Lord Stirrup, Marshal of the Royal Air Force and Chief of the Defence Staff from 2006 until 2010, gave an excellent speech lasting 57 minutes to the think tank formerly run by the founder of this institute. The reality of the serious issues with which the speaker grapples serve to highlight the secondary nature of reflection when facing the ‘heat of the kitchen’. Lateral thinking, an offshoot of intellectual reflection, could be said to inform Mr Glass’s vote of thanks as he alludes to a key issue that is ‘out of the box’ in the normal course of considering defence procurement.
Reflection and International Relations do not seem natural bedfellows. But why this is so? Handling global affairs needs a deep understanding and Reflection suggests weighing truth and objectivity in the balance.
Leaders are not noted for wandering off into quiet rooms, searching their souls for a key to riddles facing them; they have overwhelming tasks without also rummaging in dusty mental hinterlands. Dusty they may be yet we often suppose that that our thinking is ‘all done and dusted’. We take decisions. We have an attitude and a perspective towards politics. We do not expect to quiz that backdrop to our decisions at every point along the way. Many people hardly question even basic thinking. Life is busy. Decisions have to be taken; too many pressures are involved for self-interrogation about being, or not being, fundamentally on the right track or tack.
Statistically speaking those leaders who have campaigned actively for the better sort of mankind’s progress, it is the reflective statesmen who reap the pick of the laurels.
Nazi big shot, Herman Goering, boasted “When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun!” can be contrasted with King Boris III, a linguist and lepidopterist much given to wandering alone in his Bulgarian forests, who saved thousands from the Nazi maw.
Emperor Marcus Aurelius penned ‘Meditations’ which – till the Beatles buddied up with the Maharishi – was a word synonymous with Reflections. Ghandi’s non-violent creed of Ahimsa helped realise the reborn India.
Disraeli in his novels or Czech President Václav Havel, a poet who used language to critique bureaucratic absurdity, or Brandt in Germany or Woodrow Wilson all are exemplars illustrating the point.
But, how to influence leaders of the future?
Opinion formers influence decisions taken at the apex of the political tree. Fact! Statesmen listen to opinions. A politician who trims policies to prevailing winds like a weathercock will act on ideas that au courant. Courage and ability to tackle pieties that outlive their day or usefulness is given only to a few souls. Mikhail Gorbachev reversed much of what he had seemed to stand for but how many are like him?
When Shelley said that ‘Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the future.’, it wasn’t sugary romance that he had in mind but the climate of opinion. Societies, like individuals, live and learn. Education, long-term, is the solution to many problems and currents of thought have endemic effect. This is in sharp relief in societies whose youth are trained up in hatreds.
An aim of Reflection is to consider underlying currents of thinking and to encourage people to think about what they are thinking. If it produces answers to personal issues, it follows that ideally it can positively affect societal and international outcomes.
Why not ask the ‘What If? Questions: What if people do take time to think about what they’re thinking? What if people examine their prejudices? What if some touchstones of human thinking are reconsidered to work out the best conclusions regarding our thinking? Brain cudgelling can come up with useful recipes.
What is below is not the sole answer to problems but one stream flowing toward an ocean of possibilities that point up the best way forwards.
The approach below is to look at attitudes that underpin decisions about affairs of state. There are two main areas:
(1) History. Every historical situation has its own rationale. The number of such situations is all but infinite and it is not proposed to delve here into controversies about this or that historical situation.
(2) Ideas and dispositions that govern human behaviour. Can the thinking behind any given course on which we now embark lead to the right end? This approach has two main strands:
(a) Theories that underpin and justify the thinking behind governance.
(b) General assumptions about human behaviour.
We hardly expect to have time let alone a wish to sift through all the thinking processes and assumptions that lead us to take up different stances. We take it as read that we have our reasons for adopting a given position. It is a natural reaction to shy away from going into the nub of why we think the way we do. That is irrespective of whether we are on the right or the left wing in politics, or if a budget priority should be welfare as against warfare, or …an all but endless list.
The adoption of the right habits of mind is a good place to start. Freddie Ayer, the philosopher, defined the correct stance of a logical positivist as waiting for someone to say something, then finding something wrong with it. Schoolboys were taught ‘a healthy disrespect for the printed word.’ Time and Progress do not seem to have marched in lockstep.
’What if’ we dare to try and have a debate about the fundamentals with someone of a very different viewpoint to ours or produce a check-list of the pros and cons, and use it make a rational unemotional decision, an approach that hypothetically might be taken by an A.I. decision-maker?
From personal experience, there was an exchange of views between two academically inclined people who had widely differing, pronounced views on politics but shared a similar disposition of good will and code of morality. The debate spilled over into reams of paper over weeks. By the end, there was a ‘balance sheet’ of pros and cons that was roughly equivalent. Small differences between them on minor points however were assigned different weights of importance, the result being that from common ground widely divergent conclusions sprang.
There would be no saying to a robot which argument was right but from the small difference/s in what looked like peripheral areas, a subsequent chasm arose which resulted in entirely different final conclusions.
Both parties gained understanding and came to respect the stance of their opponent. Had this thinking been translated into the world of affairs it might have made a difference for the better.
The view of a recent Ambassador of Lebanese extraction en poste in Lebanon about assassinations of leading politicians there who were not affiliated to any terrorist league was not one of utter condemnation or horror. It was much as to say that, given their views as a disdained party in opposition, such a thing was only to be expected. In similar vein, the view of a Pakistani doctor in London on hearing of the thousands killed in 9/11 was that as many people were killed by American bombs. True or not, justifiable or otherwise, the kernel of an attitude typifying most Westerners would put the human intent behind the Twin Towers atrocity to the fore not a calculation as to any equivalence in numerical terms.
In the West now the murder of an opponents as a political solution is thinking that may seem on the wane, to go by the fate of Charlie Kirk and Ann Widdecombe. What in our culture results in such actions?
What would happen if President Xi, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, or their successors, were detailed off to a retreat for, say, a month, and had to get to know each other really well. It is not what is proposed here through sheer impracticality and the fact that those players may be more disposed to persuade than to learn from one another. Character profiling of would-be or potential CEOs in industry leaders is mandatory but who could enforce it in the political firmament. Should one therefore ignore the principle of ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodet’ (Who will guard the guardians)?
As is said above, the more likely way that currents of thought may be adapted to best (whatever that may be) outcomes is to aim at settling norms of thought in a society in a harmonious balance. The lines of debate can to some extent – recall that we are only discussing one tributary stream among many that lead to the ocean – come through a climate of opinion that is a wellspring from which leaders draw.
Different cultures make for different societies. In Japan, Ikigai is a way of life, promoting harmony, politeness, respect. In a post-WW2 world this code of behaviour has been a positive force for the good. In China Confucianism held sway for many a long year and promotion in the Civil Service was through academic excellence. Resonances can be seen in how Chinese foreign policy takes a long view about objectives.
In the east today it could be said that Presidents Putin and Erdogan are largely actuated by wishes for a re-emergence of old empires and power blocs. Ideal governance in the West nowadays in conceptual terms is poles apart from the warring, internecine strife that characterised egocentric rulers and territorial aggrandisement of the past. Much more to the fore is the idea that rulers are there to benefit peoples, and even produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number. The ideas for instance of Jeremy Bentham about Utilitarianism is one of the tenets that have been taken on board. Woe betides a racist politician who reverts to caveman thinking.
One cannot deny that thought precedes action or that prevailing theory determines policy. Currents of thought play a part in the world. Social engineering goes on all the time.
Is it so impossible a task to look at the mainsprings of its thinking, or is it merely a difficult one?
Theories, ideas and dispositions underpinning the thinking behind governance
To think reflectively increases the chance of success in international relations as in any other field. Care, a spirit of genuineness, clarity, patience and open-mindedness are to be prized. Sometimes the effort will be in vain. Oliver Cromwell when pleading the cavalier cause in Parliament was driven to a pitch of desperation: “I beseech thee, in the bowels of Christ, to think it possible ye may be mistaken.’ Royalist ranks did not harken to a voice of reason – as he would see it – prevail. Any deep prejudice is hard to overturn particularly if people are in ‘broadcast’ mode rather than in ‘listening’ mode.
We see no problem in self-help, learning how to better control our own lives. An argument thus far is that: Why assume that such methods cannot be of benefit to those who dictate policies? Every now and again, it is not so hard to examine ideas that we take for granted just to see if there happens to be mileage in ameliorating customary behaviour. The problem as so often is in defining the enemy or target. What exactly are the ideas deep in our daily assumptions that we may wish to look at afresh? If we do not know exactly what we are up against, and our goal in taking action, we are unlikely to succeed.
What ideas are worth reconsidering?
Have we the best refrains in our minds?
When we encounter someone acting according to precedent, do we think that this must be right or do we allow for the alternative possibility? Have we the habit of saying to ourselves: ‘A conjurer is only as good as his latest trick!’? In the domain of Law, the initial reaction of European lawyers under the Napoleonic Code as opposed to the Common Law is to consider up front the circumstances of an instant case. Their British counterparts look firstly for precedents. These respective approaches induce a slight difference in mindset. The power of positive thinking is not just a vogue. It can have beneficial effect. A mantra need not be some eastern-inspired catchphrase. Victorians knew a thing or two when telling their children ‘Count your blessings!’
Much of the thinking behind policy decisions is actually going on in front of our eyes and we don’t see it. How uninteresting a list of our ‘normal’ or cardinal assumptions seems! It is reminiscent of the advertisement for ‘Smash’ in the 1980s: ‘Mashed potato so perfect that it fails to excite comment!’ The mere fact of its being dreary means we don’t think about it; yet decisions can turn on aspects of our customary ways of thinking that may need reconsideration in the light of particular circumstances
Below are ten postulations, some overlapping, among the many that we may regularly flag up for reassessment but do not do so. It is a list from which to cherry-pick rather than one that should be accepted in toto, After this crib sheet are two instances where customary ways of thinking or unchallenged theories can lead to questionable attitudes about how to act in given situations:
1) We often don’t know where to stop
If we’ve got a good idea, we carry it on until the point where actually it becomes counterproductive.
How often does the successful leader know when to call it a day, and resign?
The founders of the Trade Union movement have had most of their wonderful ideas brought to a successful conclusion, with the old landed ruling class vanquished. It would seem that members of the movement today are more embittered than ever.
2) Categorisation Problems
Language, use of analogy, a binary way of thinking and the ‘organising principle’ feed into how we picture reality. These aids to understanding play down much consideration of their potential downsides.
Freud differentiated between the Subconscious and the Conscious but are they mutually exclusive spheres, boxed up in different categories other than for ease of understanding or are they part of a single unity in the mind with depths and a surface?
Trauma management psychiatrists say that confronting a patient head-on about a traumatic experience risks meeting with resistance but explanations using analogy are much more palatable through familiarity.
Unction from a pulpit differs from the counsel of a board room but are the spheres of business and religion mutually exclusive? To what degree is it right to discard Sunday lessons learnt in church on Monday morning when in the office? ‘He that is without sin let him be the one to cast the first stone!’ Perhaps the morality that obtains in private life is applicable to wider spheres. This penchant of throwing stones from glass houses risks puts our system of democracy at risk.
How often have we made value judgements in black and white terms, such as he is ‘a good actor’ or ‘a bad politician’; and once our opinion is settled everything someone does tends to bear out that opinion? Life is not like that; all to obviously there are shades of grey.
The language of emotion, our deep motivator, is employed when assessing problems whose resolution lies in the area of rationality.
3) The knee-jerk reaction
If there is one black spot on a white cloth, the eye is drawn to it. Stories with emotional pull are often at the fore of our thinking. A wider picture rates hardly a mention. In the USA there is a lobby against the right to bear arms and this may be a legitimate stance but is there another side to the coin that deserves an airing; burglars might be a bit more reluctant to burgle if they might get shot?
4) The tendency to follow communal prejudices
Politicos can have the courage of other’s people’s convictions – is this always so wrong?
What usually is needed is emotional and psychology acuity, strength of mind, the courage to think ‘out of the box’ and produce the right answer to the problems that come up, to know when ‘Action this day’ is required. It is a different skill set from the norm that propels ambitious politicians to the top in times of piping peace.
What Orwell called ‘Quackspeak’, namely talking without thinking, is easy. it is here suggested that the more thinking, the better, as a matter of habit before coming to a conviction that tongues can be wagged.
Keynesian economics was not written in the sky but by John Maynard Keynes, a giant with a new way of tackling the problems of the day. A climate of opinion encouraging deep, creative opinion in a mix of people, not necessarily with televisual personas, to sit in thinking conclave about implementing solutions. A reflective mind-set increases in importance when much communal prejudice is drummed up by petrodollar-fuelled partisans sinking TV and internet sound-bite-marks deep into psyches of followers of fashion. At a time when disguised barbarians are massing to dismantle hard-won civilised values, communal prejudice bubbles up in the froth of an impressive but poisoned chalice.
Is the United Nations a forum for dispassionate thrashing out of issues or does it now in greater degree forward the agendas of participants? Are objective solutions espoused as opposed to political point-scoring?
5) Familiarity breeds contempt
It is extraordinary how much time we do not spending in thinking about ourselves and, equally, the degree of total reliance we place on stories we tell ourselves.
‘Stellar nucleosynthesis confirms that every atom in the human body was forged inside dying stars across billions of years before Earth existed. The same mathematical principles organizing hydrogen into stars, stars into solar systems, and solar systems into life-bearing planets are operating in the neural networks inside your skull right now, suggesting you are not a separate intelligence that emerged within the universe but the universe’s own intelligence expressing itself through a particular and extraordinary temporary form…’ (‘Cosmic Consciousness’; see Links)
In a painting by J.M.W. Turner titled ‘Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying -Typhoon coming on’. a character in the play ‘Train to Cleveland’ by Joey Nicoletti professes astonishment about what was in the minds of sailors chucking overboard terrified captives; what stories did they tell themselves to justify their utter lack of human empathy?
Is it adequate to bypass such descriptions with the glib phrase ‘It is what it is!’? A perspective that comes with distancing oneself from complete immersion in the knotty problems confronting one casts a shaft of light onto the wider picture of what really matters. If but statesmen and the voting public have a world view that takes into account the transience of men’s affairs, the vasty universe in which man finds himself, there surely is more of a chance that they could damp down many squabbles.
6) In-dept psychology of leaders is an issue
Consider the exemplars in religion and nationality trailed in the above revisiting of Machiavellian thinking with regard to the man at the helm having huge effect. Carlyle’s ‘Great Man Theory of History’ tends to be debunked with historians writing up ‘trends’, seeing in the great sweep of events their causes. Retrospection makes sense of patterns in history but are often deficient in explaining what were the real causes, the real touchstones of events.
In our time, if Ms Harris for the Democrats had won the last US election, would she have had the dominance of a Mr Trump with the resultant domino effect? Would the fate of England and Germany have been different in WW2 – indeed would there even have been a WW2? – had not Hitler and Churchill reigned on high?
It is generally understood that there is in the East much stress placed on ‘Saving Face’. Few commentators make allowance for many American politicians scooping during their formative years a derring-do of Cowboy B-movies.
National prejudices should as often as possible be held up to the light of re-examination.
6) Why is it the exception that ‘The exception proves the rule’?
Lord Denning tended to taper the English legal system, which he upheld, to invariably individual circumstances. Was this wrong? The Napoleonic Code of law is often more imprecise that the strict rules of precedent of the common law.
The rule of law might be a great thing but is well to bear in mind that sometimes ‘The law is an ass!’ Does a maniac killer deserve the same consideration as his victim? Is it right on every single occasion that a man must have his day in court when his criminality is obvious? It can be argued that the best way in to deal with violence or terrorism is by being more skilful than a perpetrator in the methods of violence used to combat it, added to which, sometimes, and sadly, only the use of force will effectively serve a rightful cause.
As said elsewhere in this tour d’horizon, is it always right to assume the disinterest of judges, much as that would be an ideal condition for their propounding law?
The more we think creatively and connect with good opportunities the better the likelihood of positive outcomes as applies also to the bad stuff. Philosophers today argue that this is consistent with our consciousness being a tuner for cosmic energy.
Thinking creatively can be better than according to precedent.
No one prior to the event would have credited that the end of Apartheid in South Africa would have been so free of bloodletting but for the ideas of Nelson Mandela about the Truth Commission.
Sometimes institutions as well as people have a ‘shelf-life’. It is rare for institutions or policies that have proven themselves wise in one context to continue to be wise in changed situations.
In the late 1980s there was much controversy in the EU about stockpiles of butter and wine not being snapped up in the market. Storage was a problem. Traditional thinking was that market forces had to be in play. Many diehards would not entertain a fresh approach. It was surprising how long it took for commissioners to put ‘two and two together’ and simply despatch stockpiles of the ‘Butter Mountain’ to needy populations in Africa which anyway were recipients of lavish financial subsidies and to similarly dispose of the ‘Wine Lake’.
7) The best lessons of history are to be learned in the right way.
What is ‘The ‘best’? This caveat granted, a consideration of the question can throw up useful insights.
Rulers in India a hundred years on from the days of Empire or in China two hundred years on from the so-called ‘Century of Humiliation’ may well be moved by feeling that they now are ‘top dog’. While not openly touting for revenge a pride in their nation’s achievements can lead to cocking a snook in the faces of the descendants of their former rulers. It would be a matter of pride to their ancestors. While the idea is ridiculous it is not acknowledged as such in much international decision-making. If at some subconscious level this tendency may be operative, alas with manifest effect, a countervailing attitude should be vehemently voiced.
Putin, a former KGB man, may sense Stalin looking down on him as a worthy inheritor of the ‘right’ traditions but most would agree that battles of today do not need not be those of yesterday. Once again, the problem au fond lies in rulers acting according to their questionable picture of the world. Attention would be well spent in seeing how to tackle the problem.
8)The origins of situations
Is the beauty of a lily questioned because it grows out of a dunghill? The worst of origins may produce the best of outcomes. One needs to keep a focus on the present unlike the General ‘who fights the last war’, as so many do. History’s lessons can be in what not to do. There is mileage in politicians burying a hatchet as opposed to sharpening it.
Nelson Mandela’s unprecedented Truth commission may be cited again as exemplifying wise action taken to meet the requirements of the day.
9) Petty misunderstanding can have a disproportionate effect
An illustration of this point on the personal level can be found above and should be a sine qua non that facts are checked and rechecked before a Rubicon is crossed or the dogs of war are let loose. History is littered with examples.
Sir Philip Goodhart In ‘A Stab in the Front’ cites the manifest failures in intelligence and the miscalculations on the part of all the leading players in the Suez Crisis of 1956.
In 1942, Brazilians joked that a snake would smoke a pipe before their country went to war. Germans – not noted for their sense of humour – did not get the joke. Weeks later, German U-boats sank five Brazilian ships off their own coast and killed more than 600 civilians. Brazil sent 25,000 soldiers to Italy – the only Latin American nation to send ground troops to Europe. They sewed the joke onto the sleeves of their uniforms emblazoning them with the emblem of a snake, smoking a pipe!
10) Political positions can arise through questionable emotion.
Should one be a socialist like the Rt. Hon. Michael Foot whose prime motivation was to pull up the disadvantaged of society or be like certain people in the current French Parlement who, it seems, get more of a kick in pulling down the advantaged? Are politicians able to face up to the basis of their beliefs if it turns out that their ideas are more attributable that they might like to believe to emotions they would normally forswear?
The above list comprises but a few of the tendencies that can be looked at afresh in every situation, if reflection becomes a habit.
Reminders go hand in hand with habits. They rarely go amiss and can be helpful: The painting ‘The Judgement of Cambyses’ by Gerard David depicts a story from Herodotus, in which a Judge, Sisamnes, took a bribe and was punished by being flayed alive. His skin was left on his Court seat so that who sat on it thereafter, his son being the immediate successor to his rank, had an awful reminder of what befalls those who forget that the law is not for sale.
Conservative leader William Hague organized corporate-style ‘bonding weekends’ for his MPs, encouraging them to wear baseball caps, casual jumpers, and participate in team activities. It had never previously been done. It was assumed that colleagues must ‘bond’ as they had always bonded. On a like principle, it might be useful for sessions to be set up to discuss the basis of political theories and assumptions, and so policy decisions might likewise be thrashed out in a root-and-branch manner.
In life one often needs must take risks. It cannot be assumed that every gambit will succeed. Americans are said to have lost in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Is this correct? If so, is some credit due for making attempts in what some would think worthy causes or have final results obscured both effort and intention? While a verdict is the stuff of history, the presumptions arising from it affect policies in the present. History is not a game of baseball with the rule of ‘Three strikes and you are out!’
Politicians are human clay but can be judged all but unconsciously by an invisible benchmark of sainthood. They are human and to err is human. All parties, influencers especially, would do well to be more charitable in the interest of fair play for all and a level playing field. The dosage of vitriol should be more clearly measured. If this notion is taken on board, decisions stemming from questionable disparagements might be better.
It is often no light matter to gainsay conclusions of the highly intelligent advisers to politicians. A start can be made by agreeing that intelligence is not necessarily a guarantee of accuracy but often a tool to be used in the furtherance of debatable ideas.
For the above and other reasons, it is little wonder that our thinking and our leaders can mislead us about what is the right thing to do in real-life scenarios. There is good reason why every effort should be made to be clear-eyed about what are the right policies, be one a voter or a leader.
In sum, we should all reflect hard before taking action. The saying ‘Look before you leap’ has a relevance in the spheres of international relations as it does in personal conduct. What goes for one goes for all.
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How can taking the line in thinking described above impact on specific theories of governance?
An example:
Machiavellianism: a rethink?
‘In his 16th-century political treatise The Prince, Italian diplomat, poet, and historian Niccolò Machiavelli describes how authoritarian leaders, or “princes,” should rule their states—with daring, cruelty, and manipulation.
Whether a prince is a good and just ruler or a cruel and tyrannical one matters only inasmuch as it helps or hurts their ability to keep power.
However, Machiavelli still believes that princes should have and work towards certain guiding principles. The princes he venerates were driven to brutality or deception by the need to bring about the happiness of the people, the long-term stability of the state, or the greatness of the people as perceived by other states. They weren’t motivated solely by greed or selfishness.’
See SHORTFORM
How many political leaders have derived comfort or inspiration from the doctrines of Machiavelli. Nothing much wrong is seen in a Diplomat being ‘an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country.’ It gives rise to a nod and a wink. The interests of what is best for the nation reign supreme if nowadays increasingly admixed with a weather eye for the moral strictures in reportage. This latter brake on ‘The law of nature, red in tooth and claw’ is a sign that Machiavelli’s advice to The Prince is watered down in our era of public scrutiny but yet there remains the idea that the best bargain should be driven hard for the state regardless of equity. Honesty is not seen to be the prime driving impetus of many a policy or politician.
An assumption is made herein that the mores and customs of society are a mirror of the people who make up the society. If so, it follows that what holds good for a private family should hold good for the nation’s family, and then the family of nations. That is not a Machiavel’s outlook.
To wind back to first principles: there is a relatively objective morality that should be uppermost in determining the rights and wrongs of a situation, aside from the power-play of geopolitics. As a principle of Law, citizens are entitled to equal justice regardless of purse strings or ability to pull a fast one on opponents.
A difference in numbers of people cleaving to a proposition should make no odds in terms of morality. In the Middle East the preponderance of population numbers, to say nothing of its natural resources, surely has influenced thinking about the pros and cons of the Israeli position. Since the days of the British empire disdainful epithets then current about the Egyptians, however misconceived, forgotten in the face of sensible new realities. Is it partly that we turn a blind eye to inconvenient truth largely because we accept the reality of power play?
A whistle-stop tour of conventional morality playing out in history:
Christianity and Buddhism: the founding fathers were exemplary human beings, and their creeds to this day, notwithstanding misconceived ideas of some exponents, are of comfort and benefit to suffering humanity.
Afghanistan: in 1842 the Pashtoon tribes inflicted what was regarded as the biggest defeat on the British Raj when an entire contingent of British troops and supporting Indian sepoys were wiped out, Dr Brydon and, we are now led to believe, one or two others spared in carnage. Tough guys, the Afghans eh! Don’t tangle with men who dug ‘The graveyard of empires.’ A closer look at the ‘victory’ tells a tale of treachery. It was agreed under truce that the Brits should march out of Kabul unmolested. Yet they died under a hail of bullets on the Khyber Pass from tribesmen with deadly jezails from behind rocky ramparts. Fast forward to today; Afghans alas are mired in internecine warfare. A betrayal worked in the short term, but has this conduct boomeranged on the people, as if in the workings of karma, with suchlike behaviour being countenanced as part of their normal culture?
Russia: what sort of man was Peter the Great who acquired his soubriquet through piloting through a unification of Mother Russia? He enjoyed torturing his opponents so much that he had a personal torture chamber installed in his every new HQ. Fast forward to today: is the oppression that typified Russia since those days still in the course of playing out? Did the character of the man cast a long shadow over the creation of his nation?
China, Mongolia and Incas: What sort of man was the Emperor Chin who unified China, and whose death was marked with the killing of a whole army? Has the governance of China to this day been affected by his founding principles? What of Genghis Khan’s Mongols or the Incas in South America with a taste for torturing opponents? Their day in the Big League of nations is well and truly done – admittedly that could have been said of the Chinese empire which has reemerged from being defunct and also the fact that ‘All things, good and bad, can come to an end’ in the usual course of life.
It may be thought special pleading to contrast the above examples with the course of British history but perhaps many would agree that so many and so influential were its rational and thinking influencers and rulers of Britain that its history feeds through into present culture and that true tyranny did not just ‘happen’.
While it is next to impossible to prove the point one way or the other, to opine that the workings of karma or the better injunctions of religion and morality are so much bunkum in the world of geopolitics is a leap of faith, even ‘bad faith’. As a matter of logic, why should questions from a pulpit about the wages of sin be accounted unduly hypothetical when it comes to effects on large numbers of people or nations as opposed to on the smaller unit of a family and personal behaviour? The question can be summarised as: ‘Given a middle- and long-term perspective, is morality or a law of karma as good a guideline for leaders as Machiavellianism?’
A pragmatist can argue that self-interest has its predominant part to play in behaviour patterns even in personal morality. That said, surely there comes a point where the greatest good of the greatest number ought to have an equal weight in any Stateman’s ruling ideas or his assumptions at a deep, unexamined level that he is entirely free from the constraints of wrong-headed morality in his international dealings? Cynicism should not ‘Rule OK’.
An example:
King Boris III of Bulgaria: a rethink
Controversy surrounds the reputation of King Boris III. Churchill said he was a ‘Weak and vacillating cypher’ and the Nazi Goebbels called him a ‘Cunning fox’. Much turned at the time on these respective verdicts. It is accepted now that Churchill was right in the normal course of events but in keeping with the principle of rethinking ab initio: should one accept the conclusions of many historians, an often gullible public and of lawyers or should one take a step back and reflect about what really was going on?
Evidence stacks up against the King. There he was, indisputably tucking into the Bar-B-Q’d sausages of Nazi high-up Goering and chin-wagging one-to-one with Herr Hitler, depicted in newsreels and newspapers as an ally conniving with German masters – there is evidence that casts him in a different light – or should one take a step back to ask why Boris let all this happen? On reflection, one obvious conclusion is that he played a master bluff in order to retain a grip on power so that, come the days of critical decisions, he would be given a free hand to play his own game. The obvious verdict can be too facile. Common sense dictates that one should delve deep rather than accept the evidence of documentation or even of one’s own eyes. On his watch, tens of thousands of innocents were spared a fate worse than death in the concentration camps.
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A ‘background tape’ of accepted mores and thinking is always running through our minds and in that backcloth mix of many ideas it would be salutary if politicians subconsciously did not dance to a tune originally prescribed in The Prince and never since actively queried; this goes for many other ‘tunes’ that could bear dusting down and rethinking.
The same thinking applies to Reflection as a whole. It is not contended that it is a be-all-and-end-all answer to the taxing questions of diplomacy but habits of Reflection can be a helpful ‘tune’ in unearthing a true story of history in its sweep and as regards any particular train of events.
For those who wonder what is involved in adopting the reflective attitude towards international relations and what conclusions may be reached by such an approach, one answer among many is buckle down to read this piece. It is not immutable but just food for thought.