When The Going Gets Tough The Tough…Give Up

The campaign is already gearing up for the UK’s In/Out European Union Referendum sometime this year 2017, even though the exact date is yet to be decided.    When everyone else is settling down into trade blocs and multilateral organisations, the UK appears to want to go it alone.

Are they mad?  There are tonnes of reasons for staying put, that range from the geo-political to the historical and geographical.

Psycho-Geography

The first thing to notice about the UK is its psycho-geography.  It’s an archipelago of islands off the European coast.  Usually, offshore islands are very different to their continental neighbours.  Think Cuba and the US, Taiwan and China or Japan and the rest of east Asia.  The people of Madagascar aren’t Africans by decent, culture or language but descended from Malayan migrants.

I would include Britain in the trend because its history in the last 500 or so years has lent itself to isolation, even if it has been involved from time to time in European power politics.  The big factor here is the Empire and the relationship with the sea.  Other colonial powers had land borders with their European neighbours, especially France, Holland and Spain.  England (later, Britain) had…well nobody.

That has continued right up to the modern myth of the   And that’s the point, the British are still obsessed with Empire, even though it has been long dead.

Joining the Common Market (as it was called in the early 1970s) has been Britain’s biggest European adventure since England abolished the monasteries and overthrew the Catholic Church in 1535.

The Bear in the Room

So why stay?  Where do I start?  Geo-politics.  The elephant in the room isn’t an elephant at all, it’s a bear.  Russia is trying to exert as much pressure on the EU as possible with its war in the Ukraine and military campaign in Syria.  The EU has sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine.  That was prompted by the overhrow of the client president Viktor Yanukovich.  He was toppled by demonstrations sparked by his junking of an economic agreement with the EU, choosing a package of loans from Russia instead.

Russia quietly invading Ukraine caught the West napping.  The intervention in Syria has had a similar surprise factor alongside with the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the war zone to get to the safety of Europe.    That poses an even greater problem because the vast numbers of people seeking shelter are pushing European cohesion to breaking point.  Much more of this and the free movement of people, a corner stone of the Union, could end.   Russia wants those sanctions ended and wants the reduction of a regional rival.

Could plucky Britain really stand up to that kind of thing, alone, without the help or co-operation of allies across the English Channel

Britain’s oldest ally, since 1386

The Cold of the Global Village

Then there are the vagaries of globalization.  I doubt China, the US or the EU intend to give much ground to each other when they negotiate trade deals, which is the way of the world. China has set up its Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation, sometimes referred to as ‘the dictators’ club’, drawing in the former Soviet Republics of central Asia.  While Russia is a member, it is also trying to set up its own Eurasian Economic Community.

Other states are not jumping out of economic co-operation blocs, but are building more.  This has happened in North America with NAFTA, South America’s Mercusur, with even African states getting in on the idea with the African Union.

It is a long time since the UK was a serious power in the world, able to act alone with a free hand.    Belonging to the EU shores up Britain’s reputation and prestige.  States as powerful as China and the US see political / economic bloc making as underpinning both the economy and their political stature.  Membership of the EU guarantees a place at the top table, not least because of the sheer size of the market it belongs and exports to.

Being Norway, or Not

Opponents of UK membership of the EU suggest Britain can survive outside of the Union, in a manner similar to Switzerland and Norway, both successful countries who are pointedly not members.   The difficulty here is that Norway and Switzerland are powerless to change anything because they are members of the European Economic Area, not full members of the EU.  Therefore  things just happen, they have to conform to everything the Union requires in areas such as student exchanges, food regulations and exporting goods into the EU.  And these still cost money.

In each area of our lives, being part of the EU has given the British the kinds of standards a civilized society should aspire to.  Be it not being killed at work, having food that doesn’t poison us and having beaches and waters that are clean and safe to enjoy.  All of this risks being swept away if the UK jumps ship, not least because of its unwillingness to stand up to corporate power within and without its borders.

Even these two have been allies since 1904

The Invasions

Other reasons for remaining in the EU are cultural, historical and geographical.  Whether anyone likes it or not, the UK is physically a part of Europe.  That isn’t going to change any time soon.   Our history has been bound up with Europe since people first arrived on what was to become these islands.  Invasions by the ‘Celts’, the Romans, Saxons, Vikings, Normans still have a massive and lasting effect on our landscape, language and culture.  Much of our involvement was a jostling rivalry with mainland European powers, often it was co-operation under hard circumstances.  This co-operation has only deepened with the EU because it has made war unthinkable within its borders.

The original swashbuckler.  Anthony Van Dyke, Flemish, court painter to Charles I and driving force in English / British Baroque art; self portrait 1623

Culturally, the British have changed markedly since they began holidaying in Europe.  We now have a café culture and a love of good food & wine, we even like to hug each other and sometimes greet each other with a kiss, ok mostly the women.  All because of the ability to travel cheaply and freely in Europe.  This is a stark contrast to the kind of country my parents grew up in in the 1950s & 60s where restaurants served the same bland, boring food; cafes were mostly of the ‘greasy spoon’ variety (nothing wrong with them, just nice to have variety) and people were stiffly formal in public.

Our art, music and philosophy have been greatly influenced by European artists bringing their skills to Britain, from where we have become hugely influential in our own right.

Joining the EU has been enormously beneficial to the UK, giving it a post-imperial role like nothing else.  It has enriched our national life in so many ways.  Leaving would be foolish.

Where do you think Monet got it from?  JMW Turner, British; Tours, Sunset

Another fine mess they gotten us into…Britain in Afghanistan

Afghan fighters, First Anglo – Afghan War, 1839 – 42. They haven’t changed that much.

So ISAF has wound up its operation in Afghanistan and declared its objectives achieved after 4,500 military deaths, many times that in civilian deaths; billions of dollars worth of destruction and so on and so on. Predictably, the Taliban have also declared victory labeling the foreign intervention a failure.

Just as predictably, commentators of all national origins and political stripes have tried to paint Afghanistan as some kind of black hole into which an army will march and never return. The British in 1839 – 42, (and another twice over) the Russians in the 1980s and now the Americans and British (again) in the 2000s.

I’m not so sure about ‘the graveyard of Empire’ label. Afghanistan highlights something systemic about foreign intervention there; failure of leadership, failure to plan, failure to understand the terrain (physical, cultural, psychological), failure to follow expert knowledge and advice. As cunning, brave, determined and atavistic as the Afghans need to be (and are) to defeat foreign adventures, we also like to ignore how the incompetence and arrogance of foreign militaries contribute to their own defeat.

As a Briton, the two most stunning examples have to be the first and last British contributions to this history.
The First Anglo Afghan War of 1839 – 42 was an unmitigated disaster. Sparked by the refusal to follow expert advice from specialists on the ground, who understood the Afghan ruler, Dost Muhamad, and what was going on in the country.

It followed the usual pattern: seemingly easy initial victories followed by the realization of backing the wrong man, poor leadership, confusion, defeat and humiliation.

A British army chaplain, the Reverand G.R. Gleig summed it up best when he wrote in 1843 that the First Anglo-Afghan War was

“begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, [and] brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it.”

The Remnants of an Army. William Brydona, assistant surgeon in the British East India Company Army arrives at Jalalabad, 1842.

The campaign was a misbegotten mess from start to finish. To begin with, the war was unnecessary. Having decided to fight it, the British conducted the war in such a way as to make defeat the only possible outcome.
This gives an astonishing account of how it happened. This is a shorter appraisal, but equally eye opening.

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No luck second time around. British and allied forces at Kandahar after the 1880 Battle of Kandahar, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War.

Fast forward to the modern era and we can see a similar pattern, as this article in Foreign Policy makes clear.
The attacks on New York and Washington on the 11th September 2001 made action of some kind inevitable. I remember a die-hard liberal friend of mine (and near pacifist) asking ‘what else can they (the US) do?’ Which was a good question.

From the moment the US presence in Afghanistan arrived, they had no interest in nation building. No interest in attempting to solve the problems that had created the Taliban in the first place. They were only interested in driving out the Taliban and hunting down Al-Qaida. In fact, the ‘driving out the Taliban’ bit was outsourced to any Afghan force that would do the fighting.

The result was missed opportunities to round up the leadership of Al-Qaida and the Taliban holed up in the Tora Bora mountains.

This was compounded by a catastrophic misunderstanding of Pakistan. The US never properly got to grips with the fact that Pakistan was riding two horses at once. Taking US money and weapons to hunt down selected Al-Qaida leaders and personnel whilst quietly supporting the return of Taliban proxies to fight in Afghanistan. All the while giving safe haven to these proxies in Quetta and North Waziristan. And sheltering Osama Bin Laden.
Probably the worst blunder was allowing the return to power of the old Mujahedeen warlords who had sparked a vicious civil war, allowing for the creation of the Taliban and its spectacular military victories, in the early 1990s.

The Bush administration never properly tried to solve these problems and remained blissfully ignorant of Pakistan’s double game (as William Dalrymple’s review of Ahmed Rashid’s Descent into Chaos’ makes clear).
So when the new Obama administration recalibrated the US approach with the so called Af-Pak Strategy in 2009 / 10, it was already too late. The accumulated detritus of mistakes: corruption, neglect, ignorance and inaction had created a vortex that gained its own momentum.

There’s also the singular fact that Western militaries were geared toward fighting the wrong war. The Taliban insurgency was never the Soviet Army pouring into the plains of Germany. This analysis of the war against ISIS applies equally to Afghanistan.

Finally, the most remarkable account of military folly comes courtesy of the British once again. In a book review published in the London Review of Books, journalist and novelist James Meek describes something that can only be described as a disaster:

“The British army is back in Warminster and its other bases around the country. Its eight-year venture in southern Afghanistan is over. The extent of the military and political catastrophe it represents is hard to overstate. It was doomed to fail before it began, and fail it did, at a terrible cost in lives and money.
How bad was it? In a way it was worse than a defeat, because to be defeated, an army and its masters must understand the nature of the conflict they are fighting. Britain never did understand, and now we would rather not think about it.”

That gives a flavour of what the review is about.

Simply put, the British didn’t go to Afghanistan in 2001 and beyond to defeat the Taliban, restore order and create a nice place to live for Afghans. They went there for one reason: to impress the Americans.

Let me say that again. The British forces were in Afghanistan to impress the Americans. Everything they did was geared to showing the US that Britain could still cut it as a reliable partner and military power. That’s the British raison d’etre in Afghanistan. They had neither the money nor the manpower to do it, but that didn’t matter. Everything else flowed out of that.

British soldiers in Afghanistan, 2000s. At least the Army got out in one piece, but left it’s pride behind.

In terms of deaths, this disaster wasn’t as bloody (for the British at least) as the first round in 1839 – 42. In terms of treasure, it broke the bank; not least because Britain’s economy in the 2000s could buy considerably less than in the 19th Century.

It isn’t even as if they ever knew what was happening on the ground.

Putting British forces in Helmand province had no historical literacy. Meek’s article shows how the British were distrusted and hated from the start. And the British never understood why.

Meanwhile, Afghans couldn’t believe the British could be as stupid as they appeared; concocting an elaborate conspiracy theory to explain British incompetence. The 19th Century experience had left Afghans with a folk memory of the British as ingenious, cunning devils. A memory that failed to take into account what they saw in front of them.

Here’s James Meek again:

”Helmandis believed deeply in the natural cunning of the British, so much so that the former chief (actual) Taliban commander in Helmand, the late Mullah Dadullah, was known as ‘the lame Englishman’ on account of his one leg and his extreme deviousness. For this reason people found it hard to account for Britain’s conduct in Helmand. There were two possibilities: the less likely was that the British were naive and ignorant. The favourite explanation, widely and sincerely believed, was that, secretly continuing to exercise imperial control over Pakistan, they were working hand in hand with the (actual) Taliban to punish Helmand, and that the Americans were trying to stop them.”

Whatever angle you look at it, this latest ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan signals another failure of leadership and knowledge. It does not suggest the invincibility of the Afghans in their mountain fastness. Afghan history is more complex than that.

The Fruits of Failure

It’s Eid ul Azha, a major Muslim festival that marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca

As always, the headlines contain the latest ‘news’ about the deadlock in the Israeli / Palestinian mess, speculation on terrorism and the latest Western plans to bomb Iraq.

This year the terrorism and bombing plans have taken on a newly apocalyptic turn with the rise of the so-called Islamic State, controlling territory in eastern Syria and Iraq.

They’re terrifying, deliberately so; with their snuff videos, genocidal clearings of non-Sunni Muslims and enslavement of non-Sunni Muslim women and girls.

It’s easy to see Islamic State as both a continuation of some assumed barbarity within the Islamic world & mindset and an aberration divorced from any human origin. This contradiction in the popular and political mind says more about the opponents of Islamic State than it says about Islamic State.

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Islamic State, Boko Haram, the Taliban, Al Shabaab, Al Qaida & it’s franchises et al represent the utter failure of the Islamic world in northern Africa, the Middle East and south west Asia.

These organizations wouldn’t have the space to operate without the rotting away of state superstructures; without the failure of politics to deliver anything other than exploitation and oppression; without the failure of education and the wider culture to both challenge fanatic ideologies and deliver a viable alternative.

Failure in the face of what, you might ask?

To understand the plight of the Islamic world, you have to understand something of the success of its past. In terms of the achievements of culture, science, medicine, architecture, town planning and organization; the various components of the early medieval Islamic world were way ahead of the West, rivalling (and even exceeding in some instances) the achievements of China and India.

Muslim scholars and the societies in which they lived were intellectually curious, bold, adventurous and ground breaking. The European Rennaissance wasn’t merely a rediscovery and renewed interest in the learning and culture of the Classical past, it was the investigation and repurposing of Islamic achievements.

In more recent centuries the Islamic world has found itself overtaken in absolute terms, subject to the imperial ambitions of European powers, severe economic competition from Europe and the US, often being late adopters of modern advances in medicine, science, education, manufacturing, digital technology.

From what I’ve read, failing societies seem to turn to extremes to explain and survive their failure. Old Kingdom ancient Egypt collapsed under the weight of environmental change to which hunger and extreme violence became the norm. Another instance might be the rise of far right ideologies in Europe and Asia after the calamity of the First World War and the current ongoing financial crises around the world.

Similarly, the profound failures of the Islamic world, the very rotting away of states, has given us fundamentalist political Islam. Earlier responses to the depredations of Western colonialism such as Arab nationalism have utterly failed; contained or crushed, by Anglo – US actions (similarly, the US / UK backed 1953 coup d’état in Iran) and finally undermined by the collapse of Soviet power at the end of the Cold War.

Mirroring the political failure is the wider societal failure (economic, educational, developmental) which prompted the Arab Spring. At the same time, deep seated corruption and exploitation have seen states such as Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Iraq and Syria partially or totally vanish as a result of industrial scale corruption, mismanagement and blind intransigence.

All that’s left to fill the void are organizations made up of thugs, criminals, political and intellectual fantasists and failures who are left to rampage across a territory.

The kinds of organizations exemplified by Islamic State look back to some kind of past golden age when everyone was bound by Islam and there was justice, peace and prosperity. This fictional past bares resemblance to the fantasies of European fascists of the 1920s and 30s; Hitler’s bold Teutonic culture represented by Wagner and Nordic myths of Aryan warriors; Mussolini’s dreams of reviving a golden Roman past or the political Catholicism of Franco.

Each driven by a profound failure of economics, education, politics, culture and above all of imagination.

Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi, the so called Caliph of the Islamic State is a failed cleric. Most of his followers have a very selective knowledge of Islam. Indeed, Muslims themselves would say these people only do what they do because of their profound ignorance of Islam as a set of ideas to live life by, as a spiritual philosophy and as a means of organizing society. It seems the only people who agree with supporters of fundamentalist terrorists in the extremist interpretation of Islam are the Saudi state and Western ‘Islamophobes’. That is, the progeny of a profound failure of imagination and people whose main motivation is xenophobia at best and racism at worst.

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Baghdadi is not the first warlord to set himself up as a king in the Middle East and probably won’t be the last. Inspite of appearances, I think he and his ilk represent a profoundly twentieth century and Western vision of the nature of humanity and power.

The situation is complicated by what look like successful alternatives in the Persian Gulf, the monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Each of these has based its wealth on petrodollars (or in the case of Dubai, gold smuggling from India in the 70s and 80s), the media and sporting industries or on speculative, spectacular property deals.

At their core, they remain unreformed, exploitative, absolutist monarchies whose position is only guaranteed by the flow of money from the wider global economy. Underlying it all is the potential for deep instability. Witness Saudi Arabia’s battles with Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and its recent de facto acknowledgement of supporting Islamic State as a huge regional policy mistake.

***

It was possible to support the US intervention in Afghanistan, because the Al-Qaida presence had to be rooted out; especially after 11th September 2001. The later invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a disaster waiting to happen. It was so clearly misguided, such an obvious mistake that it’s hard to see how people with the most expensive education money can buy could have thought it was sensible from any angle.

This situation is itself a consequence of the destruction of Iraq and the botched political legacy the US and Iran both agreed upon in 2011.

To add complexity to complexity, it’s also a product of the mishandling of the Syrian civil war, not only by the US and Europe, but also by Russia, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This is a mess with many fathers.

The new situation in Iraq and Syria isn’t going to be solved by US and allied bombing raids alone. Someone’s boots need to be on the ground, but whose? The only power with the ability to decisively defeat Islamic State on the battle field is the US.

Meanwhile, the zenith of US power and its ability to act unchecked has passed and the American people remain suspicious of open ended military commitments in the Middle East. Besides, the US no longer has the money and is more concerned about China.

Nor is it obvious that regional powers such as Iran and Saudi Arabia want the return of US troops to their backyard. For Iran, however much they hate and fear IS, they probably hate and fear the US more. For Saudi Arabia, they probably wouldn’t be able to stop their population uprooting and going to fight for IS en masse.

For a good 40 years, Western news headlines and political debate has been punctuated by ever more massive arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies. Billions of dollars sent from the world’s consumers of oil products to (among other destinations) Western arms companies via Gulf Arab bank accounts.

And they still want the West to fight their battles for them, from containing and crushing Iran to defeating Bashar al Assad in Syria to eradicating IS.

The ‘dog that hasn’t barked’ so far, is Turkey. It was doing so well. Growing links with regional powers fuelling and driving increased ambition on the international stage; enabled by a thriving economy, vibrant democracy and a groundbreaking ‘no problems with neighbours’ foreign policy. Now, all that is a distant memory. The democracy is returning to authoritarianism, the economy was buffeted by the 2008 crash and worst of all, the foreign policy has been exchanged for serious misjudgements in Syria and now Iraq.

Turkey has yet to fully declare its hand in the face of Islamic State.

The stuff I’ve read about the crimes of IS make me think of death cults such as the Nazis (and I don’t say that without reason) and the Khmer Rouge – the very reason for their existence is the exercise of murderous power over entire peoples, with limitless ambitions for destruction and death.

That they must be stopped is common sense. But how?

The only way this can be ended and that ending be politically acceptable is for the regional powers to end it themselves independent of the old imperial and Cold War powers.

It also means more distant international powers not interfering in the region and allowing their own interests and prejudices to come before local interests; preventing any kind of equitable settlement to local problems.

This has the disadvantage that they can’t throw their populations the bone of quietly blaming the Americans for their discomfort, but it has the advantage that the solution will be more agreeable to the people that matter, the people that live there.

Other changes that are necessary would have to be more far reaching. An education system that doesn’t teach hate, war and murder as justified domestic and foreign policy goals. An economic system that creates space for ordinary people to take make a living for themselves outside of foreign multi nationals and domestic slavery. A political system that allows everyone a chance to control their own destiny and (more importantly) to let off steam by making the changes that respond to their needs. An attempt to change the culture from one of imperial expansion and the caricaturing of non Sunni / Wahhabi / Salafi Muslims as ignorant dogs deserving of conversion at sword point.

Each of these would undercut the position of groups such as Islamic State as the true champions of ‘real Islam’, whatever that means. And everybody might have a chance of getting on with their lives in peace and quiet at last.

Israel and Gaza: the more things stay the same, the more they change

So another ceasefire has ended in Gaza.   A minor interruption to an offensive (offensive, in its truest sense) designed, we’re told, to destroy tunnels constructed by Hamas to bring in supplies under the Egyptian border, or to take Hamas fighters under the border and into Israel.

For all that, the most vivid images coming out of that small territory involve the destruction of schools, hospitals and the killing of civilians.

The other day I read a comment that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for Israel to deny that it is targeting infrastructure.  Because, self evidently, it has been attacking infrastructure.

Smoke rises from a building in Gaza.

Firstly, I want to say that I think Israel clearly has and must have a right to exist.  That’s a statement of first principles.  What it does not have is a right to do what it has done in Gaza.

Secondly, Hamas is a militant Islamist grouping that is not averse to hiding itself within the civilian population or using foreign journalists for cover.  It is not an organization with a democratic vision, being more akin to Saudi Arabia or the Muslim Brotherhood in outlook (if not loyalty).  I would not want to live in a society dominated by Hamas.

What has Israel done in Gaza?

Prior to the siege, Gaza was a nightmare for the IDF.  A place that exacted a disproportionate toll on its soldiers; out of all keeping with the number of settlers, who lived there and its geographical size.  The occupation had failed in a way the West Bank occupation hadn’t.

The withdrawal and removal of settlements in 2005 made the siege a possible next move.

Now after 8 years of siege Israel has a problem.  Gaza still hasn’t collapsed.  The siege has taken a lot of diplomatic, military and political resources out of the country, with very little palpable result.

After all, life still goes on there.  Palestinians, still live there.  It is not a safe space for Israel to claim for itself…yet.  After all this time it this siege risks becoming some kind of Trojan war, on a giant scale.

As miserable as the lives of Gazans must be, they still get access to health care, albeit under highly stressed, marginal conditions.  Their children still get education, again under highly stressed marginal conditions.  Ditto, the power supply.

This Operation Protective Edge is about removing all that.  Gazans get health care?  Destroy the hospitals.  That kills the professionals who cannot be replaced.  It destroys equipment, medicine and the built facilities to house it.  It destroys medical records and things such as blood banks.

The patients don’t matter, in fact if they die, that’s all to the better because it creates misery and fear.  Meanwhile, foreigners may be horrified, but they will be too afraid to work there if they think Israel will not spare them.

Similarly, education.  Education provides hope for the future, a way out of poverty, squalor and tyranny.  That’s why tyrants hate it, why theocracies and ‘democracies’ alike interfere and divert it.  No or poor access to it means that people are without the intellectual tools to question, challenge then change their circumstances.

A wrecked building

Schools, therefore, must also become a target.

Remove energy generation, education and health care and you tear apart the ability of a society to sustain itself, to create even a semblance of normality even under highly abnormal circumstances.

Talking of energy, Israel itself is facing an energy crisis.  It’s a net importer of energy and would like to end this whilst opening gas exports to Europe and the Middle East. 

It just so happens that there’s also gas in Gaza.  Not quite, but offshore, in the Mediterranean.  It turns out there’s rather a lot of gas in the eastern Mediterranean.  The difficulty is that the largest field, the Leviathan field straddles waters where border disputes impede Israel’s ability to exploit it – disputes with Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.  Whilst Gaza has an offshore gas field; two wells worth $4billion.

When this operation ends, as it eventually must, what will Gazans have?  Will the UN and the EU build more schools and hospitals only for Israel to smash them later?  Who will work in them with teachers, doctors, patients and students dead or scattered and the ever present danger of death?

The reality is that this operation is about tightening the siege of Gaza and not about touching Hamas.  Israel needs Hamas.  Just as Hamas (like Hezbollah) needs Israel.  Both sides use the other to cohere around.

Hamas, before this operation, was dying.  Starved of funds, fallen out with Iran and Hezbollah over Syria, increasingly lacking direction.  Israel invades

Rubble and wreckage, Gaza

and Hamas is suddenly energized again.

Israel uses Hamas as a bogeyman to terrify its people, to remove debate about economic injustice and to keep Israelis terrified for their future; to justify all kinds of criminality – from petty corruption and the vilification of liberal politics to murderous atrocities to open, legally enforced apartheid.  It creates the conditions under which the whole Israeli population has a hand in these crimes, by ensuring every family has members who belong to the military and security forces that enforce the Gaza Seige or the Occupation of the West Bank; the killings, routine humiliations, deprivation and apartheid that goes with so called National Security.  Nobody is innocent, everybody has to continue with it or face a reckoning.

And, it is slowly becoming less democratic, the very reason given by the Wet to support Israel.

Israel has many reasons for attacking Gaza.  None of them involve ‘rooting out terror’.  These days the ‘terror’ is mostly, not by any means exclusively’ one way.  All the cards appear to be in Israel’s favour; military, technological, economic and diplomatic power appear to favour Israel.

However, the sands are shifting.  US power in the Middle East (as in Europe) is waning whilst it shifts its focus to China and the Pacific.  Consequently there is an ongoing reordering of the status quo in the region and nobody knows how things will look when that process is complete.  The old borders imposed by the French and British in 1918 are breaking down.  New powers will arise, the question to ask is ‘what will be the nature of those powers?’

The danger for Israel is that they will look like the so called Islamic State group, now attempting to solidify its gains in eastern Syria and northern Iraq. Well financed through oil sales from captured oil and gas facilities, with funds also coming from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.  It is battle hardened and well equipped with Russian and US equipment captured on the battlefield.  Curing that poison will not be as easy a removing the Taliban or Islamist militants in Mali.

From the West, a more militantly nationalist Egypt could pose a growing threat.  Plus, Iran’s power and influence has been growing since the overthrow of Saddam by US forces in 2003.

Even US President Obama has questioned the Gaza blockade (a symbolic change signaling nothing practical).

Meanwhile the arrival of social media has made it harder for Israel and its supporters to dominate the news and information agenda.  Israel finds itself questioned like never before in countries that traditionally supported it.  The World is not as supportive as it was (also here and here).  Conservative politicians in the UK ( here, here and here) and Australia are wondering about the Gaza operation, not least because ordinary people open Facebook and Twitter and find unfiltered accounts of journalists on the ground describing death and destruction, bombing from the air, shelling on the ground and the killing of civilians.

Protests in London against Israeli actions in Gaza

Nobody believes the ‘rooting out terror’ argument anymore.  The Iraq War and Israel’s subsequent wars in Lebanon and Gaza have undermined any belief in the official narrative.  Now social media is giving that disbelief a solidity it lacked (paywall).  Even the British Broadcasting  Corporation is quietly shifting its ground.

The risks and stakes for Israel are growing and its ability to control its destiny through the use of sheer violence – imposing so called solutions through ‘changing facts on the ground’ – is slowly diminishing.

Meanwhile, as ever with modern warfare, it’s the civilians who continue to suffer and die; caught between sets of fanatic politicians who even whilst they compete with each other in their viciousness, actually have more in common with each other than they have with the people they claim to represent.

Jaws: The Revenge or The Flying Teeth of Montevideo

You’d think that witnessing a bite, however well disguised as a fall, would be an open and shut case.  A man falls through a group and his face connects with a shoulder.  The owner of the shoulder removes his shirt to show a bite mark.  It’s captured on camera, seen by thousands in the crowd and millions on TV.

But no.  There’s quite a few people who convince themselves they’ve seen no such thing.  In fact it’s all a conspiracy, they say, by their rivals to make their hero (and by extension themselves and their country) look bad; to diminish them all on the biggest stage of all.

Luis Suarez of Uruguay and Liverpool: they don’t call him the dentist for nothing

The human capacity for denial of the obvious always surprises me.  Never mind what you’ve seen with your own eyes, turn away from it and yell ‘can’t see it, it isn’t there’.

A recent Guardian article looking into Luis Suarez, his history of violence and his standing in Uruguay described an ESPN journalist meeting a wall of silence and denial in Uruguay itself.  Legend has it that at age 15 Suarez head butted a referee in a juniors game.  The journalist found nobody would speak to him, records were ‘lost’ and everyone defended Suarez.

The only reason I can think of for this is that in Uruguay peoples sense of self, of nationhood is small and weak.

Why would this be?

The colony that would later become Uruguay was founded a century or so after what is now Brazil and Argentina were colonized; the natives were too ferocious and there was no gold and silver in the area.  Consequently, there was no motivation for either the Spanish or the Portuguese to roll in.

Since it’s foundation in the first half of the seventeenth century, the main city, Montevideo  and (later) Uruguay have suffered from being a small territory wedged between two giant neighbours.  In their turns the Spanish, Portuguese,  Argentina, Brazil, Britain, France and the US have all fought over or sought to control Uruguay’s destiny; sometimes by manipulating the politics (Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, the United States)  by sending in ground (Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Britain) and naval (France) forces or ‘just’ by using ‘diplomacy’, spying and economic leverage (the United States).

I really want to see this, it looks beautiful

Uruguay’s history is turbulent to say the least.

Then there is this article by Luis Roux, a Uruguayan journalist republished in English by the British ‘Observer’ newspaper and to be found on The Guardian’s site.  It suggests Uruguayans totally lose themselves in football (I simplify of course).

I get the sense that Uruguay gets no sense of itself from its institutions, achievements, economy etc.  The Olympics and cycling notwithstanding, the British have become used to being losers.  Anyone who follows the soccer campaigns of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; England’s cricket or Wales’s rugby teams has to have become innured to the long years of ‘hurt’ our teams have been subject to over the decades.  There have been moments of glory such as the male middle distance runners of the 80s, the triumphs of the Barcelona Olympics and Kelly Holmes at Athens – but these have been fleeting.  Andy Murray’s success in the US Open and Wimbledon during 2013 was the exception that proved the rule.  Britain (historically) punches below its weight at sport.

Consequently, whilst we love our sportsmen and women to succeed and we can’t shut up about them when they are, we do have other things to fall back on.  Such as the NHS, the BBC, Parliament, our ‘Island History’ and ‘The Empire’.  We even celebrate our emigration to the far flung corners of the world, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and cities such as Hong Kong and Singapore.  We’re pround of having so many US Presidents having their ancestral home in England, Scotland or (less often) Wales.

Uruguay: Wedged between Brazil to the east and Argentina to the west. A veritable pearl, possibly

Then we like to remind ourselves that we may not be very good at sport, but we invented and / or developed so many of them…especially football.

What does Uruguay have?  Football.

Take that away and the country has…what exactly?

That’s why conspiracy theories loom so large over the response to Luis Suarez and his biting.

By the way his punishment, four months out of the game, seems to me to be perfectly just.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

The Empire When I was a child, I rarely, if ever, did anything in school history lessons about the Empire.  Not a thing.  Which is strange given that it had ended within the lifetimes of my parents (babyboomers both).  All that I know of the British Empire is from stuff I have read in books or articles and seen or heard on radio and TV documentaries.  Perhaps the retreat from Empire, the admission and examination of our collective failure was too much back then. I have never been an admirer of Britain’s imperial past.  In fact, living in Lahore, a former city of the Raj, I had no interest in the period of British rule, other than visiting the old British centre when I felt homesick.

What’s that book, again?

Now I’ve read Charles Allen’s Plain Tales from the Raj (1975), my feelings are slightly different, though not for the reasons some people might think. It’s based on a BBC radio documentary series from the early 1970s, which used interviews with the people who had lived, worked and served in India during the British Raj.  They had been soldiers of all ranks, from a former Commander in Chief of the Indian Army, to a man who arrived in India as a ‘bandboy’; members of the Indian Civil Service, the Forestry Service, the Police, the Indian Medical service, the Bengal Pilot Service, the Political Service or had been in business.  Other contributors were the wives of these men or were single woman working as nurses and midwives.  Many of them came from families distinguished by their long presence in British India.

The former club and dance hall is now a major library – but hasn’t lost it’s English country house look

What’s so interesting about it?

I was riveted for this reason; after living in Pakistan for 5½ years and being British I can relate to the British themselves and ordinary people who lived under it. It’s now clear to me that so much of the Raj is still there; all that’s happened is that Pakistanis (and Indians) have picked up where the British left off. What bowled me over were the common experiences; the suffering induced by the brutality of the summer sun, the illnesses to be wary of, the love Indians (now, Pakistanis) have for children, the people employed to help you keep your home running, the food, the corruption, the terrain and institutions such as The Club.

Some things never change

The heat is still brutal, especially in 46˚C heat and the loadshedding (rolling powercuts) doesn’t make it easier.  The afflictions the British warned each other about are still common and I’ve had a few of them; dysentery, prickly heat, fungal infections and typhoid though thankfully, never malaria. I agree with the book’s contributors, there is something special about the monsoon.  It’s more powerful than anything you will see in Europe; during a rainstorm, the atmosphere seems to be composed only of water.   After the rain stops, the air is filled with a remarkable, earthy scent which I’ve not experienced anywhere else; not sweet but certainly not pungent either. Offices, houses and barracks would be kept dark as a way of keeping out the sun, thus helping people inside to keep cool.  One way of doing this was to hang rush matts made of fabric and plant fiber over the doorways and windows; something I have seen for myself.  My family keeps our house dark during the summer; you can still see the rush matts used to keep out the heat and provide shade during the summers.

 

The modern Club building is pretty ugly, so I’ve posted this. It could be from the Home Counties but is still well used. Part of f the old Lawrence Gardens, now Bagh – e- Jinnah, Upper Mall, Lahore

The Raj in Pakistan

As someone more famous than me once said ‘and there’s more’.  Driving through the Cantonment (former British, now Pakistani, military settlements set outside major towns and cities), you come across signs for the officer’s mess, the regimental club and so on.  In other areas you come across clubs such as Lahore’s ‘The Gymkhana’ or ‘Model Town Club’ themselves hangovers from British rule. I visited the Gymkhana some two years ago (as part of a group!).  It was all wood panelling, signs talking about the contribution of the members, the rules and history of the Club and so on.  It felt like Mayfair rather than Lahore. The most famous school in Pakistan, Aitchison College, is little different.  On Founder’s Day (marking its founding) the College authorities and main guests ride to the main marquee in a horse carriage.  The College is still run on British lines, with houses, prefects, sports tournaments for British named trophies and so on.

Aitchison College.  A mix of British, Hindu and Muslim architecture in a replica of Eton, still going strong in modern Lahore

I’ve noticed that on any graduation day ceremony for any educational institution, the students wear the British cap and gown whilst the Chancellor (British title) wears an 18^th century outfit still used in the British legal system. The owner of a Pakistani school chain once reassured me ‘this is a British School’.  A few weeks earlier I’d been to see a theatrical production put on by students of the School, The Three Musketeers.  A group of fine actors they were, not one misstep or botched line.  I thoroughly enjoyed the show. What surprised me was the atmosphere in the auditorium before the performance; a polite colonial throwback where the great and the good mixed without any reference to the outside world.

They still do it now

Everyday life isn’t free of these echoes.  For example, everyone from the middle classes upward has a cleaner, a cook, a driver and a gardener to help keep the house neat, clean and tidy.  During the day, the streets don’t exactly throng, but there are a lot of cleaners moving from house to house to their next employer.  The mali (gardeners) will cut hedges, put in the bedding plants and keep the flower beds looking magnificent.  This leads on to outdoor pot plants.  A lot of old photos of the Raj feature outdoor pot plants because many of the British were shuffled around from posting to posting up to a dozen times a year.  Pot plants made gardens possible.

An unknown woman photographed in Calcutta (Kolkatta) c.1912.  The pot plants se are  still to be seen all over Lahore in most households, businesses, public buildings and government offices.

Meanwhile, the streets are still patrolled at night by the chowkidar (guard or gunman) who still makes a noise that everyone has to put up with, though these days it’s his whistle, not his coughing and spitting. Newly arrived British officials could get expensive uniforms and outfits cheaply copied by the derzi (tailor) who would also copy the latest fashions from Britain.  The derzi is still a major part of the life of families because he will take your latest cloth and turn it into an office rival busting outfit.  He will do this for men or women, but not always both. The basically extractive nature of the Raj economy hasn’t really changed either. Living in Pakistan, it’s obvious the money flows in one direction – up.  The economy of Pakistan is still based on rent; the most noticeable businesses are property speculation & development and setting up car parks on a patch of bare land.  At the national level the country’s main income is borrowed billions from the IMF, World Bank or the Asia Development Bank that are never paid back. I can only skirt over it here, but reading Plain Tales from the Raj whilst living in Pakistan was a remarkable experience because so much of ordinary (and less ordinary) Raj life is still there, albeit without the British.

A peaceful rise, so why the gun under the table?

Modern China presents a relaxed image to the World…reality could be somewhat different

Every so often, great minds feel the need to say something about the strange sense of déjà vu it’s possible to get when we realize that something which happened in the past is revisiting us.  Mark Twain said ‘history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme’ – which I quite like.  Harry S Truman added later,  ‘“The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know.”  Another I like is Karl Marx’s ‘history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce’.

My favourite (although not about repetition) is Douglas Adams’s ‘In the bathtub of history, the truth is like the soap but twice as hard to get hold of’.

Quite a few years ago, I read Henry Kamen’s ‘Spain’s Road to Empire’, about the rise to global prominence of Spain.  His telling has it that the Spanish were hopeless colonists who didn’t benefit anything like as much as their bankers; had no chance of competing with the other colonial powers; rarely invested anything but were otherwise great adventurers even though they had the Italians do a lot of their sailing.

I mention this because one thing that stuck in my mind was this. After removing the last vestige of Muslim rule from Spain in 1492, the great Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella sent a number of regiments (called Tercio in Spanish) to Italy. This was looking after their interests because Spain had extensive territories in the peninsula. The country was a disunited collection of city states trying to expunge a large French military presence. Spain was welcomed with open arms because it was not France. The City States (at least the ones not loyal to Spain) imagined they could rid themselves of France, but gave no thought to what would happen with a large Spanish army camped outside their gates.

A century of Spanish influence, meddling and warfare later, a Spanish diplomat was able to complain “we are the most hated nation in the world”.

You can see this with regard to the US; initially feted in Europe and Asia because of it’s historic break with the British Empire, it’s freedom and self declared lack of interest in Empire. Now the US is, if not the most hated nation then it certainly does have a trust gap to contend with.

Now apply this to China.

The country insists that it wants a peaceful rise.  This can be tested by its current conduct toward its neighbours.  Whilst recovering Macau and Hong Kong from the Portugal and the UK was a necessary step, China continues to aggressively assert its dominance in the South China Sea.  China claims a vast area of that sea including waters that belong to Brunei, Vietnam and the Philippines.  In the case of Vietnam, going as far as sending a drilling rig into Vietnamese territorial waters.

Elsewhere China’s armed forces have regularly mounted incursions into India’s border zones, which China claims for itself.

Beside this, China rejects foreign concerns about human rights abuses and Tibet as ‘foreign interference’.  However, China reserves the right to interfere in the internal affairs of foreign states; attempting to control who does and does not see the Dalai Lama and foreign hosted cultural events because a participant questions China’s rights record.

This meddling is far more subtle than the demands made by Western countries but it is meddling nonetheless. I do not believe they are symptomatic of a ‘peaceful rise’.

On the wider front I suspect two states in particular will come to regret their dealings with China.

Pakistan has handed over the port of Gwadar to the Chinese to run, after China became concerned that the upgrading of that facility was proceeding too slowly.  Gwadar is important because of its place on the shore of the Arabian Sea.  A planned ‘Economic Corridor’ between the mutual border and Gwadar could cut days off the sea voyage to Western markets for its goods.

Back in December, UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to China, as was noted at the time, contained special humiliation for Britain; with the Coalition Government desperate for investment in its expensive infrastructure projects the UK was forced to grovel in front of China.  Payback for the past, perhaps.

In both instances these measures smack of desperation.

Pakistan is an economic basket case and desperate for foreign money, largely reliant on hand outs to keep it going.  It needs a miracle to grow its economy to the point where most people can find private sector jobs with money to spend.  That just isn’t the case at the moment.  The private sector is simply unable to create jobs on the scale needed.  Pakistan’s population is growing all the time which generates further stress on Pakistan’s ability to absorb them into the workforce when they start looking for work.

Britain’s problem is a bit different.  It is a declining power desperate to keep the City of London as the world’s financial capital.  As it is, economic power appears to be shifting east.  London has to attract new users to its markets and trading floors if it is to remain relevant.  The biggest new player appears to be China.

In Pakistan, China has secured a Treaty Port.  A Treaty Port creates a stable environment for a country to do business within a territory often on preferential terms.  Their history is not a happy one.

The difficulty is that Treaty Ports give a foothold that can be hard to remove when national interests clash.  Eventually, the British East India Company ran the ports of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta became military strong points and provided a gateway to the British to conquer India.

The Chinese know their history and probably would never allow foreigners to have preferential agreements on running ports or trading facilities at any time in the future.  Nor, I suspect, would the United States.  I think Treaty Ports are born out of weakness or complacency by the host power.   The danger here is that giving another country such a strong foothold on their own territory, both countries risk their independence of action.

Humiliation and domination by foreigners still haunts China

China may well say it wants a peaceful rise, but historically speaking rising powers always get around to flexing their muscles. Some start sooner than others.  And that country is already throwing its weight around.  Whilst none of this is unique to China (we are all human, for better and for worse) none of it bodes well for the future of either country.

Pots, kettles and calling each other black

One of the stranger things I noticed living in the UK was the sense people had of the country’s irredeemable corruption. Inspite of the enormous sums involved in US, French or developing world scandals, we Brits got it into our head that the UK was the most corrupt place on earth.

Perhaps that’s a result of being human and not travelling. The saying has it that ‘the grass is greener on the other side of the fence’. In many instances, this is said with very good reason,

One example is Mexico. There is a reason so many people brave a huge desert, a high & miles long fence, border guards and trigger happy vigilantes to get into the United States. I’m not sure it’s the lattés in Los Angeles or Houston.

I used to believe the idea that the UK’s way of doing things was fundamentally clean. Yes, I’ve heard of petty wrong doing at local government level in the UK, anyone involved in local politics will know of something the local press has turned a blind eye to that could put some puffed up local politico in the dumps, if not always in jail. But that’s just the point, it’s local, it’s often petty and it certainly does not involve everyone.

Then I moved to Pakistan and my views changed radically. What you see here is raw, naked, money grabbing thievery. No pretences, no beating about the bush. This is undisguised and brutal. Of course, everyone involved will deny it, nobody will admit to being corrupt. But everyone also knows that high ranking bureaucratic posts in government service are for sale. Police ranks, for example, are often for sale. You pay out a few hundred thousand rupees to get it. That means you have to find ways of recouping that money and making extra on top.

Omar Shahid Hamid’s The Prisoner is eye opening on this and other murky goings on within the police force of Karachi. This is without the dodgy politics, smuggling, tax dodging, foreign exchange scams and outright fraud that you can read about in the newspapers everyday of the week, often involving tens of millions of dollars.

What I’ve been forced to recognize is this: that corruption in the UK is far more sophisticated, low profile and disguised than it is in Pakistan. Publicly, you can have politicians losing office over a few hundred thousand pounds or getting fast track citizenship for their foreign migrant nanny.

You often have to stray into the financial pages of the media to pick up on the roll of UK financial scandals. And there are rather a lot of them.

For example, the London banking giant HSBC caught laundering money for the Mexican Sinaloa drugs cartel, fined $1 billion by the US Justice Department. The British bank Standard Chartered, discovered breaking international sanctions on Iran and North Korea. Later, a group of European (including British) banks were caught fixing the international bench mark interest rates (the Libor scandal) and now there have been allegations that foreign currency exchange rates have been fixed; both involving not billions of dollars but trillions. If this were cricket the players responsible would have gone to jail.

Add to this the ‘London Whale’ scandal involving J P Morgan Chase in the loss of six billion dollars on London trading floors and you’ve already got a a substantial charge sheet varying between dodgy dealing and outright criminality.

Except in Britain it’s not called criminality, it’s called a mistake, a technical infraction, a failure of oversight; anything but corruption.

Pakistan is listed in the Transparency International Perceptions of Corruption Index 2013 as being (alongside Russia) the 127th least corrupt country in the world, in a list of 177 nations. The UK is listed somewhere at No.14 in that list.

It strikes me that although fraud can feel like a national sport in Pakistan, corruption here lacks the sophistication, ambition, imagination and scale of British corruption. At least in Pakistan, people pretend not to have broken the law which means there are rules. In the UK, no-one has broken the law because so much of this is actually legal.

Afterall, it can’t be corrupt if it’s not illegal, right?

A revolving door isn’t just a revolving door. It refers to a minister or senior civil servant working in the private sector after they have worked in government, going on to use all their knowledge and contacts book for a directorship or a consultancy. It has been the source of a rash of scandals in the last ten years alone, although it’s been going on for at least the last three decades.

Maybe one could consider the buying and selling not only of titles such as peerages and knighthoods, but the buying of influence at the heart of government.

In Pakistan, all these things are an open secret, whilst in the UK its often dug up by investigative journalists. However, looking back at that Transparency International index, I wonder which really is the least corrupt or the better at hiding it.

Vlad the Impaler does for Ukraine

Russia’s attempted take over of part of Ukraine is remarkably subtle, for an invasion. Time was an army of 100,000 would have done the trick, marching in with tanks and artillery in tow. Now the international situation is far more precarious in the sense that there is 24 hour rolling news, the internet, UN and public opinion to cosy up to. Even dictators don’t want to look like the bad guys.

The beauty of this strategy is that it doesn’t give NATO the excuse to send in the troops in defence of their own interests. Russia gets to have its cake and eat it too.

Indeed that’s what’s so remarkable here, nobody’s interests are served by a weak, chaotic Ukraine, except perhaps Russia’s. But the stealthy nature of this invasion, taking advantage of the power vacuum left in the immediate aftermath of the Yanukovich overthrow has kept Ukraine, Europe and the US off balance and made it harder for the new government in Kiev to consolidate power when part of the country is slipping into Russia.

For a perspective here, Russia is doing what Pakistan has done in Kashmir and Afghanistan for at least the last 30 years. The fact that Pakistan has been ruined by this kind of operation tells you how stealthy and (for the moment) successful Russia’s move is.

Let’s be clear here. This has nothing to do with nationalism. It has nothing to do with defending ethnic Russians from Ukrainian oppression. In fact it probably ensures Ukraine and other ex-Russian colonies in the region will be very wary of the Bear’s motives and intent. If ethnic Russians had it tough before this adventure, they will have it harder from here on.

Why would Russia do this? From what I’ve been reading, it seems this operation was planned some time ago. It’s highly likely that Russia would have a contingency plan should chaos threaten any of it’s former European colonies. No problem with that, it’s what powers do.

A very interesting article in The Independent by Martin Nunn and Martin Foley highlights the economic gains Russia gets from holding the Crimea and the east and south of the country. Gazprom could get its hands on exploration rights in the northern Black Sea for oil and gas. Rerouting any Caspian gas and oil pipelines through Crimea to avoid Russia suddenly becomes a non starter. On top of that, the area is rich in farming, minerals, coal and steel, nuclear power and even solar power.

In taking annexing the Crimea, Putin has given Russia the kind of Black Sea dominance it used to enjoy in the Soviet era, when that sea was all but a Communist lake. Whilst it no longer is that, Russia now has control over the most dominant feature along that coast. Almost akin to the position of the US in the Carribean sea, when it ruled Cuba.

There are two problems on the horizon. Russia’s economy is reliant, not on making things but on digging stuff out of the ground. Other people turn those raw materials into things Russians might want to buy. The money comes in…and flows straight back out again.

For any reader of Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson‘s Why Nations Fail, Russia’s economic and political set up will be familiar. They would characterize Russia as an extractive state, where money and power flow upwards effectively stifling any kind of organic political and economic development. The key here is that both go hand in hand; to simplify the argument, it is simply not possible over the long term to create a prosperous economy whilst shutting out the bulk of the population from political power. Growth can be created in an extractive system but it never lasts. Witness Rome, the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Russia.

The point to be made is that in crushing political rights and siphoning off as much wealth as possible; therefore stifling the widest spread of free thinking and innovation, Russia’s elite are guaranteeing the country’s long term failure.

This action in Ukraine reminds me rather of the ancient and medieval empires that needed a constant flow of booty, tribute and conquest to keep the economy buoyant. When those conquests dried up, so did the economy.

I suspect Putin is taking advantage of the post Iraq world. The US has been clearly weakened by an act designed to demonstrate its power but which only demonstrated the limits of that power. It also damaged the fabric of international law, the idea that you don’t invade other states for the fun of it. After two bruising and ultimately futile wars in Asia, the US is in no mood to take on Russia. Nor, for that matter, is the UK quite apart from London being part owned by Russian oligarchs. It means nobody is willing or able to do anything to oppose Russia’s adventure.

Although Putin likes to pose as a neo-soviet successor to Stalin, in the Russian tradition of so-called strong rulers; with the diversion of so much wealth, the pressing importance of past glories, the importance of the ‘Russian World’, identity politics, crushing gay people and the image of himself as the Strong Man, Vladimir Putin resembles not his old Communist predecessors, but another set of tyrants altogether.