De-clawing the British Lion

One of the lesser acknowledged people who have passed through my fair city of Bristol is a man called Ernest Bevin.  Bevin knew what it meant to be poor, working as a manual labourer on the docks for pennies and then working as a driver at the same place for not much more.  He rose up to become an effective and passionate trade union organiser, becoming instrumental in organising a huge trade union confederation the Transport and General Workers Union.  However while he prided himself in standing up for the working man against a government seemingly dominated by an oligarchy of the ruling class, he refused to swallow the rhetoric prevalent in the socialist movement about all threats being manufactured.  He used his influence and his own fiery rhetoric to denounce George Lansbury at the 1935 Labour Party Conference.  George Lansbury and his supporters only saw a ruling class conspiracy in rearmament, a line supported by a wide spectrum of leftist authors and celebrities including Virgina Woolfe.  Ernest Bevin meanwhile saw the world as it was.  Italy was invading Ethiopia.  Hitler who had been in power for only a few years had already begun to violently crack down on trade union activity.  The German leader incidentally was almost in stitches of laughter after meeting George Lansbury.  Bevin’s courageous stance lead to the end of Lansbury’s resignation from his position of the Labour Party.  After a distinguished term serving as Secretary of Labour during World War 2, upon Labour’s victory in 1945 Bevin became Foreign Secretary. During his tenure has Foreign Secretary, recognising the threat from the Soviet Union Bevin was instrumental in cofounding the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation better known as NATO.  And today that organisation still stands.

 Bevin helped form NATO because while he recognised the need for major domestic reform he knew that Britain could not afford to ignore the strategic map.  Divided and disarmed Europe was prey to danger.  However united, ready and able Europe would be ensured that it could enjoy the fruits of the postwar peace.  Bevin realised the truth that both guns and butter are needed and ultimately one can’t survive without the other.

 Our present leaders, in the government and without, are not strategic thinkers in the least.  They act more like managers and mis-managers at that.  When they look at lists of our strategic interests next to lists of our armed forces.  They look at both of those lists and in place of what they should see they see pound signs.  And that creates the need for efficiencies, cost saving measures, expedient minded solutions and ultimately cuts.  The armed forces are really just an inconvenience to them.  Something to be patted on the head next to the cenotaph and to provide a musical accompaniment to the opening of the Ashes at the Lords grounds.  They talk so much about how much the members of the armed forces sacrifice while they dismember their regiments and close down their bases.

 So why do they get away with this?  Well at the moment it appears the answer is, because the balance of the British public support it.  Leon Trotsky once said “You may not have an interest in war, but war has an interest in you.”  But the problem is not so much that we are not interested.  The British are simply tired of war and the military that comes along with it.  They are tired of sharp suited politicians sending the armed forces to fight in far flung places only to see the shooting carry on long after they have left.  They are tired of being given multiple reasons why they our forces are being sent to a certain place when one solid golden reason would do.  And most of all the British are tired at seeing their money seemingly being ploughed into the military while public services are cleaved.  The peace dividend in short is looking very allusive and all too far away.

 But the problem is the world doesn’t stop being a dangerous place just because we have had enough of it and the problems within it.  We don’t even need to look on the world scale to realise that, looking at our region is bad enough.  President Vladimir Putin of Russia has thrown down the gauntlet to Europe.  It’s vastly outnumbered eastern neighbours are fearful while the central European powers do what they always do; make a lot of noise and postpone a challenge without meeting it.  And meanwhile we go about our paper tiger business as our hard power declines every day.  Vladimir Putin is a remorseless and determined nationalistic fanatic who targets weakness and exploits it.  From the start we have shown weakness.  We treated and still treat Alexander Litvinenko’s assassination in London like some kind of minor diplomatic inconvenience, like an ambassador’s outstanding parking ticket.  As Euromaidan started coming into force and the Russian supported Ukrainian President Yanukovych’s thugs started launching themselves at protestors, Vladimir Putin was having his pictures taken in front of Number 10.  Only now the rhetoric from our government has started to heat up.

 But Putin must know this rhetoric is empty.  Either as our government is spouting it they are tying themselves in knots strategically.  British bases are closing in Germany in a region where our commitments are increasing, while a base is being opened in Bahrain in a region where our operations were allegedly powering down.  How can we hope to deter our enemies when we give off such mixed signals.  How can we reassure our vulnerable allies, including those in Eastern Europe, when we are so lacklustre when it comes to defence?  Despite the fanfare, they realise that a NATO ‘spearhead’ force of 5,000 strong is pretty puny when set against the Russian Western Military District’s 65,000 strong.

The public rightly do not want war with Russia.  Such a war would be devastating for everyone, although by numbers (not in the least 3 NATO nuclear weapon owning states versus one) Russia would lose.  But wanting a peaceful endgame and going out of your way to show how little resolve you have to stand a challenge are two different matters.  If you are confronting a determined foe such as we are with Russia, it is unwise and dangerous to lay all of your cards down on the table at once.  An open public acknowledgement of our desire to only go so far until Eastern Europe is on its own is a very unwise stance on our part.  We are a part of an alliance that commits us to help those in need and in distress.  Now is the time to own up to that commitment.  If that upsets Vladimir Putin (and there isn’t much “if” about it) then that is too bad.  There is no honour or satisfaction to be had in appeasing a bully.  Historically it is not what our country is known for.

The Iraq War has left a toxic legacy in this country.  It has stoked the fires of isolationism and in it’s aftermath terrible and frankly wrong narratives have emerged from it.  One of which is that all military action not sanctioned explicitly by international law is wrong.  Tell that to the Kosovans alive because of NATO’s intervention in 1999.  Another is that every single humanitarian intervention we have been involved in has failed.  Tell that to the people of Sierra Leone.  Those forces conspire to tell us that the UK has never been and can never be a force for good in the world.  I for one believe that they are completely wrong.

In the upcoming general election the future of our armed forces will hardly be discussed.  To be sure there will be a few patronising remarks about how much good they do, probably by the same powers that be who want to carve them up.  It isn’t popular to talk about defence or about using our defence capability to help others.  It is much more popular to be ashamed of our power, or rather our former power.  On the right we have UKIP who want a massively financed military to go virtually nowhere.  Perhaps more persuasively we have the Greens who want to go nowhere too but for good measure hack away at their financing too, so they will hardly be equipped to go anywhere.  I wouldn’t vote for UKIP regardless of what their defence policy was, unless I had a frontal lobotomy.  But I do fear the momentum of the Greens.

The Greens have a toxic and corrosive view of Britain with regards to international security.  They support the sadly popular leftist moral relativist philosophy of the day that basically traces the source of all suffering in the world back to our doorstep.  It also seemingly advocates the appeasing of bullies like Putin.  In short the legacy of George Lansbury is alive and kicking, so it is time to invoke the spirit of Ernest Bevin.  So my parting advice with regards to confronting this terrible and enduring philosophy is simple: don’t stand for it.  Be proud of us being committed to the defence of the little guy.  Instead of only  decrying the unfairness of the UK’s Permanent seat on the UN Security Council, we should think about the good we can do while have it, and consider carefully whether our successors may prove as altruistic in their motives.  Our country has made mistakes with regards to military intervention, but that is no excuse for isolationism.  In the face of mistakes we should endeavour to do better, not endeavour to do nothing at all.  Our philosophy should be similar to Thomas Paine’s “The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”