Whose foreign policy?

The West Bank has over the past week been an excellent show case for the wonders of Arab democracy. The blood-soaked terrorists of the Hamas group won the election there, their weapons still unforsaken, their actions still unapologised for, in what can only be described as a ringing endorsement of violence and disorder. Meanwhile, their political opponents decided to use this as excuse to have a riot. This is Arab democracy as it is actually practised, rather than the neocon fantasy of Mesopotamian maids throwing garlands in honour of their alleged liberators.

Remember this, as you watch or hear news of Britain’s hundredth casualty in the liberation of Iraq. This is for what he and all his fallen brothers in arms have died. This is for what the British treasury has been depleted. This is for what Britain’s international reputation has been ruined, and its army turned into an auxiliary branch of Washington’s. To foist onto Iraq the very same institutions seen to work so effectively in the Gaza Strip.

It is now clear enough that Iraq’s stash of botox (for that is the extent of Iraq’s fabled WMDs) was not a serious threat to British security. Saddam himself was reduced to a shivering old man, unable to mastermind even his own escape, never mind orchestrate an attack on the West.

Nor was the war in any discernable national interest. For all the left wing jabbering about a war fought for oil, it was actually, if anything, a war to deprive the West of oil. Its price has gone sky high, and is showing no signs of coming back down again.

Far from accruing any benefit, Britain has endangered itself by stirring Arab passions best left untouched. The attacks of 7/7 and 10/7 were clearly in retaliation for Britain’s role in the Middle Eastern fiasco.

At home, the constant threat of terrorist retaliation has led to the curtailing of countless ancient rights and liberties, from the right to trial by jury to freedom of speech. The ID cards set to be introduced in the wake of these developments constitute an enormous breech of privacy and intrusion into the lives of law-abiding citizens.

Under the circumstances, anti-terror measures are necessary. The circumstances themselves are in no way necessary or inevitable, however: our current peril is largely self-inflicted.

Whilst Dave Cameron was keen enough to warn about the dangers of ideological capitalism, he stayed mum on Britain’s only too ideological foreign policy.

Ideological it undoubtedly is, however, and that ideology goes by the name of Global Democratism: its key tenets are that each and every single nation is essentially equal, and that all should be run on democratic lines. As an egalitarian ideology, it has ambitions imperial in scope. It cannot achieve its goal, or even approach it, unless the whole world falls under its sway. A single dissenting nation breaks the chimera of equality. 

Foreign invasions and liberventions are only one side of this coin. The other consists of uncontrolled borders and unlimited immigration. After all, if all the world’s peoples are essentially identical (and moreover need to live under a democracy) then why shouldn’t they live over here?

Alas, reality has a tendency to be rather reactionary and bigoted on such questions. As seen, it is utterly impracticable to export democracy to the Arabs. It is equally impracticable to import Arabs into a democracy, as can be witnessed in our “freedom-loving” friends’ recent protest against Western freedom.

There is an alternative to “invade the world, invite the world”, and before we accept that doctrine whole-heartedly, its proponents need to answer a few questions. Should the primary goal of British foreign policy be the security, liberty and prosperity of the British, or some abstract ideological goal (such as global democracy)? Should British foreign policy be informed by history and always striving only for the possible, or should it be informed by unworldly theories and striving for the plainly ludicrous? Should its conduct be judged by the British people themselves, or by the Revolutionary Tribunal in the White House? In short, should the British government act in a manner appropriate to a people’s government, or a People’s government?

Let us hope that the British government will prove, through its foreign policy among other policy areas, that, in winning the Cold War, it did not forget the age old advice about gaining the world, but losing yourself.

Posted by Alex Zeka on Saturday, February 4, 2006 at 05:37 PM in War on Terror
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