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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?
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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
Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
– John Donne (1573-1631)
When one embarks upon a war, nothing is ever certain. However if I was a betting man, I would anticipate the mother-of-all-surrenders, at least initially, followed by some nasty but sporadic and isolated fighting in a few key centres… in the end there is only so much that can be done from 20,000 feet and it is the squaddies with bayonets who will end this matter once and for all.
But just as the article Silver Linings earlier today suggests, I have an inkling that it is not just Saddam Hussain and Ba’athist Socialism which will rue the day Al Qaeda changed the world on September 11th. The aftermath of the Cold War ended today in the United Nations and I suspect when we look back in ten years we will realise that a great many things were never quite the same again. I think that NATO, the UN and (to a lesser extent) the EU have all been fatally weakened and thanks to Jacques Chirac, a great many people who matter have finally noticed that the zeitgeist has shifted and we are entering terra incognita: uncharted territory.
We have been hearing about the end of the bi-polar world and the ‘New World Order’ but in reality I do not think people really believed that the old institutions, assumptions and mindsets were really as obsolete as they actually are. It remains to be seen how long the UN and NATO continue to twitch but when the British and American tanks stash across the border of Iraq, they will be cutting the veins of more than just Ba’athism.
Britain too has just had an object lesson in the fact you cannot have your cake and eat it too. We are either an Atlantic nation trading with the world as we always have, or we are within Festung Europe. I do not think he realizes the enormity of what he is doing but Tony Blair is never going to be a ‘Good EUropean’ again… and if he tries to be, the contradictions are going to be impossible to reconcile.
Stay tuned. We live in interesting times.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was shown on TV yesterday afternoon saying something particularly interesting, to my ear. I don’t mean to suggest by this that Straw is normally dull, but this particular thing really got my attention. He used the phrase “Prime Minister Blair”. I’ve never heard a British Cabinet Minister refer to the Prime Minister of Britain in this particular way.
Straw presumably assumes that if he just said “Mr Blair” or “The Prime Minister”, which would be the usual way for a British Home Secretary to talk about a British Prime Minister, a significant slice of his audience might be confused as to exactly who he was talking about. Only by him identifying and placing together in the one phrase both the name and the office can he be confident of avoiding any such muddles among those he is seeking to communicate with. Either that, or he’s been talking so much with Americans in the last few days that their verbal habits are rubbing off on him.
Either way, what I think this shows is how very global politics is becoming. Yes it’s partly that Mr Straw is just now up to his neck in a particular global crisis, but as all we political pundits have been telling each other for as long as any of us can remember, more and more political issues now have a global angle to them, to the point where it makes more sense to speak of them as having local variations.
This is happening because of the continually plummeting cost of international communication. A system of global wires and waves that was once the privileged preserve of millionaires and statesmen, such as Jack Straw, is now available for us all to use at will.
Hence, for example, this weekend’s world wide anti-war demonstrations mentioned just before the report of Mr Straw’s odd little soundbite. Anti-capitalism and (savour the irony of this) anti-globalisation demos have been global ever since e-mail got into its stride. → Continue reading: A verbal straw in the wind – reflections on the globalisation of politics
We are always being told by those who oppose war against Ba’athist Socialism in Iraq of the downside… and although on balance I still support the armed overthrow of Saddam Hussain’s regime, on some of those issues I am all too aware that there is some truth to the fact this open ended ‘war on terrorism’ is also being used as an open ended ‘war on domestic civil liberties’.
However, let us also ponder the potential upside:
- Enough Americans will finally realizes that not only is the UN a body which allows blood soaked tyrants to stand up with impunity and take money from taxpayers in the USA, and this will push the US political establishment into seeing that the UN no longer serves any positive role… leading to US withdrawal and the UN’s financial collapse. Excellent!
- War results in the overthrow of a mass murdering tyrant who has waged wars against three nations in the region, and the Iraqi people end up almost immeasurably better off. Excellent!
- Tony Blair stands steadfast with the USA and the Anglosphere is once again shown to be the true repository of resisting tyranny across the world… Excellent!
- …and at the same time is fatally weakened politically by virtue of the fact the gulf between him and the grass roots of the socialist Labour Party have now been so starkly illuminated that it can no longer be finessed by spin doctors. Excellent!
- NATO is shown to be the anachronism it is and is restructured… and a new looser alliance of willing partners in Europe and North American emerges to take its place, without France and Germany… Excellent!
- … which also derails the terrifying prospect of a pan-European military alliance centred on the EU. Excellent!
- And speaking of the EU, now that France has broken cover with its remarks to Eastern Europe to ‘shut up’, I think the future seeds of the EU’s disintegration have been well and truly planted. Very excellent!
Always curious to know what US politicos are thinking about these turbulent times, I had dinner with Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) last night and made many of these points to him. Whilst I would not say he was happily endorsing my views, I did not see any grimaces or rolling of eyes from the urbane Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary. Although he did not make me a convert to the joys of the ‘Patriot Act’, I was surprised to see the number of issues we did indeed agree on.
Of course I am well aware things can always shake out very differently as war and politics have a ways of springing surprises on even the canniest of customers, but sometimes things also have a way of turning out better than expected. Face it, nobody really knows what will happen.
Tony Millard writes about Nigeria, Cameroon and Russia from the middle of Tuscany.
Two days ago I got a typical Nigerian fraud scam email and, in a spirit of light-hearted humour, forwarded it to a few people with a preamble to the effect that USD$ 5,000,000 fee for giving my bank account details to someone in Africa was a good deal and should be pursued with enthusiasm as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I got the usual responses from the usual people (i.e. more or less polite trying to ‘appreciate’ the joke) but one stood out. It was from the wife of a friend of mine, who worked for the UN for many years in Africa.
I think it makes great reading and confirms what we already know, that the UN is a pointless bloated gravy train that has nothing to do with Africans, who seem to be written off by them as some sort of cattle, and everything to do with driving around in large 4x4s and going to self-serving meetings at my and your expense.
I reproduce is the email below in full, witholding the name of the person as the couple are good friends, despite their employment history…
Dear Tony,
I just read your mail “Blessing In Disguise”. I suppose it is a joke, not being very good at sensing British humor. But in case it is not, I just want to share a few things from my own experience. You know that I have worked in Africa with different missions for the UN in the 90s, the longest one being in Cameroon, a country neighboring Nigeria. Camerooneese are very violent people and my life was several times in danger. However, compared to Nigerians, they are angels. I have been told by UN and World Bank officials never to set foot in Nigeria. It is a country where pistols and knives are used daily especially in Lagos. I have heard of people having rented a car who had to go to their hotels naked, stripped from their clothes, their money and car stolen. Even the Cameroonese avoid Nigeria.
When I came back from Cameroon to Paris, the only Cameroonese woman I trusted there, a young lady employed by the government, called me to let me know that she was arriving in Paris for a visit. I was gearing up to do everything to help her but immediately upon her arrival, I received an official call from the UN people inquiring if she was staying with me and telling me to get rid of her immediately. Apparently, after my departure from Cameroon, she together with a group of other women, had visited the police to lodge a complaint against me, accusing me of spreading propaganda against their government.
Imagine that! I worked for their government. My contacts at the World Bank later told me that once I were back in Cameroon, I’d be chucked in the underground of the airport where they would probably let me rot for days in the horrendous heat (for comparison, Tuscany temperatures in the middle of the summer are positively winter-like there).
The problem with the people in these countries is that corruption, violence and deception are ubiquitous and not addressed by the police, as such behavior appears to be the norm in their mind. You cannot trust anybody. Frankly, I’d rather go today to Iraq than any time to Cameroon or Nigeria.
Btw, similar precautions apply to any deal in which the Russians are involved…Our good Lithuanian friend, when he was doing business in Russia, never travelled without a pistol in his pocket and always accompanied with two ‘gardes du corps’…
Tony, let me know very quickly that this is a joke so that I stop worrying.
XXX
So the ‘heroic’ human shields found Iraq not worth laying down their lives for? I previously asked why they weren’t in Kuwait City when Iraq invaded. David Carr suggested jokingly next year North Korea, but I doubt if they would be welcome. The place that needs defending right now from the threat of massive chemical and possibly nuclear destruction is South Korea.
If the human shields were anything more than stooges for Communist evil, they would be in Seoul, Pusan, or forming a chain across the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ). If it is of any help to the peacenik who may be reading, try this link for info on places to visit along the border.
I’m not holding my breath.
This has been my 100th posting on Samizdata. Thanks to Brian, Adriana and especially Perry for their patient explanations of this medium, and to all the readers and commentators, who make it all worthwhile. Well sort of 
I have just received this briefing, courtesy of Stratfor. Since a hefty subscription fee is required in order to link to the article, here is an excerpt:
“Former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, reputed to be a personal friend of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, made a lightning visit to Baghdad on Feb. 23. The purpose and results of the meeting are shrouded in secrecy, apart from a statement by Moscow that Hussein was asked — and agreed — to cooperate fully with U.N. weapons inspectors.
Reliable Stratfor sources within the Russian government say Hussein indeed has promised to cooperate with the inspectors’ demands — including that Baghdad scrap its al Samoud 2 missile program by March 1, an announcement that sources expect to be forthcoming within days.”
It seems that this ’11th hour offer’ also includes an invitation for Western oil companies to recommence business in Iraq and a blanket promise from Hussein to ‘play nicely’. The offer is being heavily sponsored by the French, the Germans and the Russians and is expected to be received warmly by HMG.
But the real test is whether or not it is accepted in Washington. It could be acceptable if it could then be presented as having only be achieved by the credible threat of force. However, the policy goal in Washington is regime change in Iraq and not status-quo.
Rejection of the offer by Washington could see Mr.Primakov flying back to Baghdad to broker yet another offer, although what more Hussein could possibly put on the table is hard to imagine.
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