Libya and the Reality of Foreign Policy

So there’s change ahoy in Libya (added, without doubt, by a hefty payload of bombs from certain Western powers). No doubt for some we are seeing the dawn of a brave new era for Libya as a murderous dictator slowly falls from power. Now, for all those celebrating this turn of events, I’m probably going to sound cynical, but I’m going to wait to see what happens next before I get too excited by Libya’s Brave New Dawn.

After all, we’ve seen similar events play out before. For example, there was a Middle Eastern country where an unpopular dictator who had enjoyed considerable support from foreign sources was usurped by a populist movement in his own country. But post revolution Iran is hardly renowned the world over as a beacon of freedom now, is it? Of course, there are no guarantees that Libya will go the same way, but you’ll have to excuse me if I wait to see whether it does or not before I start popping the metaphorical champagne corks.

And it is worth pausing for a moment to consider the chequered relationship this country has had with the Gaddafi regime. Sure, we’ve hated him when he’s been involved in the murder of a police officer or the bombing of innocents on an aircraft. But when it looked like he could be an ally in the spurious War on Terror, we were happy to jump into bed with him. We’re helping to depose him now in an apparently noble crusade of freedom for the people, but dig into our relationship with Libya even just below the surface of the current headlines and you’ll get a much less edifying picture.

Which is the reality of foreign policy. It involves ugly compromises with temporary partners who, under normal circumstances, we probably wouldn’t deal with. Witness, for example, America funding bin Laden in the Cold War against the Soviet Union before he went to war with them. Or the allies joining the totalitarian regime that was the Soviet Union in World War Two in order to defeat the mutual enemy of Nazi Germany. Foreign policy is messy and involves difficult choices. Which is why anyone telling you about an ethical foreign policy is either terminally naïve or lying to your face. The grim reality of foreign policy is the realisation that Morton’s Fork and that the law of unintended consequences are your constant companion. And there are no guarantees that both concepts won't be rearing their ugly heads as Gaddafi apparently falls from power in Libya.

Mourning the Soviet Union

Via Mr Eugenides, I see some total dickhead is asking the sort of question that should be beyond satire:

Would the Bush-Blair partnership have invaded Iraq in 2003 with such brazen impunity if Uncle Stalin, or even Cousin Brezhnev, had been around?

I'd imagine we are supposed to respond with a resounding "no". Unfortunately I can't, for reasons too numerous to relay in detail. So, just a few points here, then:

1. This must be a new definition of impunity, since the Coalition of the Willing have been punished severally, through the loss of troops and international disgrace, whilst Blair's historical reputation has been utterly destroyed by the Iraq "adventure" and Bush left office with the sort of approval ratings that one might expect for Gary Glitter. Sure, no-one has been dragged to the Hague for the Iraq War; but I defy anyone to go to a family who have lost someone in the Iraq War and say that the invasion went ahead with "brazen impunity".

2. Secondly, there are little escapades called the Korean and Vietnam War, as well as a whole host of crazy shit done by the US in South America, that shows even during the Cold War - under Brezhnev as well - the US had no problem with messing with and even invading other nations. And the USSR itself did a little bit of invading... for example, in (wait for it, wait for it!) Afghanistan! The balance between the USA and the USSR did not stop superpowers from invading smaller powers. Their massive nuclear arsenals simply stopped them from having a Third World War against each other.

3. Putin is arguably the strongest leader the USSR has had since Stalin. Yet he couldn't stop the USA and the UK from invading Iraq.

I could go on, but it seems pointless. But just stop for a moment and try this statement out for size. Maybe it would have been best for the Nazi regime to still be in existence, dominating Europe, because they would have stopped the Iraq War. Pretty disgusting statement, eh? Absolutely. Agreed. And not that different from claiming that another brutal dictatorship should be lamented because it too might have stopped the invasion of Iraq.

You can take your Marxism and you can shove it right up your...

… well… you can probably guess the rest.

One of the many negative aspects to this economic downturn is the rush of people towards socialism and the big daddy of socialist morons, Karl Marx himself. And what is even worse than people trying to register support for ol’ Karl is people trying to be funny about their suddenly vaguely fashionable Marxist tendencies. As this article proves.

I could do a detailed fisking of that article, but holy Jesus, I have better things to do with my ever diminishing life. The author tries and utterly fails to be funny repeatedly, at the same time as revealing his ignorance of the very ideology he is championing. A word to the not-so-wise; if you are going to pursue an ideology, make sure you actually know the details of whatever it is you are meant to be defending and advocating.

However the rush towards Marx, and the constant veneration of odious Marxists like Che Guevera by some, reveals a deeper ignorance of an ideology that is deeply destructive. Yeah, Marx got some things right. He reckoned that boom and bust are natural parts of capitalism. But most economists would recognise that. He also had some interesting theories about alienation of labour – ideas that still have some relevance today. But for a man who wrote as prolifically as Karl Marx, getting something right at some point was inevitable. Just as that infinite number of monkeys at those typewriters could, in theory, come up with the complete works of Shakespeare.

Yet in so many different ways, Marx was utterly wrong. And his errors are so numerous that it would almost be compelling, if they weren’t so dangerous. None more so in his conclusions about where his spurious theories of society would take us all. As counter-culture and cool as it might be to support Marx during this (perfectly natural, even according to Marx) downturn in global capitalism, I think everyone should be very clear about supporting Marxism means. It means you support violent revolution. It means you support dictatorship. It means you support the collapse of the society we live in, and handing over absolute political power to violent revolutionaries who are going to divine some sort of better society for all from a non-existent blue-print. You can claim that Marx’s ultimate intent was utopian; the practical ends of his ideology are thoroughly dystopian.

Marxist theorists (for, believe it or not, they do still exist) will argue that we have never had an actual application of Marx’s ideas. Well, bollocks to that. The Stalinist state, the Maoist state, the regimes of Pol Pot and Kim Jong Il are all examples of the deluded, insane and deeply destructive implementation of Marxism. The problem isn’t that Marxism has never been correctly applied; the real problem is that Marxism is a deeply flawed political ideology that advocates dictatorship and sees people in general as largely bovine and in desperate need of firm guidance from portly, disconnected from reality philosophers such as Marx. The end result of Marxism is the Soviet State, pure and simple.

The recession will have come as a shock to many, and will cause some to review their political beliefs. That’s fine – it is a healthy thing to review what you think in light of events (something Marx himself wasn’t that good at). But the answer to any review of ideology should not be Marxism. Marxism doesn’t work; if you try to force Marxism on societies, then your utterly, utterly destroy those societies. Applying Marxism to countries damaged by the recession will lead to the death of democracy in those countries, and the complete stagnation of their economies.

You might ask the question about what we need to do in the face of the credit crunch. The answer is not turn to Karl Marx.