 March 2009).
The reality is that two armies equipped with armoured vehicles, artillery, laser and satellite technology, helicopters and
warplanes have been hard pressed by small bands of ragged men armed with rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.
The Nato forces cannot enter large areas of the country and rely heavily on air strikes. (In 2008, five hundred civilians
were killed by air strikes, according to UN observers and the strike coinciding with the meeting of the three Presidents
in Washington reportedly killed over a hundred civilians). According to polls (presumably of men in and around Kabul),
some 40 per cent of the population want the Nato troops to leave. The writ of the Kabul Government does not extend to much
of the country; and it is widely regarded as corrupt, incompetent, and foreign-controlled. The employment and security
situation for ordinary people in Kabul is worse than it has ever been and many families are forced to beg. The police are
corrupt and even involved in crime. The Nato forces seem to have lost the ‘battle for hearts and minds’ –
if they ever fought it.
The former SAS commander in Afghanistan has described the British operation as ‘worthless’, and likened the situation
to the early stage of the Vietnam war (www:liveleak.com). His describes British forces holed up in camps, making occasional
pointless forays. A former British commander expected the war to last thirty years.
This is the fourth Anglo-Afghan war. In the 19th century, Britain fought two wars to eliminate Russian influence and install
rulers who, as one treaty put it, would ‘conduct relations with other states in accordance with the wishes and advice
of H.M. Government’. The technically superior British Army suffered heavy losses because of the reckless bravery of the
Afghans, and was unable to occupy the whole country. However, Britain generally succeeded in controlling Afghan foreign
policy – in so far as a central foreign policy existed. After a third war, in 1919, Britain conceded Afghan independence.
British Governments have given various objectives for the war, including the eradication of opium poppy production (which has in
fact soared), establishing freedom and democracy, and supervising reconstruction (which has been minimal). Some columnists have
justified the war as a means of ending the oppression of women (which is only slightly less in the areas controlled by the Kabul
Government than in the Taliban areas). The question whether this profound social change can be brought about by outside armed
force is not asked, and the history of interventionist wars, which nearly always have unintended and unfortunate consequences,
is ignored (op.cit. chaps.7,8). The invasion of Iraq has had disastrous consequences for women.
The ‘right to protect’ has been advocated, rather selectively, by Tony Blair and leading columnists in strains of
moral indignation, without regard to the long debate on military intervention. In discussing the Balkans, George Kennan, the
Cassandra of US foreign policy, wrote;
’In the long run, no region can solve any other region’s problems. The best the outsider can do is to give occasional
supplementary help in the pinches’ (op.cit. p.186).
This hardly describes an eight-year-old-war waged against indigenous rebels by foreign armies.
In his classic essay on interventionist war, J.S.Mill wrote; ’A government which needs foreign support to enforce
obedience from its citizens is one which ought not to exist’. He rejects intervention to overthrow a tyrannical
‘native’ government on the grounds that, if the citizens of a country do not have a sufficient love of liberty to
deal with the matter themselves, foreign intervention will not do any good in the long run. Subsequent experience has
re-enforced his view.
On the other hand, Mill believed that intervention may be justified in the case of a protracted civil war when,
‘there is no prospect of a speedy issue; or if there is, the victorious side cannot hope to keep down the vanquished but
by severities repugnant to humanity, and injurious to the permanent welfare of the country’.
In this case, neighbouring countries ‘are warranted in demanding that the contest shall cease, and a reconciliation take
place on equitable terms of compromise’ (op.cit. pp.190-1). Mill’s description of ‘the victorious side’
and ‘the vanquished’ is tragically appropriate today in Israel\Palestine. Given the Palestinians’ weakness
and Israel’s dependence on the USA, a tolerably equitable settlement could probably be imposed, if there were the political
will. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, it would be more difficult but the USA rejects any kind of deal with the rebels.
It should be added that Mill was referring to European states. For ‘barbarous nations’ in Asia and Africa, he supported
colonial rule; ’since it is likely to be for their benefit that they should be conquered and held in subjection’.
This ‘liberal imperialism’ has its advocates today but the USA is not inclined to maintain overt and prolonged imperial
rule; economic/cultural imperialism and the cultivation of vassal states, as advocated by Brzezinski, is far more acceptable
and cost-effective.
The current British Defence Secretary says that the sole objective of the Afghan war is to eliminate terrorist threats to the
UK (‘Dispatches; Mission Impossible?’ Channel 4, 6 April 2009). Again, the question whether bombing is more likely
to eradicate terrorism or to encourage young Afghans or Pakistanis to hit back at Britain is not asked. The House of Commons,
through its Select Committees, has made no attempt to find out what is actually happening in Afghanistan, and whether the Nato
strategy is consistent and realistic. In response to criticisms of the disappointing outcome of six years fighting by the British
Army, the Chief of the General Staff, General Dannatt, has said that the strategy was right but under-resourced.
In Washington, some commentators believed that the Obama Administration would mark a change from the Clinton/Bush policy of
applying crude military solutions to complex problems, and would seek to distinguish between the al Qaeda hardliners who want
to attack the USA and its allies in their homelands and those insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan whose main concern is to
end foreign control or support their tribe against the governments in Kabul and Islamabad. However, President Obama has so far
simply sent more troops, including British troops, and intensified the war – as he said he would.
President Obama has announced plans (opposed by Congress!) to close the CIA detention/torture camp at Guantanamo Bay, but
has not so far said that the USA will abide by the Geneva Convention, close similar camps in Afghanistan and elsewhere, or
negotiate a status of forces agreement regulating the presence and conduct of US forces in Afghanistan. He has refused to
obey a court order to publish pictures of US troops torturing prisoners, and has revived the secret military trials of Guantanamo
Bay prisoners, outside American or international law. He has asked Congress for a large supplementary vote for war expenditure,
and for a change in procedure which, in future, will avoid a separate vote for war expenditure. The coming year will at least
test Gen. Dannatt’s hypothesis that the only thing wrong with the war strategy has been insufficient military resources.
Sharia Law in Britain (May 2009)
When, in 2008, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that ‘it was inevitable’ that parts of Sharia law would be
incorporated into British law, many people, including the Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaders, opposed such a move.
What they – unlike, probably, the Archbishop - did not know was that the process had already begun.
Sharia courts in Britain have for some years (and Jewish courts for centuries) have decided divorce and family disputes between
members of their faith, but their judgements could not be enforced in the County and Crown Courts. Sharia courts have also,
on at least one occasion, dealt with physical assaults, awarding compensation to the victim’s family. In 2008, Mr Sadiq
Khan, the Government ‘Minister for Social Cohesion’ said that he was ‘very concerned’ about the growing
role of Sharia courts, which he considered divisive.
In August 2007, Sharia courts started making their judgements ‘under the Arbitration Act’. The 1996 Arbitration Act
facilitated the use of arbitration, rather than expensive litigation, in civil disputes – commercial, family or financial.
Section 1a gave the object of the Act as ‘the fair resolution of disputes by an impartial tribunal without unnecessary delay
or expense’. However, once the parties have agreed to arbitration under the Act, the arbitrator’s decision can be
enforced by the courts, just like a court judgement. Section 46(i) states that ‘The arbitration tribunal shall decide the
dispute in accordance with the law chosen by the parties’. The subsequent reference to ‘the choice of the law of a
country’ and to provisions on ‘conflict of laws’ makes it clear that this section was intended to cover the
case of disputes between parties in different countries, with different national legal systems.
The Sharia courts decided to claim that their decisions were being made under the 1996 Act so that they would be given the
force of English (and Scots) law. This was a gross misuse of the Act’s intentions. The Government should have stated
clearly that, although citizens were free to accept judgements by Sharia or Jewish (or Christian) courts on divorce settlements
or family disputes, such judgements did not count as ‘arbitration’ for the purposes of the Act, and so were not
legally enforcable; an appropriate qualification could have been added to the Act, if necessary. The Government made no such
announcement. On the contrary, a junior Minister announced quietly in February 2009 that the courts would ‘rubber
stamp’ judgements under Sharia law. This statement was greeted with a deafening silence by the Conservatives, the Liberal
Democrats and the broadsheet press. The Lord Chief Justice issued a curiously contradictory statement, stating that there was
no place for Sharia courts in the British judicial system but endorsing the Government’s stance.
Previously, in a divorce under Sharia law, if one party, usually the woman, changed their mind – or had been pressured
into accepting the divorce settlement – the other party could not enforce the settlement in the County Courts; he
can now. Government spokespersons have said that British law remains paramount and that it is inconceivable that British
courts would endorse decisions contrary to English law. This is disingenuous; the courts do not have the resources to examine
judgements of the Sharia courts in detail (as ‘rubber-stamping’ indicated), and Sharia law is fundamentally
incompatible with English (and Scots) law, both because of its acceptance of the lower status of women and because it is
considered to be God’s law, which can never be changed – although there has been some case-law on new issues.
(The same is basically true of Jewish law, although there has been more revisionism in Jewish courts in Britain).
Like the Jewish prophets, Mohammed laid down detailed rules for life. For Moslems - or at least for the adherents of the
literalist Islam - his spoken words, written down by literate followers, are the words of God, valid for all time. By
contrast, English law, from its medieval origins, has been man-made law – originally the King’s law, and then
Parliament’s – which can be modified in response to changing conditions or attitudes. The Crown had an epic battle
with the Church, which it eventually won, over its claim that clergy should be tried under the more lenient ‘canon law’.
To import an alien system of law into the British courts, for a group of citizens defined by their religion, is a fundamental
breach of the British legal constitution, as it has evolved since the Middle Ages.
Some radical Moslems welcome the partial adoption of Sharia law in Britain as a step towards an Islamic ’state within a
state’. By contrast, the Government and some non-Moslem liberals argue that it will increase social cohesion in ‘a
multi-cultural society’. The Archbishop (who received a standing ovation from the Anglican bishops) argued that ‘some
citizens do not relate to the British legal system’ and that ‘Muslims should not have to choose between cultural
loyalty or state loyalty’. ‘An approach to law which simply says that there is one law for everybody and that’s
all there is to be said, and that anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is irrelevant to the processes of the
courts – I think that’s a bit of a danger’.
Arguments of this type confuse two very different meanings of ‘multi-culturalism’. It can mean a respect for
cultural differences within an over-arching framework of institutions, law and political allegiance; for example, Sikh turbans
in the British Army. This has been called ‘the liberal model’, as distinct from assimilation or persecution (The
Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, The Runnymede Trust, 2000). But it can also mean a different system of law, separate schools,
and social separatism. This is sometimes called ‘cultural autonomy’ (which the authors of the Runnymede Trust seemed
to favour).
The ‘liberal model’ has sometimes broken down – or never really worked - leading to war, population expulsion
and partition, but it has also had its successes. In Britain, the non-conformists, Catholics and Jews, after centuries of
persecution, were integrated into British society, without necessarily ceasing to be non-conformists, Catholics or Jews. In the
past, there have been experiments in ‘cultural autonomy’; for example, the separate law courts and schools, as well
as (limited) separate political representation, for Moslems, Croats and Serbs introduced in Bosnia in the final stage of the
Austrian Empire. Something similar had been introduced centuries earlier in the Ottoman Empire for Christians and Jews. However,
a system of this sort has only worked under imperial rule; in Bosnia, ultimate power rested with the Austrian bureaucracy and
Army. In a democracy, even ‘faith schools’ increase distrust, hatred and violence between communities, as Northern
Ireland so clearly demonstrates.
There is overwhelming evidence that one of the conditions necessary for civil peace and the survival of a nation state is the
acceptance of a common system of law, available to all citizens, and of common political and educational institutions. (This does
not necessarily exclude federal institutions or quasi-federal differences, such as that between English and Scots law). ‘One
law for everybody’ – Catholic or Moslem, rich or poor, conservative or radical - is not a danger; it is a hard-won
achievement, one of Britain’s greatest gifts to the world, and an essential buttress of a free society. It does not preclude
loyalties to religious and political associations, and the free acceptance of non-legally-binding decisions by religious bodies on
civil disputes However, the ‘rubber stamping’ of the judgements of Sharia courts, together with state support for
‘faith schools’, are steps on a path which could lead to the fragmentation of Britain. They are part of an electoral
strategy to win ‘swing’ Moslem votes which, if Mr Sadiq Khan is more representative of Moslem (especially, perhaps,
female) opinion than the militants, could prove tactically mistaken. However, it is all too likely that the silence of the
Conservatives and Liberal Democrats means that they are following the same electoral logic and will in due course invoke the same
muddled ‘multi-cultural’ arguments.
Kosovo – ten years on (May 2009).
The tenth anniversary of the start of Nato’s air war on Serbia prompted at least one article defending it (e.g. David
Clark, ‘Kosovo was a just war, not an imperialist dress rehearsal’, The Guardian, 16 April, 2009). This repeated the
official and generally accepted view that Milosevic had rejected all proposals for a settlement; was carrying out mass murder in
Kosovo and was about to start a mass population expulsion (codenamed ‘Operation Horseshoe’). The Nato air war was
launched to avert this ‘humanitarian catastrophe’, and brought peace and liberty to Kosovo.
It is difficult for truth to catch up with falsehoods, misleading half-truths and non-reporting (and non-reviewing). However,
for the record ---(see Hallett, Chap. 6, for references, including the ‘insider’ account by General Dr. Heinz Loquai,
Der Kosovo-Konflikt; Wege in einen vermeidbaren Krieg, ‘The Kosovo conflict; paths to an avoidable war’). In contrast
to the flood of books on Iraq, there has been little interest in investigating what really happened in Kosovo.
1. Kosovo, a province of Serbia, once populated mainly by Serbs, was the site of a famous defeat of Serbian (and possibly
Albanian) forces by the Turks in 1389; this was the start of five centuries of oppressive rule of the Christian Serbs by the
Moslem Turks. When Serbia struggled to recover its independence in the 19th century, ‘Kosovo’ and ‘Death
rather than surrender’ became the dominant symbol of Serb national consciousness. The province contained many historic
churches and monasteries of the Serbian Orthodox Church which, like its counterpart in Greece, maintained Serbian identity
during the centuries of subjugation.
2. Bitter conflicts between the two main racial groups in Kosovo, Serbs and (mainly Moslem) ethnic Albanians, began when Serbia
gained its independence. The Serbs treated the Albanians in much the way the English treated the Irish; the Albanians took their
revenge in two World Wars. In the First World War, Serbia fought on the Allied side, at terrible cost. In the Second, the Serbs
refused to align themselves with Germany and made a notable contribution to victory by delaying the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Under Tito’s authoritarian, multi-racial regime, Serbs and Albanians in the ruling Party worked together as communists and
Yugoslavs; by this time, Albanians were in the majority in Kosovo. When the communist regime collapsed in the 1980s, demagogic
leaders in both groups preached distrust and hatred of the other. The Serbs complained of discrimination, harassment and assaults,
and many left the province. In 1989, Milosevic ended the ‘autonomous status’ of Kosovo. The Serbs took control and
Albanians suffered severe discrimination; they were dismissed from official posts and their children were excluded from state
schools. At first, they organized non-violent opposition, seeking their rights as citizens of Yugoslavia, but were ignored by
the EU and USA. In 1997, the Kosovo Liberation Army was formed, and used terrorism and guerilla attacks in pursuit of, at first,
union with Albania.
Only when fighting started between the Yugoslav Army and the KLA did the EU and USA take an interest in Kosovo. Up to the start
of the Nato air war on 23 March 1999, around 500 Serbs and the same number of Albanians were killed, according to the British
Government; around 20,000 Serbs and 40,000 Albanians left the province. However, ‘Operation Horseshoe’ was a fabrication,
by the German Defence Ministry.
3. When, in early 1998, the Clinton Administration concerned itself with the conflict, it adopted a clear and consistent policy.
With the threat, and probably the use, of war, Milosevic was to be forced to accept, without conditions, a Nato occupation of Kosovo,
and effectively its secession from Serbia. Plans were made for building – in an oil-strategic area - the largest US
airbase outside the USA. (The construction of Camp Bondsteel began as soon as US troops entered Kosovo). Milosevic accepted, and
at first observed, a ceasefire, and allowed UN observers and aerial surveillance of Kosovo but the USA allowed the KLA to go on
fighting, and it came to control much of the province. The USA put no pressure on the KLA to stop fighting and accept a negotiated
settlement; it openly endorsed the KLA leaders as the government-in-waiting of Kosovo.
4. Both the Serbs and Western experts knew that, without enforceable guarantees for Kosovan Serbs, victory for the KLA would mean
that they would be killed or expelled, and that a completely independent Kosovo would threaten the areas in (the rest of) Serbia
and Macedonia with a mixed population. Milosevic was never offered any proposals to address these concerns. However, governments
and the press – at least in the USA, Britain and Germany - created the impression that the only issue was that Milosevic
was carrying out genocide in Kosovo; that there was nothing to negotiate about; and that there would be peace if Serb forces were
withdrawn and a Nato protectorate created. In Britain, The Guardian, The Observer and The Financial Times were particularly bellicose
while, in the German press, there were unmistakable echoes of two wars against the Serbs. A First World War popular song, ‘Serbia
must die’ was revived.
In fact, there was a civil war in Kosovo very similar to that in Ireland from 1919 to 1921. Up to the start of the Nato bombing,
the behaviour of the Yugoslav armed forces was no worse than that of British in Ireland, at least of the auxiliary units. The war
in Ireland was ended by the 1921 Treaty which, to a considerable extent, guaranteed the interests of Unionists, Nationalists and
Great Britain. The USA/Nato made no attempt to induce the warring parties in Kosovo to accept a comparable settlement, which guaranteed
the legitimate interests of the Kosovan Serbs and Serbia, as well as those of the ethnic Albanians. The US/Nato demand was comparable
to the IRA’s demand for ‘Irish independence’ – which would have led to a far worse outcome.
5. Milosevic, for all his grave faults, was a rational self-interested politician with a pragmatic and flexible foreign policy.
He had played a crucial role in the settlement of the Bosnian war, which had been agreed in its essentials before the Dayton
conference. He browbeat the Bosnian Serbs into acceptance and abandoned the Serbs in Croatia to their fate. Some observers close
to him believe that, if he had been offered guarantees for the Kosovan Serbs, enforced by NATO and Russian troops, with an assurance
that Nato would not intervene in the rest of Serbia and would disarm the KLA, he would have agreed to the withdrawal of Serb forces
from Kosovo – as, indeed, he eventually did. Lord Healey was the only British politician to advocate such an offer, and to
argue that Nato’s policies would create a gangster state.
6. In Nato’s final ultimatum to Milosevic, the ‘bar was raised’, to ensure that he could not possibly accept, by
adding provisions for Nato forces to operate throughout Serbia, without regard to Serbian law. This amounted to an army of occupation
which no government could accept. Milosevic feared, with good reason, that US forces would turn up in Belgrade and tell him, ‘You
are no longer President’. The ultimatum had similarities with the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia in August 1914, which was also
designed to be rejected.
7. On 23 March, 1999, Nato began to bomb military installations and then bridges, factories, chemical plants, public buildings, TV
stations and other civilian facilities throughout Serbia. Columnists in the British press indignantly rejected any pause in the bombing
to allow the negotiation of a ‘squalid compromise’ such as partition. Around 500 civilians were killed and Serbia’s
economy has not recovered.
The NATO commander later said that he knew that the air war would lead to attacks on Albanian civilians. After it started, the
Yugoslav Army began killing Albanian civilians as well as fighting the KLA and, after a month of bombing, it began mass expulsions.
US spokesmen claimed that 225,000 Albanians had been killed, and the German Chancellor likened the killing to the Holocaust. After
the war, experts for the International Criminal Court, following an intensive search, announced that 2,788 bodies had been exhumed
in Kosovo, although not all could be proved to be victims of murder or execution. They concluded that the final number of bodies
uncovered would be less than 10,000 and more probably less than 3,000. The International Commission, from demographic sampling,
concluded that around 10,000 persons had been killed, the vast majority being Albanians.
8. After three months of constant bombing, Milosevic accepted a peace deal brokered by Russia. It provided for a withdrawal of all
Serb forces from Kosovo, and their replacement by a NAT0/Russian force. The KLA was to be disarmed and the Kosovan Serbs protected.
Nato would not intervene in the rest of Serbia. Some Serb forces would return to guard the ‘sacred places’. Kosovo
would remain part of Serbia.
Nato reneged on all the provisions of this agreement. The USA nearly started a shooting war with Russia to stop Russian troops
entering Kosovo; an armed clash at Pristina airport was prevented only by gross insubordination by a British general. The KLA was
not disarmed, and began creating an ethnically pure state and expanding its operations in organized crime. Many Serbs and gypsies
were killed; nearly all the rest, around 250,000, were driven out. A small Serb enclave, protected by British and French troops,
has been under constant attack. The ‘sacred places’ were not protected; the architectural heritage of a thousand
years of Orthodox Christianity in Kosovo has been largely destroyed.
9. The Kosovo war freed the Albanians from Serb oppression but brought about the permanent expulsion of the Serb and gypsy
population, and left Kosovo plagued by organized crime, including drug and sex trafficking to Western Europe. KLA units invaded
Macedonia and encouraged an insurrection by ethnic Albanians. They were also allowed to move into the ‘demilitarised
zone’ and launch forays into Serbia. In 2008, the USA and the EU recognized Kosovo as an independent state – while
retaining the right to maintain troops and operate Camp Bondsteel.
10. The Kosovo war set precedents for a Nato attack on a recognized state ‘for humanitarian reasons’, in contravention
of international law, which was soon followed in Iraq and – for the first time since 1945 - for the ‘coercive
bombing’ of civilian facilities, which Israel soon followed in Lebanon. It endorsed terrorism, regional secession and mass
population expulsion, and marked Nato’s change from a defensive organization to an ‘intervention community’
(Tony Blair). It established that Nato wars were, in effect, decided solely by the USA - the Atlantic Council proved to be a
charade - and that Europe had abandoned any role in security policy. It was accompanied by a sophisticated, often mendacious media
operation, run by Alastair Campbell, which set a pattern for the future.
In 1992, the Clinton Administration adopted a post-Cold War strategy of using Nato to expand the American Empire throughout
Eurasia - as Brzezinski put it in his definitive 1997 exposition (op.cit. Chap.3). The Kosovo war was the first implementation
of this ‘New Strategic Doctrine’. Russia and other countries concluded that, unless they possessed nuclear weapons
that were a credible threat to the USA, they might well be attacked, or seriously threatened, as part of Nato’s expansionist
remit. March 1999 could be as fateful a date for the 21st century as August 1914 was for the 20th century.
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