Welcome to the Twenty-First Century. It Starts Right Now!

Alphen, the Netherlands. 2 January. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. My 2012 started here in my beautiful little Dutch village chatting with my nice Dutch neighbours amid the clatter of many thousands of burning Euros being shot into the sky or exploding in brief, bright and brilliant suns.

On New Year’s Eve Alphen seemed a million miles from reality in that fleeting moment when the New Year illuminates the old and casts it to mature into the giant whisky vat of history. And yet even during the brief truce in reality between Christmas and New Year change was regrouping. And, as the smoke clears the strategic landscape has subtly but most profoundly changed. Ten years late the old century has finally passed and the new one is finally upon us.

On 24 December the second round of voting began in Egypt’s parliamentary elections. These elections are crucial not only because of the importance of Egypt in the Arab world, but also because they illuminate the political direction of travel of the Middle East. Specifically, if the Islamist parties do well, as seems likely, Egypt could become the pioneer of a new twenty-first century phenomenon – the legitimate Arab Islamist state. Critical will be the extent to which Islamism embraces democracy and whether indeed it can. One man (or woman), one vote once would simply mark yet another false Arab dawn. Egypt will be central to the stability of the Middle East and its political identity.

On 25 December German President Christian Wulff said that Germany would offer “solidarity to Europe” in “a spirit of unity” to point the way out of the Eurozone crisis. A close ally of Chancellor Merkel President Wulff said that Europe is “our common home,” the values of which must be defended jointly. 2012 will indeed be the true test of German leadership in Europe as Berlin grapples with the Eurozone crisis…and the British. For Europe much will depend on how much Germany is willing to pay for this ‘spirit of unity’ and the leadership of Europe it confers.

Beijing announced on 27 December that the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) would begin looking for oil in Afghanistan’s Amu Darya Basin which is estimated to hold around 87 million barrels of oil. As the West prepares to leave Afghanistan having spent huge amount of treasure and at the cost of many lives China and the neighbours are preparing to exploit Afghanistan’s estimated $1 trillion of mineral and fossil fuel reserves. Much of the first half of the century will be about China’s rapacious search for energy. Indeed, only sustained economic growth will offset the marked absence of political liberty in China. China’s move into Afghanistan also marks another step on the road to a new bipolar world that will be dominated by Beijing and Washington.

On 29 December economists at the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) announced that Brazil had overtaken Britain as the world’s 6th largest economy. They also predicted that India and Russia would enjoy surges in growth as the old West stagflates in what the CEBR called Europe’s ‘lost decade’. The only consolation for the British was that the CEBR confidently predicts that by 2020 Britain would have a significantly larger economy than that of France. Here we go again.  In fact Brazil will find it very hard to turn such paper wealth into power but Britain and France really do now need to decide the extent of their strategic ambitions and how on Earth they can act together.

On 1 January Iran announced that it had successfully test-fired a medium-range surface-to-air missile equipped with the “latest technology” and “intelligent systems”, during military exercises in the Gulf. This followed reports that the West was intending further sanctions against Tehran aimed at Iran’s oil and financial sectors because of Iran’s seeming determination to build nuclear weapons. Ten days of Iranian naval exercises in the Straits of Hormuz signalled Tehran’s response; the closure of the world’s most important oil shipping lane in the event of a future confrontation with the United States and its European allies. Behind all of this posturing lies Persian Iran’s strategic ambitions to dominate its Arab region.

Put simply the power state is back. Unfortunately, the European West in particular seems incapable of thinking big enough to cope with this new/old reality. First, the Eurozone crisis is of such severity that rather like heroin addicts many European leaders would sell their peoples’ futures for a short-term political fix rather than deal with the real problem. As Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker put it over Christmas, “We know how to solve the problem, we just do not know how to get re-elected afterwards”. Oh, for just one truly great leader!  Second, Europe only recognises as much strategy as it can afford…which is not a lot. Third, the foreign and security departments of European states are today brim full of counter-terrorism experts and aid and development specialists who skew the focus of national strategies towards failed states and civil strife.  Such parochial ambitions are funded at the expense of balanced defence efforts. This is old strategy for an old world.

The twenty-first century will be a big power, big state century. Power will be organised either around big states via informal regional groupings or though institutions such as the new European Union with one such state at its core.

Welcome to the twenty-first century. It starts right now!

Julian Lindley-French

In Shadows Deep

Alphen, the Netherlands. 30 December. Just before Christmas I received an email from a friend of mine for whom I have great respect and have known many a year. He is a fifty-something and like me a tired British social democrat and one-time believer in the great idea that was Europe. His email came as a shock. He suggested that I was ‘right’, the Eurozone crisis had parted the waves of Euro-speak to reveal Germany and France for what they have always been, Britain’s natural and irreconcilable enemies. I beg to differ.

My friend had been following closely my strident defence of Britain in the teeth of the Eurozone crisis and my critique of Germany and France for their flawed and self-assumed ‘leadership’ in the name of ‘Europe’. Not a natural ally of mine the Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Junker summed up the flawed strategy perfectly when he said, “we know how to solve the problem, we just do not know how to get re-elected afterwards”. 

French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in the nineteenth century that political liberty is easily lost because democratic peoples want equality even if it means losing liberty. Germany and France are trying to achieve something much more ambitious - leadership, equality and democracy in crisis.  That does not make Germany and France enemies. Yes, it is a fairly fundamental squabble about who is in charge of Europe and how it should be organised but my objection has not been in principle to the leadership of Berlin and Paris, but rather their attempts to exclude London.

My friend's email also touched on much deeper issues that all of us in our fifties and beyond are forced to consider. None of us can expect to die from the land into which we were born. Change happens. However, since my 1958 birth the change that has taken place in my land of Europe has been so revolutionary – for better and for worse. Like him and millions of my fellow time-travellers I do indeed feel alienated not least because much of the change has been imposed upon me.  He is also right that ‘positive’ discrimination does indeed condemn many men in their fifties to the wastes of ‘freelancery’ (unemployment without benefits).  But we are where we are. 

Weak governments Europe-wide are now forced to make difficult choices  to manage the dangerous consequences of their previous inactions.  Youth unemployment is soaring, populations are rising seemingly uncontrollably and social and cultural diversity now challenges old concepts of society. Britain is a case in point. One only has to look at the place to realise that the London-elite are utterly detached from the everyday reality of ordinary Britons. 

So why do I persevere sending out blogs into the unfathomable ether? It is precisely because I do feel alienated from the political process however futile my blogging may on occasions seem. Far from retreating from politics now is the moment to engage.  Indeed, if I do not engage liberty in Europe will slowly die. And, strangely, being a fifties-something man I have earned the liberty not to cow-tow to anyone, however powerful or important they believe themselves to be. 

Irish poet W.B. Yeats once wrote; “When you are old and grey and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book, and slowly read, and dream of the soft look, your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep”.

So, my friend, I am sorry you misunderstood my meaning but Germany and France are not Britain’s enemies, they are not even friends, they are family.  The shadows are indeed deep but there is always hope and you too must engage for the sake of our Europe.

Happy New Year!

Julian Lindley-French

Is Britain Going Mad?

Alphen, the Netherlands.  22 December.  Is Britain going mad?  Please someone tell me it is not so.  Sitting here on this side of the Channel I have been following over the past couple of days what passes for a debate on racism in English football.

On Tuesday Mr Luis Suarez of Liverpool Football Club was found by the Football Association to have used language against an opponent that may have had racist overtones.  He was banned for eight games.  If he did indeed use racist language then the sanction is just as such language does indeed have no place in modern society.  However, what is dangerous about this incident is that it appears that it is simply the word of Mr Suarez against that of his accuser Mr Patrice Evra of Manchester United.  There are no other witnesses. 

If that is the case then it would appear to mean that a black person can now make a career-damaging accusation and all that matters is that the accusation is made.  That would go against all tenets of natural justice.   

On Wednesday formal charges of racist abuse were laid against the England Football Captain Mr John Terry by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).  I will not comment on that case as it is sub-judice but the way in which the press reacted had all the hallmarks of a witch-hunt.  Sadly, the CPS seems increasingly political  and politicised and I really do hope Mr Terry gets a fair trial.  

Today, Mr Alan Hansen, a football pundit, is being hunted down by the PC wolves.  Last night he referred to black people as 'coloured' on the BBC's Match of the Day, a soccer programme, although clearly no offence was intended. Mr Hansen was clear in his message that racism is wrong even if his use of language was perhaps out-dated. 

What is behind all of this?  First, the derided media are trying to prove their PC credentials by attacking individuals for what are in many cases the slightest infringement of race rules and laws that have become now so draconian that ancient liberties are at stake.  Second, the London elite seem determined to ram this issue down the throats of Britons as a warning and because of profound failures of policy.  Indeed, these witch-hunts are becoming so shrill that they reflect the steady and dangerous shift of hitherto irritating political correctness into something far more sinister; socio-fascism. 

Sadly, this PC madness will only make community relations more tense, not less so as a non-racist but nevertheless fed up English majority feel that implicit in this frenzy is the suggestion that a) they are all racist by association; and b) a precedent is being established by which the law will be applied in favour of one section of society against the rest. In recent polls 85% of the population object to the Establishment obsession over race and racism believing it to be over-reacting.

Racism is wrong and must be dealt with but in a patient and common sense way, not the kind of public show trials that now seem to be the norm and which seem to be taking place almost weekly.  Remember, I know what damage discrimination can do to a person and a career and I oppose all forms of such behaviour as I have myself suffered from it.  The real danger is not that people will stop saying racist things, but that they will stop saying anything anymore for fear of being accused of racism.  If that happens they will join the many millions of Britons who have retreated into sullen silence at work and elsewhere for the very same fear.

Where are the British going with all of this? Maoist-style re-education classes? Thought police?  The Dutch think the British are going mad over this issue.

Britain used to be renowned for common sense, tolerance and balanced thinking.  On issues of race and racism that is clearly no longer the case.

Julian Lindley-French