A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu

Many thanks to JL for providing a very interesting article and topic fo reflection.

It seems to me that, in the popular sphere at least, Britain and America approach their history in different ways. The emotions evoked by consideration of the Past are by no means similar; for America the past is a source of celebration or, on occasion, grave disconcertion. For the British, and especially, the English the Past is either a weary burden or some rose-tinted nostalgia. The Second World War, for instance, seems to embody some lost spirit of community, the 'Blitz spirit', as it were, as much as the fighting itself. The English seem to have an unease, a healthy unease, of Jingoism, as shown by the complete indifference shown to St. George's Day. This is reinforced in schools where we are taught, quite rightly in my view, of the bitter anguish and desolation, as expressed by Owen, Sassoon et al., caused by devotion to some woolly notion of nation.

On occasion the hypnotic flames of Jingoism are rekindled - the Falkland Islands spring to mind here - but on the whole it is a reluctance to participate that seems to define Britain as a nation - hence our strong tradition of satire from Hogarth to Baron Cohen. Yet, despite this collective jadedness, recent years have seen a number of interventions, such as Kosovo, Sierra Leone and recently Afghanisatan and Iraq. These operations have some moral purchase, for a foreign policy based solely on pragmatic realism seems just as abhorrent as unrestrained idealism. I would not want Britain to trade and accept some despot or dictator as he commits unknown atrocities or to sit idly by as some country starts wholesale slaughter, as happened in Rwanda.

In the case of Iraq I do not believe in a Rousseaian notion of a 'people' needing to be represented, helped or indeed ruled. But I do believe the amplified effects of religious minorities have caused an unjustifiable loss of life. Nor do these minorities work in complete isolation, Iran and Syria not withstanding, I am mindful of Ian Kershaw's writings on Nazi Germany, on how widespread support and asistance needs to be, on how it was neighbourly denunciations as much as men in leather coats that sustained the Gestapo. The problems of Iraq are deeply ingrained, which it why it was foolish to think it could be acheived with a cheap and easy victory as envisioned by Donald Rumsfeld.

Perhaps it is indicative of a flaw in the American political structure in that it lurches in and out of policy choices with leaps and starts. The vacuum of power seems to require more troops, not less, and of all nations in order to provide legitimacy and prevent the characterisation of militias as anti-Imperial freedom fighters. Blair was right in this respect, for a UN resolution would have greatly assisted in this predicament. The balance was not struck between the energy and resources of America and the legitimacy of a wider global community. As it stands the Coalition seems as multilateral as the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, where a couple of Polish lifeguards were tacked on to an overwhelming mass of Russian tank divisions. To effect worthwhile change requires either luck, or, more frequently, long-term investment in terms of resources, attention and willpower. The beneficial effects of democracy, I read somewhere, do not come as an enlightening flood, but as a slow, accumulated trickle.