Riga, Latvia. 29 September. It is
a curious phrase to speak truth unto power. It is believed to have originated
in the US in the 1950s when a group of pacifist Quakers wrote a book seeking an
alternative to the Cold War. It has also become a virtual motto for the British
Civil Service. Now, regular readers of this blog will know that I am no
pacifist, but I am utterly committed to the maintenance of a just peace and as
committed to the defence of freedom. The purpose of this blog is not to
frustrate establishments or annoy elites (although the latter has an allure). States
need effective elites and establishments. My purpose is to help make them
better and to remind them that in democracies they are accountable to me the
citizen.
Back here in Riga I am at the
sharp-end of democracy, a place where the benefits and dangers of big power are
very clear. For Latvians the rise again of its noisy neighbour and the illiberal
‘big’ military power it eschews raises big questions about whether the liberal
states of the West are any longer capable of generating the necessary countervailing
big military power needed to defend Latvian freedom. However, the need for such
big power also raises a fundamental question that is at the heart of Europe’s,
and indeed America’s political malaise; big power is necessarily distant power
and distant power can be inherently anti-democratic.
This paradox was brought home to
me on the plane over here last night. For much of the journey I read pro-EU Nobel-prize
winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and his new book “The Euro”. It is a
masterpiece and I will devote another coming blog to the many lessons Stiglitz
has for Europe’s failed elite from the failed single currency. However, what
struck me reading Stiglitz is the extent to which in the absence of proper
democratic oversight far from becoming more efficient Europe’s distant elites
became progressively and dangerously inefficient. For Stiglitz the Euro
disaster was caused by an ideologically-driven elite whose fervour for ever
more ‘Europe’ led to them dismissing the political and economic fundamentals
needed to make function a single currency across of continent of widely
differing polities, economies, languages and cultures.
Tonight I will have the honour of
addressing His Excellency the State President of Latvia Raimonds Vejonis,
together with an audience of assembled dignitaries on the defence of the
Alliance. My message will be blunt (as
it often is); in spite of the many other pressures on Western democracies the
first duty of the state to its people is their security and defence. That means
a Europe that once again begins to understand the first principles of big defence
power, how to afford it and apply it.
And yet the defence of the Alliance
is being undermined by dangerous disillusionment in publics across Europe and
the wider West. This is partly the inevitable consequence of eight years of
austerity (see Stiglitz) following the 2008 banking crash that was caused by
yet another unaccountable big power elite. It is also partly the result of a
failed ‘ideological’ Brussels elite (again see Stiglitz), and partly because
the drift towards mega power, as expressed through mega trade deals such as the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, has inexorably fuelled a popular
sense that power is inexorably moving away from the people leaving democracy a
fallen, rotting husk on the autumn lawn of power. Brexit was certainly driven
in part by this unease and the historical English distrust of unaccountable, distant
power.
Free from any real accountability
some ‘democratic’ elites have begun to do the same thing to their people as illiberal
states routinely do to theirs; treat them like children because they the elites
‘know best. Worse, bereft of influence
or power organised legitimate dissent has drifted away from the chambers of representative
democracy towards the new, extreme, and often illegitimate anarchism of social
media. A drift that has further weakened the bond between leaders and led in
democracies and too often enabled the likes of President Putin to insert an
alternative ‘truth (MH17), and to further undermine the social and political
cohesion vital to the defence of freedom.
But here’s the ultimate paradox;
in the world of the twenty-first century big power IS necessary. Indeed, the
very freedom of the individual to express dissent about big power is dependent
on effective big power. What is needed is for her/him to again feel a
connection with it. If the West’s political elites are to re-capture the trust
of the people which in a true democracy is the real foundation for the defence
of freedom then they must begin to treat their fellow citizens like grown-ups
and speak truth unto people. If not ‘populists’ and Putins will continue to
fill the vacuum of mistrust with their own very trumped-up truths, and the West
will continue its downward plunge into decline and division.
Therefore, what is desperately
needed is for Western elites to again conceive of big power differently to
illiberal big power. That means re-embracing democracy rather than treat it the
same way large companies treat tax; something to be circumvented, and if
possible avoided. In this dangerous age big power must speak big truth unto its
big people, but it must also learn to listen and mean it.
Julian Lindley-French
