addingtonWord

  • The art of political collaboration

    20150408-tracyeminSome time ago I visited the Tate Britain gallery in London with my family. Finding the lift out of order, a gallery assistant kindly offered the use of the staff lift which is not usually available to the public.  She led us through the areas that were setting up for the Turner Prize.  Variously described as “a barometer for the mood of the nation” or “cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit” (the latter by the British Culture Minister in 2002) the annual award for British visual artists often draws much criticism for the esoteric and unconventional nature of many entries. (‘My Bed‘, a 1999 entry by Tracy Emin purportedly showing her dishevelled bed within which she contemplated suicide, sold at auction last year for £2.5 million.)

    One section we passed through was entirely empty, save for four men in identical blue coveralls advancing across the room side-by-side, sweeping the floor in near-perfect harmony. A flickering strip light lent the scene a post-apocalyptic feel.  I asked the gallery assistant if we were being treated to a private view of one of the Turner Prize entries.  She looked confused, intrigued and a little nervous, before answering no, they were just brushing the floor.  I have named this work of art (the look on her face, not the blokes sweeping the room) ‘Delusion, Confusion’ and, although only witnessed by my eye-rolling wife, am waiting for the call from the prize committee.

    The assistant may not have demonstrated the ability to spot emerging British artistic talent. But by not screaming “stop being an arse you utter buffoon!” she did show she possessed the enviable qualities of tolerance, inclusion and patience. I have thought often of her good manners as the British General Election on May 7th approaches.

    Any sensible analysis of voting intentions suggests a hung parliament, with no party achieving the 326 seats needed for an outright majority. But it’s not quite that straightforward. 650 seats (hence the 326 figure) with the speaker and three deputy speakers excluded brings the target to 324. However, as Sinn Fein refuse to sit in the House of Commons they are also not counted. In the 2010 election Sinn Fein won five seats.  If that were repeated in May the total for a majority would be reduced to 321. A poll for BBC’s Newsnight programme on April 7th had the state of the parties as this:

    The resultant horse-trading will test to the limit the parties’ abilities to demonstrate the same qualities as the gallery assistant when negotiating potential coalitions. Conservative+Lib Dem+UKIP+DUP? Or Labour+SNP+Green+Plaid Cymru? Or a mishmash of something else? Small parties will likely hold the balance of power in the forthcoming election to an unprecedented degree. So how many single-issue solutions will be demanded by the tiny king-makers? How much ‘togetherness’ will actually be displayed? How will the demands for different types of ‘togetherness’ be reconciled?

    Different types? Absolutely. Take the recent referendum on Scottish independence. The Scottish National Party (SNP – the leading voice of the failed ‘Yes’ campaign and likely dominant political force in an independent Scotland) wanted to leave the United Kingdom. But it also pledged the new country of Scotland would be an enthusiastic partner in the European Union (EU), a political club committed to “ever closer union”. Labour and the Liberal Democrats are also fans of staying in the EU, and pundits reckon David Cameron thinks likewise.  So on the one hand the SNP want to break away from the United Kingdom and on the other join a supra-national club of which the main parties of the UK are also supportive. It suggests that, unusually, togetherness could be an easier sell at regional rather than local level. Will the minor parties take such a strategic view?

    But two recent political accommodations in British history give me cause for optimism that a home-grown ‘rainbow coalition’ could work.  First, the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat government, which seems to have made a good fist of sticking together, or at least not collapsing in acrimony as was widely predicted. Second, the power-sharing arrangement in place in Northern Ireland between the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein since 2007 shows how former bitter enemies can work together when required. And in the recent Sky News/Channel 4 leader interviews, Miliband praised Cameron’s commitment to gay marriage and overseas aid spending and was complimented in return for his support of the Prime Minister’s position over Da’esh.

    This acknowledgement that political opponents may, on occasion, hold virtuous views has been lacking in recent political discourse. Of course such laudable qualities, it must be noted, only got an airing when the individuals were asked directly on a nationally-televised interview in an election year. Nevertheless, it is a welcome sight and far removed from the current partisan politics practised in America, where attack adverts and polarisation are very much in vogue, as this article in the New York Times Magazine attests.

    The limits of togetherness and quite how alien the political parties are to one another will be tested after May 7th.  The need to identify common ground, display mutual respect and employ political give and take was demanded of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats for the current government to work. Finding areas of similarity and agreement can only be a good thing for national politics. In contrast to the tub-thumping of the election trail as the main parties fight to secure a majority, come May 8th respectful pragmatism will be required across the board as the parties get into bed together. And if ever there was a reason for the doubters to vote, the potential power the minor parties are likely to hold after the election is surely it.

    Exclusive offer to addingtonWord readers

    Delusion, Confusion is still available for the discerning collector.  Obviously, now it is just an abstract concept; a memory of an idea.  Hence the exorbitant asking price. I’m waiting for your call.

  • Kicking the ring

    When I was at Sandhurst, the British Army’s officer training establishment, Wednesday afternoons were given over to ‘Academy Sport’. This was an opportunity for us bright, young hopefuls to pursue whichever physical activity was our personal favourite.  Almost every sport imaginable was on offer, providing myriad opportunities to get sweaty.  Also available was golf.  Not being a fan of the game, but being a stalwart supporter of a pub in Ascot next to a driving range, I signed up, along with two mates with similar motivations. We were accused by our Company Second-in-Command of “kicking the ring” out of the principle of Academy Sports afternoons.  But, as we were entirely within the rules, he didn’t have a leg to stand on, like many of our more dedicated compatriots come Wednesday evenings.

    I was reminded of this exchange when I heard of the so-called cash-for-access allegations involving Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw, both former British Foreign Secretaries (Conservative and Labour respectively) and Sir Malcolm also the current chair of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). Both men had been caught in a joint Channel 4/Daily Telegraph sting whereby they were filmed discussing employment opportunities as advisers to a fictitious Chinese firm seeking to invest in Britain.

    The criticism broadly revolved around three issues: the daily fee each man charged for external work (£5000 in the case of Mr Straw), whether sitting MPs should take additional paid employment, and whether current or former public servants should benefit financially through the experiences, access and ideas they have accumulated through positions which are denied to the general public. The first criticism is the politics of envy (my daily rate is not yet £5000 but I’d like it to be). The second is hotly debated but, supposedly, answered by British MPs having to declare additional remuneration on the Register of MPs Financial Interests (see link here). The third is more interesting and, for me, personal, as it is exactly what I have sought to do, and is the reason you are reading this blog.

    In my 23-year military career I achieved a reasonable rank and held a number of interesting roles.  Since moving into journalism with The Economist and as a freelance I have leant on that experience to offer angles that may not be readily available elsewhere in the media. However, I have held back from discussing any sensitive material to which I have been exposed and avoided any conflicts of interest. But is maximising one’s marketability for financial gain, however that experience has been accumulated, fair game? Or is it ‘kicking the ring’?

    Sir Malcolm has today resigned as Chairman of the ISC and will not contest his seat at the next election (see here); Jack Straw was stepping down anyway. As well as the legendary (to my Company anyway) quote of “kicking the ring”, my former Company Second-in-Command, who is today a serving General, also offered us the following bon mot: “when contemplating whether or not to do something, if the thought ever occurs to you that it might not be a wise thing to do, it probably isn’t”. I have held both quotes close over the years and employed them equally in various circumstances.  Sir Malcolm and Jack Straw perhaps kicked a bit too hard this time.

  • Words as weapons

    Actress Shirley MacLaine has caused outrage with comments in her memoir suggesting holocaust victims were “balancing their karma from ages before” (see here). The book includes in the sub-title ‘A lifetime of questions, speculations…’ and so on, leaving a lot of caveated wriggle-room.  So this might be nothing more than a ham-fisted example of the old adage about ‘no such thing as bad publicity’. But in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the current debate about freedom of speech, her book highlights the power of words to wound.

    This is nothing new, of course. British Prime Minister David Cameron chooses words deliberately when he talks of a “war on mediocrity” in schools. Likewise his opposite number, Ed Miliband, countering with a desire to “weaponise” the issue of the National Health Service. Intriguingly, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has just released a classified document from 1985. It contains advice to the then new Minister, Tom King, on toxic words to steer clear of (see here). Words like ‘British Army’, ‘orange’, ‘green’ and ‘Ireland’ may seem innocuous enough to many observers, but were felt, at the time, to be sufficiently loaded as to be worth avoiding. (When I served in Northern Ireland I remember a local councillor’s outrage at a new cycle path along a busy road. His concern was not for the safety of the cyclists. Rather at the numerous junctions on the route there were patches of tarmac where the green cycle path, white give way symbols and yellow (gold) lines intersected.  These, he fumed, were Republican symbols being foisted on the public without consultation.)

    But where to draw the line between censorship and free speech if words can be so powerful? “How do you take on ideas if you hide them from view?” asked Tom Slater assistant editor of the online magazine Spiked and vocal opponent of all forms of censorship on a recent BBC Radio 4 programme, The World Tonight (link here – start at 16:37). “Censorship is a judgment on the audience,” he says, by allowing aberrant views to go unchallenged. Some authorities have resorted to legislation. An OSCE report into free media (see here) was sharply critical of Republika Srpska, the ethnic Serb portion of Bosnia, for too heavy-handedly encouraging self-censorship.

    Gene Sharp, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, understands the power of words better than most. The ‘Clausewitz of nonviolent warfare,’ as he has been called, founded the Albert Einstein Institution and promotes nonviolent struggle to challenge dictatorship and oppression. His amazing film, How to start a revolution, (see trailer here) suggests one of the most powerful methods is the use of signs in English.  The point being that the audience the protesters should be appealing to is global, not local, and English is better understood world-wide than any other language.

    Some in the media have started referring to Islamic State, or IS, as Daesh, knowing well the power words and language hold. France, also, now uses this term in official language (see here). Justin Marozzi, historian and author of ‘Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood’ has clear advice. “Follow the Arabs,” he says, “they don’t use the term IS for a very good reason.” The term Islamic State came from the group itself and he suggests we unwittingly confer legitimacy on them by supporting their narrative. Alternatively, Daesh, with connotations of being ‘outsiders’ or ‘renegades’ has a “strongly pejorative meaning of crushing something underfoot, of trampling on people, of being bigoted,” he says.

    Words can hurt; governments know that, terrorists and individuals too.  When does free speech become incitement; when should self-censorship give way to legislation? And in a global conversation, won’t somebody always be offended?

  • Goodbye to all that

    Scan 24The British government recently announced that a national service of commemoration will take place on March 13th to mark the end of combat operations in Afghanistan (link here). Bookended by the campaigns in Iraq (the latest of which continued to be busy last weekend, see here) the last decade or so of fighting has seen the purpose and efficacy of military action in the realm of international relations transformed.  The result, I think, will be a more unstable world for some decades yet.

    There are many lessons that can be drawn from these military deployments. Not least, how the campaigns have highlighted the gulf in understanding between civilian society and the military. This is primarily because, unlike the generation that grew up after the second world war, most of society no longer has experience of military service, either directly or by an immediate family member. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it has led to a “reverent but disengaged” attitude toward the military, “absent the caveats or public scepticism we would apply to other…institutions, especially ones that run on taxpayer money” according to James Fallows in The Atlantic magazine (see here). “If more members of Congress…had had children in uniform,” he says, “the United States would probably not have gone to war in Iraq”.

    Two other lessons in particular stand out for me. First, the campaigns demonstrated how little the world community has progressed in terms of international relations since 1945 and has actually retrenched from the end of the Cold War. The shortcomings of collective security and the United Nations (UN) were demonstrated for all the world to see, leading to an ambivalence towards international norms in certain contexts.

    Take the UN.  Set up to prevent a third world war, it has been brilliantly successful in that regard.  But a system designed to curb international adventurism by encouraging, through the security-council veto, international inaction, will allow occasional tragedies such as Rwanda, Bosnia or Syria.  This may be the price to pay for international peace, but post-Cold War, is an outdated system.  The UN is still rooted in a state-on-state paradigm and has proved almost powerless to prevent such abuses.  Therefore, when an entity such as al-Qaeda (and, today, Da’ish) appears, it is too easy for the world community to ignore, or rather too hard to do something about collectively (with all the legal and moral cover that provides). Hence the rise of coalitions of the willing, ad-hoc arrangements and interpretation of international law. The role and status of the nation state is centre stage once again.

    NATO also has demonstrated a fundamental weakness. It becomes unstuck very quickly outside the model of collective defence, for which the high point was the end of the Cold War.  Despite the description of a community of values, the campaigns have demonstrated through national caveats, how limited NATO’s offensive capability is in wars of choice.  The result, in Afghanistan at least, was a number of small and only related campaigns rather than a coherent whole.  Such wavering may have encouraged Russia’s recent adventurism in Ukraine.

    The second lesson to be drawn is that the campaigns showed how ‘war’ as is commonly understood as a contest between two opposing heavy-metal armies, is dead.  Rather, it is now more akin to armed politics. It was very appealing for both campaigns to be seen in a traditional manner, as ‘hard’ military responses are easier to employ (plus, it’s what the military does: ‘when you are a hammer everything looks like a nail’).  The more nuanced application of military effect that has latterly been employed certainly offers a more coherent policy response. But it also raises the spectre of war without end as, unbounded, a blurring of the distinction between peace and war could invite a more regular use of force (as President Obama acknowledged here).

    So where are we, as we mark the centenary of the first world war? Nation states interpreting international law to suit their interests and more readily reaching for the military as a policy response. And a political class increasingly detached from the people they ask to do the fighting. Cool heads will be required in the coming years.

  • Back to the future

    Scan 20 Update in light of the House of Commons Report

    This post first went up on January 22nd. I update it now as Britain’s House of Commons Defence Select Committee has released a report today criticising Britain’s limited military involvement in the fight against Da’ish (also known as Islamic State). Reinforcing the concerns I raised in the post below, the report suggests there is an “unwillingness of any of the Service Chiefs to provide a clear, and articulate statement of the UK’s objectives or strategic plan in Iraq”. It also criticises the “lack of clarity over who owns a policy—and indeed whether such a policy exists”. Link to the report here.

    Back to the future

    Philip Hammond, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, hosted a summit on January 22nd of 21 of the 60 countries contributing effort to defeat Da’ish, the increasingly used term to better describe the group also known as IS (see here). Coordination of the international campaign is sorely needed. For one thing, Britain’s military involvement is primarily from the air. Given limited political appetite for boots on the ground after the recent campaigns this decision is understandable. But it is also a glaring strategic mistake.

    As operations in Afghanistan wound down towards the end of 2014, Britain’s Royal Air Force shifted the focus back to Iraq.  Tornado aircraft started interdicting Da’ish in October, with Reaper remotely piloted air systems (RPAS, or drones) commencing operations on November 10th.  The tempo did not slow over Christmas and, according to figures released by the British government here, has increased throughout January.

    We have been here before. After the first Gulf War in 1991 the imposition over Iraq of the northern and southern No-Fly Zones by America, Britain and France was expected to lead to the fall of Saddam Hussein. They achieved nothing of the sort.  A Top Secret document (see here) from December 2001, declassified in 2011, between the office of Sir Richard Dearlove, then Chief of Britain’s overseas spy agency the Secret Intelligence Service (also known as MI6) and Sir David Manning (then foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair) states: ‘Regimes have compromised with Baghdad (sanctions busting) for gain because they see no prospect of effective action to remove Saddam’.

    ‘No prospect of effective action’ neatly describes how air power alone cannot dictate events on the ground. Supporters of the current strategy in Iraq see the Kurdish Peshmerga forces as the ground element; capable to a degree the marsh Arabs and others that rose up against Saddam after the 1991 Iraq war never were.  They will also point to the current efforts to expand the Iraqi army and reduce their reliance on shia militias (or ‘volunteers’ as Iraq’s Human Rights Minister told me here.) They might be right, but basing a military strategy on such imponderables is a bold step.

    There is another, arguably more worrying, lesson from the No-Fly Zones. Committing combat forces is about as serious a decision a state can take. There is no room for getting it wrong, and victory, however weakly defined, is a must. The No-Fly Zones became a strategy in their own right and the longer they endured the higher were the stakes.  To withdraw the forces would have been to embolden Saddam and he would have claimed, rightly, to have seen off another attack.  But in the absence of a definitive outcome (and with no UN resolution backing the action) the three Western powers had a choice: commit to a costly and never-ending military campaign, or force  a conclusion.  Starting military action without knowing how to end it is not a strategy and it rarely ends well.

    Da’ish are unhindered by the line on the map beyond which Britain has decided it will not act (although other Coalition members take a different view). A strategy with no clear link to an end-state and a fragile relationship with a largely-unknown ground force may succeed.  But history suggests it won’t.  And when it fails, it fails explosively.

  • Not in front of the children

    16x-2011-TFH-038-052The public inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko starts tomorrow in the Royal Courts of Justice in London (details here).  Litvinenko was a former KGB officer, openly critical of Vladimir Putin and reportedly in the pay of MI6. He was allegedly murdered by two Russian nationals, Andrei Lugovoy and Dimitri Kovtun, both of whom are former KGB bodyguards, using the highly radioactive substance polonium-210.  Traces of the element were found in Litvinenko’s body, a Mayfair hotel and Itsu sushi bar, both in London and frequented by Litvinenko on the suspected day of his poisoning, and British Airways aircraft supposedly used by Lugovoy and Kovtun travelling to and from Russia.

    One of the terms of reference for the inquiry is to identify where responsibility for the death lies.  This could be politically explosive if Sir Robert Owen, the inquiry’s Chairman, criticises the Russian state in any way, which is likely given its refusal to extradite Lugovoy and Kovtun.   What the inquiry will not be discussing however, is the much more politically charged issue of the efficacy and morality of the alleged tactic used; that of a targeted killing.

    Much has been spoken of precision weapons in recent years (including an earlier post, Man versus machine). But little consideration has been given to debating the most precise way of targeting an adversary; using a human being to identify and kill another.  The most recent public use of this tactic was the killing in Dubai of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas member, allegedly by an Israeli team, on January 19th 2010 (see more here).  In terms of collateral damage (i.e. killing people other than those intended) it is about as precise a method as is currently available.  But to much of the world the employment of this tactic is abhorrent.

    Why? Ultimately, killing is morally challenging and the demand from society for a clinically efficient targeting of its adversaries without the necessity of having to consider the realities of the task is naive and hypocritical. This view is understood by Gisela Stuart, Labour MP and member of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee: “Society is very happy to talk about peacekeeping,” she says, “but when you say, ‘do you know, there is a requirement to kill people before you get the peace and you can’t have one without the other’, we don’t like engaging with that.”

    Society’s relationship with security and the necessity of killing is complicated.  The increasing impact of human rights legislation and the presumption in the West that existential threats are relics of history have contributed to a lower tolerance for casualties and collateral damage. But the desire not to engage with this issue leads to the contradictory position whereby the most precise and discriminatory technique of targeted killing is eschewed in favour of one, such as drone strikes, that will undoubtedly lead to greater collateral damage.  Targeted killing through the use of a small team in personal contact with the adversary exposes the wider civilian population to a level of harm far below that accepted with precision munitions.

    Ms Stuart is in favour of discussing the merits and difficulties of employing such tactics, but accepts it will be a difficult to win the argument with the general public.  When asked if Britain should be prepared to go into a third country with a functioning state and carry out a targeted killing operation, she replied: “I hope so, but it’s a bit like sex education when a 5-year old asks you something. You don’t tell them the whole story, but what you do tell them has to be the truth.  It is un-British to make it too obvious.  Not in front of the children.”