Entropy:
“…measure of the disintegration and disorganisation of the universe”
Oxford
English Dictionary.
Alphen,
Netherlands. 9/11. Whither the West? Like
most people I know exactly where I was on September 11, 2001. The middle of Dartmoor
is as close to the middle of nowhere it is possible to be in England. Beautiful, bleak, and in places foreboding, it
is a place in which it is all too easy to get lost. ‘Lost’ is a word I
associate with the Old West these days. Yes, one hears Western leaders talk much
about shared values and interests, usually at NATO summits, and normally when there
is precious little shared strategy. Niall Ferguson wrote, “The biggest threat to Western
civilization is posed not by other civilizations, but by our own pusillanimity
— and by the historical ignorance that feeds it.” It is that combination
of pusillanimity and ignorance, albeit in different measures across the Old
West, that have created four gaping holes: US foreign and security policy, the old
Anglo-American core, the Berlin-Brussels Axis, and the retreat of Europeans
into a fantasy Euro-world.
US foreign policy: Since Churchill and Roosevelt founded the Old West in the
midst of war in 1941 on board USS Augusta,
the Old West has always been organised around what could be called American
internationalist doctrine. The sacking of John Bolton by President Trump is
indicative of a lack of any such doctrine with a president increasingly ‘winging’
foreign policy. Bolton maybe a hawk, but he has always been a consistent hawk
who believed that threats to the United States required the application of
persistent American pressure. For Bolton, there were no out-of-the-blue deals
to be done with the likes of Iran, North Korea or the Taliban, just pressure to
be maintained leading to regime change in America’s favour, even if that
involved at times the use of force. To be honest, having met Bolton, I was
surprised he was appointed as the 27th National Security Advisor.
His world-view always contrasted markedly with that of President Trump, which
seems to oscillate between a kind of ‘bloody foreigner’ neo-isolationism to a
sort of deal-making ‘real-estate with nukes’ activism. It is hardly surprising Bolton
and Trump finally fell out over President Trumps desire to invite the Taliban
leadership (whoever that really is) to Camp David to see if a peace deal could
be struck. Without clear American leadership the Old West is reduced to little
more than a set of iterative trade-offs. It should be so much more than that.
The old Anglo-American
core: The Old West was founded on the back of the
Anglo-American alliance of World War Two, what some call the ‘special
relationship’ that endured into the Cold War. Even today, Britain does enjoy a ‘special
relationship’ endures in such areas as ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence-sharing.
However, Britain’s utterly inept political and bureaucratic High Establishment
has made Britain anything but ‘special’ and reduced what should be a
considerable regional-strategic power to little or no influence. Brexit has
been an exercise in utter strategic incompetence reflected in what I see every
day on my travels – Britain today neither matters, nor is it respected. How the once mighty have fallen. Without a
serious Britain, able and willing to commit still considerable talents and
capacities to the institutions of the Old West, pathetic Britain is helping
erode the very institutions critical to its influence. Brexit? The latest
consequence of a failed London.
The Berlin-Brussels
Axis: It would be somewhat comforting to think that
as Britain’s elite retreats into the pathetic irrelevancies of post-power,
Berlin and Brussels were stepping up to help construct a New West in which
Americans and Europeans would again stand burden-sharing should-to-shoulder as cornerstones
of world stability. Nothing could be
further from the truth. Never have two world capitals built on power been so apparently,
uneasy, unwilling, or unable to understand the nature of power or its
application. Mercantilist Berlin talks endlessly about ‘Europe’, but usually
means Germany; a parochial Germany for which foreign policy is about how many
cars it can sell, or how much oil and gas it can get on the cheap from Russia.
Leadership? Forget it. Brussels is fast becoming a big power run by little
people from small countries obsessed with their own status but who either lack
a strategic culture are strategically-illiterate, or both. For them, President
Trump and Brexit are God given, more interested in criticising the America who
defends them, or punishing the British for daring to leave the EU, than
actually preparing their Euro-world for the real world. The Brussels elite
wallows in its insufferable self-satisfaction, fiddling whilst Europe’s smoulders
with unease and slithers into uncompetitive decline. A town locked into self-reinforcing,
self-congratulation for the ‘munificent’ and ‘magnificent’, Europe that have
built, whilst millions of Europeans who live in the real Europe look on aghast.
Fantasy
Euro-world: A mark of Europe’s decline is the retreat
of many of its un-led citizens into an equally unworldly fantasy. It is a kind
of slavery of the child in which democracy appears to continue, but there is
little real relationship between voting and power. Their distant ‘betters’ know
better and the really little people should not concern themselves with power, so
many do not. This week the admittedly ‘ever more Europe, all the time, for absolutely
everything’ European Council on Foreign Relations asked a sample of Europeans
what should, “Whose side should your country take in a conflict between the
United States and Russia?” The poll
suggested 45% would opt for neutrality. They clearly did not ask Europeans in
the Baltic States. Indeed, it is hard to envisage ANY such conflict NOT actually
being ABOUT Europe and Europeans. It would have been interesting to see the
results if the question had been, “Whose side should your country take in a
conflict between the United States and Russia OVER EUROPE?” my suspicion is
that the answer may have been inconvenient.
The only conclusion from
all of the above is that the prevailing power in both the transatlantic
relationship and Europe is entropy. This is not the fault of the people, it is
rather the fault of political elites who have consistently refused to treat
citizens as partners in power. Opaque elites who treat their fellow citizens as
children, keeping them in a state of strategic infancy, unwilling or unable to
trust them with hard truths. Imagine a world in which the transatlantic
relationship did not exist, in which America and Europe were adversaries rather
than partners. Then you imagine a world in which America and a Europe are defeated,
and all by themselves.
Maybe the Old West is
dead, but Americans and Europeans have never needed each other more. My fear is
that the British disease will spread. Britain’s elite have achieved something I
once thought impossible and destroyed my belief in my country as a power. How
long before this cancer, this entropy, spreads to the rest of Europe and
beyond. How long before Americans become so self-doubting about their role in
the world that the American dream becomes their and our nightmare?
For all my despair with,
and at, leaders I am still not prepared to raise the white flag of surrender
just yet. We must fight back against the entropists, the deniers of power, the
breakers of relationships, and the ahistorical idiot ‘savants’ who lead on both
sides of the Atlantic. The West today is lost in the middle of a dark nowhere. Therefore,
at this tipping point in world affairs, it is time to end the entropy of the
West, and build in its place a New West in which all the forces of freedom the
world over stand together and turn shared values into shared action.
In memory of the many
victims from many nations of all races and creeds who perished on September 11,
2001.
Julian Lindley-French
