Russia and the Mediterranean Rim

Western leaders have always been prone to miss bigger pictures. In the space race, for instance, which seems to have resulted in western success at huge cost with little return, amazing things were achieved to little purpose. In a far darker way, World War One, the struggle for Empire, and the Cold War, were all predicated on the idea of a defined task the achievement of which resulted in 'victory'.

What the West has not been culturally good at is the integration of the bigger picture and the greater game with this capacity for determined focus. We tend to move from the histrionic to the practical with no connexion in between. That was OK when rivals were self-defeating because of the grand sweep of their designs. We could pat ourselves on the back and assert that versions of liberal materialism added to technological leads could get us anywhere.

What happens, though, when ineluctable forces, and cold, calculated, patient planning of a sort that used to be just conjured up for propaganda take place?

Vladimir Putin, for instance, must rank as one of the foremost statesmen Russia has ever produced. He changes the game whilst winning it. Whilst we worry vaguely about climate change and spend blood and money in the deserts and mountains, he draws a ring of gas and steel around Europe. As the oil runs down and Europe is poised to become dependant, we turn to North Africa and find...Russia. We turn to Nigeria...and there is Russia. In East Africa, we lob bombs from expensive machines on warlords, and we miss the monsters on horseback. We also fail to notice what is effectively a Chinese colonisation of the richer areas of that continent, and a co-option of the shadier regimes. At least South African dockers, who are refusing to be part of the arms to Zimbabwe scandal, are showing some moral backbone.

Consider the four interlocking parts of the Western dilemma. Many Muslims have given themselves over to an active cult of death. The climate is changing, and this is now affecting European water, power and food. Nature has a way of unbuckling that will shock us; I wouldn't be the first and I won't be the last to note that, if the weight of ice at the poles resumed declining and displacing, it would not be surprising if earthquakes and volcanic eruptions became more frequent and intense. Did you ever connect that to what is going on? At least this might just be my Celtic gloom. The ice has not been in decline for years.

There are far too many angry young men with nothing to do except throw their bodies or their anger this way. Depression is looming and it will be worse than before over a time because the oil is running down and food supplies are, in the world, inadequate and expensive.

An active policy would be one that integrated these elements intelligently, and responded to them. This is what Putin does for his country.

A Mediterranean Community that offered real and tangible benefits, that forestalled immigration concerns, elevated the African Union, and allowed breathing space from gas depredations until we could adapt to a new, radically limited energy environment would be a start. It won't happen though, because media concerns, the short term obsessions of the political classes, and the complete indifference of people to the idea that their individualism, feminism, and consumer freedom is a consequence of cheap energy grips the western mind.

The maintenance of the Common Agricultural Policy, which guarantees food security, and its supplementation by the development of genetically engineered crops is another matter of vital concern.

We must also adopt a steady and relentless intolerance for Islamic fundamentalism, and intelligently divide the Muslim community from that group. The cult of death has many near allies. The insensible condemnation of Israel, for one thing. The cowardice in the face of intimidation and threat that western leaders demonstrate is another. They do so because they do not know their own culture, since it was thought a good thing to burn it forty years ago.

It is also the case that Western minds have been captured, for obvious reasons, by the spectacle of Arabic Islam, yet the majority of Muslims and people of that tradition aren't of that group. It must be possible to devise policies, industrial connexions, and financial deals that make that clear.

Law isn't being used in any way intelligently. The UN Convention on the Law of the Seas is one of the most powerful pieces of legislation ever created, and in area after area, Iranian, Indonesian, Chinese and African manipulation of sea disputes has resulted in belligerent and illegal behaviours on the part of powers like the USA that just lose us friends. The Straits of Hormuz, and Malacca, and the emerging North-West passage spring to mind. The US needs to sign that convention, and soon.
We also need an international criminal court that covers the world, and the African Union should be encouraged in the creation of an African Court of Human Rights.

Ultimately, though, most of this won't forestall disaster. It will just make things a little more stable in the descent, and possibly create more options. Our central problem is that we must learn that true freedom is in good deal about self-limitation. As the pope and emperor met at the White House the other day, this was made clear by one of the more beautiful speeches of Benedict XVI, and I recommend it to you. We must not give in, give up or carry on in the way we have carried on. What is coming, this decade or the next, if not now, will try us all.



The picture at the top of this blog is of course of Catherine the Great, whom I admire very deeply and who had her own schemes on the Ottoman Lands