PROFESSOR IAN LINDEN
  • Home
  • Blogs
  • Online Books
    • Emirs, Evangelicals and Empiress
    • May You Live in Interesting Times
  • Publications
  • Articles
  • Contact

Latest Blogs

On the Murder of Adversaries

18/3/2018

0 Comments

 
​It is an instructive exercise to list the number of governments in my life time who tried to, or succeeded in murdering those they saw as their outstanding adversaries. Or to use the more polite term, engaged in extra-judicial killings. Some murders were perpetrated by democratic or semi-democratic governments.  Of these almost all have given up the practice.
A sliding scale might be applied. Killing troublesome leaders such as Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro, Dag Hammarskjőld,  Steve Biko at one end.  At the other, killing nationals at home and abroad.  Mr. Putin, presiding recently over administering radioactive polonium and spectacularly poisonous organophosphates to disloyal spies, by this reckoning, falls off the scale altogether.
Motivation for the killings, of course, varies from one end of the scale to the other: simply getting rid of a major threat to projection of power as an end in itself. A bullet or a parcel bomb suffices for routine elimination. Ice-picks went out with Trotsky.  What has been horrifying about the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei and Yulia Skripal is the flagrant violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention: the total disregard for contamination of bystanders in another State, police and first responders particularly at risk.  While deaths from US drone strikes in pursuit of a targeted killing in another State, result in what is euphemistically called “collateral damage”, this is taking place in an entirely different context of violent conflict with a terrorist adversary, and, I believe, serious targeting limitations to avoid the death of civilians.  This is not an excuse for extra-judicial killing just a reflection on a potentially facile attribution of moral equivalence. Both bring shame and dire consequences on their governments but, rightly, in unequal measure.
The current revulsion against Russia is intensified by the insultingly ridiculous responses, conspiracy theories, lies and palpable nonsense from authorised interlocutors for the Russian Federation.  It is not enough to distinguish between the Russian people and their ruling kleptocracy.  It is evident from the support for Putin that a large number of Russians share in an emotional nationalism expressed in fear of encirclement, encroachment by NATO on their near neighbours, and a visceral paranoia born of a history of invasions and an addiction to  autocratic and powerful leaders.  Both the USA and Russia have been humiliatingly defeated in wars in the last half century.  Make Russia great again, make the USA great again, brings out the electorate and wins elections.  Cocking a snook at adversaries plays well with Mother Russia and overrides considerations of the rule of law and international opprobrium.  The end result is worrying if for different reasons in each case.
So is the problem a clash of different political cultures: our values versus theirs?  Up to a point.  If David Cameron had stripped off his shirt and had photographs of himself riding a horse in Oxfordshire distributed by Conservative Central Office – apologies to sensitive readers -  the British response would have been derision.  I don’t think his constituency would have taken to him throwing people around on the judo mat either. Though judo seems to have taught Putin a lot about tactics globally: use their strength against them.  Or perhaps the Taliban in Afghanistan provided the lesson.
Putin is now responding to his perception of a much weakened USA and UK, the former saddled with an incompetent, erratic, narcissist President, the latter with a weak Prime Minister determined to hold her political Party together at any cost as her meagre legacy. Because of the dominant Tory ideological Brexiteers, and the naïve, bungling leadership of the riven Opposition, this spells “make Britain little England again”.  With Russia and the USA facing each other behind proxy militias and armies in Syria, we face a perilous passage through the next few years.  Reinstating an active hotline between Moscow and key western capitals is urgent as is making understanding the psychology of Russian nationalism key to our foreign policy.   We were spared a nuclear holocaust in October 1962 by the personalities of John F. Kennedy and Nikita Krushchev.  Today it is Trump and Putin who potentially have to deal with the accidental miscalculation and confrontation that leads towards nuclear war.
Avoiding this eventuality should take precedence over other foreign policy considerations and geopolitical advantage.  Mrs. May has shown good judgement on these provocations without burning the boats we need to retain in future in the perilous seas ahead. That there are more important forces to contend with than her back-benches may be the beginning of wisdom, if not electoral gain.
 
0 Comments

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Blogs
  • Online Books
    • Emirs, Evangelicals and Empiress
    • May You Live in Interesting Times
  • Publications
  • Articles
  • Contact