Auschwitz

Today, I walked in Auschwitz – Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II Birkenau., Today I walked before the walls of Elysium, the final resting place of the heroic and virtuous. Today, I paid my respects to people, not numbers. Three of whom spoke to me – Anne Kraus, Hana Weisenkind and Berta Eppinghausen. They spoke to me not because they are different from any of the other victims of this Megiddo of industrial murder, but because their empty, pathetic suitcases spoke for them; their emptiness beyond words.

This Auschwitz is a place in which evil hides in peace and in which evil is and must be defined. I walked in silence, in utter humility, in anger, in repentance, and in shame. I walked in the footsteps of honoured ghosts; honouring with each free step I took, each condemned step I followed on the short but long road of death. 1.1 million Annes, Hanas and Bertas were murdered in this place. In Auschwitz each and every victim of the Holocaust - the Shoah - was before me, too numerous for me to comprehend, only feel, only sense. Less than a single lifespan ago ordinary Europeans were torn from the fabric of community and butchered in this place, this Auschwitz.

As I walked I thought of my Jewish friends, Scott and Neil and a host of others, spared the ovens by the serendipity of timing, but still burning with the heat of fires lit and fed by endemic evil, hysterical hate and criminal deed. In Block 11, the ‘Death Block’, my head became bowed, my heart heavy and I did not know if I would vomit or cry. Today, I was in sheol, a grave with no bodies, only soulful, sad, material remains of people still denied the dignity of identity. I came to honour them and I leave more troubled than this seasoned man of history could possibly have imagined. Oxford letters here count for nothing. In this place a people almost died here; a people triumphed here. Nothing has ever defined a present as eloquently as this recently suffered past.

I was troubled for the past, but also for the present and the future. I watched Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu in Washington and like many Europeans felt that tinge of regret, guilt, frustration that makes me both ambivalent to Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and conscious of an historic duty to support Israel whatever. Indeed, coming here, to this place at this time, my utter commitment to Israel’s right to exist was re-cast, re-forged. No-one today can expect Israel to take risks none of us would take, this place put paid to that. Whatever presidents may say a return to Israel’s 1967 borders is not going to happen until Israel’s security is assured. Here in Poland President Obama yesterday told an old Jewish woman that the US would never abandon Israel. Come to this place.

As I walked I also thought of my Arab friends, of Lena and my recent dinner with Lakhtar Brahimi, one of my heroes. And even in the heart of evil I am sure Israel’s security will never be assured when so many Palestinians seethe with their own sense of injustice. As I walked I was clear-headed enough to know that the past must in time be denied the hunger it has to consume the future. Without a two-state solution that guarantees the security and well-being of Israeli and Palestinian alike there can be no peace in the Middle East, nor I doubt in Europe and beyond.

The respective political currencies of both America and Europe are fatally devalued by the belief of both Israelis and Palestinians that such currency is arbitrary and prejudiced. This place casts a shadow over all. America rightly claims special rights because it was and is the great protector of the Jewish people and Jewish state because of this place. And yet well-intentioned, patient America is perceived by millions of Arabs to be Israel’s advocate. The foundations of the fallen twin towers were first undermined not on the American side of the Atlantic, but on this side. Europe? Auschwitz – this giant maggot of history eats into all of us and taints us by association. The past may indeed be another country, but not here, not in this place. For Israelis we Europeans always favour the ‘other side’, even when we do not.

I walked along the road of death, alongside the final platform where those about to die were separated from those soon to die. From afar I witnessed the hollowed carcass of the peace process descend the long spiral staircase of hopelessness and fear that now spans its own lifetime and which stops this place from ever being in the past..

There are no certainties in this place – then or now.  But, looking beyond the killing wire I saw an Israel no more able to escape this place, than the space that pretends to be Palestine. That is the nature of this place.

The new Egypt’s decision to open its border with Gaza heralds a new cycle of change in the Middle East. And yet finally that change need not be defined by this place. A glimmer of an opportunity can be fleetingly glimpsed fluttering in and out of grasp if we all have the vision to grasp it. The Arab Spring is driven not by Islamic medievalists, but by an aspiration for a freedom and liberty only Israelis enjoy in the Middle East. After much European encouragement Fatah and Hamas are beginning the long road to a unity that might in time bring sense to the leaders of Hamas. And, in so doing deny Iran its dangerous mischief. Can this place also be denied?

Beyond the killing wire I could also see a Europe finally ready to join with America to ease Israel’s legitimate fears for its security and offer hope to Palestinians that their statehood is more than a diplomat’s promise. A Europe that stops talking too much of a future defined by this past and which is finally able to live beyond this place and its shadow of death. There in the distance I could see a Europe that took the evil that drapes this place from its own shoulders and seized the chance to redeem itself from the ashes upon which this place stands.

From the depths of the depravity that reeks from every corner and crevice vision is still offered to us by Anne, Hanna and Berta. It is of an America and Europe standing together with Israelis and Palestinians. Genuine, responsible and supportive partners in search of a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, both of whom suffered at the hands of Europe.

A price must be paid. That is the nature of this place. For the spell cast by this place to be begun to be broken real political risk must be taken. For this place vision alone is not enough for it existed and exists to destroy hope. Walking here today I was and am convinced that only if we Europeans actively become a real part of a meaningful peace (there can be no final solutions here) can we atone for this place. Simply throwing large amounts of money can never ease the pain of this place.

Therefore, seventy years on from the commencement of industrial murder a new commitment must emerge from this place to a peace agreement, interim, final or whatever. And, if needs be, the commitment to send a European force, under UN mandate, to assure the confidence such a bold step will demand. Such a force would need to be there at the behest of Israelis and Palestinians, and act on their behalf.

Only such a brave step would honour Anne, Hana and Berta. And, begin to ease the suffering, fear and anger of Arab and Jew alike, which is so easily exploited by the new men of hate who perpetrate the hopelessness of this place. Our resolve will be tested as will the force, and doubtless losses will be taken. And, of course deep fissures will remain – such as the future of settlers and the status of East Jerusalem.

But, there can be no more running away; we would simply be running straight back...to this place.

“For ever let there be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity”, read the stone. Today, I walked in Auschwitz; and Auschwitz spoke to me.

Julian Lindley-French

The Balkans 2011: A Road Not Travelled?

“Somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by and that has made all the difference”. So wrote American poet Robert Frost a century ago. He could have been speaking of my Balkan experience. Has a corner been turned?

Ratko Mladic has been arrested. Or, to put it more accurately the Serbian authorities have decided to detain the 'General' at a politically apposite moment having known his whereabouts for many years. Nothing is ever what it seems in the Balkans, and neither is this. That said, President Boris Tadic is to be commended for facing down Serbia’s powerful nationalists for whom Mladic and all his genocidal doings still resonate with the clarion call of dark heroism. Ultimately, little Greater Serbia has lost out to Big Serbia and its bid to join the EU. A clearer example of the benefits of Union there is none – for all its many Byzantine failings.

Will the arrest of Mladic finally mark the true end of the Wars of the Yugoslav Succession? Probably not, but the Mladic detention does at least provide an opportunity to move just a step further on a long road to true peace. It also provides a moment of reflection for all engaged in a war that tragically defined a post Cold War decade that should have been joyous.

Recently I was driven by a young Bosnian-Serb diplomat from Sarajevo Airport to Pale, the political heart of Serb Bosnia where Karadzic and Mladic held court. To be precise (something of a rarity in the Balkans) he was a Bosnia-Herzegovian diplomat of Serb extraction, which goes to the very heart of a continuing problem. I am not going to reveal what he said because he was genuine in his desire to see all communities come together and impressive in his grasp of past and present and I have no wish to get him into trouble. He is very much a man of and for the future of a truly European Balkans.

Nor was it the first time I have travelled that road. I go to Sarajevo two or three times a year and have done for many years. Often, I go the other way to Camp Butmir home of the EU force guaranteeing peace. You do not see much of them, but in conversations with Bosnians of Bosniak, Croat and/or Serb extraction the message is always the same; their presence is vital. Tensions remain very close to the surface of a fractured society held together as much by EU aid and American commitment as political reconciliation. Everyone is a victim in the Balkans; noone ever an aggressor.

Nevertheless, progress has been made. When I first started to lecture to Bosnian officers they wore the uniforms of their violent, sectarian past and proudly so. I was present the day a common uniform was issued. It was the source of much hilarity and triggered jibes similar, albeit more pointed, than one might hear between English and the Scots. Sectarianism is not a local phenomenon.

The television picture last night recalled that dark past in which two hundred thousand died. These are images that cannot be dissolved by antiseptic edict. The pictures showed a T-74 Serb tank pounding the centre of Sarajevo. It was the road I had just travelled.

Each year the bullet strikes on buildings lessen and the shell holes I recall have now gone, but not the scars. What strikes any visitor to Sarajevo is the beauty, the intimacy and the tragedy of the place. So tight is the valley, so dominant Mount Igman, that there can be no hiding place in Sarajevo – physically or politically. The city has sat at the tectonic epicentre of European politics since the days of the Ottoman Empire. There was certainly no hiding place from my road, below which Sarajevo cowered in injured remembrance. As we drove on the road turned north and east and began to climb away from Sarajevo through yet another soaring mountain valley.. After fifteen kilometres we passed a sign – Welcome to Republika Srpska. It was 2010.

History, of course, laughs at us with subtle irony. It is circular because we make it so. If Mladic is well enough (a big ‘if’) he will be transferred to The Hague to stand trial. Mladic established his enduring infamy in 1995 for the massacre of eight thousand Bosnian Muslims, at the tragically ill-named UN ‘Safe Haven’ of Srebrenica. The most exposed of several such havens the place was defended by the lightly-armed Dutch troops of Dutchbat.

Mladic humiliated them and for many years Srebrenica has been synonymous with the failure of the Dutch Army to protect civilians under their care. In fact, the Dutch were hung out to dry by an international community that had done everything it could to avoid confronting the tragic reality of a brutal war amongst the people. The UN was utterly divided both politically and morally about how and if to use force, the European Union, having declared this to be the ‘hour of Europe’, failed cataclysmically and the United States at the time was ‘not cleaning windows’, as one rather myopic American put it. Dutchbat had no chance and honourable men were made to pay for the utter failure of political masters and UN apparatchiks across the West and beyond.

Paralysed by a dispute over the precise meaning of a UN Security Council resolution and to what extent under international ‘law’ civilian populations could be protected by force, the politicians buck-passed and the diplomats fiddled as the hills around Srebrenica became charnel.

“And both that morning equally lay; in leaves no step had trodden black; Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way; I doubted if I should ever come back”.

I have travelled that road and it now leads towards Libya.

Julian Lindley-French

Thank You and Goodnight, Mr President

President Obama has done Britain and Europe a huge favour. By recasting the ‘special’ relationship as an essential relationship the President has released London from the shackles of an increasingly hollow ‘specialness’. London must now seize this moment to re-balance Britain’s foreign and security policy so that British influence can be re-established where it matters for America – in Europe and with key members of a resurgent Commonwealth. President Obama is inviting Britain to become a better ally and Britain must meet that challenge. The ‘special’ relationship has now come full circle and the President has placed it graciously in the oak cask of history where it belongs.

Britain’s relationship with America is essential and will endure. There is and will remain a special place for the British in the American mind. However, that place must not become a museum. The special relationship began formally seventy years ago with the August 1941 signing of the Atlantic Charter. However, the political roots for the relationship were established not by power-brokers and statesmen, but by an American journalist – Ed Murrow.

On 22 September, 1940 Murrow began his ‘London rooftops’ broadcasts to the American people, enduring the worst of the Blitz to tell a pacifist American people of Britain’s defiance of Nazi Germany. Gradually the broadcasts generated a groundswell of popular and political support for Britain’s struggle. That in turn created the political space in Washington for President Roosevelt to prepare America for the coming struggle between might and right.

The special relationship was always a leadsership relationship.  As such it blossomed from the vital anti-Nazi alliance into critical transatlantic solidarity between democratic North American and democratic Europe in the struggle against Soviet communism. From the very beginning the special relationship was unique; a political relationship underpinned by genuine affection that in spite of the many nay-sayers continues to this day.

However, that was then and this is now. In 1940 Britain was still a global power, with the world’s most powerful navy and probably the most advanced air force (certainly air defence). A quarter of the world’s population was headed by the King Emperor, George VI. In other words the ‘special’ relationship was essentially between political equals – even if one was coming and the other going. Today, the contrast in fortunes could not be greater.

The twenty-first century will still be the American century for all the contortions of the pessimists, including an increasingly wrong Henry Kissinger (it is never good to see one’s heroes fall to Earth). Americans and Britons routinely exaggerate the strengths of others and the weakness of self. Britain will still be an essential partner of the United States, but simply lacks the clout to be THE exclusive special partner of the United States. American grand strategy (the organisation of immense means in pursuit of global ends) cannot afford to maintain such an illusion any longer. Today, America remains the challenged but indispensable power, whilst Britain is much diminished, albeit far less diminished than is currently fashionable in fashionable London. Britain stands alongside France as a great power. Britain is neither an Italy, nor indeed a Germany, and hopefully never will be a Belgium.

Ultimately, for the all the genuineness of the relationship between two countries that have done more to shape a positive world than any two others in history, relative power and influence are at the core of the link - both economic and military. Power that is underpinned by an idea – the new West. That was the essence of Ed Murrow’s broadcasts from London. Britain was not just another old European power fighting for power, but family standing for values. As George VI said in his famous King’s Speech, on the outbreak of war on 3 September, 1939, “We have been forced into a conflict, for we are called, with our allies, to meet the challenge of a principle which, if it were to prevail, would be fatal to any civilized order in the world”. The same could be said of the struggle against the new extremism during which America and Britain have again stood shoulder to shoulder and paid a heavy price in blood and geld.

New, more systemic challenges to the West will come – both North America and Europe.  And, America needs a new ‘special’ partner and for all its failings that partner must in time be Europe as a whole. Britain has therefore a critical role to play with France in preparing Europe for the new Special Relationship relevant to the twenty-first century, rather than a relic of the twentieth. After all, that is what America and Britain fought for.

To such an end Britain must first start to live up to its potential in the world and put aside the obsession with decline which is doing so much to reduce essential British influence in those parts America cannot reach. Second, Britain must forge a new partnership with France to properly renovate the European pillar of a new transatlantic relationship. Third, the relationship must be properly cast in a global context.  Whilst the two pillars will look outwards rather than inwards all-important solidarity must be seen to be preserved.  The US will be necessarily focussed on Asia-Pacific whilst Europe must get its act together in North Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Britain’s Europeaness must therefore become an asset not a liability. Fourth, the enduring military to military special relationship must set an agenda to properly prepare NATO for the twenty-first century. Fifth, Britain and France must use their collective influence to forge a direct EU-US special relationship that can reinforce the security of the respective homelands (as opposed to purely defence-related matters), particularly as it relates to counter-terrorism and counter-crime.

Above all, Britain must re-discover the global ambition to foster the Commonwealth into a new security partnership.  The West is an idea rather than a place and such groupings are firmly anchored in the idea for which America and Britain fought . It is an idea that is as compelling and attractive today as it was in the dark days of disaster in 1940 and 1941. The Empire may have indeed become a Commonwealth and Britain but one equal member of it, but as a vehicle for stabilising influence the Commonwealth can play a vital role. Several of the emergent states are committed members.

Murrow once said; “A reporter is always concerned with tomorrow. There's nothing tangible of yesterday. All I can say I've done is agitate the air ten or fifteen minutes and then boom - it's gone”. Characteristically modest as ever, Murrow may well have been talking of contemporary British politics and politicians. That must end. It is time therefore for Britain to look to the future of an Essential Relationship, America certainly is.

Thank you and goodnight, Mr President.

Julian Lindley-French