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A few days ago, I spent a pleasant evening at chez de Havilland enjoying a sumptuous dinner consisting of a selection of char-grilled endangered species washed down with a delightful bottle of Ultra-Extreme-Right-Wing cordial.
After dinner, we retired to the drawing room to smoke cigars (hand rolled by grossly exploited third-world children) whereupon the discussion turned to matters of international affairs. It was during the course of our deliberations that I struck upon what I considered to be a quite promising strategy for dealing with the ‘Axis of Weasels’ (France, Germany, Russia)
Since the basis of their informal ‘alliance’ appears to be the shared concern about the vast amounts of money each is owed, then would it not constitute a masterful stroke in the machiavellian art of ‘divide and conquer’ to ensure that one or more gets reimbursed while the other is told to take a hike? Then sit back and watch while the gang breaks apart and they start turning on each other.
To me, this was a screamingly obvious manoeuvre. And not just to me because I note that Brian Micklethwait has made a similar suggestion in one of his comments below:
What if an “illegitimate” world just cries all the way to the bank? – leaving France as the only one in step, and broke?
For all the reasons discussed here (and there) I think the Americans could break such a strike, indeed are already starting to.
Indeed they are, Brian. No sooner had I finished reading Brian’s comments, and marvelling upon how they echoed my own thoughts on the subject, than I notice this article in the Financial Times:
The difference in approach was evident on Friday in a newspaper interview in which Tony Blair, prime minister, said the failure to secure a second UN resolution had put British soldiers’ lives at risk.
Downing Street believes that Mr Chirac’s threat to veto such a resolution made difficult negotiations with countries such as Russia and Germany “impossible”.
Meanwhile Condoleezza Rice, the US president’s national security adviser, was reported this week to have said that France should be punished, Germany ignored and Russia forgiven as the US readjusts its relations with European allies.
The world, and it would appear the French in particular, is about to be reminded of an old axiom: to the victors go the spoils.
By the way, if any influential members of the US Government happen to be reading this, let me just say that the Samizdata Team are available to provide free-lance consultancy on International Relations. Please e-mail us for a resume.
Phil Bradley shows us what a wonderful institution that carnival of thieves called the United Nations is
I can hardly turn on the TV without some talking head from the UN, one of its many agencies and adjuncts, or a European diplomat talking about the UN’s legitimacy or credibility. This is a recent phenomena and I am curious as to where the UN has acquired its supplies of legitimacy and credibility. Certainly not from its member states – many of whom can hardly keep the road to the airport open without help from French paratroopers. Nor does it get it from the work of its agencies, which while on paper are well intentioned, in practice are dens of corruption, incompetence and cronyism, relegated to ‘coordinating’ roles because they are incapable of doing any thing useful.
Perhaps it is from the UN’s work in intervening in crises and helping states achieve legitimate democratic government. OK, the UN did pull its troops out of Rwanda prior to perhaps a million people being massacred, failed to anything about Kosovo and left NATO to intervene, and appears to be making a complete mess of ‘helping’ East Timor transition to democracy. A state of affairs which even the UN’s senior person in East Timor admits to. Sorry, no signs of legitimacy and credibility here!
I must therefore conclude that United Nations has discovered a means of manufacturing these precious commodities. This is a major scientific breakthrough, a philosophers stone for the twenty-first century. The UN is keeping tight-lipped on the details of this breakthrough. So it’s not clear as to how much legitimacy and credibility they can manufacture. But think of implications if they can produce a large supply (doubtless it is expensive to produce, but then everything at the UN is vastly more expense than it should be). Clearly the UN and its member states constitute a major market for both products, but the potential is huge, especially for credibility which the recent war in Iraq has shown there is a world-wide shortage, notably in the news-rooms of CNN and the BBC, as well as in some European and Arab capitals.
And to think, I always thought the United Nations was a complete waste of time and money, filled with corrupt bureaucrats only interested in first-class air travel and their expense accounts. Shows how wrong you can be!
Phil Bradley
You’ve just got to laugh really. Certainly that was my reaction when I happened upon this development, courtesy of Bill Herbert:
A coalition of lawyers and human rights groups yesterday unveiled a bid to use the UN’s new International Criminal Court as a tool to restrain American military power.
In a move Washington said vindicated U.S. claims that the court would be used for political purposes, the rights activists are working to compile war crimes cases against the United States and its chief ally in Iraq, Britain.
What, no mention of any intended actions against Saddam Hussein? Some mistake surely? I mean, if Great Satan and Little Satan are in the dock then surely it cannot be so hard to cobble together a half-way decent case against the Ba’athist regime as well?
Of course, we all know the reasons why that is never going to happen; the same reason that truly does vindicate the American determination to have nothing whatsoever to do with the International Criminal Court. But, for once, it is worth examining this in just a little more depth.
So, I followed the link in Bill Herbert’s post to this article in the National Post which provides a bit more background:
They said five eminent international lawyers will outline a case against the United States and Britain next month for submission first to an international “alternative” court called the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal in Rome, then the prosecutor’s office of the ICC in The Hague.
The ‘Permanent People’s Tribunal’? What’s that all about? I’m ‘people’ and yet I have never heard of them nor do I recall appointing them to sit in judgement on my behalf. → Continue reading: A long way from Nuremburg
The UN, meaning significant portions of its membership such as France, Germany, Russia etc. are refusing to simply lift sanctions against Iraq automatically until they get their way politically… which is to say to dilute US and British control over post-war Iraq.
So even after Ba’athism is gone, the sanctions could be maintained. In short, the people backing this are saying “do what we want or we will make the Iraqi people suffer even though the regime the sanctions were designed to contain is now gone”.
And the thing that really sticks in my craw is that these sanctimonious bastards think they have the moral high ground.
It has been a regular refrain from the anti-interventionists that there was no real connection between 9/11 and Saddam and that by overthrowing the Iraqi regime, we were diverting valuable resources from the war on terror.
Well, that theory has taken a lot of hits, judging by this story.
In fact, by deposing thuggish regimes such as the unlamented one in Iraq, it makes it easier, by far, for intelligence services of the West to unearth valuable information about terrorists and their whereabouts. Or course in their hearts the peaceniks knew this all along, but no doubt they are now vexed about Iraqis nabbing air-conditioning units from Ba’ath Party headquarters.
Bloody media. Always complaining. Thus Rumsfeld at the end of last week, himself complaining about all the newspapers featuring looting instead of liberation.
Last night, I caught John Simpson of the BBC opining that the fall of Saddam is of no significance to any country outside of Iraq, and I don’t know where to start, so hopelessly mistaken does that strike me as being. The argument was that because Saddam’s regime was a “dead end”, it couldn’t therefore be of any greater consequence when this inconsequential regime was toppled. And then various other Talking Heads took it in turns to agree. They didn’t seem to understand that there could possibly be anything between America invading a country and smashing all its statues and bombing all its bunkers and decapitating all its leaderships, and having no effect on a country whatsoever, despite having lots of bases in a newly liberated country right next door. Twats.
Nevertheless … → Continue reading: Two cheers for the media
So the French, German and Russian leaders have had a summit meeting in St Petersburg. After having had an object lesson in the severe limits of their diplomatic and political influence on the world stage, it strikes me that these three leaders have decided that the only way to be taken seriously is to get together and take each other seriously.
When Jacques Chirac says:
It is good that the Saddam Hussein regime has fallen. The fall of a tyrannical regime is a positive thing. We said for a long time that he had to be brought down. We did not defend him, but said it should not be done by force.
He is, to put it bluntly, a liar.
France and Russia were major supplier of arms to Iraq (far greater than the US or UK ever were) and were major beneficiaries of Ba’athist rule there. The meeting in Russia is nothing more noble that a tactical huddle of debtors prior to going to the receivers (The US and UK) of a bankrupt company (Ba’athist Iraq).
Although I cannot resist mocking this triumvirate of gilded irrelevences, there is indeed a serious message emerging from this meeting.
It should be clear once and for all that Blairite fantasies about being both Euro-Fedarist and Atlanticist are just that… fantasies. Of course this is going to be spun as something other than an ‘anti Anglosphere summit’ but who are they fooling? Europe is dividing again and that should be clear to anyone not willfully blind.
Britain is on the side of history’s winners. However Tony Blair has the power to snatch strategic defeat from the jaws of victory if he does not get over his mindless attachment to ‘Old Europe’ and discredited bodies like the UN. After the last of the fighting dies down in Iraq, thing are not going to gradually return to the way they were antebellum.
I really do not know if Blair is psychologically able to grasp the fact that the paradigm has shifted (I hate that word ‘paradigm’ but for once it the most appropriate term). Although I dislike him intensely, I am not sure he will make the wrong move… I really do not know: the jury is still out on how capable he is of actually making a major meta-contextual shift.
The world has changed. Get used to it.
Another one you didn’t see in the media.
“The demonstration comprised about a hundred protestors demonstrating against the arrest of Vietnamese pro-democracy campaigners. This action was organised by the ‘Alliance Vietnam Liberté’ (Vietnam Freedom Alliance) and various Ngos were invited. A representative of Amnesty International was present as well as Françoise Hostalier, former Human Rights Minister [yes we have one of those in occupied France!] and president of ‘Action Droits de l’Homme’ (Action Human Rights), as well as myself Laurent Muller, president of the ‘Association Européene Cuba Libre’ (European Association for a Free Cuba). The demonstration ended at 17 hours outside the Republic of Vietnam embassy [in Paris].”
It continues with the following:
“I take this opportunity to remind you that tomorrow, 8 April 2003, the AECL is holding a press conference about the latest wave of repression in Cuba. Some 80 non-violent dissidents are currently being tried for ‘treason’ and ‘supplying information to an enemy state’ (the USA). Prison sentences from 10 years to life have been requested [by prosecutors]. It appears that one death sentence has been requested against one dissident.”
The press conference will be held at 15 hours at the aid centre for the Foreign Press, maison de la Radio, 116 avenue du Président Kennedy, 75016 Paris. The best contact I have is Prégentil (Americans will really like the graphics on his front page). Sad note: repression is operating worldwide whilst the eyes of the world are focused on the liberation of Iraq.
There are lots of reasons to hope that this war is nearly over, not the least being that if it does end soon, the civilised world will be able to switch its attention to other bad things now being done by other bad people.
You get the feeling that Fidel Castro, for example, was hoping that this thing would last a lot longer than now seems likely. He’s been rounding up dissidents, and he surely guessed that he’d have two or three months free of major western media interference. But what if Gulf War II fizzles out quickly, and what if the Media then takes a closer look at what he is now doing, say in about a fortnight’s time? Well, we can hope.
The news I’m watching on the TV right now (Sunday breakfast time) is that the British are moving fast into the centre of Basra, days sooner than the media people I’m listening to had been expecting. If they, and the Americans in Baghdad, can make these incursions stick and if there are no big and nasty surprises yet to come, and if they can reduce the whole thing to a few dozen boring little sieges of nutters, the media may soon be toning down its fascination with Gulf War II and be looking for other morsels to feed on. If so, look out Fidel.
How delightful it would be if this opportunistic calculation were to turn Castro into one of the bigger casualties of Gulf War II.
And what’s Mugabe been up to during the last fortnight?
In accordance with its already stated policy, Samizdata.net offers the comment section under this item for discouraging messages to our BBC TV reporters serving to attack our freedoms and to encourage tyranny over the people of Iraq and the world. The many TV media personnel who read Samizdata.net regularly are sure to forward this to their colleagues.
[Note: If you are supportive of BBC TV coverage in Iraq or elsewhere, you are welcome to post a comment under a relevant story, but please leave this comment section to those who want to heap discouragement, abuse, hatred and curses upon our BBC media personnel.]
Does this look like playing both sides?
So under a “defence pact” with Qatar, French troops will be in the Gulf after all. Just in time for the reconstruction contracts I trust. (Incidentally, “MAM” as the French Defence Minister is known, is regarded by French troops with similar contempt to that shown by British troops for Geoff “Buff” Hoon).
I’m getting about as much flak from reaction to my last posting as a B1 over Bagdad. I will reserve comment on the diplomatic bungling until the organised fighting stops.
Whether or not Salam Pax is genuine or not, the Samuel Huntingdon quote carried on his blog about sums up how a big chunk of the world’s population regards the Anglosphere.
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”
The bombing of Bagdad is doing little to dispel this notion. I don’t approve or agree, but that doesn’t make it less of a problem.
So it appears that we are now a few days, or possibly even a few hours, away from being engaged in an honest-to-goodness, actual, balls-out, fighting war. Despite the misgivings of Antoine Clarke, I believe HM forces will acquit themselves admirably although there is no doubt that the bulk of the war effort will fall upon the much larger US contingent.
We are here now because Tony Blair has prevailed over the anti-war sentiments of much of his own party. Without wishing to sing his praises per se, he has confounded the sizeable number of British commentators who believed that he did not possess the spine to see through his pro-war commitment. He clearly does and he clearly has. Last night’s vote in the House of Commons, on a motion to delay hostilities with Iraq, was defeated despite a record number of Labour rebels voting for it and, ironically, with most of the opposition Conservatives voting against.
Of the Conservatives who voted for the motion, some are undoubtedly what Mark Steyn has called ‘defeatist patricians’. In all but name they are Social Democrats and are driven by sentiments that are not so much anti-American as they are pro-EU. For them, the top-down, corporatist paternalism of Europe is much more resonant of the natural order of things than the racey vulgarity they see as intrinsic to the American way of doing thigs.
But there are others on the British right who are vigourously opposed to Britain taking any part in the attack on Iraq not because they harbour anti-American sentiments (indeed, they heartily reject such nonsense) but because they believe that it is not in British national interests to do so. They are far from confident that any US administration would go to bat for Britain in the way that Britain has gone to bat for America and whilst this may or may not prove to be the case, they (and I) do have genuine cause for complaint about the kid gloves that successive US administrations have put on when dealing with the IRA.
However, it would appear that at least some of isolationist argument in this regard is based on the erroneous (and largely left-inspired) view that Tony Blair is merely acting as George Bush’s ‘poodle’; that he will get his ‘orders’ direct from Washington and that he will send British troops off to yomp around the planet in whatever direction the Whitehouse commands.
It is this kind of thing that makes for good copy, but it is not actually true. For good or for bad, Blair has very much acted as his own man throughout this whole affair. Had it not been for Tony Blair, the Americans would almost certainly have not agreed to take (the ultimately fruitless) UN route to disarming Saddam. Had George Bush had his way, the war in Iraq would, by now, have been over and done with. Try telling anyone in Washington that Tony Blair is their ‘poodle’. I think you will be sharply disabused of any such view. → Continue reading: The widening channel
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