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Thomas Friedman (New York Times) explains Arab tribalism with the example of 100 people, living in a desert, where a waterhole only provides enough for 50 people. It is natural for the tribe to split into two, and for each side to try to kill the other. I wish to push this scenario to its natural conclusion. An intriguing theory emerges, which I call Desert Culture.
If someone from our tribe kills someone in the other tribe, in Desert Culture this would be celebrated, as someone in our tribe would have room at the well, and would live. However, in Western Culture this would be murder, the worst crime of all.
If someone from our tribe kills ten people from their tribe, in Desert Culture this would be heroic. We would be writing folk songs. Ten of us will live. However, in western culture this would be genocide, the work of madmen.
If someone from our tribe killed 10 from the other tribe, knowing that he would give his own life on the mission, this would be the ultimate act of generosity. This is martyrdom in Desert Culture, but baffling in Western Culture, where life is sacrosanct.
The conflict that afflicts the Middle East is often described as a clash between the Western World and the Islamic World, but it has never made that much sense that a peaceful religion should be so embroiled in conflict. If the source of the conflict were Desert Culture, then the evidence does seem to make sense. "You love life and we love death," Al-Qaeda, 2004.
At a recent Progress event, Michael Bailey of Oxfam claimed that suicide bombers from Hamas are completely different to those from Al-Qaeda. I don’t agree. If we imagine a wannabe suicide bomber in Morocco, who has a contact in Hamas and a contact in Al-Qaeda, is it likely that he would choose to kill himself for Hamas, on the basis that he just cannot stomach what Al-Qaeda stand for?
"Desert Culture" does appear to be an interesting theory as to why the Middle East has been so persistently unstable over the last century. Certainly it seems better than the constant application of western standards to try to understand other peoples. Did the Palestinians really vote for Hamas as a protest vote against the corruption of Fatah? Or did they consider that if Hamas give their lives for us, they must be worthy of our vote?
Is the optimism of the west an essential element of all life on this planet, or is it uniquely us, who strive for utopia?
Desert Culture has no hope, because hope is a false sense of security. If your son is to journey across the desert tomorrow, he will die if the well is dry. Hope will not change this. So is Cherie Blair applying Western Culture when she considers that, "As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress"?
In Desert Culture, you would not hang a photograph of a live person on your wall; for fear that the well tomorrow is dry. You would not show love for any person close to you. Why cause yourself suffering when tomorrow, inevitably, death will strike? In desert Culture we are reconciled to death, and with death, let all your love and all your emotions pour out, because in Desert Culture, death is the only thing safe and sure. Death is the only thing that can be relied on. That’s why Desert Culture loves death, while Western Culture loves life. Aren’t you glad you were born in the west?
It's not every day that you manage to see an ex-PM on an evening but that's what I ended up doing yesterday night. I know that John Major has been doing the rounds in a similar setting - his talk at the LSE the other week is reported here.
However yesterday was the turn of Bangladeshi leader of the opposition Sheikh Hasina at SOAS.
The lecture theatre was packed to the rafters with largely sympathetic people of largely Bangladeshi origin here to ogle an opposition leader who had arrived in London in exile but according to her words will be returning to Dhaka on the 6th May. The title was "Democracy and Human Rights in Bangladesh" and representatives from Amnesty, Human Rights Watch were also in attendance. The other two famous names on the platform were the two Jeremys - Seabrook and Corbyn.
Shiekh Hasina is a small fiery sari-clad bespectacled individual. She spoke about how her party the Awami League (AL) had been established in 1949 and was more than a party as the foundation on Bangladesh was broaght about by it. She explained how there had been 19 attempts on her life - most recently by hand-grenade in an incident where party workers forming a human-shield had saved her; some paying the ultimate price. It was moving stuff but strictly partisan in knocking the outgoing governing party the BNP (no, not that BNP, the Bangladesh National Party). The end should have had the disclaimer "That was a party political broadcast for the Awami League". At times it felt like being at an AL rally to be honest.
The other speakers stressed that human rights abuses occurred whatever government was in power. Currently things are being overseen by a caretaker government of retired judges pending "free and fair election" due to take place at an unspecified date. Nobody seemed to think this was a satisfactory sate of affairs. Jeremy Seabrook is primarily a writer and it showed with his literary style of allusions and allegory. He saw partition everywhere in Dhaka (palaces for garments vs hovels for people) and the way things go next (secular Bengali tradition vs Islamism).
I've never quite worked out what the political difference between the BNP and AL is really. I suspect the BNP are the more right-wing and they were most recenly ruling in coalition witha religious outfit called Jamat Islamia - all this despite the founding principle of Bangladesh as a secular state. The two leaders are both women interestingly enough - all this in a culture where people always assume the fairer sex are downtrodden. Many expat Bangladeshis I know seem to think "they're both as bad as each other" in a Tweedledum-Tweedledee way. After the floor was opened up one of the contributors said as much claiming "I'm not pro-Awami League or BNP I'm just pro-Bangladesh." That got the biggest clap of the night. The most memorable moment though was when a mobile phone went off for seemingly an eternity playing Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer". Professor Minski in the chair froze everyone with a death-ray glare until Her Exellency piped up "It is mine".
An interesting use of a Wednesday night - sure beats EastEnders.
Writing about the recent remarks on British foreign policy by both the Prime Minister and David Cameron, Ian Kearns, the Deputy Director of ippr, claims that it is the Tory leader who ‘points the way ahead for progressives.’ He says that Mr. Cameron is right to call for more ‘multilateralism’ and for the need to ‘re-balance our relationship’ with the United States.
Maybe Mr. Cameron is right, but involvement in the debates on both the special relationship and multilateralism is to become enmeshed in populist issues that are, in reality, little more than sideshows in the bigger scheme of things. What really matters is the direction of British grand strategy. But first, let us be clear: Mr. Cameron is no progressive regarding foreign policy, which is reflected by those he has chosen to advise him on world affairs, like Douglas Hurd. Far from being a progressive, the Tory leader’s recent speech seems to suggest that we move back to a foreign policy based on Realism – best represented by the amoral foreign policy of John Major’s administration in the 1990s. While Mr. Cameron made several statements elsewhere in his speech calling for the promotion of human rights, he also said:
We must also use our considerable historic, cultural and trading links with Islamic governments that seek cooperation rather than confrontation, to strengthen their position domestically and within the Islamic world…from Malaysia, to Egypt, to Jordan, to the Maghreb, there are governments with whom we work closely already, and with whom we could do more. This does not mean uncritical acceptance of all their views or actions. But it does mean persistent engagement at all levels, and it means basing our actions on real sensitivity and understanding of their domestic circumstances.
Here, his attachment to the key tenets of Realism is quite clear, contradicting any idealist rhetoric elsewhere. Foreign policy Realists are natural pessimists, and in the words of Mr. Cameron, they are ‘sceptical of grand schemes to remake the world.’ Realism argues that nations should only pursue their narrowly defined national interests, and should not intervene in the affairs of other countries, unless those countries become a clear and pressing threat to national security. This approach sees oppression, human rights abuses, ethnic cleansings, and even genocides as unfortunate occurrences in which it is not our business to intervene: state sovereignty is held as sacrosanct, and no distinction is made between autocracies and democracies. In any case, in Neville Chamberlain’s words, such countries are, for Realists, often ‘far off land[s] of which we know nothing’, so the events in those lands, they say, are of secondary importance. Realists assert that we should merely try to manage global affairs, working with and even reinforcing, if necessary, dictators who are our ‘friends’, while showing greater sensitivity and understanding towards, as Mr. Cameron puts it, the ‘domestic circumstances’ of oppressive regimes. In other words, a foreign tyrant ‘may be a son-of-a-bitch, but at least he’s our son-of-a-bitch’.
During the Cold War, the West’s application of a Realist foreign policy may have been necessary. Dictators were courted by Britain to prevent the Soviets’ tentacles from expanding into other countries, the consequences of which would threaten Western security. In the Realist tradition, what happened to the people held captive by tyrants was neither here nor there. Further, Western nations actively supported autocracies in many cases, providing weaponry and aid, causing a string of brutal tyrants to came and go in many developing countries, who caused death, bloodshed and radicalisation in their wake.
But the whirlwind that we today now suffer was in many ways sown by the Realism of the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. Whereas the costs of autocratic oppression used to be by and large contained within national borders, in today’s world, where space and time are compressed by cheap transportation, email and the internet, those consequences now harm the West, and also destabilise other regions still further. We stood by while millions were slaughtered in Rwanda and Bosnia, and when societies collapsed in Afghanistan and Somalia, all of which later became nodes of chaos. It was only in the latter half of the 1990s when Labour came to power that Britain took more concrete action: the operations in Kosovo and Sierra Leone being good examples. Western leaders began to realise that the internal affairs of other countries – far from being of little concern – were increasingly important. Extremist websites can be seen by anyone with a computer and mouse, radicals can move easily between countries to spread their venom, and the ‘blowback’ from failed states – international crime, slavery, political and religious extremism, weapons proliferation, migration, and illegal drugs – corrupts the social fabric of our societies like never before. Unless we rise to the challenge, these threats will only get worse.
Radicalisation and extremism have become particularly acute in the broader Middle East. Tony Blair’s ‘arc of extremism’ is no figment of the imagination. It is both very real and very dangerous. Stretching from central Africa to central Asia, it includes some of the most abhorrent regimes yet known, where human rights abuses are endemic, where women are oppressed and where hardship, poverty and brutalisation are a way of life. Found also within this ‘arc’ are ‘frontier zones’, like Afghanistan, Somalia and Congo, where lawlessness is the norm, and where central government is either weak or non-existent. Such places are incubators of further extremism and terror, as radicals seek to draw off the impoverished masses and covert individuals to certain abhorrent causes, such as to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, or to piracy in Somalia.
Henry Kissinger was America’s arch-strategist of the ‘he may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch’ foreign policy approach of Realism. His nemesis, Henry Jackson, an American Democrat senator - after whom The Henry Jackson Society is named – strongly objected to this strategy. Jackson believed that good relations and concessions towards autocrats strengthened, rather than weakened, their rule, especially that of the Soviet empire. Accordingly, he fiercely resisted Kissinger’s desire for Détente, believing, above all, that the promotion of human rights was not only a moral objective, but also a strategic imperative. Looking at the foreign policies of the Soviet Union, Jackson concluded that the way governments treated their own people mirrored the way they treated the outside world. He understood that the promotion of democracy was more important than the maintenance of a supposed ‘stability’ – which merely disguised dictators’ domestic oppression. Instead of Détente, Jackson urged the West to maintain a ‘forward strategy’ to confront and destabilise the Soviet empire in every way possible. He believed that the more democracies in the world, the more secure the world would be. And then, like now, many argued that a confrontational and transformational approach to oppressive regimes would lead to ruin. But ultimately, Henry Jackson was right.
The idea, therefore, that Britain’s current foreign policy in Iraq or Afghanistan is the cause of Islamist extremism is a lot of nonsense. Indeed, while current British foreign policy in the broader Middle East may be ammunition – or an excuse – used by fanatics to convert more to their cause, Islamist extremism long predates Anglo-American interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. After all, not that it needs to be emphasised, but 11th September 2001 happened before either. Instead, the rise of Islamism has been intensified by almost half a century of failed Western strategy in the broader Middle East and the pursuit of ‘stability’ under the guise of Realism. In reality, though, a dictatorial regime can never produce ‘stability’, because it is very much like a wooden house riddled with termites. It may seem hard and stable from the outside, but closer inspection reveals the rot. The termite-infested house will eventually collapse, with consequences all round.
What is needed, then, is not ‘friendly’ relations with brutal regimes, or the propping-up of various warlords in failed states, but rather, their gradual removal and their replacement with democratic government. And democracy is more than just free elections. It is also an open political system with freedom and rights for all. It includes protection for minorities and a dynamic civil society, as well as social solidarity and the strict adherence to the rule of law. Here, when Tony Blair says that the universal values of the West are a cure for the brutalisation and corruption of foreign lands, he is spot on. When Gordon Brown declares that democracy is not just for us, but for all, he is utterly right. And when liberal interventionists and neoconservatives in both the United Kingdom and the United States seek to transform the broader Middle East and other regions racked with autocracy, they understand just how much our world has changed.
The most successful, and long-term, method of spreading democracy is to allow the West’s values to shine brightly as a beacon to the rest of the world. Here, Western states must not be seen to reduce domestic civil liberties, and internment camps like Guantanamo Bay have no place. But the threats from mounting radicalisation and extremism overseas call for more proactive techniques: a robust foreign policy must be sustained, and a ‘forward strategy’ continued to force open closed societies and spread democracy all over the world. First, autocratic rulers must be destabilised and democrats and moderate dissidents supported and promoted. Second, failing states must be prevented from collapsing into chaos, and failed states must be reordered. And let us not beat around the bush: this will require both military intervention and even prolonged occupation. As such, Britain’s armed forces must be bolstered, its defence spending increased and its military technology enhanced. Thirdly, as with the elimination of Saddam’s regime in Iraq, the leading democracies must not rule out the forceful removal of unpalatable regimes. Autocrats obstructing democratic change may have to be flushed out.
The United Kingdom – a global power with truly worldwide interests – must recognise, as John Reid recently stated, ‘that we not only have rights to defend in the world, but we also have responsibilities to discharge; we are in a sense our brother’s keeper globally. Sometimes it requires us to say: “yes, we will make the ultimate sacrifice”.’ Under Labour, Britain has once again been catapulted to the forefront of global affairs. Instead of Realism or a naïve Idealism (like that of ‘the peace at any price’ brigade), the Prime Minister has sought to marry principles with power under what might be described as a ‘Strategy of Openness’. The results have been spectacular: the world is being opened and changed. Oppression is in retreat, and democracy is on the march. Kosovoars no longer live under Milosevic’s lash; the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone has been crushed; Saddam Hussein is effectively in gaol; and the remnants of the Taleban are gradually being mopped up. Both Afghanistan and Iraq may not have improved as rapidly as was first hoped, and we have made many tactical errors, but there is at least now a real chance for positive change; and it is our duty to help the Afghans and Iraqis realise this goal.
So, there must be no return to Mr. Cameron’s new brand of Realism, where ‘friendly’ dictators are to be supported abroad, and where the international status quo is to be timorously accepted. It was this approach that contributed to 11th September 2001 in the first place – and allowed Saddam Hussein to go on misgoverning in Iraq. Labour’s foreign policy must not change radically from its current course. We are the progressives and we must persist in forging a principled foreign policy, using British power to serve democracy’s advance. Labour’s must be a missionary foreign policy, which is the only way in the twenty-first century of protecting British security and building a better world.
Both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have delivered speeches heavy in foreign policy significance in recent weeks. The Prime Minister’s speech to the Labour Party Conference went beyond terrorism and the need to maintain support for the United States to highlight energy security and mass migration as new issues on the national security agenda. David Cameron, speaking ten days earlier to the British America Project, talked of the need for a new multilateralism and of the need to re-balance our relationship with the United States. Of the two speeches, it is Cameron’s that points the way ahead for progressives.
This is true for two distinct but related reasons. First, Cameron is right to say that the foreign and security problems we face today can only be met through multilateral solutions. No state acting unilaterally, not even the United States, can manage the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, of climate change, or of transnational terrorism and organised crime. The international community’s response to the North Korean nuclear test will be informative in this regard, since there is little the US itself can do in response. Meaningful sanctions, if they come at all, will come from China and South Korea. Cameron’s speech may have been motivated by political opportunism, and he himself may be politically incapable of seeing the EU as a pivotal part of the multilateralism now needed, but this should not distract us from the wider truth his speech identified: Security requires multilateralism.
Second, the Labour government’s claim that there is no inconsistency between full public support for the current US administration on the one hand, and our stated desire to build effective multilateral institutions and regimes on the other, is no longer tenable. The neo-conservative view that the national security mission should determine the necessary coalition, rather than the coalition of states determining the mission, is fundamentally at odds with the approach required to foster the multilateralism we now need. It is one thing, against this backdrop, to say that effective multilateralism cannot exist without US participation and that we should seek to influence US policy in our direction. It is another thing entirely too publicly support US policies that undermine the more effective multilateralism needed to keep us safe.
Given this, and given the domestic political price already paid by progressives for the government’s support for President Bush, a change in our approach to relations with the United States is now urgent. To be successful, this needs to include not only a subtle shift in policy but also some fresh analysis and a more mature understanding of how our relationship with the United States works.
First, we need to assert politically that it is possible to be serious minded on security without agreeing with everything the American administration does. In this regard, Cameron’s speech was extremely helpful. It exposed as flawed the Prime Minister’s view that only two security policy choices are on offer, namely close support for the Bush administration on the one hand or the hopeless idealism of the far left on the other. There is a viable policy space in between these extremes and Cameron’s speech has made it politically easy for us to occupy it without being seen as soft on security.
Second, and to reinforce the credibility of this shift in policy, we need to conduct a strategic threat assessment to ensure our policy frameworks, alliances, and institutional architectures are designed to meet the challenges of the early twenty-first century rather than those of the last century. This threat assessment must consider issues such as the worrying amount of WMD related material and know-how going missing from sites in the former Soviet Union and Pakistan. It must consider the security implications of growing international pressure on natural resources such as oil and water and the possible re-emergence of multipolar competition among the US, China and a resurgent Russia. Finally, it must consider the long-term security implications of climate change, and the degraded power of formal state authorities to keep control of transnational terrorist and organised crime networks. Strategic assessment of these threats should underpin development and publication of a national security strategy for the United Kingdom, spelling out our interests and vulnerabilities, as well as the rationale for any policies intended to keep us secure.
Third and last, we should develop some much needed maturity in our domestic debate on the relationship with the United States. It simply lacks credibility, for example, to claim that any public disagreement with a US administration on a national or international security issue would destroy the relationship. This has not been the experience of history, nor the experience of other European allies when they have failed to agree with US foreign policy positions. And if the claim were true, this would be a stunning assertion that our entire national security strategy is based upon the most fickle and unreliable of relationships.
It is equally unhelpful to claim that all disagreements with the US are motivated by anti-Americanism. As Andrew Gamble, the leading academic and author of Between Europe and America has pointed out, there is an identifiable Anglo-American presence in world politics. Ideological debates take place between Anglo-America and other entities internationally but also within the Anglo-American sphere itself. These latter debates are transnational in nature, dividing opinion within the US and UK in more important ways than they divide opinion between the US and UK. The neo-conservative view currently prevalent in Washington, therefore, is not the sum total of American opinion. Many credible foreign and security policy analysts in Washington disagree profoundly with the policies of the Bush administration. And when disagreement is allowed to be branded as disloyalty, either within the United States, or between allies across the Atlantic, we concede important ground to those who seek political advantage in constructing the debate in this way.
Moreover, if we treat, the views of the current US administration as a permanent feature of the landscape, we fail to acknowledge the obvious point that American politics is dynamic and cyclical. Neo-conservative foreign policies often struggle to show results abroad, and can suffer serious loss of popular political support at home. American administrations, in this context, use the support of allies abroad as important sources of political capital in the ongoing noise of domestic disagreement and debate. We will never know how a British government refusal to take part in the invasion of Iraq would have played on the American political scene but we should not underestimate how valuable our support can be to any American president about to undertake serious and risky military action overseas.
There is then, more room for disagreement and influence in this relationship than many would have us believe. We share core values with the United States, including a commitment to an open international economy, good governance and universal human rights. More often than not, we will be standing shoulder to shoulder with the US in promoting a global order based on these values. But in a mature relationship there will sometimes be open disagreement. The challenge, of course, is to limit the disagreements and to know when to disagree, and why. The decision should be based on the contents of a well thought through national security strategy, not fear or unconditional loyalty.
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