Hard Choices
Peter Ricketts
Observers of the British system from abroad often marvelled at how the political system seemed to function on the basis of unwritten conventions and gentlemen’s agreements. They watched with admiration as elections produced stable majorities, and the losing party moved smoothly into the role of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. They also noticed that a British prime minister with a sizeable majority was in a very powerful position. In this they were right.
The goal of defeating terrorism – repeated endlessly by political leaders after each subsequent terrorist atrocity – is however simply not possible. The risk of another spectacular attack cannot be reduced to zero. But the overall level of deaths from terrorism in Western Europe is now far lower than the 400 a year at the height of the IRA and ETA campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s. Even in years of multiple Islamist attacks, such as 2015, there were 150 deaths from terrorism in EU countries. By 2019, this had fallen to ten.5 In the same year, 132 people were killed in knife-crime attacks in London, with a similar total in 2019. The death rate from terrorism has fallen even more dramatically in the US since 9/11. On average, two people per year have been killed by terrorists in the US since 2001, as against sixty-nine by lawnmowers and almost 11,500 by gun-wielding Americans.
1960 yılındaki rapor…
Even though the panel were not tasked with policy conclusions, they left their readers in no doubt about the consequences for Britain of what was happening in Europe:
The European Economic Community is of immense potential importance. . . if they continue to grow at their recent pace they will approach and perhaps reach the United States level by 1970. If therefore the ‘Six’ achieve a real measure of integration, a new world power will have come on the scene. . . It would probably replace us as the second member of the North Atlantic Alliance. . . there would be a considerable danger that other European countries would jump on the EEC bandwagon, and if an economic division led to conflict, the United States with their traditional attachment to the idea of European unity, might even feel obliged to support the Six against us, to the great detriment of Anglo-American cooperation.
The current generation of political leaders is the first to have both the insatiable demand for instant reaction generated by social media and the technology that enables them to meddle from thousands of miles away, inserting what the military call the 2,000-mile screwdriver. These pressures will only get worse as the digital revolution continues to sweep away the old barriers of time and distance. And they apply disproportionately in democratic countries. Western politicians are subject to public and parliamentary pressures that authoritarian leaders habitually suppress. Democratically elected politicians cannot censor the internet or stifle criticism in the press. They cannot evade accountability. The commitment of democratic countries to openness and the rule of law is a huge strength, which differentiates them from authoritarian regimes.
The British brand is still attractive in the world. The Portland Soft Power 30 index8 has published rankings since 2015 based on measuring objective data and international polling for a wide range of countries. The index has consistently ranked Britain at or near the top, scoring highly for culture and education, reflecting the global impact of British sport, films, music, and the appeal of its universities, museums and tourist sites. It also ranked highly for engagement, that is, its diplomatic network, development programme and openness to the world, and for its digital infrastructure and high-tech sector. In 2019, the UK fell from first to second place, behind France, having been first in 2018. Not surprisingly, it lost ground over the soap opera of Brexit and the effect on business confidence as demonstrated by falling foreign direct investment.
There is no longer such a thing as strategy, there is only crisis management.
Robert McNamara, 1962