A case of pots and kettles

Am I alone in wondering what on earth the fuss is about over Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s appearances in black and brown-face images decades ago?

Is this not another case of imposing the judgements of today on incidents long ago when attitudes to what was acceptable were very different?

Is it really a scandal that will doom Trudeau’s bid for re-election as some commentators are breathlessly predicting?

Or is it the case of a young man larking around in an era when this kind of thing was not looked upon in the same way as it is today?

Let me put this into context. In my youth in the United Kingdom, the British Broadcasting Corporation ran a light entertainment program called The Black and White Minstrel Show.

It featured male dancers and singers in black-face performing traditional American minstrel and music hall songs together with females and other supporting artists who did not wear the black make-up.

The show was not a one-off. It ran for 20 years and at its peak had a viewing audience of 21 million. I watched it myself and to this day I do not believe it encouraged me to adopt racist attitudes.

But that was then, and this is now.

The Black and White Minstrel Show would not last a single performance if someone was daft enough to put it on now. It would rightly attract condemnation for promoting racial stereotypes.

If Justin Trudeau turned up at an election rally wearing the black-face he thought was okay back in the 1990s that would be the end of him politically.

Times have changed, and both the BBC and Trudeau know that what was once socially acceptable is now beyond the pale.

Can we really believe the Canadian Prime Minister is a closet racist because of some youthful pranks all those years ago?

There would not be many people who pass through their younger years without doing something which, looking back, makes then squirm.

Remember Prince Harry turning up at a party wearing a swastika armband?

Trudeau has offered a fulsome apology. “I let a lot of people down and I am sorry for that,” he says.

I suppose it’s inevitable that political opponents are going to play it for all its worth. There’s an election on after all.

But in most cases — and especially for people over a certain age — I would say it is a case of pots calling the kettle black.

Dear me, did I let slip a racist remark?  

Why Cameron failed the Disraeli test

The Conservative Party is the United Kingdom’s oldest and most successful political organisation.

It managed the transformation from a Victorian-era guardian of landed privilege into a standard bearer for the aspirational middle classes of the 20th century.

Above all, it was a party of survival.

In doing so, it established a set of unwritten rules governing that survival, the first and foremost of which was the provision of strong leadership. 

Benjamin Disraeli put it succinctly when he said that if the masses were not led, they would find leaders from among their own ranks — leaders of dubious quality and questionable ambitions who might ferment chaos for their own ends.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, when the fortunes of the party reached a low ebb under the leadership of Arthur Balfour, Chief Whip Alexander Acland-Hood lamented a “want of backbone” and “vacillating policies”

Disraeli was speaking of the dangers of Chartism; Acland-Hood of tariff reform, but the message was the same. Conservatives only prosper with a strong person at the helm. Someone prepared to lead rather than follow the vagaries of public opinion.

These thoughts coincide with the imminent release of the memoirs of David Cameron, who led the Conservative Party up to 2016 when he authorised the referendum on membership of the European Union that plunged the United Kingdom into a three-year still unresolved crisis.

Cameron became Prime Minister six years earlier as a mild Eurosceptic, but his time in office convinced him the country was better off inside the EU.

However, he failed to control hard-liners within Conservative ranks, and concerned over the growing influence of the right-wing UK Independence Party agreed to a referendum on membership.

That was a mistake, and a failure of leadership, followed by allowing Ministers to campaign for leaving the EU while still in office, even though the official position of the Government was to remain.

That gave respectability to the Leave campaign, while presenting the picture of a Government that was trying to have it both ways.

Agreeing to the referendum was the moment Cameron lost control.

A strong leader in the Tory tradition of Disraeli might have sacked the Leavers from the Cabinet; announced that the UK would not leave the EU until a party dedicated to that aim won a majority of seats in the House of Commons at a General Election – and then, perhaps, called one himself.

In interviews connected with his book Cameron comes across with a mixture a mea culpa and anger over Brixiteers for “trashing the Government”.

He says the 2016 referendum result left him hugely depressed and recognises that some people “will never forgive me”.

He has launched into the tactics of current Prime Minister Boris Johnson, claiming his sole reason for committing himself to the Leave campaign was to advance his own career.

Indirectly he blames the electorate for preferring Leave’s “powerful emotional arguments” over the “technical and economic arguments” of Remain.

In other words he is refusing to accept full responsibility for a failure, at a crucial point in the country’s fortunes, to have said: “Enough – it is my way or the highway.”

Disraeli would have appreciated the need to face down political foes — even those in his own party.

Balfour would have understood the reasons Cameron failed to do so.

Telling words from the last statesman

Observing the continuing turmoil in the United Kingdom Parliament and country, it seems that for many Britons history began on June 23, 2016.

I suppose in the 24-hour news cycle with clickbait continuously churning out sensational headlines on mundane reports, it is inevitable that anything more than a day old is quickly consigned to the archives, at least in popular memory.

At a time when it is most needed, a knowledge and understanding of the historical currents that have led to the present sorry state in the UK are shoved aside by breathless coverage of the latest uproar and outrage. 

The dangers were noted in 2001 by former United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in his book Does America Need a Foreign Policy?

He wrote: “The study of history and philosophy, the disciplines most relevant to perfecting the art of statesmanship, are neglected everywhere or given such utilitarian interpretation that they can be enlisted in support of whatever passes for conventional wisdom.”

No more apt description could apply to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, both Oxford classic scholars who have allowed their learning to be subsumed by ego and ambition.

In this frenetic atmosphere, it has not been possible to canvas all statements and opinions, but I have not come across a single detailed discussion of the historical context of the UK’s engagement with Europe.

Does anyone today realise that the Conservatives were the original ‘Party of Europe’; that both Tory and Labour Prime Ministers sought to enter the then exclusive six-nation club before a Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath, finally achieved membership?

Brexiteers, who continually try to recruit the ‘bulldog spirit’ of wartime leader Winston Churchill to their cause, conveniently forget (or perhaps they never knew) that Churchill was a proto-European.

Not only did he propose union with France in 1940 as a way of keeping his ally in World War II, he later advocated a “United States of Europe”, 10 years before the Treaty of Rome.

Churchill was in retirement by the time the treaty was signed and his successor, Anthony Eden, a hangover from the days of empire, neglected to be part of it. However, his disastrous Suez campaign demonstrated once and for all that the UK’s days as a stand-alone world power were over.

His successors, Harold Macmillan and Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, both made applications to join, both thwarted by French President Charles De Gaulle who did not want Britain in the way of his dream of a Europe dominated by France.

Finally, after de Gaulle had left the stage, Heath negotiated entry, which took place in 1972.

It is hard to pin down the tipping point in the Conservatives’ attitudes to Europe, but the change certainly began in the 1980s with the leadership of Margaret Thatcher and hardened during the years the Tories spent out of office during the Labour Governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

David Cameron, a moderate Eurosceptic, was kept in check while in coalition with the pro-EU Liberal Democrats, but after winning Government in his own right succumbed to his more militant colleagues and announced the 2016 referendum.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Ken Clarke, the longest serving MP in Parliament is one of the last survivors of the ‘Party of Europe’. Sitting several rows behind Johnson this week he rose to give this withering assessment of his leader.

“His obvious strategy is to set the conditions which make a no deal inevitable, to make sure as much blame as possible is attached to the EU and to this House for that consequence and then as quickly as possible fight a flag-waving general election before the consequences of no-deal become too obvious to the public,” he said.

“Would Mr Johnson let me know whether that clear explanation of his policy is one he entirely accepts?”

The answer was expulsion from the party Clarke had served with distinction in Parliament for almost half a century, along with other Tory rebels who voted to outlaw a no-deal (among them Churchill’s grandson Nicholas Soames).

At 79, Clarke is one of the last true statesmen in this Parliament of fools. Attuned to history’s inevitable march, it has sustained him in the past few years as the party he loved gradually moved away from much he believed in. The final break this week was inevitable.

He has remained loyal to his values that have guided him over his long public life. Unlike so many of his former colleagues, he can now leave holding his head high.

Desperate Trump’s Greenland gamble

United States President Donald Trump is facing a foreign policy crisis.

With an election year looming he does not have a single overseas achievement of any worth to take to the electorate — rather it has been a catalogue of disasters.

If any further evidence was needed, the hilarious episode over Trump’s suggestion that he could buy the self-governing Danish Territory of Greenland provided it.

Horrified White House aides tried to pass it off as a joke and might have succeeded if the president had not got upset at Denmark Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s blunt put-down of the proposal and cancelled a State visit.

That gave credence to the view that he was really serious when he described the transfer of sovereignty as a “real estate deal” something which another Danish official said “was proof he has gone mad”.

It is not the first time the president has believed that any problem could be solved if enough money was thrown at it. The first phase of his plan to solve the decades-long dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians involved a pay-out of $50 billion to kick-start the Palestinian economy.

Seen by most Middle East commentator as a clumsy attempt at bribery, the so-called “deal of the century” has been so thoroughly rejected that phase two of the plan has not yet surfaced and may well be permanently shelved.

Trump will no doubt seek to promote his series of meetings with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un as a diplomatic success, rather than the sad non-events they actually are.

After two summits and a third meeting at the Korean Demilitarised Zone, Kim’s standing in the world has been boosted; his nuclear program is intact and he is still firing off rockets to the consternation of his near neighbours.

Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, has not forced Teheran back to the negotiating table, has heightened tensions in the Middle East and put him at odds with his European allies.

There was no reason to do this other than to trash the signature foreign policy achievement of his despised predecessor in office Barrack Obama, a vindictive act which has lost the US much respect around the world and put it at odds with some of its strongest allies.

Finally, for all his bluster, the US is being hurt by the trade war he began with China, while Beijing maintains the iron grip on its own economy and shows no sign of backing down.

Domestically Trump can point to a strongly functioning economy, achieved mainly through making a bonfire of environmental legislation; a tough, some would call brutal, crackdown on refugees and undocumented migrants, and consist resistance to any form of gun control even as mass shootings multiply.

This works well with his constituency — the president has shown no interest in working with those who show the slighted degree of disagreement with him — and may even be sufficient to win him re-election given Republican gerrymandering and the notorious apathy of many American voters.   

However, Trump’s giant ego demands he also strides Caesar-like on the global stage so expect more ‘initiatives’ such as the Greenland purchase in the coming weeks and months.

Be ready for more angry responses, temper tantrums and not so veiled threats if he does not get his way.

I am sure the international community can hardly wait.

A stealthy war the West is losing

The recent clashes between supporters of Hong Kong’s democracy movement and those claiming to represent to views of the Government in Beijing are at last beginning to raise the debate on Chinese influence in Australia.

For years there have been occasional voices that Australia has become too dependent on the People’s Republic in a number of areas including resources and education.

I have long argued that with China responsible for more than 30 per cent of Australian exports, there is a need to change that market profile, not necessarily by cutting back on the China trade, but to make it less important to the national wellbeing through diversification.

This can and should be done by becoming more active in south-east Asia and India whose huge potential has been overlooked and downplayed. If a no-deal Brexit happens, the United Kingdom coming cap-in-hand looking for Australia to bail it out could be another lucrative source.

For too long our so-called captains of industry have been too busy sucking on the China teat to exploit other possibilities.

This was summed up by the negative reaction of many business leaders when Liberal backbencher Andrew Hastie likened the world’s approach to China as similar to the failure to contain the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

That comparison is a little over the top, but it expressed the frustration of Hastie and others at the general indifference to China’s growing involvement in Australia’s political and social affairs.

This has been done through a proliferation of apparently innocuous groups that invariably have ‘peaceful’ and ‘friendship’ as part of their titles.

In his recent book, Silent Invasion, Clive Hamilton writes that many of these organisations have direct links with the Chinese Government though that country’s consulates and embassy in Australia.

He notes that the massive and intimidating presence of pro-Beijing students during the passage of China’s Olympic torch through Canberra in 2008 was a direct result of a call from these diplomatic posts, which paid to transport the students from the major cities.

It was an early warning of the way things were going — one that has been largely ignored.

Now the call is being answered again in a bid to silence the voice of Hong Kong people and their supporters in Australia who believe the pro-democracy movement in the city has true grievances and the response by the authorities out of all proportion in its brutality.

Hastie’s comments drew a sour response from a business community with both eyes on its bottom line, but he is far from alone in his concerns.

The Chief of the Defence Force, Angus Campbell, at a conference of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, spoke of a “strategic and operational mismatch” between authoritarian States such as China and Russia, and the West.

“The authoritarian States possess deep traditions and cultures of offensive political warfare,” Campbell said. It was a war in which they were winning victories.

“By contrast, most decision-makers in the West still consider themselves to be in a state of peace and are not inclined to initiate actions that, they fear, Moscow or Beijing might consider provocative.”

He hoped that the West would wake up to this, but even if they did they would be “late to the battlefield” of political warfare.

These warning are clear, there is a war going on, fought with campaigns of coercion, propaganda and not so subtle threats of economic blackmail. It is not taking place in far off lands but in the streets, boardrooms and even in the parliaments of Australian cities.

It is being aided and abetted by Australians who for various reasons, some quite honest, others not so honest, believe it would be better for everyone if the white flag was hoisted.

For those who think this would be a wholly bad thing that should be resisted, time is running out.

Kashmir a pawn in regional power plays

The decision by the Indian Government to nullify the special status of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, abrupt as it was, should have come as no surprise.

It was part of the election manifesto of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and after its stunning poll victory earlier this year, domestic conditions could not have been better for the move.

While the international reaction has been largely negative, the move has widespread support in India and especially within the nationalist BJP where Cabinet Ministers reportedly made the decision to act after just seven minutes of discussion.

Those who follow events in the troubled region also read the signs. In late July thousands of additional troops were deployed to Kashmir; on August 2 tourists and pilgrims were ordered to leave; two days later internet and phone access was cut and activists arrested.

Then on August 5 Article 370, a constitutional clause dating back to 1949 that gave Jammu and Kashmir its special autonomous status, was revoked.

Few outside India saw it coming because by and large, the world had stopped worrying about Kashmir. There were bigger concerns — trade wars, the Gulf crisis Brexit, Hong Kong — attention was elsewhere.

For Prime Minister Narendra Modi there was both an opportunity and an incentive to remove Kashmir from India’s agenda. The problem has lingered from the early days of independence and partition when its princely ruler, Hari Singh, had dithered over whether to join India or Pakistan.

Pakistani guerrillas invaded assuming this would help persuade Singh to transfer his Muslim majority State to Pakistan. Instead he called on New Delhi for help, which was given on condition he joined India.

The resulting conflict led to a split in the State between Pakistan and India along a ceasefire line mediated by the United Nations which called for a referendum to decide Kashmir’s future. 

In the ensuring years the countries fought twice more over the territory and the UN-proposed referendum never happened. It is this 72-year stalemate that Modi moved to end.

Initially it has led to a storm of protest. Kashmiris under curfew and cut off from the world complain “they are living in hell”. Having suddenly discovered a fresh crisis, international journalists are reporting dire consequences; Pakistani President Imran Khan has likened the action to Nazism.

Modi believes that India can weather the storm with minimal damage to its international reputation. Troops will gradually be withdrawn and restrictions lifted, to be reimposed again if the inevitable disturbances get out of hand.

He knows that Khan can do little more than bluster and appeal to a disinterested international community. India has never been stronger militarily, while Pakistan’s forces are plagued by internal distrust and disputes.

In the longer term Modi believes Indian Kashmir’s status as a regular State will encourage outside investment and a return of the once lucrative tourism industry. He hopes an influx of migrants will help to balance the State’s 77 per cent Muslim majority.

Most importantly for New Delhi is the securing of the region against its giant neighbour, China.

The two countries have never resolved their borders and Beijing continues to produce maps showing large swathes of Indian territory as part of China. Since the BJP came to power, India has become more assertive in pushing back against these claims.

In the end, the fate of Kashmir is wrapped up in the continuing rivalry of these two regional superpowers.

Westphalian system has had its day

In 1648 warring factions gathered in the Westphalian cities of Osnabruck and Munster to negotiate what would become the known as the Peace of Westphalia.

The resulting treaties ended one of the most devastating conflicts in human history, the 30 Years War.

Essentially fought over religion — with one or two side issues — the war turned central Europe into a wasteland. Around eight million people had died, what is now modern Germany had lost 20 per cent of its population.

Food production was disrupted, towns and cities lay in ruins, famine and plague were rampant.

Finally the antagonists, the Holy Roman Empire on one side and a league of Protestant countries on the other, realised this could not go on. A new order had to be established, one based not on religious affiliation, which often ebbed and flowed across regions, but on firmly established national borders.

This in essence is the Peace of Westphalia, based on the concept that a nation’s domestic conduct and institutions are its own affair, into which no other State should interfere.

In 1648 this made absolute sense. Large parts of the continent were in urgent need of reconstruction and it seemed reasonable that rulers would use and care for the populations under their control so this could be achieved.

It was also believed that a series of independent sovereign States would ‘balance themselves out’ so that one nation would never be able to dominate others.

The flaws in this thinking were exposed by the Napoleonic wars of the 19^th century and shattered by the two ruinous world wars of the 20^th. As well, it has been proved time and again that rulers are not necessarily benign towards their own populations.

Hitler in Germany and Stalin in the Soviet Union are prime examples of the atrocities committed by Governments to peoples in territories under their control.

Contemporary examples of the Westphalian doctrine being misused include China and its persecution of the Uyghurs, Myanmar and the Rohingya, Syria and anyone who dares to question the despotic regime of Bashar al-Assad. 

New ways had to be found and in the years after World War II the idea of shared sovereignty began to emerge, initially with the Treaty of Rome that brought into being what later evolved into the European Union.

The concept was simple: If national leaders sit around the conference table — not in response to some looming crisis, but on a regular and continuing basis — they are more likely to thrash out their differences without resorting to grandstanding and threats.

A structure based on familiarity and, indeed, friendship between the representatives of the various participants was more likely to lead to cooperation and willingness to compromise.

It has worked.

In the EU’s 63-year history there has not been a single war within its borders. Given the events of the previous 63 years, this has been a signature achievement.

The example of the EU is being copied at an admittedly much slower pace, in organisations such as the African Union, Mercosur in South America and, until the destructive policies of an America First United States President, NAFTA in North America.

Today this movement towards continental groupings is under threat by a tide of nationalism whose leaders proclaim its failings (and there are many) while conveniently forgetting its achievements.

It is this deliberate misreading of the facts that led to the 2016 referendum in which Britons voted by a narrow margin in favour of ending the country’s membership of the EU.

It is only after three years of preparation for leaving that many of the UK’s citizens realise the huge advantages of membership, and that their very wellbeing and prosperity, taken for granted over more than four decades, is about to be snatched away.

With the Government currently in the hands of a hard-line faction determined to press ahead with withdrawal no matter what, options for a rethink before the leave deadline of October 31 are increasingly limited.

The UK will pay a heavy price for its rejection of economic and political partnership. Westphalia has had its day.