When empires fall they often leave behind spectral remnants which for a time preserve the customs and institutions of an order that has largely passed away. Quaint, bizarre, offensive, perhaps even magnificent in their own way - we see them as if lit by an afterglow from the world of which they were once part. Thus Byzantium flourished for a millennium after the fall of the Roman empire in the West, the Umayyads ruled in Andalucia three centuries after the fall of the Umayyad caliphate in Damascus, Franco's Spain lasted for a generation after the defeat of European fascism, and Kim Jong-il's North Korea today preserves as a sort of pantomime with nuclear weapons some of the features of the Stalinist and Maoist personality cults. In Eastern Europe it is Belarus that still flies the Soviet flag.
The question last week was whether the fall of the neocon empire in Washington would leave behind it a similar ghostly survival. As the Democratic barbarian hordes stormed the Capitol on the Potomac, and demanded an account of the conduct of senators and representatives during the latest round of imperial wars, there was a brief period when the British government looked to have been left in splendid isolation to defend the faith of its fallen idols. "Very well then, alone", might have been the gritty response from a sort of unrepentant British neocon Belarus.
That mood did not last the weekend, however. As late as Saturday (11th November) Andrew Grice in the Independent was informing readers that the prime minister believed there were "two camps within the America-EU family: those like the US, Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and Poland prepared to use military force for progressive means if necessary, and those such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain who will join peacekeeping operations but not intervene militarily". The sabre was still rattling. Two days later, the Guardian told us that "the prime minister is poised to announce an 'evolution' in the government strategy on Iraq, which will see greater cooperation with its neighbours Syria and Iran", something later confirmed in Blair's Guildhall speech.
"Evolution"? That would imply adaptation to the environment in which we find ourselves, not conformity to some imported model.
Position one: we are going to continue to pursue the neocon White House policy of military intervention to achieve democracy. Position two: as the post-neocon White House is doing, we are going into business with Syria and Iran to stabilise Iraq. The common thread, of course, is that we do not what our circumstances require but what we perceive the White House to be doing. When Bush flips, we flip, with the inevitable corollary that when Bush flops, we flop too.
So paradoxically the more we try to follow the twists and turns of White House policy as it thrashes in its death throes, the more by our very lack of principle we after all come to resemble a sort of Belarus-on-Thames. Before more Iraqis and British soldiers have to die, could we perhaps find a firm and logical basis for our international actions?
Comments