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Waiting for the Barbarians: A response to General Election debates, why Nationalism can destroy our country

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By Pablo de Orellana & Maryyum Mehmood:

Immigration limits
Conservative Party 2005 election poster. Remarkably, this exact phrase was taken up by Yvette Cooper in 2014. Photo: Spectator

To say ‘our country’ constitutes a claim as to whom the country belongs, and just as explicitly, to whom it does not. Nationalism is a big and old idea, a political concept that links rights to membership of a particular community. Within that community, however defined, nationalism emphasizes a duty to solidarity, fellowship and common cause around the collective of the nation.

The problem is that nationalism works equally, or even more emphatically, to draw the lines distinguishing who belongs to this collective and who does not. This division is inevitable and essential to the functioning of nationalist ideology, for to belong is to have access to rights, and to a share of the community’s hard-earned rewards: why should we pay for the healthcare, benefits, or any goods that are not destined for our community?

The ideology of nationalism: Self and Other

This love of one’s own community can take a banal form. It does not have to be virulent, racist or violent; nevertheless, it always demands separation. This is, on one level, subconscious: to love one’s community, to wish for its continued prosperity – commonly referred to as ‘patriotism’ – does not necessarily constitute sinister ideology.

The problem is that it inevitably poses a radical binary: two choices that are not compatible and may not coexist, an existential choice, as Nigel Farage is fond of pointing out. Our favourite extremist makes this clear when he says that the only question he would accept in a ballot for a referendum on EU membership would be ”Do you wish to be a free, independent sovereign democracy?’’

That being said, patriotism in and of itself does not entail a definition of who is excluded from membership of the Leviathan. Demarcating these boundaries is one of the essential discursive functions of nationalism.

The use of nationalist rhetoric is neither new nor uncommon. Figures as diametrically opposed as Mustafa Kemal, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Oswald Mosley, Mohandas Gandhi, Ho Chi Minh, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Marine Le Pen, to name but a few, all held nationalism as a key big idea, their rallying call, despite their otherwise distinct political projects. We emphasise distinct because these figures differed in everything except for the unifying claim to link the rights of those that belong to a nation with a particular political movement motivated by attaining these rights.

That is the core of nationalism: these rights, for these very people: its nationals, those belonging to our country. This is a powerful and universally applicable idea; a dragon of populism many have ridden and many more think they can ride, perhaps even tame.

Riding the dragon of British nationalism

In the British context we have witnessed over the last decade the rise of populist appeals to voters: politicians attempting to ride the nationalist dragon for electoral advantage. They are all implicated. Most political parties are attempting to draw on concerns about immigration or, more broadly, the dangers posed by foreigners, foreigness, to this country. On the one hand, these clumsy attempts include the explicit drawing of a division between those that belong and those that do not. On the other hand each of these attempts entails a definition of the rights accorded (or that should be accorded) exclusively to those that belong.

UKIP is the spectacular and colourful newcomer to the British political scene. It is more akin to the resurrection of the cantankerous alcoholic uncle that no one invites to weddings. Much like its discursive predecessor, Oswald Mosley, Farage’s party explicitly links rights to birth. To be born British affords specific rights that in UKIP’s vision must therefore be withdrawn from all others. The right to live on this island, right to access healthcare, right to welfare benefits, right to vote, and even the right to receive treatment for HIV/AIDS are all determined by birth. Even Farage’s own wife may not be saved from the curse of her foreign birth.

We expect UKIP to link British birth, the British genus, to exclusive rights. But shamefully, mainstream parties are just as culpable – perhaps even more culpable – for the promotion of this vision. As part of their eighteen-year quest to reconquer and now keep the throne from Labour, the Conservative party has made clear efforts to address nationalism and the populist vote it commands, to the point of alienating some of its major figures, such as former Cabinet minister Sayeeda Warsi.

Their attempt to ride the dragon of nationalism has had a perverse effect. Pablo de Orellana predicted in 2011 that Sarkozy’s attempt to absorb Front National’s anti-immigration and Islamophobic rhetoric would only serve to legitimise Le Pen’s party. So it came to pass, and so too has it come to pass for David Cameron. The virulence of Conservative anti-immigration measures and rhetoric has only aided UKIP. The Conservatives have facilitated the increasing acceptability of nationalism, and its implicit and explicit differentiation between the rights of those that belong and the rights, or lack thereof, of those that escape the increasingly narrow definition of ‘British’.

One of these forms of exclusion is Islamophobia, which, in Lady Warsi’s words, has ‘passed the dinner-table test’ in the duration of this last parliament. Unlike UKIP, Tories can claim they have put their rhetoric into practice. While they have not managed to limit entry to Britain to their ‘tens of thousands’ target, they have managed to establish tighter legislation with regards to visas for foreign spouses and other family abroad and, of course, Theresa May’s infamous vans warning illegal immigrants to leave.

May is the Conservative anti-immigration hero: she has been ever ready to bring in the most draconian anti-immigrant discourse to the debate, giving Farage a run for his money. Most of the measures she’s introduced, including deferral of access to social and health security and the hunt for extremists (even in universities), are articulated around the assumption that immigrants are somehow cheating or betraying Britain.

One of Theresa May's infamous vans. Photo: Rick Findler
One of Theresa May’s infamous vans. Photo: Rick Findler

Conservative rhetoric highlights that the core of the debate is access to resources. UKIP and the Tories tell us that public resources are in danger from abuse by foreigners. Labour’s embrace of nationalism has focused, until recently, on the danger posed by immigrants to a limited labour market. In 2010 Gordon Brown declared ‘British jobs for British people’.

In the current campaign Labour appears conflicted over the issue of immigration. On the one hand they promise quantitative control on immigration. On the other, they advance the more nuanced argument that immigrants’ absorption of low-pay jobs is related to their willingness to be underpaid by unscrupulous employers, and that the answer is to enforce the minimum wage. Furthermore, Labour wants to be viewed as making efforts to tackle xenophobia: promising minority community leaders a sort of new charter of rights that set tougher penalties on Antisemitism, Islamophobia and Homophobia. Yet the mixed nature of their message inevitably invites suspicion among the electorate.

The Nation’s right to common resources

Cash for the UK: that is the only real benefit of immigration, according to Labour, UKIP and the Tories. Immigration must justify itself by bringing in cash, by not making any claims to the common resources of the nation. The unspoken part of this argument, the scariest part, is that the ‘dinner table test’ has indeed been passed: immigrants are less human, less deserving, less imbued with social, human and economic rights than those blessed with British papers or, if extremists are to be heeded, with indigenous heritage.

This is why immigrants can be detained indefinitely in detention centres; this is why they can be underpaid; this is why they are less deserving than us when it comes to healthcare, benefits and just about anything else. Their lives too seem to be worth less: an immigrant can be hurt, punished, or even killed in Calais, in Dover or in a SERCO immigration centre. They are less deserving, we are constantly being told, and they are to blame for their own misfortunes.

The Liberal Democrats are not without blame either. During the 2010 election their position on immigration was the most enlightened. Immigrants were to be considered as a beneficial good, to be regionally allocated by a fairer immigration system. To immigrants themselves, we should remember, they promised regularisation of those who had illegally entered the country and had resided for a certain amount of time as productive members of society.

Tragically, none of these ideas survived beyond the election campaign. It remains the case that, despite Nick Clegg’s wholesome rhetoric against Farage and the Conservatives during the current campaign, the Lib Dems clearly had other priorities while in government.

It would be farcical to exclude the SNP from criticism in this whole affair. For all the furore unleashed by its charismatic leader, Nicola Sturgeon, and its ruthless ongoing plagiarism of Labour’s traditional working class hero rhetoric, the basis of its discourse is to secure those lovely left-wing social rights for Scots. Once again we have claims about rights and an identity’s access to those rights.

They are by no means radical, and in the SNP’s world one can become Scottish: it is not a question of ethnicity, heritage or cultural origin, as demonstrated by the raging popularity of their Scottish Government Minister and minority poster-boy, Humza Yousaf. However, the key to SNP politics remains the claim of more social justice and equality for the Scots because they are Scots, rather than because all on this island could do with more social justice and equality.

Retrieving nationalism, past and present

It is difficult to recognise ourselves in the horror of WWII ideologies, when nationalism had taken over most of Europe and drove us all to perdition and bloodshed. The extremisms of that time appear too excessive for useful comparison. Black-shirt fascism is so old, dated and dirty that even the Daily Mail no longer supports it.

Rothermere_-_Hurrah_for_the_Blackshirts
Photo: Wikipedia Commons

However, some key features of that past nationalism are here, clearly visible today. Firstly, we have the resurgence of a right to be racist or xenophobic, in evidence in Farage’s attacks on the excesses of political correctness, Cameron and May’s sudden amour of heeding the immigration concerns of their voters, and Labour’s endless and unconstructive hesitation to challenge their right-wing opponents on the pitch of immigration.

Secondly, past nationalism rears its ugly head in the definition of rights in exclusive association to belonging to a national identity, the above-discussed link of rights to birthright. This, sadly, needs no comment. All parties – except the Greens – are working on the assumption that immigrants should have fewer rights.

Thirdly, we have seen the narrowing definition of British, Britishness and British values. Ten years ago the BNP was ridiculed for speaking of ‘native Britons’ and an ‘indigenous [white] population’. In the current discourse, this has become commonplace and acceptable: incoming immigrants will by law have less rights, regardless of who wins the upcoming election. Both Conservatives and Labour have put in place plans to limit their access to healthcare, welfare and a raft of other social measures – for a period at least, until they have proven their usefulness to the Great British Economy, the new idol of this green and pleasant land, to which some, not others, have a birthright.

Concerns about the limitations of the economy and anxiety about the fiscal health of the country have only served to maximise the separation of those that have a birthright to access that wealth from those that do not. As welfare cuts started to bite from 2010 and access became more restricted, immigrants increasingly came to be blamed for the limitations of the welfare and health systems in Farage’s rhetoric. To a smaller but politically much more respectable and influential extent, Labour and the Conservatives did the same. They only affirmed that Farage was correct. The tightness of the election race means that no party will challenge the entirety of this xenophobic discourse, often only gently qualifying it, and in the process attempting to get one over UKIP.

Determining Britishness: birth, culture, heritage

The current countdown to the election underpins a shift towards an increasingly narrow definition of what it means to be British. The effect of this race to the bottom is that, slowly, extremist nationalists in UKIP and some Conservatives are attempting to saddle and ride the unleashed dragon of that big idea all the way to Westminster. The definition of British might gradually (but not inexorably, we would like to highlight) be approaching an ethnic dividing line.

We are currently looking at dominant and widespread definitions of nation governed by birthright. But as Lady Warsi and many other British-born descendants of immigrants are making clear, even though they feel British, they are slowly and unwittingly being pushed further out of the pale of the definition. In this way we are seeing an added dimension of claims in the demarcation between those that belong and those that do not. This is clearly birth plus the “correct” (the implication is, certainly, indigenous) heritage – cultural and, increasingly, ethnic.

Recently, people like us, people not born British, but long-established and naturalised British, are coming to be called ‘Plastic Brits’. The emphasis is clearly on the falsity of our flesh.

Through its history, from the romantic historicism of Richard Wagner and the fire of Germany’s first Bismarkian national ideology through to those destroying Ukraine today, nationalism in its various iterations and reinventions has been just as dangerous as it has been useful, a powerful big idea to rally mass support. We might well recognise the good intentions of liberation nationalist ideologies in the aspirations of Sun-Yat-Sen, Nehru and Ghandi. However, it is also crucial to note that, perhaps because they too drew on divisions of who was and who was not, their ideas have been led astray, the divisions of belonging turned into violent exclusion. Chiang Kai-shek and Narendra Modi are extremists who we are confident their predecessors would have loathed.

This is not the first time that nationalism has stridently emerged in the throes of poverty and destitution after an economic crisis. Its power in such circumstances is to link the right of all members of a nation to a limited pot of resources and goods to the exclusion of others. Its most violent manoeuvre is the delimitation of who the excluded Other is, a delimitation that can change and evolve over time on a scale from ‘people on this island’ to ‘indigenous population of this island’. The last time nationalism offered solutions to an economic crisis, things did not go well. We are still European enough to remember that much.

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Perhaps we easily forget how difficult it is to walk back from such extremisms. Francisco Franco, a scion of the Fascist nationalist dictatorial tradition of the 1930s, ruled Spain until 1975. That is very recent. These ideas are powerful, they rally potentially endless support, but they are also difficult to dissolve or moderate. Franco’s party, the equivalent of the Italian Fascist Party, the Falange Española, still exists and is still legal. Nationalism, we urge, should be fought and avoided by everyone at all the little political instances of our lives.

Our analysis has focused on the core conditions that allow nationalism to emerge. First, the rise of structural social grievances: from poverty or constrained labour markets in the UK, to the increased commodification of public goods such as land or water around the world, and the resulting stress on the most vulnerable. Second, the act of drawing the line between those that belong and those that do not. Third, the consequent linking of the definition of that national identity to an exclusive set of rights or claims, which only feels like patriotism, love and solidarity to those that belong.

The results are twofold but related: on the one hand, the violence that emerges when we follow an idea that systematically despoils some individuals of their social, economic and even human rights. On the other hand, the ideological effort that obscures this violence, that makes it acceptable at the dinner table. Ask yourself, why can an immigrant be treated differently?

We are all implicated in doing and undoing nationalism. Every one of those moments when we have the choice to demarcate those that belong from those that do not belong. Every time that we allow this to happen, every instance of immigrant-bashing, these are the myriad little acts of demarcation that are at the populist basis of nationalism. At that point, when economic exasperation needs a victim to blame, all the nationalist has to do is draw the line: they are not from here, they are not deserving.

So the likes of Farage distinguish the outsider, whose ultimate definition can be crafted, caricatured and stigmatised to suit a political agenda. We here lay blame squarely at the door of the three main parties who have found it electorally expedient to acquiesce and even participate in the race to expel the immigrant.

But this line-drawing may not stop; it will continue as long as there are grievances like poverty, which need an explanation and for which politicians must offer up solutions. The dragon of nationalism can be ridden, but it cannot be tamed. It will only ever truly submit to those that claim it in its most extreme form, which necessitates extreme demarcation of Self and Other, where the Other has less rights, becomes less human; where the Other can be humiliated, abused, stigmatised, ostracised, deported, enslaved, and, on the saddest of nationalist days, killed.

Pablo de Orellana is a Teaching Fellow at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. His research focuses on diplomatic communication and identity. He writes on a range of research subjects in academic publications as well as in Strife and other online outlets. Research interests include diplomacy, political identity, nationalism, extremist ideology, philosophy, art history, art theory and curating. 2015-16 he will be teaching a course on nationalism at the College.

Maryyum Mehmood is a PhD researcher and a Teaching Assistant at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Her research focuses on responses to religious and racial stigmatisation and prejudice in contemporary Britain and Weimar Germany. Her other research interests include identity politics, sectarian violence and South Asian security trends. She regularly contributes to Strife and a number of other publications. She tweets @marymood.

All photos are copyrighted and published under fair use policy for intellectual non-commercial purposes.

A tale of two elections: UK, Canada and lacklustre foreign policy

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By Zachary Wolfraim:

David Cameron in conversation with US President Barack Obama and Canadian PM Stephen Harper, 25 June 2010. Crown copyright (CC 2.0).
David Cameron in conversation with US President Barack Obama and Canadian PM Stephen Harper, 25 June 2010. Crown copyright (CC 2.0)

A Conservative Prime Minister is fighting against a left-wing opponent about which the electorate has continued doubts. At the same time this Prime Minister is faced with challenges from within his own party: attempting to prevent the right-wing elements from pulling away from the moderate image he has sought to project. Despite weathering what seems to be the worst of the 2008 financial crisis, he continues to face the repercussions of the crisis alongside Russian aggression, instability in the Middle East and broader socioeconomic issues such as rising economic inequality, all the while faced with US leadership that has adopted a relatively passive foreign policy.

The above description fits Conservative Prime Ministers on both sides of the Atlantic. Both David Cameron in the UK and Stephen Harper in Canada are fighting to retain control of Parliament and their position in it. In both countries the governments have made significant attempts to shrink the role of the state and, in Canada’s case, an effort to redefine its national worldview. The result of these elections could see a departure from the ‘austerity’ leadership that has characterised both countries since the 2008 financial crisis. This would alter the dynamics of the transatlantic sphere and, vitally, each country’s relationship with the USA.

While many of the specifics vary, both men are faced by restless electorates who are increasingly willing to examine alternative options, be they as extreme as Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party or, in Canada, as mainstream as Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party. Either way, the political landscape seems likely to shift.

In terms of the UK election’s international dynamics it seems clear that regardless of who wins, addressing British voters’ apprehension towards immigration from the EU is a chief concern. Should the UK’s relationship with the EU chill further, it will have serious consequences: the US has voiced a clear preference for the UK to stay in the EU. The impending US-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) could alter the dynamics of the way in which US businesses view the utility of the UK as a European entry point, particularly if Britain were shut out of this agreement by leaving the EU. The US leadership desires a stable Eurozone, but it also wants a close ally with influence in the heart of Brussels.

On the Canadian side, it remains hard to discern the various parties’ stances on foreign policy, but if trends continue as they have under the Harper government, Canada’s international voice and standing will continue to diminish. Both Harper and Cameron have stepped back from seeking to lead on foreign policy initiatives and seem content to follow the US’ reluctant leadership, as they did in tackling ISIS/L and Russia.

Pressures at the US domestic level, including budgetary restraints, an intransigent Republican presence in Congress, and a lack of overarching strategic vision, are to blame for a relatively diminished American role in international affairs. During this time, Canada-US relations can best be described as transactional and tepid, due in no small part to the mismatched personalities and ideologies of Stephen Harper and Barack Obama.

Conversely, while the US-UK relationship has been positive under Cameron, the possibility of a European referendum or another Scottish referendum means that the UK is no longer the predictable pillar of support for US relations with Europe. Moreover, neither Harper nor Cameron have been very proactive with their foreign policy initiatives meaning that foreign policy leadership is left in the hands of a passive US administration seeking to ‘lead from behind’, the consequences of which have become apparent as crises continue throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe.

So both Canada and the UK under their Conservative leaders have stepped back from taking the lead in global affairs at a time when the US has also stepped back. This has been a mistake. There are no other countries as capable of putting constructive pressure on the US leadership as Canada and the UK. The ‘special relationship’ between these three north Atlantic members of the anglosphere has been invoked time and again to justify support for military actions under US leadership, such as Iraq in 2003 (and at present), Libya in 2011 and Afghanistan in 2001. Given the current state of international affairs, a British or Canadian leader with a clearer foreign policy vision could constructively influence US foreign policy towards certain strategic ends.

Indeed, in this election cycle the main UK parties have scarcely gone into depth on foreign policy and, while in Canada the election is not slated until later this year, opposition parties have focused largely on domestic issues.

Whoever ends up in 10 Downing Street or 24 Sussex Drive needs to be ready to be more proactive on issues of foreign policy. Both countries claim a ‘special relationship’ with the US; however, thus far neither Canada nor the UK has used this to substantially exercise influence in the Obama White House. This is symptomatic of a failure of foreign policy vision on the part of both Conservative leaders.

Whoever is elected this year will need to think critically about the nature of their relationship with the USA. By doing so, they will have an opportunity to help shape the nature of future US foreign policy initiatives. If they fail to do so, they risk leaving themselves at the mercy of international events and, ultimately, to be swept along with whatever future actions the US administration undertakes.

Zachary Wolfraim is a PhD candidate in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, where he focuses on the role of narratives in shaping foreign policy in relation to NATO operations. He previously worked as a consultant in NATO Headquarters on operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

After Ukraine, Part I – Sleepwalking into crisis: Britain, Russia and the Ukraine

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By Michael Jones:

David Cameron meets Vladimir Putin in Moscow, September 2011. PA copyright (CC 2.0)
David Cameron meets Vladimir Putin in Moscow, September 2011. Photo: Number 10, PA copyright (CC 2.0)

Britain’s Defence secretary Michael Fallon said in February that the Russian Leader Vladimir Putin presented as much of a threat to Europe as ISIS[i]. It seems strange that to assert the seriousness of the threat from Russia – a major nuclear-armed power in Europe – Fallon had to compare it to a rebellion on another continent. Fallon was suggesting that people were seriously underestimating Russia’s power and misunderstanding its nature.

This is suggestive of both how the crisis in Ukraine arose and why our reaction to it has been so muted. The House of Lords said as much in a new report, stating that Britain, NATO and the EU had “sleepwalked” into the crisis with Russia in the Ukraine. Britain (as well as NATO and the EU) has consistently misread Russia’s perceptions and actions, and even now they seem confused over how to react to the Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine and the subsequent confrontation.

Fallon’s comparison of Russia to ISIS reflects the relatively minor attention this war in Europe has received in Britain. With the exception of the downing of MH17, the Ukraine conflict has generally garnered less media or public attention than ISIS or the threat of terrorism at home. Parliament has debated the subject several times but action has been limited to sanctions in line with the US and EU, sending one company of non-combat troops and a large amount of high-flying but ultimately hollow rhetoric.

Why the lack of interest? 

The reason for this seems to be that Britain has had more immediate problems. It is easy to forget that seven months ago Britain came close to splitting up, which would have thrown the government, economy and military of Britain into uncertainty and crisis. Thus, for most of 2014, while the Ukraine crisis blew up into civil war, Britain was not sure if it would make it to Christmas in one piece (it did, unlike Ukraine). Britain could hardly commit to radical sanctions or military pressure when it was not sure if its treasury and armed forces would be split with an independent Scotland.

The haunting figure of the Londoner “Jihadi John” personifying the “Islamic State” (IS) on our TV screens hooked our attention and dominated debate. Horror reminiscent of the dark ages in a country we recently invaded, with large numbers of our (erstwhile) countrymen running enthusiastically to join in was hard to ignore. IS has not only stolen the headlines with its sweeping conquests and brutal TV executions, but it has provoked a serious debate about the role of extremism within the West. Radical Islam seems to be a brutal and terrifying enemy that is hard to understand and is at work amongst us, an impression fuelled by the Charlie Hebdo and Copenhagen attacks.

Finally, in the face of economic crisis, potential dissolution and domestic terrorism, Britain’s public has become reluctant to sanction actions abroad and the government has been duly circumscribed. The 2013 defeat in Parliament of David Cameron’s proposed intervention in Syria has made government reluctant to commit forces abroad; indeed, we have fewer aircraft fighting IS than Denmark. This all suggests that Britain’s government is preoccupied and its people unwilling to act.

Britain is involved, whether we like it or not. 

With all of these distractions and weaknesses, perhaps conflict in Ukraine is a troublesome irrelevance. But Britain is involved, whether we like it or not. Britain is an EU and NATO member state, both of which are being challenged by Russia. Even without NATO and the EU, we are one of the three guarantors of the Budapest Agreement of 1994, which promised Ukrainian sovereignty would be inviolate in return for abandoning the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the USSR.

The UK supported NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, with seemingly little consideration of what the implications would be. NATO expansion brought with it Article V of the NATO treaty, meaning that an attack on one state is an attack on all. Britain is therefore bound by treaty to defend the states of Eastern Europe as much as it is bound to defend the Falklands. Russia’s consistent and vocal opposition to this expansion should not have left us under any illusions about what might happen. The states of Eastern Europe that joined NATO expected the protection of NATO’s Article V, because they did not want to be treated like Ukraine. Despite seeking and accepting these numerous responsibilities, we seem surprised that they should cost us anything. Sleepwalking is an apt description.

In terms of concrete action, Britain has joined EU sanctions against Russian banks, energy and defence companies, although the government policy states it has merely left its economic relations with Russia “under review”[ii]. British troops help form the NATO Rapid Reaction Corps, which has drilled in Poland and the Baltic states, while the RAF and the Royal Navy intercept Russian ships and jets near the UK.

Britain did unilaterally send 75 troops to Ukraine to help train the government forces, a move that no other EU states matched. But this was a gesture, nothing more, as it was too late to affect the training standards of troops already engaged in combat and the ceasefire of February has effectively created a frozen conflict already.

These lacklustre actions mean that at home and abroad we are perceived to lack the will to act. A growing chorus of generals, politicians and journalists are drawing attention to our underwhelming reaction. Generals are using the menace of Russia as an argument to stop or reverse defence cuts. So far in this election campaign, none of the UK’s main parties have pledged to maintain the commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defence required of NATO states. This has drawn warnings from our American allies and will not have been missed in Moscow.

The Prime Minister was notably absent from the Minsk talks and has generally allowed Angela Merkel and Obama to lead the Western diplomatic efforts. Politicians have talked tough on Russia but musings about cutting Russia off from the SWIFT banking mechanism were quickly silenced by Medvedev’s claim that this would be an act of war. Russia has achieved escalation dominance and they are prepared to do more in Ukraine than we or our allies are prepared to do to prevent them.

The implications of sleepwalking.

The implications of this are considerable. Our actions here will affect our interests globally. First, Russia has redrawn European borders at gunpoint, a move that we have not prevented (although NATO also did this in Kosovo in 2008). The fact that the UK was unable to prevent the violation of the Budapest Agreement means that our ability to uphold our obligations will be called into doubt. This will mean our enemies show less respect for our interests or those of our allies. Our allies will view the UK as a less credible ally and think twice before admitting us to the negotiating table. If Russia feels emboldened by our weakness and NATO is indeed undermined by Russian actions, the security of the UK will be undermined because the reliability of NATO as a pillar of UK security will vanish.

The second issue is nuclear weapons. As Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons based on the promise of the protection of its sovereignty in 1994, what message does that send to Iran, North Korea and other would-be nuclear powers? Arguably it shows them that a nuclear weapon is more necessary than ever, that their sovereignty can be violated without it. This impression was exacerbated by the US-led invasion of Iraq. Powers like Israel and Pakistan are nuclear states that, despite many threats, remain intact; while non-nuclear Ukraine and Iraq have both suffered invasion. The logic behind nuclear non-proliferation will be irrevocably damaged.

What can the UK do?

It is easy to highlight problems and not proffer solutions, and clearly the UK has made some efforts in Ukraine which other states have not. It is extremely unlikely the UK would ever fight a war over Ukraine, whatever its treaty obligations. But what can the UK do?

First, the crisis in the Ukraine has taught us that we need to think carefully about taking on burdens we cannot support, specifically in terms of the implications of signing up to treaties and expanding alliances. Renewing our commitment to spending 2% of GDP on Defence would improve the means to act and signal to the rest of the world that we are not shirking our responsibilities.

Second, we should play Russia at its own game. Since Russia has violated the Budapest accords by invading Ukraine, we could, in turn, stop adhering to the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997. This Act stated that there would be no permanent NATO bases in Eastern Europe, only temporary deployments. Estonia’s president has called for NATO troops to remain in Eastern Europe on more long term deployments in violation of the act. By stationing troops in Eastern Europe for as long as Russia is in Ukraine, the UK and NATO would show that they are prepared to support and honour their obligations to their allies and that Russia would not be able to hide behind treaties if it was itself reluctant to honour them.

Whatever the wisdom or morality of NATO and EU expansion, and whether or not we have provoked Russia, the damage to UK-Russia relations is done and Russia cannot be appeased. We are now bound to support our allies. We cannot salvage our failure to keep to the terms of the Budapest Agreement by withdrawing from Eastern Europe, acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence and thereby forsaking our NATO responsibilities.

The world is shaped by powers that act. If we don’t, it will be shaped by someone else, quite probably to our detriment.

Michael Jones has a BA in History from the University of Oxford. He is currently reading for an MA in War Studies at King’s College London. His particular areas of interest include modern Russia and great power rivalry.

This article is part of a Strife series entitled ‘Russia and the World following Ukraine’. Over the next couple of weeks Strife will feature three more articles about the global reaction to the crisis in the Ukraine. Next, Conradin Weindl will look into the relationship between the European Union and Russia in the wake of the war in Ukraine. Then Andrzej Kozłowski will analyse Poland’s approach to the crisis and the implications for Polish security. Finally, Sebastian Åsberg, will examine the debate regarding NATO membership in neutral Sweden and Finland, which has intensified significantly as a result of the war in Ukraine.

NOTES

[i] I Magazine pp.4 20/02/2015

[ii] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/doing-business-in-russia-and-ukraine-sanctions-latest

Punishing the cowboys: Blackwater, justice, and easier wars

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By Charlie de Rivaz:

A Blackwater Little Bird Helicopter flies over the Republican Palace in Baghdad, December 2007. Photo: jamesdale10 (CC 2.0)
A Blackwater helicopter flies over the Republican Palace in Baghdad, Iraq, December 2007. Photo: jamesdale10 (CC 2.0)

On Monday, four former employees of Blackwater, the notorious private US military contractor, were sentenced for the killing of 14 unarmed civilians and the wounding of 17 more in Iraq in 2007.

Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard each received 30 years in prison after being found guilty of several charges of voluntary and attempted manslaughter. Nicholas Slatten, the team’s sniper, was sentenced to life for first-degree murder for his part in the killings, which took place while the four men were working as part of a security detail for the US State Department.

Slatten began the massacre by firing at the civilian occupants of a car caught up in traffic at the roundabout in Nisour Square, Baghdad. In the ensuing confusion three armoured vehicles opened fire, strafing the cars and pedestrians in and around the square with heavy machine guns and grenade launchers, causing what the lead prosecutor described as ‘a shocking amount of death, injury and destruction’. The defendants’ claim that they believed they were under attack did not convince the jury, who convicted them in October 2014.

After Nisour Square

In the fallout from the massacre in Nisour Square, Blackwater was blocked from providing diplomatic security in Iraq – the so-called ‘cowboys’ were sent home. Indeed, you might have expected a general cooling off in the relationship between the private security companies and state militaries.

But there’s been nothing of the kind. Between 2008 and 2011 there were more military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than soldiers. Compare this to the First Gulf War, when there was one contractor to every hundred soldiers. [i] Most of the contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan were working in logistics: building bases, doing the laundry, cooking the food. But a significant chunk – 18% in 2012[ii] – were involved in providing security, exactly what Slough, Liberty, Heard and Slatten were supposed to be doing on that fateful day in Nisour Square.

Even Blackwater is still involved, albeit under a new – less threatening – name: ‘Academi’. As part of the failed counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan, Academi has received $309 million from the US government. Erik Prince, Blackwater’s founder, escaped any liability for what happened in Nisour Square and is now gallivanting around Africa for Chinese mining, oil and gas companies as part of his new outfit, Frontier Services Group. In the war against ISIS, Prince has called for the US government to ‘let the private sector finish the job’.

Rotten apples?

The use of private military contractors by governments has increased, not decreased, since the Nisour Square massacre. But does it really matter? After all, weren’t Slatten and co. just a few rotten apples, caught up in the heat of the moment?

It is difficult to know how many ‘rotten apples’ are working for private military companies. In 2012, Faiza Patel, then Head of the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries, claimed that the rot was widespread, alleging that private military contractors had been involved in extrajudicial killings and sex trafficking. A 2008 RAND survey found that 20% of diplomatic personnel who had worked with armed contractors in Iraq found them to be ‘unnecessarily threatening, arrogant or belligerent’. This was echoed by a 2010 New York Times article, which claimed that American troops saw contractors as ‘amateurish, overpaid and, often, trigger-happy’.

It has also become clear that private contractors were heavily involved in the torture of Iraqi detainees during the so-called ‘War on Terror’. One of the most striking revelations from the CIA Torture Report, apart from the systematic use of brutal practices like ‘rectal hydration’ and ‘rough takedowns’, was that private contractors conducted 85% of the interrogations of terror suspects. In late 2012, L-3 Services Inc paid $5.8 million in damages to 71 former detainees of Abu Ghraib who allege that they were tortured by employees of the US defence contractor.

Hiding in the shadows

But the truth is that little is known about the behaviour of private military contractors, because they typically operate in the shadows, beyond the scrutiny of the media. Most governments do not publicise the military contractors they hire, and much of what they get up to on the ground is either classified, or obscured by layers of further sub-contractors.

Indeed, it is precisely this secrecy that makes private military companies so attractive to governments: they can hide both the violence and the cost of war. When a contractor dies no one lines the streets of Wootton Bassett, waiting for the flag-draped coffin to pass. Similarly, when a contractor abuses a civilian in a faraway warzone, the government doing the contracting can deny all responsibility. No pesky court-martials are needed; no reputations tarnished.

By employing private contractors, wars can be escalated on the sly, without the need for unpopular troop increases. This is foreign policy by proxy. The UK allegedly used SAS veterans in Libya, who claim they were paid £10,000 per month, to help topple Gaddafi in 2011. The US Congress was not made aware of the fact that Blackwater were assisting the CIA and JSOC in their ‘snatch and grab’ missions in Afghanistan (and even Pakistan) until it was disclosed by the CIA director in 2009.[iii]

At the same time, the costs of private contractors can be kept ‘off the books’ in a way that the costs of regular troops cannot, thereby making an expensive war seem relatively cheap. An estimated 70% of the costs to the US of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were kept off the books, funded by emergency appropriations approved outside of the Pentagon’s annual budget.

Regulating the cowboys

It is difficult to control what goes on in the shadows. Since the fifteenth century and despite Machiavelli’s warnings about the ‘undisciplined and treacherous’ nature of mercenaries, states have failed to effectively regulate the role of private companies in war. Even today, there is no effective system of legal accountability to check the behaviour of private military contractors; they typically operate beyond the jurisdiction of both national and international law.[iv]

For a long time it looked like Slough, Liberty, Heard and Slatten would evade justice too. It took over seven years before they were found guilty of the killings in Nisour Square, so long that the statute of limitations kicked in and prosecutors had to drop manslaughter charges against Slatten. In fact, the case only made it to trial after a personal intervention by Vice-President Joe Biden. Blackwater/Academi itself never got anywhere near the courtroom. If a case as high-profile and horrifying as Nisour Square proved so fragile, it is little wonder that private contractors rarely end up in court.

But even if there were effective regulation, even if we did live in a world where international law meant something and international institutions worked; even then it would still be better to reject the turn towards using private contractors instead of the regular state militaries.

More wars, bigger wars

This is because private contractors make war easier. With the support of private contractors, states can engage in more wars, and on a far grander scale than would otherwise be possible. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan would not have gone ahead without the support of private contractors: there just weren’t enough soldiers.

In particular, private contractors make unilateral wars easier. There’s a good reason that unilateral wars are unilateral: no one else supports them. If states could only entertain the possibility of going to war if that war had multilateral support, then both the legitimacy of the war and its prospects of success would be greatly increased.

Private contractors make war easier, and they also try damn hard to make it desirable. We should not kid ourselves into believing that these contractors are sitting quietly, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the government to pick up the phone and call on their services. On the contrary, they are incentivised to lobby the hawks in government to make war. For the contractors, war equals money. It is no surprise that from 1998 Kevin Prince became a steady contributor to the Republican right – one of his recipients was, of course, George W. Bush.

Disturbingly, the more the government outsources its military needs, the more pervasive the war incentive becomes. Intelligence analysts working for companies like Blackwater are now judging security threats. Strategy experts working for these companies are now being asked their advice about the risk of prosecuting such-and-such a war. Those who stand to make money from war are gaining more and more influence in the corridors of power.

While we should welcome the weighty sentences handed down to the ‘cowboys’ responsible for the massacre in Nisour Square; it is no cause for celebration. There has been precious little change since the massacre. The state is still in thrall to the private contractors, and the contractors still operate in the shadows, beyond the eyes of the media and beyond the reach of the law. This matters. We have so far failed to tame the cowboys, we must not let them make violence an easy option.

Charlie de Rivaz is an MA student on the Conflict, Security and Development programme at King’s College London. For three years he worked in Argentina and Colombia as an English teacher and journalist. His main interests include the political economy of war, international human rights law, conflict resolution, and state-building. Charlie is the Managing Editor of Strife blog.

NOTES

[i] Pattison, James (2014), The Morality of Private War, OUP
[ii] Ibid, p.22
[iii] Ibid, p.149
[iv] Ibid, p.147

Aid and Conflict: Britain's approach

by

By Isobel Petersen:

UK aid bound for the Philipines after Typhoon Haiyan, November 2013. Photo: MoD, Sgt Ralph Merry (CC 2.0)
UK aid bound for the Philipines after Typhoon Haiyan, November 2013.
Photo: MoD, Sgt Ralph Merry (CC 2.0)

There is a trend across Western governments, and the UK is no exception, to consider the value of aid and conflict prevention as intertwined. The UK government has been a staunch supporter of the Security Sector Reform (SSR) framework since the 1990s (see Strife’s interview with Dylan Hendrickson). This concept advocates a holistic approach to human security that ties together the security and development sectors.

Prioritising reform and stabilising the security sector in a post-conflict situation to reduce the chances of repeated cycles is essential. But a country’s development is just as important when it comes to strengthening a government’s ability to provide for its people. Ultimately, SSR prioritises the individual’s sense of security in order to reduce the likelihood of future conflict. This framework is a good illustration of the wider plan for British overseas aid assistance and how it should be regarded.

It is normal for aid assistance, whether from states or Intergovernmental Organisations (IGOs), to be considered by governments and the authorities as interrelated with, and an underpinning motivation for, conflict prevention. However, in the public sphere aid assistance is usually understood to mean ‘poverty reduction’. This is a convenient portrayal, but there is more to aid commitments than the Robin Hood intentions of Western governments. Does it matter if the authorities and the public have different conceptions of the meaning of ‘aid’?

At the beginning of March parliament passed a bill committing 0.7% of Britain’s Gross National Income to international aid spending. This makes the UK one of the leading nations in global development assistance. As well as bolstering the UK’s international reputation, it also ensures that the UK as a donor country is involved in the domestic affairs of the recipient country. This is a particularly powerful side-effect when it comes to post-conflict reconstruction and conflict prevention. The consequences of the actions taken by the World Bank in developing nations’ affairs are infamously divisive; nonetheless, their explicit declaration of a positive correlation between poverty and recurrent conflict is a persuasive one.

Contributing to effective conflict prevention by improving human security requires resources, time, expertise and financing, and it is worth this investment. Combating conflict recurrence should be considered a key objective of the UK government’s foreign policy, if only because security threats are far more likely than ever to arise as a result of overseas conflicts and fragile states.

The UK government has a commitment to spending 30% of UK aid in fragile states, which means that a large proportion of the new aid budget will be going directly to states in the midst of conflict and instability. This does not take into account countries at the focus of democratisation efforts after conflict or countries with counter-terrorism operations, which are usually afflicted by conflict to some extent.

Giving aid in an ethical, cost-effective and sustainable fashion consistently throws up challenges, particularly when aid is so often required in conflict-affected areas; but this is not a good enough reason to suspend aid programmes and commitments.

There is a mainstream approach within Western policy-making views a conflict as consisting of two opposing sides who are either ‘allies’ or ‘spoilers’. International involvement typically follows the same path: first the military presence, then the post-conflict reconstruction phase, where an influx of aid will be directed at the ‘allied’ forces.[i] The choice recipient is based upon a certain interpretation of the conflict by the donor country or organisation that is difficult to avoid. This is one serious difficulty when faced with the task of giving aid in a conflict environment.

Another challenge is counter-terrorism. This issue can confuse the conventional association of aid with poverty-alleviation. Pakistan was the highest recipient of UK aid in 2014, and yet between 2009-2013 they were rated the 47th poorest nation by GDP. Pakistan clearly faces numerous challenges worthy of assistance, but this comparison demonstrates what happens when UK national interest takes precedence over genuine human need. It has even been argued that giving aid to states which are the focus of counter-terrorism operations can alienate the population because it is likely to be diverted away from the people.[ii]

In the same vein, aid coming into a conflict area can alter the power balance and distribution of resources within a divided society. This may lead to a worsening of inter-group tensions, the proliferation in arms acquisition, and a reinforcement of inequalities. It therefore runs the risk of worsening the existing conflict rather than succeeding with conflict prevention.

Sri Lanka is a good example of this. After the tsunami there was such vast pressure to give large amounts of aid to the country as quickly as possible that time was not spent considering facts other than the tsunami. The aid was undoubtedly life-saving but it did not take into account the concurrent conflict; there was a failure to ensure even distribution between government-controlled areas and those of the opposition Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebel movement. This only exacerbated political tensions and the ongoing conflict.

It is not just the practical hurdles that the UK faces when giving aid assistance, it also faces the criticism from the public and media at home. This is just as damaging to aid assistance as errors on the ground. Conservative MP Philip Davies declared the recent legislation as pandering to do-gooders with a “mis-guided guilt complex”. This is shockingly patronising and selfish. It is all too easy to argue that our lives in the UK would be simpler and better by keeping all we have for ourselves, but that is willfully ignorant of the difficult reality for so many beyond our borders. Furthermore, is it not contrary to the universal value of sharing with and caring for others that is taught to us all as children growing up?

There are a few key flaws in the criticism of the bill protecting the size of the UK aid budget. First, the announcement in early March simply enshrined in law a commitment that every UN member state made in 1970, so really this should have happened years ago. Second, the target was reached for the first time in 2013 with 0.72% of national income given,[iii] meaning that no extra spending would be required and it is compatible with the continued functioning of the UK. Finally, for those concerned that the wellbeing of British citizens would be excessively jeopardised, welfare spending was at 23.8% of GDP in 2013, leagues ahead of other EU member states, and vastly overshadows the aid commitment. The urgency of financial assistance and conflict prevention is higher than ever and as Justine Greening, the UK International Development Secretary, said last year to the World Bank spring meetings in Washington, “the humanitarian system is already stretched to breaking point”.

The MP who introduced the legislation, Michael Moore, argued that “the problems of other parts of the world do not stay local for long”.[iv] This has never been truer; conflict prevention and post-conflict assistance deserves attention, and one way of achieving this is through financial assistance. One aspect of financial assistance is the Government and Civil Society sector, which in 2013 received £835 million, 12.4% of the overall UK Bilateral aid spend. This sector includes activities carried out by the Conflict Pool, which is a cross-departmental UK team seeking to reduce the impact of conflict by holding rule of law projects and training peacekeepers for example.[v] The UK are in the luxurious position of being politically, socially and economically stable enough to contribute financially on a significant scale; it would be shameful not to do so.

Perhaps then, ‘aid’ is a term that can easily be misrepresented. It does not matter that UK aid is directed to conflict prevention as well as poverty assistance; but it does matter if their relationship is not widely understood by the British taxpayer. If the motivation for aid is to deliver reform, to protect national security, and to reduce the chances of recurrent conflict, then presenting the figures as solely to combat international poverty is misleading. The public perceive security and aid as separate entities, which means that those with the power of decision-making and implementation need to consider it their responsibility not to politicise an issue of international human security and well-being, but to express clearly how the aid commitment is relevant to both security and development, and furthermore how the two are related.

State failure and human insecurity as a result of conflict are both unacceptable. Responsible aid assistance is a start to building a country’s capacity to prevent future conflict. Providing funding and expertise to train the security forces in how to separate the roles of the police forces and military of a post-conflict state to increase their trustworthiness and efficiency is one example of how aid can increase capacity to prevent future conflict.

Conflict prevention and aid assistance are inextricably linked and the UK government legislation guaranteeing the nation’s role in this is a positive decision. However, there must be an awareness of the complexity of blindly trusting an aid package to solve everything. Monitoring, training, direct application to civilians, and accountability measures are all ways that such an aid commitment can reach its full potential. Importantly, raising awareness about the specificities about what UK aid assistance really means gives the British public the opportunity to ensure that whichever government comes next continues to live up these standards.

Isobel Petersen studied International Relations at the University of Exeter and is currently reading for an MA in Conflict, Security and Development at King’s College London. Her particular interest is post-conflict resolution with a specific focus on the Arab-Israeli crisis. 

References

[i] D.Keen with L.Attree Dilemmas of Counter-terror, Stabilisation and Statebuilding in Saferworld (January 2015)

[ii] ibid

[iii] L. Booth “The 0.7% aid target” House of Commons Library (28 July 2014)

[iv] R. Mason “MPs back law committing 0.7% of national income to foreign aid” in Guardian foreign policy (12 September 2014)

[v] Statistics on International Development by DFID (October 2014)