McDonough’s book describes the fall of democracy in one of the most sophisticated societies in the world and its replacement by a violently authoritarian regime built around one man, Adolf Hitler.

Hitler said he intended to come to power by legal means, but he stated openly, before he came to power, that he would not shrink from the use of illegal methods to hold onto power. “When our party emerges victorious by legal means,” he said, “a new Supreme Court will replace this one, and the criminals of November 1918 will find their reward. Then heads will roll.”

This language is not dissimilar to the “retribution” being promised now by Donald Trump.

How Hitler got the German people to give up democracy

The “criminals of November 1918” Hitler referred to were the democratically elected German politicians who signed the Treaty of Versailles, ending the state of war that had existed between Germany and the Allies.

A completely unrealistic view of the balance of power obtaining in November 1918 was lodged in German public opinion. Germany had by then been comprehensively defeated militarily and economically. But the High Command, led by Field Marshalls Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, persuaded the public that it was the politicians who wanted to give up and that the soldiers were able and willing to continue.

The second part was simply not true. German military capacity was exhausted.

It would have been better if the allies had insisted on unconditional surrender and full occupation as in 1945.

The interwar democratic politicians in Germany were talented leaders who, in other circumstances, could have been very successful. Chancellor Gustav Stresemann and Finance Minster Matthias Erzberger stood out. They made improvements in unemployment insurance. But reparations to the Allies heavily burdened the budget. Paralysis in parliament and hate-filled rhetoric meant that the president had to pass key legislation by decree.

It is not impossible that similar paralysis might evolve from the divisive debates that we will soon face over the related costs of aging societies: pension inequalities, immigration, healthcare costs, etc.

In 1933, the Nazis came to power and soon overthrew democracy. Hitler became chancellor with the aid of other authoritarian-inclined political parties. These other parties were closely associated with the army and/or were highly nationalistic. Alfred Hugenberg and Franz von Papen were principal leaders of this group. They thought they could control Hitler. So too did Hindenburg, who had become president.

When a lone arsonist burned the Reichstag in 1933, Hitler seized the moment. He blamed the Communists and persuaded Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree. The decree suspended civil liberties, effectively abolishing the last remnants of German democracy.

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda master, had created a public mood that would accept this. He used a technique that we should watch out for today among the arsonist far right in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe. Goebbels’s technique was to find something that people already hated, and encourage them to hate it even more. The “big lie” is a variant of this technique. It played to people’s emotions, rather than to their reason.

Hitler’s foreign policy aspirations

One other thing that interested me in McDonough’s book was the long-term foreign policy that Hitler had prepared as a Second Book (Zweites Buch) in the summer of 1928. This sequel to Mein Kampf was not published in Hitler’s lifetime, and it did not appear in English until 1961.

One wonders if Vladimir Putin has a “second essay,” a sequel to the long historical essay he published on the eve of his so far unsuccessful invasion of Ukraine.

Putin could mount no Blitzkrieg, but his intentions are no less malign than Hitler’s.

Hitler’s Zweites Buch laid out a four-stage process. Stage One envisaged massive German rearmament, the revision of the Versailles Treaty and the formation of military alliances with the UK and Mussolini. Stage Two envisaged German wars against France, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia. Stage Three would consist of the destruction of the Soviet Union. Stage Four was a planned war against the United States.

Hitler saw the UK as a natural ally of Germany. He thought the English and the Germans were racially close, as did many English people at the time. But a skeptical democracy was too well implanted in Britain for an alliance with a loud-mouthed German dictator ever to have taken off. Yet Hitler continued to dream of an alliance with the UK even after the war had started.

A military alliance with Italy in the 1930s would have been a liability for Germany. This was demonstrated when the war actually started and Germany had to rescue Italy many times. The reasons for the degree of Italian military weakness are hard to understand.

We know, with hindsight, that important parts of Hitler’s plan did not work out. But the fact that a relatively unsuccessful opposition politician, as Hitler was in 1928, could think in such ambitious terms is a warning from history.

The 1930s was a dark decade for Europe. I fear we are entering a similarly dark decade now. We need to study what happened in the 1930s if we are to avoid the mistakes made then.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post An Informative Book Tells How Hitler Seduced a Democracy appeared first on Fair Observer.

These considerations should apply to crimes committed against peoples and nations, as well as individuals. States have a responsibility to defend themselves, and to help build a credible international order that will deter future crimes against peoples and states. However, the existence of this order is predicated on the principle that revenge and retribution should never motivate state action.

When Hamas launched its violent attack on Israel, it made a callous calculation. Hamas leaders probably reckoned that the  Israeli response would be so severe that it would strengthen their organization’s position in Arab public opinion. Unfortunately, Israel looks as if it is playing the role Hamas cast for them.

Israel is operating on the assumption that crushing Hamas will lead to peace. This begs the question: Is there another way to build peace?

The truth is that peace will only come through a practical compromise between Israelis and Palestinians. This will require rigorous thought. Slogans will simply not suffice.

The international community advocates a two-state solution for the Israel-Palestine problem. It is far too easy to advocate this solution without thinking through the practical details. The devil will lie in the details.

The two-state solution will not be  a formula for  peace, unless the proposed boundaries between the two states are delineated, and there is a clear statement of the obligation each state will have towards the other, and the means whereby these obligations might be enforced.

When anyone champions the two-state solution, the media must raise the two issues of boundaries and mutual obligations to this person.

They may not give a definitive answer but that is not material. Such a questioning would make us move the debate away from evasive cliches, and towards difficult practical issues that cannot be avoided in the real world.

Remember, if we cannot find a two-state solution we will be left with three even more difficult options:

1. A one-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights,

2. A state of perpetual war, and

3. The complete defeat of one side by the other.

None of these options are probable or desirable.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What Is Justice in the Old Israeli-Palestinian Conflict? appeared first on Fair Observer.

I have a minor quibble with the title of the book, which refers to “THE” civil war, suggesting that there was only one civil war. I would argue that there were in fact two Irish Civil Wars … the first one from 1919 to 1921 and the second one from 1922 to 1923.

Irish people fought for Britain, too

I would argue that the 1919 to 1921 war, the Irish War of Independence, was also an Irish civil war. I say this because Irish people fought on both sides in both wars. In fact, I believe most of the people who died on both sides were also in fact Irish.

The members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), who opposed the Irish Republican Army (IRA), were predominantly Irish (and Catholic too, if that matters). Failing to recognize the Irishness of the many natives of this 32-county island who fought on the pro-Union side in the war of independence is a barrier to the reconciliation of all the communities on this island.

If one looks up the excellent book The Dead of the Irish Revolution by Eunan O’Halpin and Daithi Ó Corrain covering the period 1916 to 1921, one can confirm that those killed by the IRA were predominantly Irish, such as magistrates, RIC members and supposed informers. Some of these people were Protestants or wanted Ireland to remain part of the UK, but this does not make them any less Irish!

The fact that Irish people fought on both sides in the 1919–1921 war makes it an Irish civil war. Those killed in the first military action of the war of independence in January 1919 were members of the RIC, James McDonnell from Belmullet and Patrick O’Connell from Coachford, County Cork. Both were Irish Catholics.

The first magistrate to be killed, Jack Milling from Glasson, County Westmeath, was an Irish Protestant. He was shot through the front window of his house on Newport Road in Westport, County Mayo, while he was winding up the clock. In his front room. His family subsequently settled in Armagh.

I make these points not as a criticism of John Dorney’s book but as a reminder that, if we want reconciliation on this island, we must recognize that those born on this island who profess allegiance to King Charles and who feel British also have an Irish birthright and are fully Irish. Some will find it difficult to come to terms with this, but it will have to be done.

The political vandals who opposed the idea of recalling by name, on a wall in Glasnevin Cemetery, the people who died on both sides in the 1919–21 war were promoting a version of what it is to be Irish that is deeply exclusionary. They were saying that, if you supported a continuing link with Britain during the 1919–21 war, you were not Irish and did not deserve to be remembered by name on a wall. They were telling the Irish people who fought on the other side that they and their beliefs were to be canceled (to use the modern term). If this attitude persists, we will never have lasting peace or reconciliation on this island

The Second Irish Civil War

We need a fair-minded presentation of painful historic events that forces people to reflect on their own prejudices. John Dorney does that in regard to what I will call the Second Irish Civil War, that from 1922 to 1923.

John Dorney is a graduate in history and politics from University College Dublin and a native of Rathfarnham. He manages a website on Irish history called “The Irish Story.”

The interim period between the truce of July 11, 1921, and the opening of the civil war almost a year later was one during which there was no clear and well-established authority in the state. People took the law into their own hands. Order had broken down and, without order, laws could be enforced. The longer that continued, the more respect for laws would have been eroded.

Something had to be done to restore unitary authority across the full territory of the state. To my mind, the civil war was fought to restore order and thereby make laws meaningful. What led to this situation?

A peace treaty had been signed between the UK government and an Irish delegation, led by Arthur Griffith, representing the Dáil Éireann (the lower house of the legislature) in December 1921. This treaty was approved by a majority in the Dáil Éireann on January 7, 1922. That should have settled matters. But a large part of the IRA membership did not accept the decision of the Dáil Éireann to accept the treaty.

The biggest objection to the treaty was that it required legislators to swear an oath of

 “allegiance to the constitution of the Irish Free State” (which was established under the treaty) and to be “faithful to King George and his successors.” It seems to me that the wording here creates the stronger tie to Ireland and its constitution, compared to the “faithfulness” to King George. In any event, it was not worth falling out over.

We know now, with the benefit of hindsight, that the treaty was capable of being amended (as are all treaties) and of being a stepping-stone to greater independence, as Michael Collins said at the time.

As the argument raged in the early months of 1922 over the wording of the treaty, the IRA broke down into two factions. Each scrambled to occupy key installations in the capital and around the country. Attempts to heal the split failed.

Generally speaking, the anti-treaty side seized installations in the southern half of the country, and the National Army took control elsewhere. In Dublin, anti-treaty forces, led by Rory O’Connor, occupied the Four Courts and made it their headquarters. They also seized the Kildare Street Club, of which many Anglo-Irish gentry were members, as well as the hall where the Orange Order used to meet.

One has the sense that these buildings were chosen for their propaganda or symbolic value rather than for their military defensibility. Indeed, a preoccupation with symbolism underlay the problems of anti-treaty political thinking.

As said earlier, the majority of the IRA opposed the treaty. This was the case in Dublin too. Only 1,900 of the 4,400 IRA members in Dublin were pro-treaty. Yet when the fighting started, the National Army was able to dislodge the anti-treaty forces from their strongholds in Dublin quite quickly. The Four Courts was taken with the aid of artillery. The buildings held by anti-treaty forces in the vicinity of O’Connell Street were taken in a few days of building-to-building fighting, not unlike the fighting in Stalingrad 20 years later.

The National Army was able to mobilize the support of the country

Why was the war in Dublin over so quickly, when it dragged on in the rest of the country for 10 months?

The National Army may have been outnumbered at the outset of the war, but they were better equipped, with material supplied by the British. They also had much more support from the general public, which meant they had better intelligence.

They were better led, too. The Free State government had a clear sense of purpose, that of establishing the institutions of a new European state.

The anti-treaty side was, both militarily and mentally, on the defensive from the beginning, holding positions and waiting to be attacked rather than advancing to take positions held by the Free State.

The military wing of the anti-treaty formation, led by Liam Lynch, made the key decisions, and the civilian leadership of Éamon de Valera was almost completely sidelined. They were also fighting to defend something ephemeral, a republic proclaimed at the General Post Office in 1916, which had no government and no visible or tangible existence. It was an idea, not a reality.

In contrast, the Free State was established on the principle that civilian leadership was paramount over the army. When Michael Collins took over as chief of staff of the army, he handed over his position as president of the Executive Council to W. T. Cosgrave. Even when Michael Collins himself was killed in action in August 1922, there was a seamless transition of responsibilities.

Soon, as a result of intense recruitment, the National Army would have a huge numerical advantage over the anti-treaty side.

Why was the Free State able to recruit so many troops, so quickly?

Only a small proportion of the population had been involved in the war of independence, and not everybody had voted for Sinn Féin in the 1918 election. This left a large pool from which soldiers could be recruited by the National Army. The National Army was also able to recruit among the unemployed, including those who had fought in the Great War.

The human costs of the war were high

This was a brutal and cruel civil war. The anti-treaty forces wanted to bankrupt the Free State by blowing up its infrastructure. One such plan was to blow up all the road and rail bridges leading to and from Dublin. This was a failure, and numerous anti-treaty prisoners were taken.

This book gives an account of the execution without trial of anti-treaty soldiers. Some of these executions were part of a planned campaign to intimidate the opponents of the treaty and get them to give up their armed resistance to it. The policy on executions without trial may have shortened the civil war, but it undermined the case that the Free State was fighting for. It was hard to justify, and no one was held to account for it.

Other actions were undertaken, on an unauthorized basis, by groups within the National Army that were out of control.

The worst case, in my mind, is the killing of Edwin Hughes, Brendan Holohan and John Rogers. These were unarmed teenagers caught distributing a leaflet in Drumcondra calling for the killing of Free State soldiers. The bodies of these young boys were found the next day in a quarry near Clondalkin.

All urban centers had been secured for the Free State by the end of August, but the fighting continued on a hit-and-run basis well into 1923, using tactics refined in the 1919–1921 war against the British. Unarmed civilians were targeted by both sides.

The anti-treaty forces finally gave up in May 1923, and they dumped their arms.

Although this book is subtitled “The Civil War in Dublin,” it gives a fairly full account of developments outside Dublin. It is a comprehensive piece of work and I recommend it.

I believe the civil war flowed from the war of independence, which in turn flowed from 1916, which was a response to the militarization of politics by the Ulster Volunteers. Violence begets violence. It rarely serves any useful purpose.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Were There Two Irish Civil Wars, or Just One? appeared first on Fair Observer.

The book was originally published in 1980 and covers the period from 1760 to 1960. It traces the organizational development of political groups agitating for change in Ireland during that long period.

On one side, there were parties agitating for control of agricultural land to pass from the legal owners (the landlords) to the tenant farmers (who did the actual work on the land). This struggle for control of the land was most intense from 1879 to 1903, ending with a victory for the tenant farmers.

Essentially, UK taxpayers bought out the landlords. It was good that this issue was settled before Irish independence came in 1921. The new democratic Irish Free State, created by the Treaty of 1921, had more than enough financial and other problems on its plate in the 1920s and 1930s without having had to deal with a huge land transfer program as well.

Those looking for land reform were in close alliance with those agitating for a greater degree of independence of Ireland from Britain and overlapped with them.

Demands here ranged from home rule (devolution) within the UK to a dual monarchy (whereby Ireland and Britain would be separate states but have the same king) to a third option, a completely independent Irish Republic.

In opposition to all moves towards independence, there were the Irish Unionists. Irish Unionists were divided on the land issue but strongly united in insisting that they would not be ruled by a Nationalist-majority parliament in Dublin, whether it be a home rule parliament or the parliament of an Irish Republic.

What methods of political agitation were to be used?

Another big controversy was about acceptable methods to be used to achieve political goals. Should the methods used be confined to peaceful and parliamentary agitation, or should physical force (involving the taking of human life) also be permissible?

There were strong practical arguments in favor of using exclusively peaceful methods. The land reforms were, after all, achieved by exclusively peaceful methods.

Home rule was also achieved by peaceful methods in 1914. This is forgotten nowadays because of the subsequent, and to my mind ill-advised, celebration of the violence from 1916 onwards.

Home rule within the UK was voted into law in September 1914. Implementation was deferred until the end of the World War, which had started a month before home rule became law.

To what geographic area should independence apply?

There was one big outstanding issue. Should home rule apply to all 32 counties of Ireland as one unit, or could the 6 predominantly Unionist counties in the northeast be excluded, temporarily or otherwise?

Behind this demand for exclusion was a threat of the use of military force by the Ulster Volunteer Force and even of a mutiny by pro-Unionist officers in the British Army.

In this, it could be said that it was unionism that introduced the threat of violence into Irish politics, although it was a faction of nationalism that actually fired the first shots on Easter 1916.

Garvin’s excellent book crams a range of fascinating material into 137 pages. He covers the sociology; the competing ideologies; the role of secret societies of mass political agitation and of organisational methods; and their cumulative impact on the course of Irish history.

Who had the vote?

Garvin also shows the impact of changes in the right to vote on who would be the members of parliament representing Irish constituencies in Westminster.

The franchise was very limited in 1860. Only significant property owners had a vote. If that had persisted, there would not have been a majority for either home rule or land reform. The successful British agitation (by groups like the Chartists) for a wider franchise across all parts of the UK was a huge help to Irish causes.

From 1867 on, the property qualification for the votes was eased. In 1872, the right to vote in secret was established, and this stopped landlords from attempting to control how their tenants voted. These changes had immediate effects.

In 1868, 69% of the 105 Irish members of parliament in Westminster were landlords, but by 1874, that percentage had fallen to 49%, and the proportion of those who came from the professional classes had risen from 10% to 23%.

Thanks to a further extension of the franchise introduced during World War I (abolishing property qualifications and giving the vote to women for the first time), the electorate in Ireland who had a vote in the 1918 election was three times the one that had a vote in the previous election of 1910.

Symbols versus reality

One of the ongoing problems of Irish republicanism was a preference for political symbols in the promotion of the ideal of an Irish Republic. The decision to use violence blotted out the time and space in which practical issues might have been explored before the shooting started. The use of violence required the oversimplification of the issues at stake.

Symbols got priority over explanations of how the Republic might be structured, how relations with Britain and other countries might be organized and how minority rights might be protected.

The neglect of a debate on these questions meant that sections of the electorate were disappointed by what was actually achieved. They were not ready for the necessary compromises.

Seán Ó Faoláin, who took the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War and was its director of publicity, admitted that, in 1922, “We had no concept of the State we wished to found.” So, Irish Republicanism tended to be defined more by what it was against, rather than by what it was for. This remains so to this day.

Developments since 1960

Since Garvin finished this book, Ireland has experienced huge economic, demographic and political change. The population had been declining up to 1960, but it has been growing since then. Over 7 million people now live on the island.

While the birth rate, which peaked in 1980, has fallen substantially, emigration has been replaced by immigration. This is how the population has risen.

Economic growth has been rapid. There were debt crises in 1980 and again in 2010, but these were overcome quickly because the underlying productive base of the Irish economy is modern and flexible.

In terms of party politics, Sinn Féin has emerged as the largest political party thanks to its ability to exploit the debt crisis of 2010. Its advance has been mainly, though not solely at the expense of Fianna Fáil.

The assumptions that justified IRA killings have not yet been disavowed

Sinn Féin continues to defend its support for the Irish Republican Army (IRA) campaign of bombing, murder and torture from 1968 to 1998.

Sinn Féin assures us that the IRA no longer exists.

But it is hard to give weight to that assurance while Sinn Féin justifies past IRA activities and the political assumptions that underlay them.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post An Informative Book on Irish Republicanism appeared first on Fair Observer.

Political opinion varied greatly among the slave states

The range of opinion in the states that permitted slavery was wide. Indeed, four slave states — Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri — never left the Union at all. President Lincoln was keen to keep these states in the Union. That is why he did not abolish slavery in these states until the end of the war, whereas he liberated slaves elsewhere on January 1, 1863.

The most radical Southern advocates of leaving the Union to preserve slavery were to be found in the Deep South, notably South Carolina, where Confederate forces fired the first shots of the war.

Other more northerly states, like Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas, initially declined to join the Confederacy until forced to take sides by the course of events. During my five years closely observing US politics as EU Ambassador in Washington, I noted that, even to this day, these latter states tend to have a more moderate political stance than Deep South states.

Even within parts of states, voting patterns dating back to the stance taken in the Civil War, persist to this day.

The Deep South states produced cotton and other crops, using a plantation system that would not have been workable without slave labor. The other states had more diversified economies.

A majority of the white population in Confederate states did not own slaves, but slaves made up a significant share of the wealth of those who did, which explains why this section of the white population went to such lengths to protect slavery. As the slave trade had been abolished in 1808, slaves were valuable in financial terms. Slaveowning was profitable. Poor whites, on the other hand, were driven into low-paying, casual work because of competition from the slave system.

So why did non-slave-owning whites fight so hard to protect slavery?

I think this can be partly explained by an almost religious sense of racial superiority. Poor whites also feared that, if slaves became free, their status as relatively superior to them would be lost.

African Americans during and after the Civil War

The conditions for slaves was appalling. Masters whipped their slaves for transgressions. In practice, many of them could not marry, because a husband could be sold to an owner different from the one who bought his wife. In some states, slaves were forbidden to be educated. Even to this day, there is a lack of investment in basic education in some of the former Confederate states.

The deep racism that underlay slavery came to light when manpower for the Confederate Army was scarce towards the end of the war. An Irish general in the Confederate Army, Patrick Cleburne, proposed that Blacks be recruited to the army in return for being freed of slavery. The Confederate War Department rejected the proposal on the grounds that Black people would not be suitable for military service on grounds of “natural dullness, cowardice and indolence.”

This was racist, ideological rubbish, as shown by the exceptional bravery of the Black Americans who fought in the Union Army. Black soldiers in the Union Army, if captured, were likely to be executed (in defiance of the conventions of war).

In the end, the Confederate forces recruited very few Blacks, largely because the promise of liberation was confined to the soldier himself, and not to his wife and children.

On that note, what did happen to the liberated slaves after the war was over? This question is not explored as fully in this book as I would have liked.

In Georgia, a large part of confiscated land in the state was allocated by Union General William Sherman to be given in 40-acre lots to former slaves. But in other places, the confiscated land was sold off, at a discount, to speculators from the North. Elsewhere, freedmen were left to their own devices.

Indeed, an attempt was made to reintroduce elements of slavery through so-called “black codes” which restricted free movement and wage bargaining by freedmen.

There is one issue, very topical today, which Levine touches on briefly: voting rights for African Americans.

In an impromptu speech delivered just after the war had ended, President Lincoln suggested that the newly liberated African Americans might be given the right to vote. One of the people in the audience of that speech was John Wilkes Booth, an actor. On hearing this suggestion, Booth immediately set about plotting to murder President Lincoln, an enterprise which he unfortunately completed successfully.

As I said at the outset, this is an excellent book. It relies on private correspondence, as well as public statements, to gain insights into public opinion in the Confederacy.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post A New Book Explores the Psychology of Civil War Southerners appeared first on Fair Observer.

The book describes the trial of Marshal Philippe Pétain, which took place only a few weeks after the war ended, and uses it to do two things: look back at the events that led to France’s humiliating defeat in 1940, and look forward to the present day to see how France remembers, and commemorates, its behavior between 1940 and 1945, especially vis-à-vis Jewish people.

Pétain was the great French war hero of World War I, especially due to his leadership in the crucial Battle of Verdun in 1916. Through this, he had acquired a godlike status. By the 1930s, Pétain had long been retired from the army, and thus he had no responsibility for the strategic error of the French High Command that led to the defeat of May 1940. This error was sending the French Army deep into Belgium when Germany attacked that country, which created a gap in French defenses that allowed the Germans to encircle a large portion of the Allied armies from the rear in the vicinity of Dunkirk.

The consequences of this mistake discredited those who held office in France in the period immediately before the war. This included former prime ministers Édouard Daladier and Paul Reynaud. Both of these ex-prime ministers gave evidence in Pétain’s trial.

So did another ex-prime minister, Pierre Laval, who was later to be tried and executed for treason in 1945.

The author says that, for Laval, “no cause, however noble, could justify a war.” He had been prime minister in the 1930s and wanted reconciliation with Italy. During World War II, he said that he favored German victory, a matter on which Pétain wisely offered no opinion.

When the Germans surrendered in 1945, Laval escaped to Spain, but Franco did not want him. According to the author, Laval was then offered asylum by the Irish government, presumably on the Taoiseach Éamon de Valera’s instructions.

I have never read any exploration of this issue in books about de Valera. Laval could have proved an embarrassing guest for Ireland. In the event, Laval opted to return to France and face a trial which he must have known would sentence him to death rather than live peacefully in Ireland.

Pétain’s emergency leadership

Coming back to the dilemma faced by the French government in 1940, after the shock of the encirclement had worn off, the French army resisted the Germans bravely and effectively in central France. But the damage to public morale, caused by the initial defeat, was too deep. 

Could the French Army have resisted long enough to retreat with their government to Algeria (technically part of France)?

Some of Pétain’s accusers argued that he should have taken this option and ordered the army to fight on rather than seek an armistice from the Germans. Others criticized him for not joining the Americans when they landed in North Africa in 1942. Instead, he authorized the French Army in North Africa to resist the Americans. Many interpreted this as treason.

How did Pétain come to be in charge in late 1940 and thus be in a position to make these choices?

The previous French government, headed by Reynaud, had retreated from Paris to Bordeaux after the initial defeat in May 1940. But it needed a new leader. It turned to Pétain, as an untainted national leader, to head a new government.

It was almost as if the politicians gathered in Bordeaux felt they needed the “Pétain magic” to restore France. This was the hope on the basis of which the National Assembly made Pétain head of state, soon with unlimited powers. It was never a viable project.

If Pétain had thought things through, he would never have lent himself to such a dubious and hopeless endeavor. His vanity got the better of him. 

Even if Germany had won the war, and had come to terms with Britain, the prestige of Pétain would not have sufficed to wipe France’s humiliation away.

Trial of a once-hero

How informative were the proceedings at the trial?

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that some issues were explored too much in the trial and that others deserved more attention.

A big part of the prosecution’s case was that Pétain had long been preparing himself for a French military defeat and plotting how to exploit defeat to grasp supreme power. There was no evidence to back this.

The issue that got too little attention in the trial, in light of what we now know, was the active involvement of the French police, and of the Vichy government, in the transportation of the Jews to the gas chambers.

Pétain’s defense team argued that the regime had spared many French people, including French Jews, from the horrors of direct German occupation by taking over the administration of a large portion of the interior of the country from 1940 to 1943 and that this saved lives.

There is statistical evidence to back this up. The survival rate of Jews in France, at the end of the war, was much higher than that of Jews in Poland and the Netherlands, which were directly occupied by the Germans and where virtually every Jew was wiped out.

Another issue that could have gotten more attention was the Munich Agreement with Hitler which sapped French morale.

Many of the themes evoked in this book are current today.

Grappling with the past

What is treason?

Is it treasonable to make the mistake of backing the loser?

Where is the line to be drawn between bad political judgment and treason? Where is the boundary between making a legitimate political judgment, and betraying a cause that is, or appears, lost?

What constitutes a war crime? That had not been defined at the time.

Who should be the jury in a trial like this? Pétain’s jury consisted of two halves: sitting National Assembly deputies and recently active members of the Resistance. This politicized the judicial system in a way that would not be allowed today.

Jackson’s book also explores the emotions of the French people in the aftermath of an acute crisis. France has emerged as a strong democracy despite the trauma.

For the record, Pétain was condemned to death at the end of the trial. But the jury anticipated, correctly, that Charles de Gaulle would commute the sentence. Pétain died peacefully some years later.

The great merit of the book is the human stories it tells so well, prompting the reader to ask how he or she would have reacted if faced with the same dilemmas.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post France Grapples With the Painful Legacy of Marshal Pétain appeared first on Fair Observer.

If Ukraine uses these munitions on Ukrainian soil, it will be endangering its own children, who may come across some of these explosives years from now when out playing.

One of the participants on the MSNBC show, New York Times columnist David Brooks, was asked why the Biden Administration was supplying such munitions to Ukraine.  His answer really startled me.

It was,

I guess they have no other munitions to send.

So, after a few months of artillery-intense trench warfare, the West has run out of supplies of shells and missiles and cannot replenish its stocks quickly enough. This reveals acute vulnerability.

How on Earth did the US, and its European allies, find themselves in this situation?

If munitions have run out after a few months of artillery warfare, that does not bode well for Europe’s capacity to defend itself in the long term in the event of a wider confrontation with Russia.

We’ve seen all this before…

It seems as if the West has been taken by surprise by this munitions shortage. There is no excuse for that. There are ample warnings from history.

There is a clear precedent in relatively recent history for the style of war now being waged in Ukraine: the artillery bombardments, followed by assaults on deep entrenchments, that characterized the Western Front in the First World War. Only after heavy bombardment of the enemy front line could troops advance.

Like the war in Ukraine, World War I started out as a war of movement.

The Germans made rapid advances in 1914 until the French halted them on the Marne.  After that, the war quickly became a static artillery war, where advances of as little as 100 meters were celebrated as triumphs.

These small advances would involve huge casualties among the advancing forces unless they had been preceded by heavy artillery barrages that employed a caliber of shell that destroyed barbed wire as well as larger fortifications.

In general terms, casualties among the attacking forces were three times as great as they were among the defenders. That is probably the ratio in Ukraine now too.

It is becoming plain that Ukraine does not have sufficient supplies of either the type or amount of munitions required needed to make a big breakthrough and to preserve the lives of the brave Ukrainian soldiers sent in to attack the Russian lines. Meanwhile, Russia has air superiority, which is more important now than it was in World War I.

I do not understand why the counter-offensive was announced at all, without adequate supplies of artillery and munitions already being in place. A worrying lack of strategic foresight is evident.

…and we didn’t deal with it very well back then, either.

The political precedents from World War Iare far from encouraging.

Within a couple of months of that war starting, there was already an acute shortage of shells and heavy artillery in the British Army. (France and Germany were better supplied.) David Lloyd George described this situation in Volume One of the War Memoirs.  He described the war as a war between German “mechanics” ( i.e., munitions manufacturers) and British manufacturers, and said that, in 1915, the German “mechanics” were winning.

Radical action was required. There was an acute shortage of people available to work in munitions and artillery factories. State enterprise had to be brought into play because private enterprise was too slow in setting up the required factories.  State-owned “Royal Factories” were set up all over the British Isles, including in Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Galway.

There were not enough men to work in the factories, so women had to be employed in this dangerous work. The war became an industrial war.

The West is facing similar choices today. Notwithstanding the fact that the NATO counties, especially the US, outspend the Russians on military hardware by a large multiple, they have yet to mobilize society for the existential struggle which their chosen ally, Ukraine, is undertaking.

But even the opening of the Royal Factories, and the recruitment of thousands of women workers, was too slow in delivering the necessary shells in 1915. This was because there was an acute labor shortage then, just as there is in 2023.

The Daily Mail went on the warpath. There was a political crisis.

The Liberal government, led by H. H. Asquith and supported by the Irish Party, which was committed to Home Rule, was replaced by a coalition of Liberals and Unionists, led by David Lloyd George. We are living with the consequences of the munitions crisis of 1915 to this day.

Returning to 2023, the EU may face a similar political crisis because it has not matched its needs with the necessary resources.

Member governments need to simultaneously ramp up arms production for Ukraine, pour money into the Green Deal, provide for healthcare for an aging population and manage the debt inherited from the Covid epidemic, all while still respecting the Maastricht budgetary criteria.

If Trump wins the 2024 Election in the US, he may stop supplying arms to Ukraine. Europe will then be alone facing Putin.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post We Should Have Predicted Ukraine’s Bomb Shortage appeared first on Fair Observer.

The rhetoric being exchanged between the two countries is becoming ever more heated. These exchanges are inimical to the exploration of compromise.

Mistrust and hostility build on both sides

On the US side, active preparation for rivalry with China is one of the very few things that seems to unite Republicans and Democrats.

President Biden has continued with the tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum, imposed by President Trump on supposed security grounds. President Biden has also continued the Trump policy of making it easier for US officials to meet Taiwanese officials, something that infuriates Beijing. Former Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan led to a suspension of important working meetings, all for the sake of a photo opportunity.

The reason given for the steel and aluminum tariffs is that these materials might be used in warfare. Allies of the US are being pressured to apply the same policies to China, thereby dividing the world into two hostile blocs.

For its part, China’s navy is using hostile tactics towards US vessels in the international waters of the South China Sea. An important principle is at stake here. The entire world benefits from freedom of navigation in international waters. Without the freedom of the seas being guaranteed, first by the Royal Navy and later by the US Navy, the prosperity the world enjoyed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would have been impossible.

China is also launching thousands of cyber attacks every day on Taiwan.

A conflict between the powers would not be pretty

Charles Kupchan, an American expert on international relations, who I came to like and admire during my time in Washington, has issued a stern warning about complacency about the development of a “cold war” with China in the latest edition of The Atlantic.

The balance of power for the US in a cold war with China will be very different than the one it had with the USSR. China has four times the US population, whereas the US and USSR had similar populations. China’s gross domestic product will soon exceed that of the US. The USSRs GDP was only a fraction of that US. China already has a slightly larger Navy than does the US, and Chinese spending on research and development has increased dramatically in the past 10 years.

China is, however, an aging society, whereas the US is not. China’s birth rate is so low that some speculate that the US population could exceed that of China by the year 2100!

With that context, I was surprised to read that, at present, a quarter of young Chinese are currently unable to find a suitable job. Chinese local governments have run up big debts building apartments that are lying empty.

Centralized thinking in the Chinese Communist Party has the potential to undermine China’s military efforts by introducing rigidity of thinking. Unlike the US, China’s military has little combat experience. Chinese military spending is 12 times that of Taiwan, but it is still much less than that of the US.

China and the West need to work together, not waste energy fighting

The rivalry between China and the US is diverting resources away from cooperative possibilities in areas, like climate change and food insecurity, in which both countries have a shared interest.

The dispute places the EU, as an ally of the US, in difficulty. It shares all the US reservations about Chinese policies on a range of issues. It has said that the Chinese stance on the invasion of Ukraine will be “the determining factor.” That is a clear prioritization, which China should not ignore.

One of the big problems flowing from the present rivalry is a simple breakdown in communications. Canceled meetings have allowed misunderstandings to increase.

The same event is interpreted differently in Washington to the way it is interpreted in Beijing. Each side sincerely believes its interpretation. Minor issues for one can be seen as hostile signals by the other side when they were not so intended.

I believe the US and China should consider instituting some sort of “political truce” for a predetermined period.

This should be designed to allow a concentration of the formidable diplomatic weight of the two countries on an issue in which they have a shared interest, namely mitigating climate change. Such a signal by the two big powers would prompt the rest of the world to do more.

A “circuit breaker” of this kind is needed to prevent the current disagreement from spiraling out of control.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The World Needs the US and China to Talk appeared first on Fair Observer.

Meanwhile, the countries that would form the EU pursued a vigorous and profitable policy of promoting trade with China. Germany led the way in this respect, especially through the export of German automobiles. This particular trend is weakening at the moment, although generally trade with China has recovered well.

There is a new problem. This is the openly declared and increasingly explicit US policy of curbing the growth and sophistication of the Chinese economy. This is being done because the US fears that China could pose a security threat to the US, and its allies, including Taiwan. The US wants to deny China access to certain types of semiconductors. Security concerns were cited by the Trump Administration when it imposed hefty tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum. China responded with tariffs of its own. The US is also putting pressure on its allies to join in some of these measures.

An Expert Explains Why We Need a New Cold War With China

The goal is to prevent China from developing strongly in areas that might make a key contribution to its national security. The World Trade Organization (WTO), of which China is a member, aims to ensure that global trade is governed by predictable and transparent rules. But “national security” is a matter of subjective judgment, to which such rules cannot easily be applied. Furthermore, China does not want WTO rules to apply to state-owned enterprises, while the US is undermining the appeals mechanism on WTO rulings.

The law of the jungle in international trade suits big counties, but not smaller ones. Economies such as Ireland are fortunate to be part of an EU bloc that will defend their interests.

Recently, the US published its National Security Strategy. It accused China of “wanting to reshape the international order” and of “assertive behavior”…hardly a hanging offense.

It said that it wanted the US to “outcompete” China, and added that it would oppose any unilateral change in relations across the Taiwan Strait. It also said that the US does not support Taiwan independence and remains committed to a “One China” policy.

This language is quite conciliatory and makes one wonder what the then Speaker Nancy Pelosi was trying to achieve with her recent high-profile visit to Taiwan—at a time when we may need China to talk sense into the Russians and get them to back out of their unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

China had a strong record of defending the territorial integrity of states, notably against European powers in the nineteenth century. So it should not be neutral about the imperialist behavior of Russia!

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Two Reasons China Can Be a Valuable Partner for Europe appeared first on Fair Observer.

Nicholas Milton is the author of Neville Chamberlain’s Legacy: Hitler, Munich and the Path to War. This biography published by Pen and Sword in 2019 is a new look at this British prime minister and his times. Edward Heath’s autobiography, The Course of My Life, was published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1998. 

Chamberlain and Heath’s political lives span the period of British history from 1920 to 2000. Both these books are a good introduction to this period. They reveal how the priorities and the philosophy of a major political party  adapts to changed circumstances.

Looking Back at Neville Chamberlain

Neville Chamberlain is, of course, remembered for his attempts to find a modus vivendi with Hitler. He forced Czechoslovakia to make territorial concessions to Nazi Germany and is blamed for the policy of appeasement. However, this book rightly shows us that there was much more to Chamberlain than just this moment in history.

This British leader was minister for health in the 1920s and was responsible for initiating a huge programme of social housing. He introduced pensions for widows. In modern terms, he was a “leveling up“ leader who did what he said. Chamberlain was not impeded by free market dogma. He had been a local councilor and mayor in Birmingham before entering the House of Commons. This leader had seen poverty first hand. Therefore, he instituted policies to address this issue.

Contrary widely held perceptions, Chamberlain was no pacifist. As the chancellor of the exchequer after the 1936 general elections, he imposed a three pence income tax on the pound to pay for more defense spending, particularly of aircraft. This investment proved critical during the Battle of Britain and Chamberlain gets little credit for it.

When it came to negotiating for peace, Chamberlain failed to understand Adolf Hitler. The Nazi leader was a reckless gambler who did not play by the rules of the game. Chamberlain mistakenly assumed that Hitler was a normal calculating politician and acted accordingly. 

Yet it is important to remember that Chamberlains did buy significant extra time for British rearmament by appeasing Hitler in 1938. He was also reflecting the zeitgeist. On September 24, 1938, The Irish Times published an editorial saying that Chamberlain “has the sympathy and admiration of the whole civilised world, because he has done more than any other individual to save mankind from another war.” The editorial went on to say that the British prime minister “has done what no other statesman in Europe would have the courage to do.”

Éamon de Valera, the Irish prime minister from 1937 to 1948, admired Chamberlain’s policy as well. The British prime minister was not alone in subscribing to a policy that eventually failed. Peace in Europe, which many fervently desired after the horrors of World War I, was not to last. Chamberlain failed in his goal to maintain this peace and this failure was clear to him before he died in 1940. Yet the late prime minister deserves credit for many of his other policies and his service to his nation.

Edward Heath’s Story

The great goal of Heath’s political life also was peace in Europe. He sought to reach that goal by bringing the UK into the EU. For him, the EU was a structure of peace in Europe, binding countries so closely together economically that they could never contemplate war with one another. Fortunately for Heath, he did not live to see his work  partly undone. He died in 2005, more than a decade before the UK voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum. 

Heath was an excellent writer. His autobiography keeps the reader’s attention over its full 736 pages and gives a good account of his personal life. Heath was brought up in a semi-detached house on the Kent coast. His father was a qualified carpenter who made a living as a small builder. 

Heath became an undergraduate in the University of Oxford before World War II on the basis of his academic results. Like many British leaders, he became active in politics during his time at Oxford and joined the student Conservative Party. As a student politician, he opposed Chamberlain’s appeasement politics. Heath had observed Hitler’s Nuremberg rally in person. 

Heath served in World War II bravely. He gives an entertaining account of his search for a parliamentary seat after the war. One association wanted an assurance that Heath would reply to all correspondence personally, and in longhand, as the previous member of parliament (MP) had done. Heath would not give that assurance, so he had to look elsewhere. Another wanted an MP who might become a minister. 

Heath finally found a seat in Bexley, Kent on the eastern edge of London. He was elected to serve that constituency in the general elections of 1950. Heath served the constituency loyally as its MP and Bexley remained loyal to him too despite his public differences with Margaret Thatcher who ousted him from the Tory leadership in 1977.

Heath devotes much of the book to his work in negotiating British entry into the EU. He points out that the true political nature of the EU was set out for the British people. It was not presented merely as an economic arrangement. This was done before the House of Commons voted to join the EU and over 67% of British voters opted for joining the EU in the 1975 referendum. This stands in stark contrast to the 2016 referendum, where spin, misinformation and downright lies were rife in the political campaign.

Heath also gives his version of his difficult relationship with Thatcher. Early in their career, Heath and Thatcher had much in common and were good friends. It is a pity she did not find an opportunity to bring him back into government at some stage after she replaced him as the leader of the Conservative Party. Yet Thatcher might have had a good reason for her decision. Heath may have expected too much too soon.

The breach between the philosophies of Heath and Thatcher remains unhealed. For now, Thatcher’s version of conservatism is triumphant.

Observations on Chamberlain and Heath

The title of Milton’s book suggests that he is assessing Chamberlain’s legacy. The biography does not do so. 

My own assessment of Chamberlain’s legacy is that he gave appeasement a bad name. His failure to avoid World War II in 1938 has shaped British and American decisions since. When negotiating with dictators or authoritarian regimes, British and American leaders have often begun with wrong assumptions and made poor decisions. For example, Saddam Hussein was bluffing about the weapons of mass destruction. Yet British and American leaders were haunted by the ghost of Hitler and went to war on a false claim. This perceived failure of Chamberlain has led to many failures since World War II.

Milton’s book also deals very slightly with Chamberlain’s policy towards Ireland. He settled the economic war between the UK and the Republic of Ireland in 1938 on financial terms that were favorable to Ireland. Sadly, this has been forgotten in Ireland. 

Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, the UK retained three deep water Treaty Ports at Berehaven, Spike Island and Lough Swilly in accordance with the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 6 December 1921. Chamberlain gave Ireland back these Treaty Ports, which enabled the country to remain neutral in the war. The biography does not explore this far-reaching decision either.

In his book, Heath devotes a chapter to Ireland. He was the first British prime minister to say that the UK had no selfish interest in Ireland. He was the first to visit Ireland when he met Liam Cosgrave in Baldonnel in 1973. Earlier British prime ministers over the previous 50 years had expected their Irish counterpart to visit them in London. Heath’s visit was symbolic and historic.

As prime minister, Heath approved the introduction of internment without trial by the Stormont  government in Northern Ireland. He justified this decision on the grounds that juries would be intimidated. Yet he seems to have given insufficient thought and not explored alternatives to the consequences of this radical decision.

Heath sought to end the conflict in Northern Ireland through the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement. This was an attempt to establish a power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive and a cross-border Council of Ireland. In his autobiography, Heath claims that Liam Cosgrave, who was then the Irish prime minister, lacked the courage to  promise to hold a referendum to remove articles 2 and 3 of the constitution.  These articles included a territorial claim by Dublin to rule Northern Ireland. Removing them was to be  a price to be paid for setting up a Council of Ireland with consultative functions. 

Given that the partition of Ireland had been accepted in practice by Dublin as early as 1925, this territorial claim should never have been inserted in the Irish Constitution of 1937.  However, once this claim was in the constitution, removing it was bound to be divisive. 

Heath seemed to have forgotten that Cosgrave headed a coalition government and that some of his strong-minded ministers were quite nationalistic. The main opposition party, Fianna Fail, was even more nationalistic. The risk of defeat in such a referendum on the constitution and split in the government was extremely high. Cosgrave’s government could have fallen on this issue and his hands were tied. So, lack of courage is the last thing of which Cosgrave can be accused. Heath’s evaluation of Cosgrave demonstrates that even enlightened British leaders sometimes have a poor understanding of Ireland. 

Both Chamberlain and Heath had hobbies that helped them keep their minds relaxed despite the pressures of the job as prime minister. Chamberlain’s interests were angling, birdwatching, and the study of moths and butterflies. Heath’s interests were music and sailing, and he reached a very high standard in both activities.

In their own ways, both prime ministers were far-sighted statesmen. Like all human beings, they had their faults and made mistakes. However, it is important to remember some of their significant achievements.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Looking Back Now at Neville Chamberlain and Edward Heath appeared first on Fair Observer.

Before Brexit, trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland was straightforward. Both were in the EU and shared the same trade rules. Goods, services and people could seamlessly move across the border. Northern Ireland is a part of the UK and Brexit created a de facto hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This created a major problem. The Protestant DUP supports closer union with the UK while the Catholic Sinn Féin aims to maintain ties with the Irish Republic south of Northern Ireland. A deal was needed to avoid a return to the pre-Good Friday Agreement days.

When former UK prime minister Boris Johnson agreed to a Brexit deal with the EU, the Northern Ireland Protocol was a part of it. This came into force on January 1, 2021. As per this protocol, goods from the Republic of Ireland and the UK were not to be checked at the Northern Irish border. Instead, checks were to be done at Northern Ireland’s ports. The DUP argues this protocol has created an effective border between Northern Ireland and the UK.

The DUP’s boycott is unwise

In February 2022, the DUP began its boycott of the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont, which continues to this day. On February 27, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak signed a new agreement called the Windsor Framework designed to make trade between Northern Ireland and the UK easier. This gives Stormont “more say over EU rules and has been welcomed by most Northern Ireland parties.” However, the DUP opposes this framework and has yet to re-enter power sharing.

This stalemate in the politics of Northern Ireland seems likely to continue. It leaves an empty space in the political life of Northern Ireland, depriving people of a forum to discuss their problems. In fact, the DUP’s boycott of Stormont makes it harder for politicians to even meet each other.

If a political vacuum like this is not filled by elected politicians, it leaves the door wide open for those with undemocratic agendas. This space could be occupied, as in the past, by people who are willing to use murder to make themselves heard.

The DUP’s boycott is intended as a lever to change the Windsor Framework. However, this boycott reveals deeper problems, which if left unaddressed, could lead to such things happening again in the future. It is clear that the Windsor Framework will not be amended. The UK and the EU have a lot of other business to do together, especially in face of grave global threats.

The DUP has to realize that the requirements of the EU single market necessitate some form of borders. While these may alarm its supporters, there are things that could be done to reassure DUP voters. So far, the DUP has offered no concrete ideas in writing. It could take the lead and sketch out practical proposals, using the local knowledge of its members, instead of waiting for others to do so.

This post-Brexit impasse also raises questions about the meaning of Ulster Unionism in the 21st century. Ulster is one of the four traditional Irish provinces made up of nine counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland and the remaining three are in the Republic of Ireland. Unionists self-identify with the UK and have loyalty to British institutions. However, this loyalty is to the sort of UK that existed in the 1950s instead of the diverse and hyper-globalized UK that actually exists in 2023.

Just as the UK has changed, so has Northern Ireland. The DUP must focus its thinking on younger voters in Northern Ireland, who self-identify as neither Unionist nor nationalist. These are the swing voters who will determine the future direction of Northern Ireland. These swing voters may look for an entirely new dispensation for Northern Ireland, one that is neither nationalist nor Unionist. The binary and irreconcilable way in which that choice is unfortunately presented in the Good Friday Agreement might soon be superseded by changes in society.

What is the way forward?

Unionist leaders would best serve the interests of voters by working out ways to persuade non-Unionists to contentedly accept arrangements within which all will feel secure and respected. That is a huge task, and a challenge to the Unionist imagination. Realistic Unionists know in their hearts that this is the only way forward.

Rather than focussing all their energies on EU goods standards being applied in Northern Ireland, the DUP should be putting forward much broader intellectual, political and economic arguments. They should be working for arrangements in which Unionists, nationalists and voters who are neither can all feel secure. To achieve this, Unionism would have to present itself in a completely different way, emphasizing symbols that the entire community can embrace, rather than symbols that repel some.

This would require a huge infusion of self-confidence in Unionism. It would be uncomfortable for the base of the party, but the base will never deliver a majority for the DUP. 

At its core, the conflict is about identity. Identity is not a simple idea. It is about far more than politics, territory or sovereignties. The question I have is simple: Can we not build a shared identity to which all the people of Northern Ireland could subscribe?

Identity, of course, includes history and aspects of which make us proud. But, every day, we write some new history. I believe identity can be cultivated in two radically different ways. Either it can be built on the basis of rivalry against another community or it can be built on the basis of shared achievement. The latter is the best way to build a shared identity.

The forced choice in the Northern Ireland Agreement between the two fundamentally contradictory aspirations, union with Dublin or union with London, works against the building of a shared identity. We must move on from this binary choice.

The parallel consent rules in the Assembly should be changed. Giving extra weight to the votes of the members of the legislative assembly, who have chosen one or other of  the two contradictory aspirations, is not the best way to protect minorities. In fact, it oppresses the minority that chooses the middle ground. This minority might one day even be the majority. The case for changing parallel consent rules is becoming stronger.

Creating a shared identity is becoming ever more important. Some good work can be done at community level, but it is difficult to have shared achievements, at least at the political level, if the institutions of governance are not up and working.

Like the DUP, some nationalists may also be going down a corridor that leads to frustration. By putting all their energy into seeking a poll for a union with the Republic of Ireland, they are setting up a conflict which they may not win. There are signs that Sinn Féin is beginning to see this. Gerry Adams recently told a reporter from The Currency that “Irish unity is not a 50% +1 equation. Unionists will need to buy in too.”

Adams has made a welcome and important statement.  Unfortunately, the Good Friday Agreement does not take this view into account. It provides for irrevocable Irish unity to be voted through on a 50%+1 basis. It will be interesting to see what the leadership of Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party have to say about Adams’s idea, which would require the rewording of the Good Friday Agreement.

We must remember that the goal of this 1998 agreement was to bring reconciliation and trust to Northern Ireland. The spirit of this historic agreement was to bring peace and end the Troubles.

In the 1990s, symbolic gestures played a great role in the peace process. When I was Taoiseach—the Irish term for prime minister—in 1995, I organized a commemoration at the War Memorial in Islandbridge. It honored the Irish who had died in World War II fighting in British uniform. Sinn Féin sent Tom Hartley as their representative, which was an important gesture. 

Symbolic gestures continue to matter. In 2018, the DUP leader Arlene Foster attended the Gaelic Athletic Association’s Ulster Football Final between Donegal and Fermanagh in County Monaghan. Sports have also been a dividing line in Northern Ireland. Foster said, “I understand the significance of me being here as well today, so I hope I enjoy today.” Needless to say, her gesture was important and powerful.

Perhaps when the local elections are over, the British and Irish governments and the parties in Northern Ireland should think about events and activities that could promote reconciliation and thus create the emotional space for political compromise. These symbolic gestures are needed yet again to bring peace to a divided and troubled land.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post How to Promote Peace in Northern Ireland Now appeared first on Fair Observer.

I found the background to the rushed US and allied exit from Afghanistan revealing, but also incomplete. I was in Washington, as the ambassador of the EU, in 2009. Barack Obama was then president. He announced to assembled ambassadors that he planned to dramatically increase US troop presence in Afghanistan. This so-called surge was supposed to wrest back control of the country from the Taliban.

Obama was motivated by a desire to strengthen the US global military position. He also wanted to make Afghanistan a human rights respecting democracy. At the time, Obama’s policy seemed overambitious to me. George W. Bush had tried a troop surge in Iraq. This 2007 surge had similar goals to the 2009 one and had failed.

Peril tells us that Joe Biden, who was Obama’s vice president at the time, was totally opposed to the surge. But Hillary Clinton, the then secretary of state, and Robert Gates, the then secretary of defense, and American generals favored the surge. They prevailed.

When Trump took over, he wanted to get US troops out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible. But inertia and lack of focus on his part meant that Trump never actually managed to achieve his goal.  It fell to Biden to implement this part of the Trump agenda, in the same manner as he is implementing the Trump policy on China.

The US withdrawal was a botched job. Afghans who had loyally served the allies were abandoned. Woodward and Costa offer no explanations for this abandonment.

Their book does offer an insight into Biden’s style of negotiation with the Congress. He is tough and relentless in his pursuit of a deal. He was, and is, determined to put money in the pockets of working class Americans . Biden has been so good at achieving his goals that his stimulus bills may have contributed to demand-led inflation in the US.

The book also examines the fateful days that led up to the storming of the US Capitol on January 6. Did Trump’s incitement of violence and his attempts to overturn the popular vote add up to a crime for which he could be convicted in a court of law?

I believe the answer is to be found in the speech made by Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate, after the second attempt to impeach Trump had failed. Describing what happened on 6 January as a “disgrace” and an “act of terrorism”, he found Trump “practically and morally responsible.” Yet he voted to acquit Trump. McConnell took the view that “by the strict criminal standard, the President’s speech probably was not incitement.”

After all he has done, Trump still leads many Republican polls. The peril to American democracy comes from kind and decent Americans, who are putting cultural and party loyalty ahead of the interests of democracy in America.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is American Democracy Now in Peril? appeared first on Fair Observer.

President Donald Trump imposed punitive tariffs on Chinese goods worth $50 billion. He cited the theft of intellectual property and currency manipulation as reasons for penalizing China. Mike Pence, as Trump’s vice president, declared that the US would prioritize competition over cooperation in its relations with China. 

President Joe Biden’s administration is not only continuing with Trump’s tariffs, but it is also introducing restrictions on the export of certain semiconductor chips to China. Their goal is to prevent China from getting access to cutting-edge technology and to hobble the semiconductor industry.

Why Semiconductors Are a Really Big Deal

Industry experts estimate that Taiwan now “produces over 60% of the world’s semiconductors and over 90% of the most advanced ones.” Officially, Taiwan is a part of China. When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) won the civil war, the Kuomintang (KMT) fled to an island off Mainland China. For decades, both the CCP and KMT maintained a “One China” policy.

Taiwan has since transitioned into a democracy. The KMT is no longer in power. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen belongs to the Democratic Progressive Party. She has made a historic visit to the US and met the US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The Chinese are clearly not pleased with this visit or this meeting. De facto, Taiwan has become militarily and politically independent of Beijing.

Taiwan has become a flashpoint for US-China relations. In the last few years, US media has been speculating about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. China’s rhetoric has also been hardening. Beijing is restricting the exports of rare earths needed to build the batteries necessary for renewable power.

As US and China Clash, Taiwan Moves Closer to the Brink of Disaster

China has increased military spending as well. Chinese defense expenditure increased by 15% per year from 1990 to 2005. This trend has continued. In March 2023, China announced a defense budget of $224.8 billion, marking a 7.2% increase from 2022. Beijing is also prioritizing its navy, and navies can be used to enforce blockades.

The US Navy has long been dominant globally but now faces a challenge in the Pacific from the Chinese Navy. In any confrontation with China, the US can count on the support of  its allies in NATO, and from countries like Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia. On the other hand, China has no significant allies, except perhaps Russia.

Interestingly, the country whose population feels most threatened by China is India. A poll found 73% Indians worrying about China’s military rise. A large majority of the Japanese are also worrying about the threat from China. Just before Christmas last year, Japan increased its defense spending, announcing it would double it over the next five years. In contrast, only 48% of the French and 40% of Germans feel China poses a risk to their respective countries.

Han and Hindu Nationalism Come Face to Face

The US has complained repeatedly about China not trading fairly with the rest of the world. Yet the US continues to weaken the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the only body that could discipline Chinese unfair trade practices. Thus, US-China trade tensions have been increasing steadily.

Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, has called for a structured relationship between China and the US. He calls for “managed strategic competition” between the US and China in his 2022 book, The Avoidable War. Strong institutions such as the WTO would help.

Working out the terms of this arrangement to manage relations between the world’s two biggest powers will not be easy. It would require creativity and goodwill on both sides. Statesmanship is the need of the hour.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is a US-China Conflict Inevitable Now? appeared first on Fair Observer.

As Prince of Wales, and briefly as King, Edward had led a full life, with plenty to do, and plenty of time for affairs and entertainment as well. He had spent his entire life as heir to the throne surrounded by servants who attended to his every whim. Unsurprisingly, Edward became used to adulation.

After he abdicated, all of this changed. He was no longer a king, he was just the Duke of Windsor. His wife was not a queen, and was not allowed to describe herself with the prefix Her Royal Highness (HRH) (a matter about which he became obsessed). Initially, he lived in Paris and on the French Riviera with Wallis Simpson.

Edward doted on Wallis and became dependent on her. But she found him boring. She found it difficult living up to the legend of a romantic love she did not feel. He no longer had anything useful to do. After abdicating as king, Edward had no prearranged program. The couple’s days were filled with private dinners and lunches and little else.

Dangerous Liaisons

As time went by, Edward wanted to be back at the center of things. This desire for attention led to his entanglement with Germany. His fascist and pro-German sympathies had been well known even before he abdicated. The British Union of Fascists even held a demonstration in his support. They demanded the postponement of Edward’s abdication until a referendum was held on it.

Edward’s first formal trip, after his abdication, was a high profile visit to Nazi Germany. Edward and Wallis infamously met Adolf Hitler in 1937.  He wanted to make a similar high-profile trip to the US. However, the public reaction to his German trip was so bad that Edward’s American visit had to be called off. This royal soon became convinced that Great Britain could not defeat Germany in a war. Therefore, the British were best served by reconciling with the Nazi regime.

When World War II broke out in 1939, Edward was given a role inspecting the defenses on the French and British fronts. His report identified the weak point at the Ardennes in Belgium. Germany went on to exploit this weakness spectacularly a few months later when it launched blitzkrieg (lightning war) that led to the fall of Belgium, The Netherlands and France.

Despite his prescient observation about the Ardennes, Edward was a defeatist. In his private conversations, he directly contradicted the foreign policy of his own government. When France fell in May 1940, Edward fled to Spain and later to Portugal. His role during the war was dubious. Lownie’s book documents Edward’s indirect, but extensive, contacts with German agents while in Madrid and Lisbon. The ex-king was scheming to get Britain out of the war.

While Edward did want peace for its own sake, he also saw a German victory or a negotiated peace as routes towards getting back on the throne and a means of his wife becoming HRH, the queen. It is pretty clear from the documentary evidence cited in this book—including German archives discovered after the war—that Edward’s activities in Spain and Portugal in 1940 amounted to treason. Edward’s stay in Europe was cut short when he was sent as governor of the Bahamas. Even there, he got involved in intrigues with isolationists to keep the US out of the war.

Edward the Eighth was not a stupid man. He had some administrative ability which he demonstrated in the Bahamas. For five years, he was able to run this island fairly decently. So how could Edward have allowed himself to become drawn into what he should have clearly seen as treasonable activities?

I suspect the atmosphere in which he grew up was to blame. As heir to the throne, Edward must have come to believe that normal rules did not apply to him. This proved to be not entirely right. Edward lost his throne and history has found him wanting. Lownie’s book is an excellent read about a character that remains relevant even today.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post It Now Turns Out that King Edward VIII was Traitor King appeared first on Fair Observer.

It will not necessarily resolve the crisis in the Good Friday Agreement quickly though. It is not certain that the Northern Ireland Executive and the Northern Ireland Assembly will be restored. The split in the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) on the protocol is not healed. There is still a border in the Irish Sea.

For the DUP, taking part in the Executive still means serving in a body in which a Sinn Fein politician will be “First” Minister. In reality, of course, the Deputy First Minister, presumably a DUP member, would have exactly equal power to the First Minister. Yet appearances matter and the DUP does not want to be seen to have lower status.

Perfection should not be the enemy of the possible

The situation in Northern Ireland might not be ideal but we need to keep a sense of proportion. Although the Good Friday Agreement is 20 years old, it was only fully operational half the time. When it was operational, the Executive did not really operate on a basis of full collective responsibility, as illustrated in the “cash-for-ash” inquiry.

Neither the North/South nor East/West institutions of the Agreement operated at anything near their full potential. Yet the Agreement did provide a pretext in 1998 for paramilitaries to end their violence, which they already knew was getting them nowhere. In that contextual sense, it has brought us peace. But it is hard to say that there has been significant political or cultural reconciliation between the communities because of the Agreement. Arguably the communities are further apart.

The two novelties in the Windsor Framework are the “Stormont Brake”, and the provision of a Green Lane for goods destined to stay in Northern Ireland. The brake has got the most attention. It is not a veto. It is a mechanism whereby 30 members of legislative assembly (MLAs) can raise a red flag about a new or amended EU law that is to apply in Northern Ireland, and force an examination of it.

Given the negative perceptions of the EU in Ulster Unionist circles, there are worries that this mechanism could be triggered capriciously, as a partisan lever, rather than for practical reasons. The Windsor Framework says the brake is only to be used as a “last resort,” and where there is a risk of “significant or lasting damage.”

These terms are open to varying interpretations, especially if there is a trust deficit between some MLAs and the EU. It may be that, after a long delay, specific cases, in which the brake has been pulled, will go to international arbitrators, who will then tell us exactly what these terms mean in practice. Meanwhile a lot of time will have been lost and business disrupted.

EU laws in the UK

The UK is currently going through a process of deciding which EU laws it will continue to apply and which it will “restate, revoke or replace.” Nearly 3,800 pieces of EU sourced regulation will have to be examined and a decision made on whether to restate, revoke or amend them. Most of this work will take place behind closed doors, and at breakneck speed, because the whole process is supposed to be complete by the end of this year.

The risk of catastrophic regulatory mistakes is enormous. The area of biggest concern is food safety.  We all know how food scares can do lasting reputational damage to a country. I hope that the civil service in the UK is sufficiently well staffed to do the job well. 

The worry on this side of the border is that substandard ingredients might enter Northern Ireland, via the newly liberalized Green Lane, and then find their way into final products, exported from here to continental Europe or further afield. This would be especially alarming if food products are involved. The combination of a lightly regulated Green Lane, with no controls at all on our land border with the UK, means that the risk is not negligible.

It is true that only goods that meet EU standards will be allowed to enter the EU tariff-free under the EU-UK Trade Agreement, and the tariffs can be collected at any time. But once something that fails to meet EU standards gets into the supply chain, the damage is done. Hence, detection will be key. One hopes that technologies and artificial intelligence can be used to help in this work. Thus, Ireland will need to invest heavily in detection..

All in all, the Windsor Framework is a good day’s work. It happened because there was mutual respect between British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his EU counterparts. Such respect did not exist between the EU and recent previous prime ministers. There are valuable lessons to be learned from this: mutual respect matters in international relations.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The EU-UK Windsor Framework Is the Right Step Forward appeared first on Fair Observer.

The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), which later became the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and the UK had agreed to a truce in July 1921, which was in effect in June 1922. A constitution for the Irish Free State, based on the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921, agreed between Irish and British delegations, including Michael Collins and David Lloyd George, had been ratified on June 16, 1922, a week before the assassination of Henry Wilson. 

Revered in England, Disliked in Ireland

People in Ireland disliked Wilson, but people in England revered him. He was considered a key figure in the allied military strategy, credited with saving France in World War I.

Wilson was born and raised on a large farm in Currygrane near Ballinalee in County Longford. His family had come to Longford from Ulster in an earlier generation, and Wilson felt like an Ulster man more than a Longford man. 

The men who killed Henry Wilson were Reginald Dunne and Joseph O’Sullivan. They were native-born Londoners of Irish ancestry and active members of the IRB. In London, they grew up in Irish culture.

Theories Surrounding the Assassination 

At the time of the assassination, the IRB’s supreme commander was Michael Collins, president of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State. Members of the IRA had opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the provisional government and occupied the Four Courts in Dublin and other strong points around the country. 

The occupation was an unsustainable situation for the new state from a law-and-order point of view. When news of the assassination broke, British government circles assumed the anti-treaty forces ordered it. McGreevy dismisses this theory. 

Another theory suggests the IRB had a standing order to assassinate Wilson, which was not withdrawn despite the truce and the treaty. McGreevy does not believe this theory either. He says O’Sullivan and Dunne were scrupulous followers of military discipline who would not have acted on a freelance basis without clear, current orders.

The author concludes Collins authorized the assassination as commander of the IRB. Why might Collins have issued such an order? There is no written evidence, as the IRB was a secretive society and left no paper trails.

Involvement in Northern Ireland Politics

Wilson, who had retired from the Army, had become a military adviser to the Northern Ireland (NI) Government. He had become a Unionist MP. 

NI security forces had colluded in attacks on Catholics. Wilson was not involved in Northern Ireland for much of the period. His political opinions were well-known and bigoted. In 1914, as a serving soldier, he had conspired with the Tory opposition to block Home rule.

Collins’ top role in the IRB is hard to reconcile with his presidency of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State. But this account is one aspect of this multilayered story. The events do not seem to justify authorizing an assassination during a truce in 1922 with a peace treaty being ratified.

McGreevy gives a sympathetic account of the Wilson, Dunne, and O’Sullivan families and their changing fortunes. He explains the shifting politics of the time and the links between the Wilson family and their Longford neighbor, General Seán Mac Eoin, “The Blacksmith of Ballinalee.” Reading this book, I am reinforced in my view that once the gun is introduced into Irish politics, it is difficult to get it out again.

[Conner Tighe edited this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What You Need to Know About the Assassination of Sir Henry Wilson appeared first on Fair Observer.

One of the report’s authors was the distinguished Irish barrister Richard Boyd Barrett, who once worked in the Irish attorney General’s office. The EU is a system of rules, and the EU can only survive if its rules are fairly and uniformly enforced by the courts of the 27 member states.

National Courts’ Role in the EU’s Common Market

The EU is a common market because it has a common system for making, interpreting, and enforcing common rules that apply to the citizens of its member states. The national courts interpret these common rules in each member state. 

The integrity of national courts is vital for the EU. This issue lies at the heart of the difficulties the UK is experiencing as it tries to leave the EU and enjoy the benefits of the EU’s common market for goods without taking part in the common system for making, interpreting, and enforcing the rules of the common market. 

Poland’s Judicial System and EU’s Call for Independence

The root cause of the disagreements between the EC and Poland and Hungary is whether their judicial systems are independent. If one lives or does business in Poland, going to the Polish courts is the only way to get one’s common market rights. This course should be open to you, whether you are a Polish citizen or not, and whatever political opinions or status vis-à-vis the government of Poland.

The EU insists courts be independent so everyone can enforce their rights as equal EU citizens, anywhere in the EU, at all times. This rigorous insistence on the rule of law is one of the reasons many European countries want to join the EU to get the EU seal of approval for the rule of law in their country and be attractive to overseas investors and other visitors.

I visited Serbia and heard Prime Minister Ana Brnabić stress that accession to the EU was the top priority for countries in her region. She said the rule of law and transparent administration, demanded as preconditions for Serbian membership of the EU, are crucial to winning foreign investment and access to cheaper finance for Serbia.

Politicizing Polish Courts

If the Polish courts were allowed to become politicized and were no longer seen as objective in interpreting EU law, it would damage the EU and harm Polish citizens. Such a scenario would discourage investment in Poland and remove one of the fundamental reasons for the existence of the EU: the rule of law.

The EC started proceedings against Poland under Article 7(1) of the EU Treaties over aspects of the restructuring of the Polish judiciary. On an application to it by the EC, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ordered the Polish government to stop appointing many new judges to its Supreme Court in recent weeks. 

The ECJ feared the new appointments might politicize the Polish courts. The Polish government can propose this large number of new appointments because it is retiring up to 40% of existing judges based on introduced upper age limits.

The age limit will only be applied in some places. The government can grant discretionary extensions to some judges whose judgments it likes. The well-founded fear is it will replace these retired judges with judges sympathetic to the views of the present government.

The independence of the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in Ireland was an important reform made in the 1970s, which successive taoiseach have since protected with the merger of the minister’s offices for justice and the public prosecutor. The merger creates fear that politicization will affect prosecutorial decisions. 

Venice Commission’s Report on Polish Judiciary Reforms

The Polish “reforms” provided that the president of the republic, not the court, would establish the rules of procedure for the Supreme Court of Poland, determining which categories of judges would hear what sort of case, which is unacceptable political interference. The Venice Commission’s report, coauthored by Barrett from Ireland, concluded that the Polish government’s proposed mechanism for an extraordinary review (and possible reversal) of past judgments was “problematic.” Such a conclusion is an understatement. 

The report noted it was retroactive and allowed the reopening of cases decided before the proposed law was to be enacted. The Venice Commission concluded the proposed legislative and executive power to interfere in a severe and extensive way in the administration of justice.

It is important for the EU that the Polish government realizes that more is needed for free elections. A country cannot enjoy the benefits of EU membership or democracy unless it respects the rule of law in Article 2 and Article 7 of the EU Treaties. The credibility of the EU and the integrity of the EU single market are at stake in the Venice Commission’s dispute with Poland, to a greater extent than with the UK’s attempt to “have its cake and eat it” on trade!

[Conner Tighe edited this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What You Need To Know About Brussels’ Proceedings Against Poland appeared first on Fair Observer.

The subtitle of Bodganor’s book is  “Politics and Power Before the First World War,” and it is an account of the politics of the British Isles between 1890 and 1914. The book is essential reading for any student of Irish history. Bogdanor is comprehensive, gives a good account of the 1899-1902 Boer War, recounts women’s struggle to gain the right to vote, covers the rise of the Labour Party, and examines the introduction of unemployment and sickness insurance. Bogdanor also outlines the evolution of British foreign policy, including the alliance with Japan and the increasing, though not inevitable, rivalry with Germany. It covers the tragic events that led to World War I. In a nutshell, Bogdadanor has written a big book in every sense.

The title of the book is misleading, in the sense that the book is about far more than the survival of liberalism. It explores the issue of tariff reform, forgotten today, but politically convulsive for the first 20 years of the  20th Century. In the 1890s, a leading figure in the Conservative and Unionist Party, Joseph Chamberlain, committed his party to what he called “tariff reform.” By this he meant something was quite radical, turning the British Empire, which spanned every continent on the globe, into an economic union, much like the EU today.

The British Empire as One Big Free Trade Union

As with the founders of the EU in the 1950s, Chamberlain envisaged giving trade preference to goods produced within the British Empire over imports from elsewhere (e.g. continental Europe and the US), and thereby strengthening the political unity of the empire. 

In the 1890s, note that empires were regarded as progressive concepts. They were seen as vehicles for the promulgation of civilized ideas, such as the rule of law.  Other powers, like France, the Netherlands and the US, were also seeking to build their own empires. Empires were seen as efficient. They enjoyed economies of scale that smaller powers could not match. “The Empire” was also important domestically for the United Kingdom: it helped keep England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland united in a shared endeavor.

Hence, Chamberlain’s proposal for imperial trade preference was seen, at least superficially, to be going with, rather than against, the grain of history. As a result of Chamberlain’s advocacy, the Conservatives were to promote tariff reform, on an on-and-off basis, for almost 30 years.

However, this policy proved to be a vote loser. The British Empire could not produce all the food that Britons wanted to eat, and tariff reform would have required a tax on food coming from outside the Empire. High food prices, then as now, were politically lethal for politicians.  Chamberlain’s protectionist ideas also ran against the free trade, laissez-faire ideology that had dominated economic thinking in Britain for much of the 19th century.

Many British thinkers and politicians had a deep belief in free trade. One of them was Winston Churchill. In 1904, he was a young Conservative MP who left the party and joined the Liberal Party because he believed in free trade. Joseph Chamberlain’s son, Neville, would put some of his father’s protectionist ideas into practice, as chancellor of the exchequer in the 1930s.

Now largely forgotten, Joseph Chamberlain was a dynamic force. He was a successful businessman who became the mayor of Birmingham. He was Nonconformist—in those days, a term used for Protestant Christians who did not “conform” to the governance and usages of the Church of England, the established church of England—and was an early advocate of old age pensions and anti-poverty programs. Chamberlain was originally a member of parliament (MP) for the Liberal Party but became a Conservative when Liberals supported Home Rule for Ireland. Truth to be told, Chamberlain was never really a Conservative.

Through sheer force of personality, Chamberlain imported protectionism into the Conservative Party. Tariff reform is just one of the many themes explored in Venon Bogdanor’s comprehensive history of the 30 years preceding World War I. It is a history of policymaking, not just of politics. Bogdanor’s book not only has all the drama of these tumultuous years, but also solid content. 

The Story of Ireland in the British Empire

As stated earlier, the book is comprehensive. It covers developments in England, Wales, Scotland and, of course, Ireland. At the time, Ireland was run by 29 different government departments, each with its own board. They were all supervised by a single non-resident chief secretary for Ireland, usually an English or Scottish MP from the governing party in Westminster. 

By some measures, Ireland did well during this final period of British rule. The amount the British central exchequer spent in Ireland increased more rapidly than the amount of taxes it collected. In 1893, the Irish Administration (run by the British) ran a surplus on its budget and Ireland was making a net contribution to the overall British budget. In contrast, by 1912, this surplus was turned into a deficit of £1.5 million.

This increase in British expenditure on Ireland was for two reasons. First, old age pensions were introduced in 1909 and a number of Irish people qualified for them. Second, the British exchequer compensated landlords for transferring their land to tenants as per legislation passed in 1903. These two measures made Ireland a loss-making entity for the United Kingdom. Before World War I, the UK was actually losing money to keep Ireland in the union.

At the time, Ireland was seemingly doing well politically as well. It was actually overrepresented in the House of Commons, with one MP for every 44,000 voters in contrast to one MP for every 66,000 voters in England. Yet this Irish representation was not worth that much. Ireland was run entirely out of London by the chief secretary through the 29 departments. Irish MPs could only give inputs through the House of Commons and had little say in running their country. Very few MPs rose to become ministers.

Such a situation was increasingly unsatisfactory for most Irish people. It led to a growing demand for “Home Rule,” a movement to secure internal autonomy for Ireland within the British Empire. The Irish wanted their own parliament and government in Dublin. They wanted their ministers to be responsible to their own parliament, not the overstretched chief secretary for Ireland in London. 

The idea of Home Rule was resisted in Britain. It was seen as heralding the beginning of the disintegration of the British Empire. As Lord Salisbury, the prime minister at the beginning of the period, put it: ”If Ireland goes, India will go 50 years later.” He was not far off the mark. Ironically, the 1916-18 Indian Home Rule movement was inspired by Ireland. One of its two main leaders was Annie Besant who had an Irish connection. Her father was an Englishman who got his medical degree at Trinity College, Dublin and her mother was an Irish Catholic. 

As Bogdonar describes, forces in Britain ranged against Home Rule were substantial and serious. This is why it is truly remarkable that Home Rule for Ireland passed into law, without a shot being fired, in September 1914. This peaceful achievement by Irish politicians in Westminster, like John Redmond, John Dillon and Joe Devlin, was largely ignored by the Irish government at the beginning of the “Decade of Centenaries.” This commemoration “of the centenaries of a number of seminal events in modern Irish history” ignored this peaceful achievement and favored the nationalism of physical force.

In 1909, the Liberal government led by Herbert Henry Asquith depended on the Irish Party and the Labour Party to stay in office. Lloyd George, the charismatic chancellor of the exchequer, introduced a radical budget that set out deliberately to raise money to “wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness.” The House of Lords rejected this famous “People’s Budget,” creating a constitutional crisis. In response the Liberal government introduced a parliamentary bill to curb the power of the House of Lords to veto legislation passed in the House of Commons. It was brinkmanship, but it worked. 

If the House of Lords had not rejected the budget in the first place, Irish Home Rule might have been postponed. The Liberal government had only a half-hearted commitment to Irish Home Rule but events forced its hand. In April 1912, the Liberal government introduced the third Home Rule bill in Westminster, which was passed as the Government of Ireland Act 1914 and history was made.

Run up to World War I

Bogdanor’s book also deals with the events leading to World War I. In the 1890s, Chamberlain had favored a Teutonic (Protestant) alliance between the UK, the US and Germany. However, the majority opinion in Britain preferred closer relations with France and Russia.

The British cabinet seems to have had little discussion of foreign and defense policy in the years before the war. It placed an exaggerated reliance on the Royal Navy and neglected the British Army. In general, the cabinet had no agenda, no regular meetings and no minutes in this period. Only Germany’s August 1914 invasion of Belgium enabled Britain to enter the war as a united country on the allied side. If Germany had avoided Belgium, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, as it was known then, would have been deeply split on whether to support France militarily, or stay out of the war.

When it comes to the tricky question of war guilt, it was the belligerent and irresponsible demands of Austria on Serbia that dragged Russia and Germany into war with one another. In retrospect, the war seems unnecessary and avoidable. At the time, a chain of events kicked off a tragic four years of bloodshed.

I strongly recommend this book. The reader will find that many of the problems we sense as being unique to our era were around at the time of my grandparents as well.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post A Full View of Britain and Ireland a Century Ago appeared first on Fair Observer.

It provides current insights into the vulnerabilities of various groups in Poland’s history. It is an area witnessing Europe’s most severe and prolonged war conditions since 1945.

Former Polish territory now part of Ukraine

Some centuries ago, Kyiv, Lviv, and Kherson (now Ukraine) were all part of the then Polish/ Lithuanian Commonwealth. Many western European countries, such as France, were absolute monarchies at the time. But the Polish/Lithuanian Commonwealth was different. A limited monarchy existed, in which notable Poles or Lithuanians, or members of the royal family of another European country, elected the king. 

For example, James, the Duke of York, who became King James the Second of Britain and Ireland, was considered a candidate to be king of Poland earlier in his career. The Commonwealth had no permanent state apparatus, and big decisions required unanimous agreement in the elected Sejm. 

Breakdown in Consensus, Enlightenment Ideas and Suing Germany

This veto system worked well as long as there was a broad consensus among the Polish and Lithuanian peoples. Consensus breakdown often resulted in the exploitation of veto power by outside powers and ambitious Poles seeking to paralyze the state. This occurrence led to the carving up of Poland by Russia, Austria and Prussia.

The Commonwealth was designed to limit state power, in line with ideas that were popular during the Enlightenment of the 18th century. These ideas of a limited state still find favor among some conservative Republicans in the US. The current Polish government, which has tried to limit the independence of the Polish judiciary recently, is pursuing policies contrary to Polish democratic and constitutional traditions.

It is shocking that Poland, who joined Germany as a fellow member of the EU in 2004, wants to sue Germany for damages caused by the invasion and occupation of Poland in World War II. This war was over well before the EU was formed. If Poland was serious about this claim, it should have made it a requirement of Polish membership in the EU.

 Now, too late, it is exploiting historical grievances to whip up nationalistic sentiment in Poland, which is destructive. If we go down this road, the EU will only survive briefly.

[Conner Tighe edited this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What You Need to Know About Poland’s Tortured Past appeared first on Fair Observer.

Governments have made commitments to reach net zero emissions by 2050. To achieve these ambitious goals, we will need to allocate spending differently. Currently, the economy is weighted in favor of current spending with consumer goods, healthcare, pensions and travel taking most of the money. We will have to lower this spending and put more money into long-term capital spending such as electricity generation using renewable energy, updating—and, where needed, even changing—the electricity grid and improving public transport.

The nations of our world are concerned about such lavish long-term capital expenditure.  Yet we will inevitably have to invest heavily in flood and drought prevention schemes to adapt to the effects of climate change. The level of greenhouse gasses such as CO2 and methane is already so high that climate change is baked into our future.

Why Joe Biden’s Green Energy Policy is Dead

This capital spending to adapt to climate change—adaptation spending—will inevitably mean lower current spending. In an era of higher interest rates, governments will have to follow a more restrictive fiscal policy. They will have to sacrifice some programs to release funds for climate-related policies. Politicians and leaders will have to prepare public opinion for such policies.

New Mines and More Controversies

While we are familiar with the environmental costs caused by burning coal, extracting oil and drilling for natural gas, we are less aware of the environmental costs arising from renewable energy systems. Clean energy is often not as clean or green as it is made out to be.

For example, an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources in its construction than a gas-burning plant producing the same amount of electricity. By 2040, solar and wind power generation will increase demand for some minerals by 300% to 700%. Copper supplies would need to double if we are to meet our targets for substituting electricity for hydrocarbon-based fuels. Furthermore, a typical electric car battery requires 8 kilograms (kg) of lithium, 35 kg of nickel, 20 kg of manganese and 14 kg of cobalt. Mining causes immense environmental damage. Therefore, to exploit these minerals sustainably, require careful deep-sea and on-land mining processes. 

Much of the mining will likely be done in poorer countries. It may damage local water supplies and interfere with local agriculture, warranting compensation for local people. The location of this mining—especially open cast—is very controversial. Legal, political, and personal objections to mining are inevitable, even in poor countries. Because of these objections, opening mines may take twice as long as expected. These delays will add to costs. They will have to be financed by somebody. 

The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects global oil demand to reach a record high in 2023. At the same time, Russia has cut its oil supply and OPEC+ has not raised production levels to meet the shortfall. It is clear that there will be supply shortages and volatile prices for energy and gas.

Meeting this demand with renewable energy instead of fossil fuels  is a good thing. Reducing energy consumption is even better. After all, generating more green energy takes a toll on the environment. The time has come to restrict conspicuous energy consumption. That might be a sensible way forward.[Bella Bible edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Clean Energy Not So Clean, Time to Restrict Consumption Too appeared first on Fair Observer.

This is an alarming statement from a man who is not given to alarming statements. While this is a war of aggression by Russia, the aggression was  driven, at least in part, by fear. Russia feared being encircled by NATO and EU countries that were hostile to it. Yet these same countries had clamored to join NATO because of their fear of Russia. For its part, the US pushed the expansion of NATO into central Europe because it feared a China-Russia alliance dominating the Eurasian landmass. 

My direct experience is that security issues dominate diplomatic thinking in Washington, DC,  in a way that they do not dominate thinking in Brussels. The loss of life that has already taken place as a result of the Russian invasion is enormous. The physical infrastructure destroyed by Russian weapons will take 10 years, and tens of billions of euros, to rebuild.

There are eight million Ukrainian refugees in EU countries, and this number is bound to increase. The EU is directly helping a country at war, something it never did before in its 70-year history.

Europe is unprepared for a wider war

The war could widen. The possibility of Russian forces using Belarus as a jumping-off point for a new front in Western Ukraine is being discussed. This would bring the fighting much closer to NATO members: Poland and Lithuania. If either of them are dragged into conflict, it could set off a chain reaction dragging all of Europe into war.

The preparedness of EU countries for such a wider war is not great. These countries have significant and well equipped forces, but getting them to the front, where they would be needed, is something for which Europeans rely on America. Airlift capacity is a major European weakness. Since World War II, the road and rail systems in Europe have not been designed for the swift transportation of heavy military equipment. 

Furthermore, there is a lot of duplication and waste in European armies. They have 170 different (national) weapons systems, In contrast, the US, with a much bigger military, has only 30 different systems.

Meanwhile, the weapons that have been supplied to Ukraine from European stocks have not entirely been replaced. Money has been allocated but orders have not been placed. In case of all-out war, Europe could be caught unawares.

Europe is also suffering deeply from inflation. The dramatic increase in food prices, and in the price of inputs necessary to produce food — fertilizer and energy — is a direct consequence of the Russian invasion. Over 10% of the world population is already facing hunger. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that the number of people facing “acute hunger” has multiplied 2.6 times since 2019. The spike in global hunger is affecting poorer countries more severely but Europe is suffering too.

Wheat prices will stay at 250 euros per tonne for the next two years, as against an average of  175 euros per tonne over the previous 20 years. The price increase for cereals since 2004 has been almost twice that for meat and dairy. The world is facing an escalating, war-driven, food price crisis.

What can Europe do to reduce hunger and boost peace?

When it comes to fighting food insecurity, I have four suggestions for the EU:

1. Reconsider the policy of subsidizing fallow arable land. About six million hectares of land are lying fallow right now. These could be used to grow crops.
2. Do not encourage use of land that could grow food to produce biofuels. About nine million hectares are now being used to produce biofuels. Instead, farmers could grow crops.
3. Encourage farming systems that maximize the efficient conversion of sunlight into consumable calories.
4. Discourage food waste. An estimated 17% of food is wasted, mostly by households because of  over purchasing and poor meal planning.

On the conflict front, Europe must make a concerted effort to identify the fears that are fanning the warlike atmosphere today. The fears of all parties have to be taken into account. We must remember that, while it may be impossible to do business with the current regime in Moscow, Russia will still exist when the war is over. The West needs to think through the postwar relationship it could have with a Russia that was willing to respect the territorial integrity of all its neighbors. That could boost the prospects of peace.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Charles Flanagan was the Irish foreign minister at the time of the 2016 Brexit referendum. He reacted to the referendum result with commendable speed and thoroughness. Flanagan briefed his counterparts in all the 26 remaining EU states about Ireland’s concerns. In particular, he argued for keeping the border open between the two parts of the island — Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland — and preserving the former’s position as a full member of the EU Single Market. This laid the foundation for the consistent support Ireland has had for its position from all the EU institutions.

Ditching the Northern Ireland Protocol is unConservative and May Break the UK

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If Flanagan emerges with credit, Keir Starmer does not. In her final days as prime minister, Theresa May tried to assemble a majority in the House of Commons for a deal that would have kept the entire UK in the EU Customs Union. This would have mitigated or removed the need for customs posts either at ports or land borders. To push this deal through, May needed the support of the opposition Labour Party. Collins observes that “Corbyn was relatively open to the deal, but Starmer, who was in theory strongly pro-EU, raised obstacles at every turn.”

This deal represented the last chance of a soft Brexit. For Starmer, defeating the Tories took a higher priority than preserving good international relations with the EU and Ireland. This episode does not bolster confidence in the potential Labour government in Westminster.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post A Book on Brexit Shakes Confidence in the Labour Party appeared first on Fair Observer.

I have always taken the view that, without Germany, there would  be no EU. Germany provides the financial backstop on which all the EU’s ambitious plans, including the Green Deal, and the recently acquired capacity of the EU to borrow, rest. Without a healthy German economy, and a Germany that is prepared to think of its neighbors as well as of itself, the EU would wither. So, it is important that other EU states demonstrate energy solidarity with Germany during this autumn and winter, when the economic model of the EU’s powerhouse is under particular stress.

In addition to the German economic crisis, the EU is facing other threats that could also become existential. One comes from Poland, and the other from the UK.

Poland’s not-so independent judiciary

In Poland, the courts system there has been politicized, to suit the agenda of the ruling Law and Justice Party. In effect, Polish Courts are rejecting the primacy of EU over Polish law, in disputes around issues that are within the competence of the EU under the treaties. 

Polexit: Is Poland on the Way Out of the EU?

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This principle of the primacy of EU law, to be authoritatively interpreted by the European Court of Justice, is not new. It dates back to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) decisions of 1964 and 1970. By having a single ultimate interpreter of EU law, namely the ECJ, we have been able to create a single market with consistent rules, consistently interpreted, and  more or less consistently applied, across all the 27 countries of the Union.

The Polish government has interfered with the independence of its courts by putting in place a disciplinary tribunal for judges. Some judges,  disliked by the government, were sacked. Such actions encourage a nationalistic and eurosceptic interpretation of the position of Polish law within the EU.

Cases on the interpretation of EU laws, as applied in Poland, are not being referred to the ECJ for authoritative interpretation, as is the normal procedure in most EU countries. Thus, the primacy of EU law in Poland is being slowly eroded. If a big country, like Poland, gets away with this, other countries like Hungary, which is even more eurosceptic, will follow suit, and the EU will begin to decay.

Despite Poland’s undermining of the EU, the country was allotted €36 billion in EU funds in June 2022. The country is yet to dissolve the disciplinary tribunal as required by previous EU decisions. Poland has also not addressed the issue of the primacy of EU law at all.

 In a split vote, the European Commission (EC) led by Ursula von der Leyen  voted to release the funds on the understanding that Poland would meet certain “milestones.” These include the abolition of the disciplinary tribunal but not the affirmation of the primacy of EU law. The EC decision to release funds was influenced by the burden Poland has borne in aiding Ukraine. However, this decision is fundamentally damaging to the EU. The rule of law is one of the EU’s core values for which Ukrainians are sacrificing their lives. It is also a key reason why countries like Ukraine want to join the EU as full members.

For small countries like Ireland, the EU offers a great benefit. Decisions in the EU are made based on clear rules, not raw power. Ireland and other small countries cannot be indifferent to the precedent Poland is setting for the EU. It is also true that Brussels should be conservative in asserting what comes within the legal competence of the EU. Any overreach could be damaging.

British tactics on Brexit

Not only Poland but also the UK is challenging the primacy of EU law. The UK is also threatening the integrity of the single market. British tactics on Brexit are to blame.

The Risk of a No-Deal Brexit Remains

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Under the Northern Ireland Protocol, Northern Ireland has unfettered access to both the EU and the UK markets. This avoids the need for customs controls on the land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. The UK does not want the ECJ to be the final interpreter of EU rules, as applied in Northern Ireland. The UK also wants Northern Ireland exempted from EU state aid and value added tax (VAT) rules. Such a precedent would undermine the level playing field essential to the EU single market. 

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss seems to be willing to provoke a major crisis on this matter. Truss seems to believe that, if she stands strong, the EU will cave in. Truss represents a deeper problem. The UK has never taken the EU seriously and has a patronizing attitude towards it.

The EU should not wait until the UK has started to flout the Northern Ireland Protocol  to propose trade sanctions. Once the protocol disapplication bill reaches the committee stage in the House of Lords, the EC should publish the full list of its proposed trade sanctions on the UK. These sanctions should be imposed on the day the UK legislation is implemented. Such advance notice by the EU would allow cooler heads to assert themselves in London.

I still have no doubt that practical compromises can be reached on the implementation of the protocol. In July,  the Europe Committee of the House of Lords published a very interesting report, with the evidence it received, on the protocol. The report concluded that the protocol had adversely affected the retail sector but advantaged manufacturing investment in Northern Ireland.

I drew two conclusions from the report and its underlying evidence.

First, the UK will lose its court cases governed by EU law for flouting the Northern Ireland Protocol. Under the Vienna Law on Treaties, the UK would have to show it had been suffering from “coercion” or “improper process” when it signed and ratified the protocol. Given that the UK has been negotiating with the EU for over a year, the UK would not be able to claim either ground to wriggle out of the protocol.

The EU and the US must collaborate on Northern Ireland

Second, the best way to find solutions to practical problems would involve officials of the UK and the EU meeting key people from Northern Ireland from various sectors of the economy.  Sadly, this cumbersome format is not conducive to constructive thinking or to problem solving.

Michael Gove, a key Brexiteer, suggested a joint EU-UK consultative group of officials who could talk to each other and with relevant economic actors. If Liz Truss wants to keep open the option of a negotiated agreement, as she says she does, she should activate Gove’s proposal. A breakdown in EU-UK negotiations would cause unnecessary trouble at a time of much trouble.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The EU Faces Major Challenges This Autumn appeared first on Fair Observer.

The subject was the stated policy of Liz Truss not only to enact but also to implement the legislation that would unilaterally disregard the Northern Ireland Protocol. This is an international treaty that the  UK freely agreed to, signed off on and then ratified through parliament.

From Brexit to Broken Protocol

Now, the UK government is looking to break this protocol on the grounds that this would be a good thing for the Union, i.e. the union of Britain and Northern Ireland. Indeed it is being pressed forward by a  self-described “Conservative” and supposedly “Unionist” party.

My argument to Times Radio listeners was that this radical , and deeply unconservative, attempt to break a solemn treaty , is actually damaging to the Union, for the following reasons:

1. It is opposed by a majority in Northern Ireland. A majority there would like changes to the protocol alright , but do not favor such a radical course as Truss is insisting upon. Adopting a course , in defiance of a majority view in Northern Ireland,  politically weakens “unionist” sentiment there. That should be fairly obvious.

How Britain Has Seen Its Place in the World from 1815 to 1955

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2. Northern Ireland has prospered disproportionately under the protocol. Before this treaty, Northern Ireland was one of the worst performing regions of the UK. Now, it has become the second best in the country after London.

Prosperity in Northern Ireland, as part of the UK and under the protocol , is objectively good for the Union. While business in Northern Ireland knows this, the “Conservative and Unionist” party in Britain does not seem to care. Incidentally, the more Northern Ireland prospers under the protocol, the less subsidization it will require from London, which would also strengthen the Union.  

3 . Unilaterally ditching the protocol will initiate a a major trade war between the UK, including Northern Ireland, and the EU. Northern Ireland would suffer most and this would be bad for the Union. Liz Truss, a former trade secretary, is bound to know this well. 

This UK-initiated trade war will also weaken the western alliance’s economic and political capacity to support Ukraine. Those who believe in and support democracy will be concerned.

4 . Ditching the Protocol will not restore the pre-protocol economic status quo ante for Northern Ireland. In this period, this region lagged behind the rest of the UK.

Worse Than Pre-Protocol

In fact, the new situation will be much worse than the pre-protocol era for Northern Ireland. This is because its economy will be engulfed by a new duplicative bureaucracy of a kind never seen before.

Long existing links will be broken.

Supply chains will be destroyed.

Expensive investments will be rendered valueless.

The above three things will happen because the ditching of the protocol will allow the UK to impose increasingly different product regulations in Northern Ireland to the ones the region uses at the moment. The current regulations allow Northern Ireland free access to the EU market, the only market in the world to which the region has  unimpeded road access.

The World This Week: A Troubled Marriage in Europe

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The damage will be felt especially severely by Northern Ireland’s dairy sector. One-third of Northern Ireland milk is processed in Ireland, a member of the EU.  There are 5,400 dairy businesses in Northern Ireland and the business generates over $1.75 billion (£1.5 billion pound sterling) every year. This cross-border processing  of Northern Ireland milk will have to stop if  the milk is longer produced to EU standards. This will be massively disruptive .

To get around this problem,  a special supply chain would have to be developed. Farmers could either supply milk to Northern Ireland and the UK or to Ireland and the EU. Currently, they do not have to choose. They supply both markets at the moment.

Thus, massive duplication and additional expense would be imposed on dairy producers in Northern Ireland. Ironically, most of them probably vote for “unionist” parties,  are enterprising people and vital contributors to their neighborhoods. They do not deserve this disruption.

It turns out that ditching  the protocol will not only be bad for the Union, it will be bad for unionists. For all these reasons, Liz Truss’s policy is not only unConservative, it is also anti Unionist.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Ditching the Northern Ireland Protocol is unConservative and May Break the UK appeared first on Fair Observer.

If a similar crisis arose now, is there a basis on which Russia and the US could even talk to one another to defuse it?

Ambiguity, the enemy of peace

Tensions between Russia and the US might be high right now but the US-China confrontation is more serious. It will be far more long lasting.

China has dramatically increased its military spending. Confronting China is almost the only thing on which Democrats and Republicans in the US can agree. The US is pledged to support Taiwan remaining politically separate from China, even though it is part of China, and the US is theoretically prepared to go to war to defend that position.

Reality is more complicated. The US position is ambiguous and so is the Chinese position.

Ambiguity is often the enemy of peace. World War I arose from ambiguity in the pledges that the powers had given to one another in the event of attack. If the pledges had been clearer, the risks might not have been taken.

Inflation, the enemy of peace too

Inflation, and an artificially induced recession  to cure it, are increasingly expected. Central banks will use higher interest rates as the main tool to fight inflation. The political effects of this could be very serious. Public opinion is unprepared for increased interest rates and the ensuing hardships will not be evenly spread. As the adage goes, inflation hits everybody, though not equally.

High interest rates are even more selective. They hit states who have overborrowed, such as Greece and Italy hardest. They also cause unemployment, which hits people with marginal jobs hardest. Those in secure employment with  savings or even low borrowings  are less affected. Inflation led to high interest rates in the 1980s, which led to political tensions. Such tensions are back.

Some posit the idea that we should tackle inflation by extra state spending. This can only be paid for either by increasing taxation now or by borrowing, which increases taxes for our children and grandchildren. This does not seem sensible to me. Yet everyone is advocating it.

The current inflationary surge has come from a global supply side shock. It has made countries that import energy and food poorer. Attempting to redistribute this poverty through state action raises expectations that cannot be fulfilled. It will inevitably damage democracy. Government spending increases demand, which fuels inflation. The cure for controlling inflation is Increasing supply but that is not in the gift of any western government.

It is important that voters understand the gravity of the problems we are facing. Populism confuses facts with emotion. Anger is not a policy. Blame is not a policy either. Instead of acting rashly, we need to think things through carefully and choose sound economic policies.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post We are Living in an Increasingly Dangerous World… appeared first on Fair Observer.

The Corrib field is running out and our dependence on the UK for natural gas supplies is estimated to rise from 53% today to 90% in 2030. The electricity interconnector with France will not come on stream until 2027. Depending on one supplier, the UK, places Ireland in an inherently vulnerable position, especially given the fact that relations between London and Dublin have deteriorated.

We need a short term, as well as a long term solution. Most of the solutions under discussion such as hydrogen, offshore wind and building an LNG Terminal are long term. They will not help us next winter.

The EU-UK Trade Threatens Ireland’s Natural Gas Needs

Currently, about 700,000 homes, mainly in built up areas, use natural gas directly for heating. Furthermore, 50% of our electricity is generated from natural gas. As we know, electricity is vital for agriculture, industry and even services in any economy. The reliability of our power supplies is the number one worry for the multinational firms located in Ireland. Over the years, we have built our successful  and fast-growing economy around these multinationals. Power failures will make multinationals look to other shores and scare away investors.

We need to think hard about natural gas, power and our economy. There was an alarming report in one of the Sunday papers about a risk that Ireland might be cut off from natural gas supplies from the UK next winter. As per the story, if a gas shortage occurred in the UK, due to the continuing war in Ukraine, under a contingency plan now in preparation, the UK natural gas grid operator would be instructed to stop supplying gas to our fellow EU members: Netherlands and Belgium.

If it is legally possible for the UK to cut off these supplies to Ireland’s fellow EU members, one might assume that it would also be legally feasible for Britain to cut off supplies to Ireland too, citing the newly discovered “doctrine of necessity” it is using to back out of the 2019 Northern Ireland Protocol.

The British Ambassador to Ireland responded that the UK would not do this, and would  “ensure gas supply to Ireland in the event of any emergency.” He was confident the UK would have enough gas for next winter anyway. This assurance is welcome but, given in the context of supply problems arising because of the war, it is in doubt. Naturally, it is an open question whether the British ambassador’s assurance would hold this winter, especially in the event of a Brexit-related trade war breaking out between the EU and the UK.

Such a trade war is likely if the UK goes ahead with its threat of ceasing to operate the Northern Ireland Protocol. On the present parliamentary timetable, a Brexit-related crisis could occur next winter, just as Ireland’s electricity demand peaks. 

I do not believe that the departure of Boris Johnson from 10 Downing Street removes the risk of an EU-UK trade war. His successor will have to court the large radical Brexit element among the Tory grassroots. The EU and Ireland may have a very strong legal case on the Northern Ireland Protocol in international law, but law cases will not heat our homes, or power our farms in winter.

Ireland Needs to Face Crisis Realistically

This potential crisis of natural gas supply is simply accelerating a wider underlying electricity supply problem in Ireland. Even without the war in Ukraine, we already were facing electricity shortages for the winters of 2022-23 to 2025-266, according to the commission for the Regulation of Utilities. In a report last year, well before the war, the commission said we would need two new gas-fired stations, and prolong  the operation of older inefficient gas-fired plants just to maintain electricity supply.

But what happens if we cannot even get the gas, at any price?

The government is not unaware of the problem. By mid-2022, it has promised to produce a strategy statement on the security of energy supplies. It has been working on this since mid 2021. Yet we urgently need a transition plan that will see us through until offshore wind and other renewable sources come onstream in sufficient quantity.

Renewable energy would require substantial investment, which would have to be a strategic instead of a purely commercial decision. The taxpayer may have to fund part of it.

Today, the debate in the media in Ireland seems to be mainly about how to treat the symptoms of inflation. This needs to change. We need to pull together as a people to solve deep-seated problems such as power supplies for the current as well as for future generations.

Every day on Morning Ireland, we have interviews about shortfalls in services. Invariably, the solution proposed by the interviewees is “more resources,” which are to come from government coffers. The interviewees tend to blame the government of the day for all problems and crises with little challenge from the interviewers.

The interviewers rarely ask the interviewees from where the government would get the money required for the measures they propose. They fail to ask the obvious question: Is the money to come from extra borrowing or extra taxation?

The government itself has no money. To fund measures proposed on Morning Ireland, it will have to either tax or borrow. Either option has downsides, which need to be explored when anyone demands more resources. I realize most interviewees could not give a full answer to such questions. Most are not experts in public finance.
Yet asking the question would remind Irish radio listeners that government is about choices, often difficult ones. For example, the Irish government faces a choice between raising pensions for older people and increasing back to school payments for young families. To fund increased expenditure, should the government raise tax? If the government borrows instead of raising taxes, it is choosing the interests of the present generation over a future generation. Is that “social justice”?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Alarm in Ireland About Natural Gas Supplies Next Winter appeared first on Fair Observer.

Hurd has had a distinguished career, which included not only holding the office of the foreign secretary but also of the secretary of state for Northern Ireland. He is an excellent writer who combines historical analysis with vivid sketches of political personalities.

Published in 2009, this book shows how the life experiences and assumptions of successive foreign secretaries influence the content and outcome of diplomatic policies. There is a tension , throughout this long period, between two views of how Britain should conduct itself in its relations with its European neighbors.

The Two Views of Europe

One view was that the UK should seek to create, and participate in a structure of consultation which would help preserve peace in Europe. The best exponent of this approach was an Irishman, originally a member of parliament in the Irish parliament. In 1800, the Acts of Union united the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland (previously in personal union) to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Lord Castlereagh who had begun his political career in Ireland now moved to London, rose to be foreign secretary and helped to ensure that a defeated France was not humiliated in 1815. Arguably his work in the Congress of Vienna and afterwards helped preserve relative peace in Europe until 1914.

While Castlereagh believed in engagement, Lord Palmerston took the view that the UK should be somewhat more isolationist, intervening only to promote liberal causes while avoiding entanglements in Europe. Castlereagh had his supporters and so did Palmerston and, between the two of them, they set the two poles of British foreign policy when it came to Europe.

Forgotten Figures

Hurd shines the light on some figures that are forgotten today or do not get their deserved attention. He highlights the role of Ernest Bevin in helping found NATO, and thereby committing the US to the defense of Europe. Bevin’s efforts are very relevant to events today, and to maintaining the peace in Europe for the last 70 years.

Another figure who gets deserved recognition in Hurd’s book is Austen Chamberlain, the author of the Locarno Pact which reintegrated Germany into Europe and established good relations with its neighbors. This could have kept peace in Europe but for the economic crash and the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Unlike his half brother, Neville, Austen warned of the danger of Hitler before any other British leader, including Winston Churchill.

Decline of Empire and Changing Role of Foreign Secretary

The relative economic power of Britain peaked around 1870 after which it began to decline slowly. But the fact that so many parts of the world were still colored pink on the map as part of the British Empire led some statesmen to overestimate British power and the power of the foreign secretary.

In the earlier periods, the foreign secretary was in-charge of foreign policy. The prime minister supervised the foreign secretary mildly. Today, the prime minister plays a much more central role in foreign policy. Still, personalities matter and the best example of this phenomenon is Anthony Eden. Under Churchill, Eden was a good and methodical foreign secretary. He turned out to be a bad prime minister because he had no strong foreign secretary to restrain him over Suez in 1956.

If the UK overreached in 1956, it is in danger of withdrawing into its shell in 2021. The country is isolating itself in a dangerous way. The UK is conversing with itself, rather than conversing with its neighbors. None of the statesmen chronicled in Hurd’s book would have let that happen.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post How Britain Has Seen Its Place in the World from 1815 to 1955 appeared first on Fair Observer.

 I have lived much of my life in sight of the magnificent spire that is the centerpiece of the college. 

My father told me he had met a man who sat on the cross which is at the very top of the steeple. He enquired how the man had managed this miraculous feat.  The man paused for dramatic effect and then revealed that he had been present when the steeple was being built and the cross was lying on the ground, waiting to be erected. So he sat down on it, so that he would have this tall story to tell for the rest of his life!

Any time I looked at the steeple I thought of my father’s story, but I have to admit I did not give a lot of thought to what was going on in the shadow of this magnificent steeple within the walls of the college.

Professor Michael Mullaney and Father Tom Surlis will give you an outline of their plans for the college. I hope the discussion today among people of many diverse backgrounds and generations can enrich the plans Michael and Tom have.

I would like to say why the work here is so important.

We need priests and religious.

We also need an educated Catholic laity capable of spreading the message of Faith confidently.

The Education of Priests Remains Vital

First, let me say something about the core task of this seminary: the formation of priests. What did Vatican II say  in 1965 about the role of priests? It said their “primary duty is the proclamation of the gospel of God to all,” and, in the words of St Mark’s Gospel, to “go into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature.”

But Vatican II also referred to Catholics as those who “understand or believe little of what they practice” and added that the preaching of the word is needed for the “very administration of the sacraments.” If that was an uphill task in 1965, it is even more so today. Families are going through the motions rather than trying  to understand what Baptism and First Holy Communion for their children are really about.

Vatican II put the Eucharist at the center of everything the Church does. It said, “The Eucharistic Action is the very heartbeat of the congregation of the faithful, over which the priest presides.” The mystery of the Eucharist is central to everything, and that is what makes the education of priests so important, because without priests there can be no Mass. In the words of Vatican II, “priests fulfill their chief duty in the mystery of the Eucharistic Sacrifice”

Building Communities at the Parish Level is Key as in the Early Church

Vatican II also observed: “The office of the pastor is not confined to the care of the faithful as individuals, but is also properly extended to the formation of a genuine Christian Community.”

I think Irish priests do the first of those tasks very well. But, unlike churches in the US,  I fear they do the second task, the formation of genuine Christian communities in their parishes,  less well. Our churches are not even physically designed to encourage people to meet easily after Mass, and to make contacts that help form a “genuine Christian Community”, based and centered on the Eucharist as per the wishes of Vatican II. This is an essential first step towards the involvement of lay people in the work of the Church. Practicing Catholics are a minority in Ireland, and they need to support one another .

The Increasing Responsibilities of Lay Catholics and the Synod

In 1965, Vatican II said that priests should “confidently entrust to the laity duties in the service of the church, allowing them freedom and room for action.” This will be put to the test, 57 years later,  by Irish participation in Synod.

How many sermons have been preached in Irish parishes, explaining what the Synod is about, explaining its opportunities and , of course its limitations? I do not feel that job has really been done adequately in every parish, although I am sure it has been done very well in some.

Moving on from the formation of priests, let me say something about the formation of lay people who will play an increasing role in the Church. As I see it, this college can play a vital part in the moral, spiritual and intellectual life of the Irish people.

Filling a Void in Thinking in Ireland

The college could ask questions that go beyond the temporal and material concerns that occupy most of our waking hours in modern Ireland. It could help people to be comfortable considering deeper questions about life.

For instance, what happens when we die? Is this life all there is? Can we communicate with God? Does he hear us? What constitutes a good life? Does it have meaning beyond doing no harm, and causing as little pain as possible to others and to ourselves? What are the obligations we have to other human beings, to human lives born and soon to be born? How do we best cope with suffering and setbacks in our lives? How do we keep them in proportion in our minds?

Not everyone will answer some of these questions in the same way. Many will never even ask themselves these questions at all, claiming to be agnostic. I take the view that this type of agnosticism is a form of laziness.  It is not to be confused with the residue of doubt that all of us have after we consider these questions, questions to which there is no simple empirical answer.

But if, as a society, we avoid questions like these, we are, in a sense, not living our lives to the full. This college will enable people, lay as well as religious, to become comfortable discussing profound questions, thus helping them to live their lives to the fullest, with all of life’s complications.

There is no doubt Ireland is a very different country now to the one into which I was born in 1947.  There is immensely more material wealth now than then. There is less deference now than then. There is less of an obsession with respectability, an obsession that was the cause of many abuses in which society implicated the Church and vice versa.

We have lived through rapid change, a change in what people regard as more or less important. In other words, we have lived through a change in values. Laity and priests can respond to this change either by taking refuge in a past that never really existed, or, alternatively, by just chugging along optimistically and ignoring unpalatable trends, hoping that it will all  turn out alright in the end.

In a recent address to priests, The Pope took a very different view.  He said we should instead “cast out into the deep” as per the words of St Luke’s Gospel, trusting in our God-given discernment to find the right path. Helping a new generation of Irish people, lay and religious, to find the right path, to learn from mistakes, and to correct their course when necessary will be the task this college will undertake through the priests and laity it educates.

The Limitations of Individualism

In 21^st century Ireland, there is a much stronger emphasis than before, on the rights of each individual. These rights are growing in range and scope, and are being litigated through politics and the courts. But the emphasis is heavily on rights, and on the individuals who are to enjoy those rights, rather than on the community as a whole, on shared responsibilities, or on the common good.

Social media has also facilitated the pursuit of celebrity, a desire for personal recognition.  This is sometimes accompanied by a desire not to be judged oneself, but to be free to judge others harshly, hastily, and anonymously. “Taking offense” can become a weapon in our culture wars. Feelings can be elevated, above thought, and above careful objective reflection.

The banal truth is that for every right, there must always be a concomitant responsibility. On whose shoulders does the responsibility rest? On the state and the taxpayer, on the family, on the local community or on the courts? Finding a formula to answer such questions was one of the goals of Catholic Social Thinking, which will no doubt be part of the academic activity in this college in the years ahead.

The best antidote to the problems of excessive individualism is a well developed values system. By this I mean a way of evaluating what is more important, and what is less important — without dismissing anything as unimportant. That requires judgment, and we must not be afraid to judge.

It is important to remember that Catholic Social thinking is social. It is about society, rather than just about the individual, and not just about the individual’s desire for self esteem and recognition. Our Church has always emphasized the importance of community, community among believers and community with wider society.

The fact that Ireland has a strong spirit of organized volunteerism still today is due, in no small measure, to the heritage of voluntary organizations formed by, and around, the  Catholic Church. That heritage must be preserved and enhanced. I have no doubt Maynooth, through its programs of part and full time education for lay people will contribute greatly to this.

The college will be continuing, as I said before, its vital core responsibility of educating the priests and the religious laity of the future.  As I have said, It will be preparing priests to do their work in a very different world to the one that priests ordained in the 1960’s faced.

There will be radically fewer priests, fewer people going to Mass, and a much more crowded and unsympathetic communications space through which the Church can communicate its message. As far as Catholicism is concerned, Ireland has become a mission territory.

New Skill Sets for Priests

In the past, the priest could do much of the work himself. In the future, he will have to work increasingly through lay people, most of them unpaid.  The skill set of a priest of the 2030s will center on motivating others to do the work, rather than doing it all himself.

Motivating and sustaining volunteers is a skilled and demanding job, in which the priests and the religious laity of the future must become expert practitioners. The priest of the future will have to share power, while at the same time, ensuring that the essential doctrines of the church are accurately conveyed.

Indeed, education in the doctrines of the church will become more and more important . This is because we live in a world in which people of faith want to be listened to but also crave clear answers.  There is a real tension between the desire to be heard, and the desire to be led. And it is a tension that will be expressed in the Synod. Faith and reason must sit together in the Synod.

In the past, we may have become used to having clear answers provided for us by church teaching. For some of us, controversy between leading church figures is troubling, even upsetting. We want a clear line we can follow, not a cacophony. That is a feature of politics too, and the church can learn from politics. Parties with too many competing messages do not do well in elections.

And yet we know, from daily life as well as from Scripture, that some situations are hard to fit within a single line of thinking. We need an educated and tolerant laity, educated and tolerant priests, who are willing, as the Pope said, to “cast out into the deep” and have confidence in themselves.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Education of Priests and the Future of the Catholic Church in Ireland appeared first on Fair Observer.

The United Nations Charter established the principles of the inviolability of borders, respect for the territorial integrity of states and the prohibition of the use of force. When Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in 1991, its borders were formally guaranteed by Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Now, one of those guarantors is deliberately breaching those borders — for a second time.

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The Helsinki Conference of 1975 reaffirmed the respect of borders in Europe, and it gave birth to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which Russia is a member of. Its charter confirms the above-mentioned UN principles. The Helsinki Final Act goes on to say: “They [states] also have the right to belong or not to belong to international organizations, to be party or not to bilateral or multilateral treaties including the right to be party or not to treaties of alliance.” The Russian pretext for war — to stop Ukraine from joining NATO and the European Union — is a direct contradiction of this Helsinki principle.

Many, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, hoped the conflict would be a short one. Yet it looks increasingly like becoming a long war of attrition, much like World War I, where most of the deaths were caused by missiles and shells falling for the sky. This sort of conflict can grind on for months and even years until all is ruined.

The Impact Beyond Ukraine

The devastation will be felt far from Ukraine. Between them both, Ukraine and Russia grow 25% of the wheat traded in the world. Around 12% of all calories consumed around the globe derive from crops grown in Russia and Ukraine. It is impossible to sow and harvest crops on a battlefield. Indeed, both belligerent nations are likely to keep any crops they can grow for the use of their own beleaguered people.

The effect of this on bread prices will be dramatic. Some 75% of all the wheat consumed in Turkey and 70% in Egypt comes from Russia or Ukraine. Israel and Tunisia are also dependent on them for half of their supplies from the same sources. We can expect bread riots and renewed political instability in these countries.

The effect of the war will be increased social tensions everywhere. The higher fuel and food prices that are flowing directly from the conflict will affect poorer families much more than richer ones as these items are a bigger share of the weekly budget in low-income households. They will also hit rural households much harder because people have to rely on a private car to obtain the necessities of life.

The cost of replacement motor vehicles will rise because of shortages of minerals like aluminum, titanium, palladium and nickel, of which Russia is a major supplier. This will hit Germany’s car industry hard. Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Finland will be disproportionately hit by the loss of Russian markets for their exports.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — creating a land-based route for Chinese exports to Western Europe — is being radically disrupted by a war that cuts right across the BRI’s road westward, and whose effects are being felt all the way from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The continuance of this war is not in China’s interests.

The Possible Way to Peace in Ukraine

The longer the conflict goes on, the more the sanctions on Russia will begin to sap its war-making capacity. Supplies of missiles and shells will become progressively harder to pay for. Those supplying weaponry to Ukraine have deeper pockets. This is the significance of Russia’s overtures to China.

These overtures are an opportunity. China has an incentive to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, and so does Turkey. Of course, timing will be crucial. But the ingredients of such a deal, where there is no trust at all between the parties, are much harder to describe.

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Ukraine could perhaps find a formula to give up Crimea, but it can hardly concede an inch in eastern Ukraine. Russian-language rights in Ukraine could be guaranteed, but what has Russia to offer in return? Perhaps reparations for the physical damage that the Russians have done to Ukraine’s infrastructure. Ukraine could join the EU but not NATO, with Russia’s encouragement, which would be a major U-turn for Moscow.

None of these compromises are palatable, but they are preferable to a war of attrition that could go on for years until all the participants are exhausted or dead.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is Peace Possible in Ukraine? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Popular opinions about history frequently involve mythologizing certain events and oversimplifying the choices that were available to decision-makers at the time. For example, Larkin robustly challenges the popular view, endorsed in a recent book by historian Diarmaid Ferriter, that the border on the island was “imposed” on Ireland against its will by the British in 1920.

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Larkin points out that John Redmond and Edward Carson had accepted some form of partition in principle in 1914 and again in negotiations after the Easter Rising in late 1916. So too did the majority of TDs (members of the Dail), who had been elected under a Sinn Fein banner, when they accepted the treaty of 1921 by a vote in the Dail. 

On each occasion, the Irish leaders in question shrank from the prospect of a prolonged and bitter sectarian war — and even more deaths — that would have been necessary to impose a united Ireland on a resisting unionist population. They were realists, facing their unpleasant responsibilities, and realists are rarely suitable subjects for romantic historical commemorations. 

We are reminded of this by recent events, and I am not sure much has changed. There is still a widespread view that unionists will cease to be unionist once there is a border poll on the island of Ireland. 

As Larkin sees it, the role of the historian is to debunk myths about the past. The historian’s task is to recognize that nothing that happened in the past was necessarily inevitable.  History is the result of an accumulation of a series of individual decisions, each one of which could have been different. Politicians and citizens are — and always were — the shapers of their own destiny within the constraints that existed at the time.

So, the study of history and the well-chosen commemoration of past events should enable us — by learning from the consequences of past decisions — to make better choices in the future. It should encourage the taking of responsibility, rather than undue submission to victimhood, nostalgia or the blaming of others.

Diving In

Larkin’s book covers many other topics. These include the contrast between the ideologies that inspired the 1798 and 1848 rebellions, the successes and failures of the Irish Parliamentary Party, and the varying attitudes of the Catholic hierarchy to political violence. It also explores the appropriation of the religious feast of Easter by the faction of the Irish Republican Brotherhood that launched the Rising, including through the use of religious imagery and notions of blood sacrifice in the proclamation of the Irish republic. 

Even to this day in secular Ireland, the 1916 Rising is remembered annually on Easter Sunday, whenever that falls under the Christian calendar, rather than on April 24, which is the actual anniversary. This purely secular commemoration should probably not be conflated with the resurrection of Christ. Each should be recalled by modern Ireland on their own merits.

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Larkin believes democracy should infuse commemoration, so the foundational event of this state should be recognized as the anniversary of the meeting of the duly elected First Dail in 1919. This was a democratically sanctioned event, whereas the Rising of 1916 was not.

Felix Larkin’s book deserves to be widely read. It gives a very personal perspective and offers insights that will help all residents of the island of Ireland — whatever their allegiance — to shape a peaceful future, free of grievance and myth.

Larkin is a former senior official in the Department of Finance and later in the National Treasury Management Agency. He has also been a historian writing about many topics, most notably the history of Irish newspapers, something he first took up as a graduate student as far back as 1971. His work on newspapers has given him a unique window into contemporary Irish public opinion over two centuries.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Myths About History Can Lead to Future Errors appeared first on Fair Observer.

It shows that efforts from the outside to topple regimes and replace them with friendlier ones are more difficult than anyone thought 20 years ago, when NATO forces first overthrew the Taliban regime in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The aim of capturing Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, which was being harbored by the Taliban, was not achieved until much later in 2011. Even his attempted arrest and subsequent death took place in Pakistan — an ostensible ally of the United States — not Afghanistan. 

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The end of the US-led intervention in Afghanistan has lessons for those who might wish to undertake similar exercises in Somalia, Libya, Syria, Cuba, Mali or Venezuela. The objectives need to be clear and limited. Local support must be genuine. If one is seeking out terrorist organizations or individuals, an invasion is not the best way of achieving extradition. Nation-building is best done by locals.

Existing regimes may be oppressive or corrupt, but if they are homegrown and have been developed organically from local roots, they survive better than anything — however enlightened — introduced from outside. Foreign boots on the ground and targeted bombings have limited effectiveness against networks of fanatics or mobile guerrillas. Western countries will now need to reassess their military spending priorities in light of the lessons from military interventions in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.

With Afghanistan, it is the US and NATO that have the hardest lessons to learn. But if China were to attempt a similar exercise in nation-building from the outside — say, in Taiwan — it would have the same experience. The fact that Beijing has had to adopt such extreme measures in Xinjiang to integrate that province into the Chinese social system is a sign of weakness rather than strength. 

Afghanistan is an ethnically diverse country that, despite its diversity and disunity, has been able to resist rule from Britain, the Soviet Union and now the US and NATO. Religion was a unifying factor in an otherwise divided country. It seems the Taliban have been more effective in building an ethnically diverse coalition than the previous Afghan government. But it is not yet clear whether the Taliban will be able to hold that coalition together.

It does seem that the Taliban have, in the past, been able to impose a degree of order in Afghan society and been able to punish corruption. Between 1996 and 2001, the Taliban created a form of order in a brutal and misogynistic way. Order is something the outgoing government in Kabul could not provide, even with generous outside help. After all, order is a prerequisite for any form of stable existence. Without order, there can be no rule of law and no democracy. Coupled with that, civil society breaks down. This applies in the West as much as it does in Central Asia and South Asia.

Order is created by a combination of three essentials: loyalty, acquiescence and fear. All three elements are needed to some extent. Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president between 2001 and 2014, could not command these three elements. It remains to be seen whether the Taliban will do any better.

Will There Be a Change in US Strategy? 

It is hard to assess the effect the Afghan debacle will have on the United States, which has by far the most elaborate and expensive military forces in the world. There is a strong temptation to turn inward and reduce commitments to the defense of other countries, including European ones. From 1783 until 1941, the US tended to remain neutral and rely on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for protection against its enemies.  

The countries of the European Union will also need to work out what their practical defense priorities are in light of the events in Afghanistan and other recent experiences. This is a political task of great difficulty because the 27 member states have very different views and geographic imperatives.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What the World Can Learn From the Events in Afghanistan appeared first on Fair Observer.

This distrust arose because the implementation of the Ireland and Northern Ireland Protocol of the withdrawal agreement — the treaty that took the UK out of the EU — had been unilaterally changed by the British government. If a party to an international agreement takes it upon itself to unilaterally alter a deal, the whole basis of international agreements with that party disappears.

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The matters in dispute between the UK and the EU — the protocol and COVID-19 vaccines — remain unresolved. The European Union is taking the United Kingdom to court over the protocol, but the court is unlikely to decide anything before the new deadline of April 30.

In the normal course of events, the TCA between the UK and the EU would be discussed in the relevant committee of the European Parliament, before coming to the plenary session of Parliament for ratification. The next meeting of the Committee on International Trade is due to take place on April 14-15, and the agenda for the meeting has been published. It includes a discussion on the enforcement of trade agreements, the general system of preferences and, significantly, trade-related aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It makes no mention of the TCA with the UK.

Trade-related aspects of the pandemic will inevitably include a discussion on vaccine protectionism, which is a highly contentious issue between the EU and the UK that has poisoned relations and led to bitter commentary in the media. The fact that the committee has not included a discussion of the TCA with the UK on its agenda for what may well be the only meeting it will have before the April deadline is potentially very significant.

Ratifying the Trade Deal

The TCA is a 1,246-page document, and its contents, if ratified, will take precedence over EU law. To ratify such an agreement without proper scrutiny in the relevant committees could be seen as a dereliction of the European Parliament’s responsibility of scrutiny. We should not forget the scrutiny that was applied to the much more modest EU trade agreement with Canada. The same goes for the deal with Mercosur states (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay).

Furthermore, the TCA would, if ratified, set up a network of committees to oversee its implementation. These will meet in private and their work will diminish the ongoing oversight by the European Parliament of a host of issues affecting all 27 EU member states. The TCA also contains a system of dispute-resolution mechanisms that will quickly be overwhelmed by work. The TCA has many items of unfinished business, on which the European Parliament will want to express a view. It is hard to see how any of this can be done before the end of April.

The UK government led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson has adopted a deliberately confrontational style in its negotiations with the European Union. The more rows there are, the happier the support base that Johnson is seeking to rally for his Conservative Party. Johnson’s European strategy has always been about electoral politics, not economic performance. This has led to almost complete confusion between the British government and the EU.

If the European Parliament ratifies the TCA without there having been seen to be a satisfactory outcome to the EU-UK negotiations about the Ireland and Northern Ireland Protocol and over the export of vaccines, it will be a political setback for Parliament and a source of immense satisfaction for Johnson.

Yet one should never underestimate the role emotion can play in politics. The entire Brexit saga is a story of repeated triumphs of emotion over reason — and the European Parliament is not immune to this ailment. Boris Johnson could be pushing his luck a bit far this time.

*[A version of this article was posted on John Bruton’s blog.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Risk of a No-Deal Brexit Remains appeared first on Fair Observer.

As the European Union grows, the independence of commissioners from national politics has become ever more important. Some believe the European Commission is too large. From an efficiency point of view, they have a point. But Ireland, among others, has insisted that despite this, each member state should have one of its nationals as a member of the commission at all times.

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But if the one-commissioner-per-member-state rule is to be upheld as the EU enlarges, commissioners from all states — large and small — must demonstrate that they put European interest first and are not subject to the vagaries and passions of politics in their country of origin. In other words, European commissioners must be independent. All member states must be seen to respect this.

This is why I am deeply troubled by the attitude taken by the Irish government, and then by President Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission, to call for Phil Hogan to resign as EU trade commissioner. Both of them failed in their understanding of the European Union and of one of its vital interests — namely the visible independence of members of the European Commission from the politics of any EU state, large or small.

I was genuinely shocked by what happened. Late in the evening of August 22, leaders of the Irish government called on Hogan to “consider his position.” That means to resign. They piled on the pressure thereafter, with a further statement on August 23 containing a political determination that he had broken the government’s quarantine rules to combat the spread of COVID-19 after returning to Ireland from Belgium. Hogan resigned on August 26. That was his decision and one he was entitled to make.

Lessons From This Precedent

But there are profound lessons to be learned by President von der Leyen — and by the European Commission as a whole — as to how and to whom commissioners should be held accountable, and a need to understand what this precedent means for the future political independence of commissioners from their home governments. Separately, there are also questions to be asked about the internal management of and the collegiality of the EC.

I will set out my concerns here, drawing on the words of the EU treaty, which I helped draft as a member of the Convention on the Future of Europe.

On August 26, von der Leyen clearly withdrew any active support from Commissioner Hogan and unquestioningly accepted the line of the Irish government. This influenced him to resign from his position. In this action, I contend that the president did not fulfill all of her responsibilities under the treaties. I know she faced genuine political difficulty. But the treaties were framed to deal with fraught political situations while preserving the independence of the EC and due process.

The European Commission is the guardian of EU treaties and should be seen to defend the rules laid down in the treaties under all circumstances, even when it is politically difficult. Article 245 of the treaty requires member states to respect the independence of commissioners. Ireland is bound by that article, after having ratified it in a referendum. One should note that Article 245 refers to respecting the independence of commissioners individually, not just to the EC as a whole.

It is for the Irish government to say whether publicly demanding a commissioner’s resignation for an alleged breach of Irish rules is compatible with the Irish government’s treaty obligation under Article 245. But it had other options,

If a commissioner is visiting a member state for any reason, he or she is subject to the laws of that state on the same basis as any other citizen. A visiting commissioner would not be above the law, nor would they be below it either. If they breached the law, due process in the courts ought to be applied — as with any citizen. This is what would have happened if the visiting commissioner was from any country other than Ireland and had experienced the difficulties that Hogan did, and due process would have been followed.

The statements of the Irish government, and the unsatisfactory explanations by Hogan, created political problems for von der Leyen. She had to do something, but not necessarily what she did. Yet there were options available to her, which she inexplicably failed to use or consider.

Rules Ignored

Commissioners are subject to a code of conduct. Under that code, there is an ethics committee to determine if its guidelines have been breached. If the matter is urgent, there is provision for a time limit to be set for a report by the committee. Nonetheless, a reference to the ethics committee would have allowed for due process and a calm and fair hearing. More importantly, using this process would also have asserted the independence of the European Commission as an institution.

The code says that it is to be applied “in good faith and with due consideration of the proportionality principle,” and it allows for a reprimand that does not warrant asking the commissioner to resign. Due to the course followed, we will never know if there was any breach of the code at all by Hogan.

President von der Leyen’s failure to use these mechanisms seems to be a serious failure to defend due process and proportionality and to protect the independence of individual commissioners, as was required by the treaty. The EC and the European Parliament should inquire into why she did not do so. There are consequences now for the viability of the code of conduct if it is not to be used in a case like this.

Criteria Not Applied

Was what Phil Hogan did a resigning matter anyway? Article 247 allows for only two grounds for asking a commissioner to resign. These are that he or she is “no longer being able to fulfil the conditions for the performance of [their] duties” or “has been guilty of serious misconduct.” I do not think either condition was met in Hogan’s case.

Hogan would have been fully capable of carrying out his duties while the ethics committee did its work. Instead, his position is now effectively vacant.

Most people I have spoken to do not think the breaches committed by Hogan — while foolish — amounted to “serious misconduct” within the meaning of Article 247. Failure to recollect all the details of a private visit over two weeks, or to issue a sufficient apology quickly enough, may be political failing, but they hardly rise to the level of “serious misconduct.” Any deliberate and knowing breach of quarantine measures should have been dealt with in Irish courts without fuss.

In any event, von der Leyen would have been far wiser to have gotten an objective view on all of this from the ethics committee before allowing Hogan to resign.

Why Did the European Commission Not Meet?

Another issue is the president’s failure to call an EC meeting if she was considering that a commissioner should resign. Under Article 247, it is the EC — not the president alone — that can make a commissioner resign, and even then it must be approved by the European Court of Justice. These safeguards were put in the treaty to protect the independence of the European Commission. They were ignored in this case.

The subsequent weakening of the institutional independence of the commission is very damaging to European integration and to the interests of smaller EU states. This should be of concern to the European Parliament.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Failing to Protect the Independence of the European Commission appeared first on Fair Observer.

There are only around 50 working days left in which to make a broader agreement for a post-Brexit trade deal between the UK and the EU. The consequences of failing to do so for Ireland will be as profound — and perhaps even as long-lasting — as those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A failure to reach a UK-EU agreement would mean a deep rift between the UK and Ireland. It would also mean heightened tensions within Northern Ireland, disruptions to century-old business relations and a succession of high-profile court cases between the EU and the UK dragging on for years.

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Issues on which a deal could have easily been reached in amicable give-and-take negotiations will be used as hostages or leverage on other matters. The economic and political damage would be incalculable. And we must do everything we can to avoid this.

Changing the EU trade commissioner, Phil Hogan, under such circumstances would be dangerous. Trying to change horses in midstream is always difficult. But attempting to do so at the height of a flood — in high winds — would be even more so.

The EU would lose an exceptionally competent trade commissioner when he was never more needed. An Irishman would no longer hold the trade portfolio. The independence of the European Commission, a vital ingredient in the EU’s success, would have been compromised — a huge loss for all smaller EU states.

According to the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, talks between the European Union and the UK, which ended last week, seemed at times to be going “backwards rather than forwards.” The impasse has been reached for three reasons.

The Meaning of Sovereignty

First, the two sides have set themselves incompatible objectives. The European Union wants a wide-ranging “economic partnership” between the UK and the EU, with a “level playing field” for “open and fair” competition. The UK agreed to this objective in the joint political declaration made with the EU at the time of the withdrawal agreement, which was reached in October 2019.

Since then, the UK has held a general election with the ruling Conservative Party winning an overall majority in Parliament, and it has changed its mind. It is now insisting, in the uncompromising words of it chief negotiator, David Frost, on “sovereign control of our own laws, borders, and waters.”

This formula fails to take account of the fact that any agreement the UK might make with the EU (or with anyone else) on standards for goods, services or food items necessarily involves a diminution of sovereign control. Even being in the World Trade Organization (WTO) involves accepting its rulings, which are a diminution of “sovereign control.” This is why US President Donald Trump does not like the WTO and is trying to undermine it.

The 2019 withdrawal agreement from the EU also involves a diminution of sovereign control by Westminster over the laws that will apply in Northern Ireland and thus within the UK. That agreement obliges the UK to apply EU laws on tariffs and standards to goods entering Northern Ireland from Britain — i.e., going from one part of the UK to another.

This obligation is one of the reasons given by a group of UK parliamentarians — including Iain Duncan Smith, David Trimble, Bill Cash, Owen Paterson and Sammy Wilson — for wanting the UK to pull out from the withdrawal agreement, even though most of them voted for it last year.

Sovereignty is a metaphysical concept, not a practical policy. Attempting to apply it literally would make structured and predictable international cooperation between states impossible. That is not understood by many in the Conservative Party.

The Method of Negotiation

Second, the negotiating method has proved challenging. The legal and political timetables do not gel. The UK wants to discuss the legal texts of a possible free trade agreement first and leave the controversial issues — like competition and fisheries — until the endgame in October. But the EU wants serious engagement to start on these sticking points straight away.

Any resolution of these matters will require complex legal drafting, which cannot be left to the last minute. After all, these texts will have to be approved by the European and British Parliaments before the end of 2020. There can be no ambiguities or late-night sloppy drafting.

The problem is that the UK negotiator cannot yet get instructions on the compromises he can make from Boris Johnson, the British prime minister. Johnson is instead preoccupied with combating the spread of the COVID-19 disease, as well as keeping the likes of Duncan Smith and Co. onside. The prime minister is a last-minute type of guy.

Trade Relations With Other Blocs

Third, there is the matter of making provisions for the trade agreements the UK wants to make in the future with other countries, such as the US, Japan and New Zealand. Freedom to make such deals was presented to UK voters as one of the benefits of Brexit.

The underlying problem here is that the UK government has yet to make up its mind on whether it will continue with the European Union’s strict precautionary policy on food safety or adopt the more permissive approach favored by the US. Similar policy choices will have to be made by the UK on chemicals, energy efficiency displays and geographical indicators.

The more the UK diverges from existing EU standards on these issues, the more intrusive the controls on goods coming into Northern Ireland from Britain will have to be, and the more acute the distress will be for Unionist circles in Northern Ireland. Issues that are uncontroversial in themselves will assume vast symbolic significance and threaten peace on the island of Ireland

The UK is likely to be forced to make side deals with the US on issues like hormone-treated beef, genetically modified organisms and chlorinated chicken. The US questions the scientific basis for the existing EU restrictions and has won a WTO case on beef over this. It would probably win on chlorinated chicken, too.

If Britain conceded to the US on hormones and chlorination, this would create control problems at the border between the UK and the EU, wherever that border is in Ireland. Either UK officials would enforce EU rules on hormones and chlorination on the entry of beef or chicken to this island, or there would be a huge international court case.

All this shows that, in the absence of some sort of partnership agreement between the EU and the UK, relations could spiral out of control. Ireland, as well as the European Union, needs its best team on the pitch to ensure that this does not happen.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Negotiating the End of Brexit appeared first on Fair Observer.

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Perhaps it was unrealistic for Barnier to have expected the UK to engage seriously with the trade-offs and concessions that are essential to a long-term trade agreement while Johnson was in the hospital. Brexit is Boris’ big thing. He made it. Other Tory ministers have no leeway to make Brexit decisions without his personal imprimatur. He has purged the Conservative Party of all significant figures who might have advocated a different vision of a post-Brexit trade agreement with the EU.

The point of Barnier’s intervention is that now Johnson is back at work, he will need to give clear strategic leadership to the UK negotiating team. If he fails to do so, we will end up on January 1, 2021, with no post-Brexit deal on future relations and an incipient trade war between the UK and the EU — and Ireland will be on the front line.

The scars left by the COVID-19 pandemic will eventually fade, but those left by a willfully bad Brexit —  whether brought on deliberately or by inattention — may never heal. This is because a bad Brexit will be a deliberate political act, whereas COVID-19 is just a reminder of our shared human vulnerability. 

No Draft Proposal on Future Relations

In 2019, Johnson signed up to an EU withdrawal treaty to allow the UK to leave the union. This legally committed the UK to customs, sanitary, and phytosanitary controls between Britain and Northern Ireland, so as to avoid checks of goods between the north and south on the island of Ireland. So far, Barnier says he has detected no evidence that the UK is making serious preparations to do this. An attempt by the UK to back out of these ratified legal commitments would be seen as a sign of profound bad faith.

Barnier said that negotiating by video link due to the pandemic was “surreal,” but that the deadlines to be met are very real. The first deadline is the end of June. This is the last date at which an extension to the transition period beyond December 31 might be agreed upon by both sides. While the EU would almost certainly agree to this, there is no sign that the UK will. Tory politicians repeatedly say they will not extend.

This tight deadline would be fine if the UK was engaging seriously and purposefully in the talks. But, according to Barnier, the Brits have not yet even produced a full version of a draft agreement that would reflect their expectations of future relations between the UK and the European Union. The EU, on the other hand, produced its full draft weeks ago. Without full texts of the proposals, it is hard to begin real negotiations.

So far, the UK has only produced portions of the proposed treaty. The UK insists that Barnier keep these parts of the draft UK text secret and not share them with the 27 member states of the EU. Giving Barnier texts that he cannot share with those on whose behalf he is negotiating is just wasting his time. It seems that UK negotiators are adopting this strange tactic because they have no clear political direction from their own side. They do not know whether these proposals are even acceptable in the UK.

In the political declaration that accompanied the EU withdrawal deal, Prime Minister Johnson agreed that his government would use its best endeavors to reach an agreement on fisheries by the end of July. This would be vital if the UK fishing industry were to be able to continue to export its surplus fish to the EU. Apparently, there has not been serious engagement from the British side on this matter either.

Level Playing Field

The other issue on which Barnier detected a lack of engagement by the UK was the so-called “level-playing-field” question. The EU wants binding guarantees that the UK will not — through state subsidies or via lax environmental or labor rules — give its exporters an artificial advantage over EU (and Irish) competitors.

This issue is becoming a difficult issue within the EU itself. In response to the COVID-19 economic downturn, some wealthier EU states (like Germany) are giving generous cash/liquidity support to the industries in their own countries. On the other hand, EU states with weaker budgetary positions (Italy, Spain and perhaps even Ireland) cannot compete with this.

It is understandable that temporary help may be given to prevent firms from going bust in the wake of the economic disruption. But what is temporary at the beginning can easily become indefinite, and what is indefinite can become permanent. Subsidies are addictive.

The reason we have a common agricultural policy in the EU is that when the common market was created, nobody wanted rich countries to be able to give their farmers an advantage over farmers in countries whose governments could not afford the same level of help. The same consideration applies to industry. Subsidies should be equal or they should not be given at all.

State aid must be regulated inside the EU if a level playing field is to be preserved. To make a convincing case for a level playing field between the European Union and the UK, the EU side will need to show it is doing so internally. This will be a test for President Ursula von der Leyen as a German commissioner.

Will COVID-19 Hide the Pain of Brexit?

Which way will Johnson turn on the terms of a deal with the EU? It is unlikely he will look for an extension to the transition period beyond the end of this year. He wants a hard Brexit, a clean break as he would misleadingly call it, but he knows it will be very painful. He probably thinks the pain of a hard Brexit — or no agreement at all on future relations — at the end of December will be concealed by the even greater and more immediate pain of the economic slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Brexit will not be blamed for the pain. But if the transition period is postponed until January 2022, the Brexit pain will be much more visible to voters.

The Conservative Party has become the Brexit Party. It is driven by a narrative around reestablishing British identity and is quite insensitive to economic or trade arguments. It wants Brexit done quickly because it fears the British people might change their minds. That is why there is such a mad rush. It is not rational — it is imperative.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Brexit Is Heading for the Cliff Edge appeared first on Fair Observer.

Given that the G20 was founded in order to deal with crises — particularly the global financial crisis of 2007-08 — it is amazing that it has taken the Saudi presidency of the G20 so long to convene a meeting. The Saudis were pressed into doing so by India.

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In 2008, when the G20 first convened, there was a reasonable relationship between the two biggest world powers, the US and China. Gordon Brown of the UK was the chair, and a substantial program of action was agreed and implemented. The financial stability board was set up, and a global set of actions to stabilize banks was agreed and put into motion. China led the way in stimulating its economy through infrastructure spending, and this helped to get the global economy going again. Germany and Europe benefited from this through exports.

Now that lives, not just livelihoods, are at stake, an even more vigorous program of action is needed from the G20. The US and China must stop sniping at one another and start cooperating. Washington and Beijing coming together to work on this global threat would give hope to the world.

When the COVID-19 crisis broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, Japan set a good example that the US might now follow. Japan sent protective equipment to Wuhan, and Japanese MPs donated part of their salaries to the virus containment efforts in China. This was a remarkable gesture in light of the previous public hostility between these countries, which dates back to World War II.

The WHO and Trade

The COVID-19 crisis has revealed how much we all depend on the chronically-underfunded World Health Organization (WHO). In recent budgetary proposals, the White House actually proposed halving the US contribution to the WHO. Instead, all G20 members should agree to double their contributions to the organization.

Trade barriers, many of them recently enforced, are also hindering efforts to save lives. John W.H. Denton, the secretary-general of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, wrote in the Financial Times that “the recent escalation of trade barriers is now wreaking havoc in key medical supply chains.” For example, restrictions on the export of life-saving equipment — including masks, test kits, disinfectants and ventilators — have been introduced by some countries. Global trade in test kits is worth $186 billion and that in disinfectants is around $308 billion.

The Global Trade Alert team in Switzerland says that damaging export bans have been introduced by a number of countries, including Bulgaria, France, India, the UK, South Korea and even by Saudi Arabia itself. In the case of ventilators, export restrictions would be particularly damaging. In Africa, there is no firm that is capable of manufacturing ventilators, while there is only one throughout Latin America. Even the countries that do have manufacturing capacity will have to import some components. Even soap and disinfectants have to be imported by most countries. There are 78 countries that impose tariffs on soap and 23 nations place tariffs on disinfectants. This is crazy under the present circumstances.

The G20 should decide that all barriers to trade in goods, including soap, which the World Customs Organization (WCO) has said is critical to fighting the coronavirus, should be lifted straight away. The European Union should abolish its own export authorization system for ventilators as it will slow down production and cost lives, especially in the poorest countries of the world.

EU Action

The G20 also needs to consider the long-term economic effect of the shutdown in global economic activity. Big countries with big tax bases can protect themselves and their firms. Germany has introduced a huge aid package for German firms. Yet an Italian company that produces the same product as a German one may not receive the same aid as its German competitor, and this sort of issue could destroy the level playing field of the EU single market.

No country derives as much benefit proportionately as Ireland does from the existence of a fair and open single market in the European Union. So, Ireland should back EU coordination of business support to ensure that all firms — whether from big or small countries — can compete fairly. 

The European Central Bank has taken welcome steps to help Italy and other heavily indebted countries affected by the coronavirus pandemic to borrow at reasonable interest rates. But that simply adds to their debts. Collective EU action, financed by collective EU borrowing, in support of particular health-related spending should be undertaken. At the moment, the union can neither raise taxes nor borrow, and that means it is unable to cope with crises like this one.

There are three steps that should be considered. First, there should be an immediate elimination of all tariffs and restrictions on the export or import of goods identified by the WCO as vital to fighting COVID-19. Second, a mutual assistance program to help countries with the greatest shortage of equipment and intensive care beds should be launched. Finally, medical staff who have been tested should be exempt from immigration restrictions to allow them to go where they are needed most.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The G20 Needs to Show Leadership to Fight COVID-19 appeared first on Fair Observer.

There is concern about the impact of populism on rational decision-making in many Western democracies. But there is no agreement on what “populism” means. All politics appeal — to some extent — to people’s self-interest and to their preference for advantages being given to themselves, the area in which they live or a group to which they belong.

The concern is not so much about this form of populism as it is about a populism that seeks to radically overturn the rules of the game by which conventional politics is played out. As the European Union is, above all, a rules-based organization, this form of populism represents a particular threat to the EU.

For example, by proposing in 2016 to leave the EU, British populists sought to change the rules of UK politics — rules that constrained what the United Kingdom could do, so as to protect the country’s relations with its neighbors.

In Poland, populists sought to overthrow the rules of Polish politics by challenging the independence of the national courts. Hungarian populists did something similar by dominating the media and defying EU policies on refugees. America’s populist president is seeking to overturn the rules of international trade by undermining the World Trade Organization and placing new tariffs on imports and withdrawing from nonproliferation and arms control treaties.

Generally, the existing rules that populists want to overturn are portrayed by them as benefiting an “elite” or foreigners, to the disadvantage of “the people.” By overturning these rules, the people are supposed to be allowed to “take back control.”

But there is often no underlying consensus about what to do with the control once it has been taken back. This is most obvious in the case of Brexit. Populists can articulate what they are against, but they generally fail to give equivalent detail on what they are for. If everyone pursues national self-interest, the conflicting national interests will cancel one another out.

Ray Dalio, the founder of the investment firm Bridgewater, has described populism as: “[A] political and social phenomenon that arises from the common man being fed up with 1) wealth and opportunity gaps, 2) perceived cultural threats from those with different values in the country and from outsiders, 3) the ‘establishment elites’ in positions of power, and 4) government not working effectively for them. These sentiments lead that constituency to put strong leaders in power.”

He adds: “Populist leaders are typically confrontational rather than collaborative and exclusive rather than inclusive. As a result, conflicts typically occur between opposing factions (usually the economic and socially left versus the right), both within the country and between countries. These conflicts typically become progressively more forceful in self-reinforcing ways.”

The results of the European elections have revealed some breakthroughs for populists in France, the UK, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland. But they have suffered setbacks in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Denmark and Ireland (Sinn Fein losses). The center has held, but its composition has changed. Greens and liberals have made gains, while classic Christian democrat, social democrat and conservative parties have lost some ground, although they remain dominant.

The biggest difficulties will be in EU relations with the UK and Hungary, where radical populists won large mandates. One has to ask whether the political culture of these countries is such that they belong in the European Union at all.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Avoiding a no-deal Brexit will require radical change in the way Parliament makes decisions. Now that the withdrawal agreement negotiated with the European Union has been rejected twice by the House of Commons, MPs must now turn to discovering what alternative approach might find actual support. Only then can the UK engage meaningfully with the EU.

This process must be completed by April 10, the date of a possible special meeting of the European Council on Brexit. Otherwise, the UK will simply crash out of the EU with no deal on April 12, with dire consequences for all.

So, how might the House of Commons organize itself to make the key decisions, and will the British government facilitate — or deliberately hinder — the process? There have been suggestions that Prime Minister Theresa May might call a general election if support is gathering for a solution she does not like or which might split the Conservative Party irrevocably.

What Can Be Done?

The options for decision-making in the House of Commons have been analyzed in an excellent paper published last week by The Constitution Unit of University College London. One proposed way — for example, by Kenneth Clarke and others — of organizing the question is to offer preferential voting, which is a proportional representation system of choosing between options. This method is already used for choosing the chairs of committees in the House. It would avoid the problems of the yes/no voting system and encourage more sincere voting.

But the choices to be made are complex and contingent on other choices by other people. MPs may find themselves needing to know how their colleagues will vote on other questions before they can decide how to vote on the question that is actually in front of them. To address this problem, The Constitution Unit suggests that two separate ballots might be held. The first ballot would ask MPs to rank preferences (1, 2, 3) between:

i) Moving straight to Brexit on the existing deal without a referendum

ii) Accepting a Brexit deal, but on condition that it is put to the people for approval in a referendum

iii) Ending the Brexit process by revoking Article 50 and staying in the EU on existing terms as a full-voting member (an option that still exists up to April 12)

These options are incompatible with one another, so the result of the ballot would clarify matters. The option that receives the most support would then be the basis for a second ballot. If MPs do not vote in the first ballot to revoke Article 50 and stay in the EU, a second ballot might then ask them to rank different options for a Brexit deal on a preference basis. They would have to mention their order of preference between four options:

a) The prime minister’s current deal, including the Irish backstop and proposed customs arrangements

b) The current withdrawal agreement, including the backstop, with significantly looser customs arrangements (the Canada-style model), which in practice would make the backstop more likely to be brought into effect

c) The current withdrawal agreement alongside significantly closer arrangements (the Norway model or Common Market 2.0), which would in practice make use of the backstop unnecessary

d) A no-deal Brexit

The result of this ballot would establish the wishes of the House of Commons. Obviously, the process would have to be public, so each MP’s ballot paper would need to be published. However, the whole initiative could be completed in a day.

Would May Accept Such a Process?

It would be necessary to have a government in place that would intend to fulfill the preferences of the House in a sincere and constructive way. Only a government can negotiate with the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, not 650 MPs.

Paving the way for a PR-type ballot will be very difficult. The Conservative Party has a deep dislike of the whole idea of PR. Yet PR may be the only way out of its present dilemma.

It is also important that the issue be decided on the basis of free votes, although it has to be recognized that an MP, who is threatened with possible deselection by his/her constituency association, is not entirely free. If Prime Minister May refuses to allow some such system of discerning the will of Parliament, or if she declines to accept the result in a sincere spirit, the question would arise as to whether she should continue in office.

Ultimately, the House of Commons holds the power — and hence the threat — of removing the government from office. Under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, a vote of no-confidence does not immediately result in a general election, but triggers a 14-day period during which a new government can be formed.

There is no necessity that a new prime minister be one of the party leaders; any MP could become prime minister. Instead, it would be crucial for any new prime minister to command the confidence of the House of Commons — beyond the confines of the Conservative Party — to deliver the next stage of the Brexit process.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Can the UK Avoid a No-Deal Brexit? appeared first on Fair Observer.

In the UK, a no-deal Brexit has become increasingly likely. This is because Prime Minister Theresa May has decided her priority is to avoid a split in the Conservative Party.

She has calculated that if she tries to get her withdrawal deal through Parliament with Labour Party support — in return for modifications, such as staying in a customs union or softening her stance on EU immigration — the Conservative Party would break up. May would lose around 50 to 100 MPs and cease to be prime minister. Instead, she is trying to win over individual Labour MPs by promising spending in their constituencies — a desperate tactic that corrupts the political system.

Should, or could, the European Union make concessions that would help out the prime minister? Even if Brussels wanted to make changes to the terms of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, it has no way of knowing if May would have the political authority to get any such modified deal through the House of Commons.

When one contrasts what leading Brexiteers, such as former UK Brexit Secretary David Davis, were saying a few years ago about what might be acceptable with what they are insisting now, it appears that nothing will satisfy them and that every concession will be met by a new demand. It is catharsis they are after, not compromise. This is the point that needs to be addressed by those who are already laying the groundwork for blaming “brinkmanship” by the EU — particularly Ireland — if the UK crashes out of the European Union on March 29.

What guarantee can these critics offer that any conceivable “alternative” to the Irish backstop — an insurance policy to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic — would pass in the House of Commons? These bar-stool critics, and the UK government itself, have so far been shy in coming forward with practical ideas that would get a majority in Westminster and also respect the integrity of the EU single market.

How to Break the Deadlock

One person who has come forward with ideas to break the deadlock is Karl Whelan, a professor of economics at University College Dublin. He says that one of the reasons advanced by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) for rejecting the backstop — namely that it would place a barrier in the way of Northern Irish exports to Britain — is without foundation.

He says that under the backstop, exports originating in Northern Ireland would go through a green channel at Belfast port with no checks or controls. Only goods originating in the Republic of Ireland, or further afield in the EU, would have to go through a red channel, where there might be checks. And, at the same time, Northern Irish exporters would have free access to the EU across the open land border in Ireland. They would have the best of both worlds.

Whelan goes on to suggest that, to get the withdrawal deal approved by the House of Commons, the EU might consider two extra concessions.

First, at some future point after the end of the 21-month transition period, Britain could leave the joint customs union with the EU, on condition that Northern Ireland remained in it and aligned with EU goods regulations. This would deal with the Brexiteer fear that the EU is trying to “trap” Britain in the customs union, which is not the case.

Second, voters in Northern Ireland could test the backstop, but after around five or more years there could be a referendum in which Northern Irish voters could decide to opt out of it. Whelan thinks they would opt to stay in it because they would, over the five years, have experienced the best of both worlds that the backstop gives to the Northern Irish economy.

There are two problems with this idea. The suggested referendum could further deepen the orange/green split, and the very possibility of a referendum would introduce a new element of uncertainty for business in both parts of Ireland. Referendums are risky and influenced by extraneous issues. But the delay inherent in his proposal would allow time for the supposed technological fixes for a hard border on the island of Ireland to be road tested.

That said, his referendum would be far less divisive than an outright border poll on leaving the UK altogether, which could be the case in a no-deal Brexit situation. Opinion polls in Northern Ireland suggest that a majority would opt to stay in the United Kingdom if the country were to remain in the EU. Public opinion there would also be equally split under the backstop, but polls show that the people would spring dramatically against staying in the UK if there is a no-deal Brexit.

Under those circumstances, a border poll on Northern Ireland leaving the UK altogether would be hard to resist under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. According to that agreement, such a poll must take place if a majority in Northern Ireland want it. Brexiteer Unionists in Britain are foolishly playing with fire by their brinkmanship and flirtation with a no deal.

European Customs Association

Another idea for breaking the Brexit deadlock in the UK Parliament has come from the German Ifo Institute in a paper published in January. The proposal would involve dumping the entire EU negotiating approach so far, and instead offering the UK membership of a newly-constituted European customs association, through which the British would have influence on EU trade policy and vice versa. It suggests that Turkey might also be invited to join the association.

This idea might mitigate the “vassal state” objection to the UK joining the EU customs union as a simple rule-taker. But I would question the wisdom, and perhaps the motivation, of bringing forward such a proposal at this very late stage as a possible solution to the crisis. The timing is wrong. It might have been helpful if it had been published in 2017 when Theresa May wrote her Article 50 letter indicating the UK’s intention to withdraw from the EU, but it has little value as a way of averting a no-deal Brexit now.

If the British Parliament eventually accepts the withdrawal treaty, or if it decides to withdraw its Article 50 letter, the Ifo proposal might be considered then. To have any traction, though, it is an idea that would have to come from the UK, not a German think tank.

But the Whelan and Ifo proposals are designed to help the United Kingdom clarify what it wants. The problem is that UK opinion on Brexit has become so polarized that it is hard to see the House of Commons assembling political will to deliver anything except slipping into a chaotic no deal.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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It puzzles many people in Britain that something known as an “Irish backstop” should be at the heart of an increasingly bitter dispute. This is over the deal the UK government has made with the European Union on the terms for Brexit.

Most people understand that when the UK leaves the EU on March 29, the only land boundary between the United Kingdom and the European Union will be the 300-mile-long border in Ireland. Some do understand that if the UK leaves the EU, there will have to be border controls. After all, leaving the union was supposed to be about taking back “control,” and given that countries can only exercise control in their own territory, there is a logical necessity to have controls at the border of a country’s territory.

This is not something made up by the EU to annoy Brits, but is a logical consequence of Brexit, which is, as we all know, something Britons have chosen for themselves and not something imposed on them by the European Union.

The proposed backstop in British Prime Minister Theresa May’s deal with the EU involves the whole of the UK staying in a close customs arrangement with the union. The original idea was that the backstop would be confined to Northern Ireland, but the British government preferred a backstop arrangement that would cover the whole UK, so as to minimize the controls that would otherwise have to be imposed between Britain and Northern Ireland. The object of the entire exercise is to avoid having controls at the 300 crossing points between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Some in Britain think the UK should be free to leave the EU, and that the British and Irish governments should then just decide, between themselves, that they were simply not going to have controls on the Irish border. That would not work because Ireland would still be in the European Union and would be breaking EU rules if it failed to control its portion of the EU land border.

Apart from being illegal, it would be impractical. The UK, once outside the European Union, would immediately go off and try to make trade deals with non-EU countries. These would inevitably involve agreeing to different standards and tariffs on goods coming from these non-EU countries to the ones that the European Union (including Ireland) would be applying to these nations. So, if there were no controls on the Irish border, goods from these non-EU states with which the UK had made its own trade deals could enter the European Union via Northern Ireland, without complying with EU standards or paying EU tariffs.

That would destroy the single market, which is based on common rules and tariffs, made, enforced and interpreted in the same way for all 27 EU members, including the Republic of Ireland.

Outside of the EU, under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, the United Kingdom would also have to impose tariffs on its side of the Irish border — unless it wanted to collect no tariffs at all — on goods coming into the UK from any country in the world. This is because of a WTO rule that says in the absence of a broad trade agreement, a country cannot discriminate between WTO member countries in the rate of tariffs it charges on goods coming from those countries (the most favored nation rule).

So, in the absence of a trade deal with the EU, the UK must charge the same tariffs on Irish goods as it would charge on goods coming from any WTO members, with whom it has no trade deal — which, if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, would be every WTO country. If it attempted to discriminate unilaterally, the UK would be taken to the WTO court by some or all of the WTO countries who would not be getting the same concessions.

The UK is a trading nation. As such, it benefits from a rules-based world trading system. So, it would not be in the UK’s interest to start breaking WTO rules on the day it left the EU, just to solve a problem that is of its own making.

THE TWO ALLEGIANCES IN IRELAND

The other big reason for having an Irish backstop and for avoiding a hard border is about human beings, rather than just about commerce. For the past four centuries, two communities with different allegiances have lived together, geographically intermingled, in the Irish province of Ulster.

One community feels a sense of allegiance to Britain, its monarch, its historic narrative and its flag. The other feels an allegiance to Ireland and identifies itself with different historic narrative and different symbols. The two communities have different religious allegiances too, but the disagreements between them are not primarily about religious matters — they are all about national identity.

For centuries, the contest between these two identities was a zero-sum game. Either the British identity had to win or the Irish identity had to win. That zero-sum approach led to wars, threats of wars or uprisings from the 17^th century all the way up until the late 20^th century. These conflicts caused many casualties in Ireland and in Britain, too.

British and Irish political leaders have, for the last 40 years, been trying to find a different way forward. Rather than a zero-sum game where if one identity won, the other had to lose, these leaders sought to create conditions in which both identities could coexist comfortably together within Northern Ireland, without either of them winning or losing. The aim was to ensure that neither would feel cut off from the focus of their emotional allegiance. The nationalists would not feel cut off from Dublin, and Unionists would not feel cut off from London or the “mainland” as they would call it.

The Belfast Agreement of 1998 achieved this. Crafted between Ireland and the United Kingdom, when both were members of the barrier-free EU, it created structures to have a comfort zone for both communities. This was done through establishing three interlocking structures of cooperation, incorporated in an overarching international treaty, namely: power sharing within Northern Ireland; cooperation between north and south; and cooperation between Dublin and London. On the strength of this agreement, Ireland changed its constitution to remove a territorial claim it had on Northern Ireland.

Now, 20 years later, the UK’s decision to leave the European Union puts these structures at risk because Brexit requires barriers to go up between the UK and Ireland, where previously there was free exchange. This is why, at a meeting in London, long before the referendum in 2016, I described Brexit as an “unfriendly act” by the UK vis-à-vis my country.

The backstop is simply an effort to mitigate the damage. It is a second-best option — and a bad second best at that. The only option that will not damage the structure of peace we have so painstakingly built between Ireland and Britain, and within the island of Ireland, would be for the UK to decide to stay in the EU after all.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why Is There an Irish Backstop? appeared first on Fair Observer.

The worst possible outcome of Brexit for Ireland would be the UK crashing out of the European Union without a deal because Parliament cannot make a decision. The key to avoiding this disaster lies in the hands of the Labour Party.

So far, the focus of discussion in regard to Brexit has been on whether the minority Conservative Party government can reach sufficient consensus internally to make a deal to withdraw the UK from the EU. But such a deal can only come into effect if it is approved by the House of Commons.

Here, the stance of Labour is crucial. If Labour were open to supporting the deal — or even if the party abstained from the vote in Parliament — the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the hardline Conservative Brexiteers would not be able to stop it. On the other hand, if Labour, the DUP and the Brexiteers all oppose it, the deal will not come into effect.

There would then be massive political uncertainty, the likelihood of the UK crashing out of the EU in 2019 and a huge blow to the global economy. One could then place blame on the DUP and the hardline Brexiteers, but Labour, as the bigger party, would bear more responsibility than the others for this debacle.

LABOUR’S “SIX TESTS” ARE BESIDE THE POINT

The Labour Party has set six tests that it says the withdrawal agreement must pass if it is not to vote against it in the House of Commons. On close examination, the tests seem to be designed to allow Labour to vote against any conceivable deal that Prime Minister Theresa May could have negotiated on a withdrawal treaty. The tests that Labour says the withdrawal agreement must pass are: 

1) “Does it ensure a strong and collaborative future relationship with the EU?”

This is impossible because the future relationship will not be negotiated now, but later during the transition period.

2) “Does it deliver the “exact same benefits” as we currently have as members of the EU single market and customs union?”

This is also impossible because there would be no point having an EU single market or customs union if, as a non-member, the UK could get all the benefits that members get. In any event, these issues will not be settled in the withdrawal treaty.

3) “Does it ensure the fair management of migration in the interests of the economy and communities?”

The UK has not yet finalized its own future migration policy, so it is unreasonable to expect the withdrawal agreement to do what the British government itself has been unable to do. In any event, what would Labour’s migration policy be?

4) “Does it defend rights and protections and prevent a race to the bottom?”

This is not going to be settled now. It will be the subject of the future trade negotiations, and the EU will be doing its best to ensure that the UK, outside the union, does not reduce quality, environmental and labor standards to win market share.

5) “Does it protect national security and our capacity to tackle cross-border crime?”

Again this is for the future negotiation, not for the withdrawal agreement. The only way the UK can take part in the European arrest warrant is by staying in the EU and accepting the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. National security policy is the responsibility of member states, not the EU, and cannot be bound by an agreement made by the European Union.

6) Does it deliver for all regions and nations of the UK?

This is a matter for the UK government, not for the withdrawal deal from the EU.

So, the agreement cannot pass these tests for the simple reason that none of these six matters can be finalized until later. They are not valid tests for a withdrawal agreement, and the Labour Party should know that.

It is true that the agreement will be accompanied by a political declaration about the framework for future relations between the UK and the EU. But, legally speaking, this declaration cannot give binding commitments on the six points raised by Labour. In fact, on some of these matters, like security policy, are ones where the EU could not give commitments — even in a future trade agreement — without the consent of the legislatures of each of the 27 member states of the union.

The Labour Party knows this perfectly well. Choosing six tests designed to give a basis for rejecting any agreement that Prime Minister May could negotiate would be a legitimate and normal opposition tactic if the government had an overall majority in Parliament. But it does not. The Conservative Party depends on an agreement with the DUP, which has said it is prepared to break.

WHAT HAPPENS IF LABOUR DEFEATS THE DEAL IN PARLIAMENT?

Let us assume Labour wins a vote to reject the withdrawal agreement. What does Labour do then?

Obviously, Labour would like either a general election or a change of government in this Parliament. But, even if that happens, a Labour-led government would not have time to negotiate a new withdrawal deal that would pass its own six tests before March 29, 2019, the date that the UK will be out of the EU, deal or no deal.

The only way Labour could pass its own six tests would be by withdrawing the Article 50 letter written by Prime Minister May and seeking to keep the UK in the EU after all. There are two issues with this. First, there is legal doubt as to whether the UK has the power to withdraw its Article 50 letter. The European Court of Justice would have to adjudicate on that. Second, staying in the EU would require a second referendum.

A second referendum would have a lead time of 22 weeks, from the decision to hold one to polling day. This is because of legal requirements in Britain. A special bill for a referendum would have to pass in both the Houses. This 22-week delay would bring us beyond the UK’s automatic exit date of March 29, unless the UK had first obtained permission to withdraw the Article 50 letter.

All this has huge implications for the whole of Ireland, not just the border. So, to avoid a crash out Brexit, Irish diplomacy now needs to focus on the Labour Party as well as the Conservative government. The Labour Party needs to be persuaded to come off the fence and either back a realistically negotiable withdrawal deal or say clearly that it would prefer the UK to say in the European Union. The party could then base its parliamentary tactics on whichever of those two options it prefers. Either would be less disastrous than the present fudge.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Labour’s Stance on Brexit Will Be Crucial appeared first on Fair Observer.

The harder the Brexit, the harder it will be to reach a resolution of the Irish border problem. In a joint report in December 2017, the United Kingdom agreed to respect Ireland’s place in the European Union and that there would be no hard border on the island of Ireland. This was to apply “in all circumstances, irrespective of any future agreement between the EU and the UK.”

The further the UK negotiating demand goes from continued membership of the EU, the harder it will be for it to fulfill the commitments it has given on the Irish border in the joint report.

If the British government had decided to leave the EU but stay in the customs union, the Irish border questions would have been minimized. But the government decided to reject that because it hoped to make better trade deals with non-EU countries than the ones it has as a member of the European Union. If Westminster had decided to leave the EU but join the European Economic Area (the Norway option), this would also have minimized the Irish border problems. The government rejected that because it would have meant continued free movement of people from the EU into the UK.

In each decision, maintaining its relations with Ireland was given a lower priority than the supposed benefits of trade agreements with faraway places and being able to curb EU immigration. The government got its priorities wrong.

Future trade agreements that may be made with countries outside the EU will be neither as immediate, nor as beneficial to the UK as maintaining peace and good relations on the island of Ireland. The most they will do is replace the 70 or more trade agreements with non-EU countries that the UK already has as an EU member and will lose when it leaves.

EU immigration to the UK, if it ever was a problem, is a purely temporary and finite one. Already the economies of central European countries are picking up and, as time goes by, there will be fewer people from those countries wanting to emigrate to the UK (or anywhere else) to find work. These countries have low birth rates and aging populations and, therefore, a diminishing pool of potential emigrants.

Solving the supposed EU immigration “problem” is less important to the UK in the long run than peace and good relations in — and with — Ireland.

If, as is now suggested, the UK looks for a Canada or Ukraine-style deal, the Irish border problem will be even worse. British Prime Minister Theresa May has recognized this, which is why she rejects a Canada-style deal. This type of deal would mean the collection of heavy tariffs on food products, either on the Irish Sea or on the Irish border. Collecting them on the long land border would be physically impracticable, so the only option would be to do it on the Irish Sea. The all Ireland economy — to which the UK committed itself in the joint report — would be irrevocably damaged. The economic foundation of the Good Friday Agreement would be destroyed, too.

It is time for the Conservative Party to return to being conservative, and instead conserve the peace it helped build in Ireland on the twin foundations of the Belfast Agreement and the EU treaties. The Conservatives might remember that, without then-Prime Minister John Major’s negotiation of the Downing Street Declaration in 1993, there would have been no Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

PROBLEMS GETTING A BREXIT DEAL

The proposals the UK government is making for its future relationship with the EU will run into a number of obstacles.

The first will be that of persuading the EU that the UK will stick to any deal it makes. Two collectively responsible members of the British cabinet, Michael Gove and Liam Fox, have both suggested that the UK might agree to a withdrawal treaty on the basis of the Chequers formula, but later, once out to the EU, abandon it and do whatever it likes. This would be negotiating with the EU in bad faith. Why should the European Union make a permanent concession to the UK if cabinet members intend to treat the deal as temporary?

The second problem relates to the substance of Britain’s proposals. They would require the EU to give control of its trade borders and subcontract control to a non-member: the UK. While Britain envisages a common EU-UK rulebook for the quality of goods circulating via the United Kingdom into the EU single market, the British Parliament would still retain the option of not passing some of the relevant legislation to give effect to it. The UK would not be bound to accept the European Court of Justice’s interpretation of what the common rules meant. Common interpretation of a common set of rules is what makes a common market common.

May is not the only prime minister with domestic constraints. Creating a precedent of allowing the UK to opt into some parts of the single market (but not all) would create immediate demands for exceptions from other EU members — and from Switzerland and Norway, who pay large annual fees for entry to the single market as non-European Union members. This would play straight into the hands of populists in the European Parliament elections, which take place in May 2019, just two months after the UK is scheduled to leave the EU.

It does not require much political imagination to see that aspects of the UK proposal, if incorporated in a final trade deal in a few years’ time, would be a hard sell in the parliaments of some of the 27 EU member states. We must remember that all that would be needed for the Brexit deal to fail would be for just one of them to say no. Do you remember how difficult it was to get the Canada and Ukraine deals through?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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On September 2, British Prime Minister Theresa May wrote in The Sunday Telegraph that to have a second referendum on Brexit would be a “gross betrayal of democracy.” If May believes that, she doesn’t understand democracy very well.

She seems to suggest that democrats, having made a decision, should never change their minds. In fact, democracy is all about creating mechanisms whereby voters can change their minds. Democracy allows voters to change their minds through parliamentary elections and sometimes by having another referendum on the same topic. Democracies usually work through parliaments, and parliaments often change their mind. Indeed, most of their work consists of changing laws made by an earlier parliament. Changing one’s mind is the essence of democracy.

Totalitarian or dictatorial regimes do not a have an inbuilt mechanism for changing their minds. This makes them brittle and ultimately weak. In contrast, democracy is flexible, durable and strong because it has inbuilt mechanisms for changing its mind.

The difficulty behind holding a second referendum on Brexit is not the one advanced by Prime Minister May. It is the fact that we are running out of time, and also that there is no consensus in British politics on what question to put to the people in such a situation.

First Referendum

In fact, the dilemma that May now faces arises from the underlying weaknesses of the UK political system. Although in theory the British Parliament is sovereign and all powerful, when it came to Brexit it turned out to be weak and indecisive. It did not feel it had the authority and legitimacy to decide on the Brexit question on its own, so it decided to get the voters of the United Kingdom to decide the issue.

Under former Prime Minister David Cameron, the government held a referendum in June 2016 in the full knowledge that it was asking voters to decide on Brexit, without being able to provide them with information on what Brexit would mean in practice. This was because, as Parliament knew, the terms of Brexit could not be dictated by the UK, but had to be negotiated with the European Union. To place voters in such a position was a dereliction of duty.

The right course would have been to apply to leave the EU on its own authority, negotiate terms and then put the result to a referendum or a general election. In that situation, voters would have known exactly what Brexit meant and could vote to either accept it or decide to stay in the union on whatever terms were on offer.

How did the UK get into a position that its Parliament was so paralyzed by the Brexit question that it had to call a referendum without being able to tell voters what Brexit actually meant? The answer is to be found in recent changes in the way the two big parties — Conservative and Labour — choose their leaders. Instead of this choice being in the hands of members of parliament, who are accountable to their electorates and have to take account of middle ground opinion, it was handed over to largely anonymous and self-selected party members, voting as individuals and accountable to nobody. In the case of both parties, these members tended to have more radical opinions than the broad mass of voters. So, in pursuit of a dream of party democracy, parliamentary democracy in the UK has been so deeply damaged that it could not, and still cannot, decide on Brexit.

Second Referendum

While Prime Minister May is wrong to say that holding a second referendum on Brexit would be a betrayal of democracy, there are practical difficulties with holding a second vote on Brexit at this late stage. The big problem is to know what alternative to Brexit would be on offer to voters. Would it be continuing membership on existing terms, or would it be crashing out of the EU on March 31, 2019, when the Article 50 deadline expires?

The answer to that question hinges on the interpretation of Articles 50 (3) and 50 (5) of the EU treaties. Unless the UK negotiates a time extension under Article 50 (3), and this is unanimously agreed by the remaining 27 EU states, the country will be out of the European Union by the end of March next year. The UK would then, outside the EU, have to apply to join the European Union as a new member.

So, to hold a referendum on a choice between the agreed Brexit terms and staying in the EU on its existing terms, the UK would have to persuade the rest of the union to stop the clock on its Article 50 exit. Doing that, while also negotiating Brexit terms, seems like a huge task to undertake between now and March 2019, and the present Conservative Party government does not want to do this anyway. There is little prospect of a different government coming to office in London before March that would follow such a course.

For the EU, there would be great reluctance to prolong the Brexit uncertainty, unless union EU was certain that the UK electorate were minded to reverse the earlier referendum decision. Those conditions do not exist now and are unlikely to arise before the clock stops in March.

So those of us who would like to see the United Kingdom in the EU are forced back to considering what might happen if the country leaves the union and then, after some time, changes its mind and decides to try rejoin. This could happen, but the timing is impossible to predict.

If the UK negotiates something along the lines of the Chequers white paper, which sets out the British position on Brexit, it will find itself having to apply EU rules on which it has no say. That could lead to a gradual change of mind. If it fails to get something on the Chequers or European Economic Area lines and instead has to impose customs controls on all EU traffic, the shock will be more immediate. Minds could change more quickly. Nothing is certain here.

Should the UK change its mind and seek to rejoin the EU, it will have to apply under Article 49 of the EU treaty. It would then have to abide by all EU policies, probably without some of the exemptions it now enjoys on issues like the euro and financial contributions. Its application would have to get unanimous consent of all existing members. Its terms of its rejoining would presumably have to be accepted by the UK electorate in a referendum as well as by Parliament.

Extension to Article 50

The great pity is the haste with which David Cameron and Theresa May dealt with the Brexit question — Cameron in calling a referendum and May in sending off her Article 50 letter — meant both of them failed to work out a feasible model for Brexit that was compatible with EU interests. Both of them seemed to assume that the UK could decide and the rest of the EU then would just fall into line.

The only meaningful referendum the UK could have before Brexit actually happens would be to ask the UK electorate to agree to apply to the EU for an extension of the time limit under Article 50 (3). This would have to be for a number of years, not just months. Even if the electorate agreed, there is no guarantee that the other 27 states would agree, but it is likely they would.

This option would only become become politically realistic if the three main party leaders agreed on it. This is unlikely. There seems to be no private dialogue between the main party leaders in London and, as a result, Parliament is not functioning as it should.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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In the increasingly likely event that US President Donald Trump follows up on his steel tariffs by imposing similar measures on European car imports on so-called “national security grounds,” we can expect a full-scale trade war to erupt with no end in sight.

This will have disproportionate consequences for Ireland. A recent report by Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank, estimates that 7.8% of the aggregate value added of the Irish economy comes from final products sold in the US market. This is far more than for any other European Union member and is twice the comparable figure for dependence on US sales for Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, and three times that for France and Italy.

A disruption of trade links with the US, combined with the effects of a hard Brexit in Britain, could do deep damage to Ireland —  socially, politically and economically. Indeed, Trump’s actions change the entire context of Brexit.

G-7 Summit

The language used by President Trump about Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after the G-7 summit was shocking. He treated the Trudeau as if he was a domestic political opponent, not the prime minister of a friendly country, whose citizens gave their lives in common cause with the United States in both World Wars. It contrasted starkly with the language he used about the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.

Berating allies and flattering enemies is a low-risk approach in the short term. It is dramatic and gets attention in ways that diplomacy never can.

The drama seems to be working well in the US primaries, where President Trump’s allies are doing well. But trust in the United States is being undermined, and the prosperity of the developed world is being put at risk. The damage may long outlast the Trump presidency.

The US has had trade disputes with allies before, but they have never been supplemented by personalized attacks on foreign leaders. Trump’s imposition steel tariffs on the EU, Canada and Mexico suggests that the president believes he cannot rely on these countries to continue supplying steel to the US in war time. There is no basis in reality for such a contention, especially with regard to Mexico and Canada, which are US neighbors.

The EU will retaliate by imposing selective tariffs on US goods, though only on half the scale of the US steel tariffs. It will also take a case against the US before a World Trade Organization (WTO) panel. Canada and Mexico will do likewise. Given the way President Trump reacted to a difference of opinion about a mere communiqué from a G-7 summit, one can expect his language to escalate when the EU, Canadian and Mexican tariffs begin to bite.

It could be argued that the EU, Canada and Mexico should not bother retaliating, because the US steel tariffs will do the most damage to the American manufacturing industry and make it less competitive, but that is a difficult concept to communicate. So too is the argument that the US trade deficit is not due to unfair trade by others, but to the fact that Americans borrow and spend too much abroad, and are encouraged to do so by the lax fiscal and debt accumulation policies of successive US administrations.

President Trump is now contemplating imposing tariffs on cars coming from the EU, Canada and Mexico on the same national security grounds. He has initiated a legal process leading to that. On the narrow issue of cars, there is a difference between the rate of EU and US tariffs. The US tariff is 2%, whereas the EU tariff is 10%. That, of course, means US consumers have cheaper cars and a wider choice.

The EU could reduce its tariff on US-manufactured cars to 2%, but under the most favored nation principle by which the WTO, this would mean that the EU would also have to reduce its tariff on cars to 2% for all WTO members, including Japan and China.

The tragedy is that President Trump’s initiative is driven by electoral politics, not by economic reality. He is breaking up the rules-based international trading system that the US itself established in the aftermath of the Second World War and is operated by the WTO. The US has a poor record in implementing WTO decisions on disputes, partly because this requires action by Congress, and the administration can claim not to control Congress. In contrast, China has a good record so far in implementing WTO decisions.

Even under former President Barack Obama, the US was failing to appoint US judges to sit on the WTO disputes resolution panels, thereby undermining the WTO disputes resolution system. This is despite the fact that the US has won 87% of the cases it has taken to WTO panels. The disputes settlement mechanism was one of the great achievement of the late Peter Sutherland as head of the WTO.

The US sometimes feels it can get along fine without the rest of the world. Given its vast area and resources, it is understandable how it might come to think like that. For much of the 19th century, it acted on that basis. That illusion finally ended at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Isolationism is no longer an option for the US. China is rising in global importance. Its economy is already as big as that of the US. It is attempting to build a global infrastructural and technological system centered on China, not the US. That is the rationale of the “one Belt One Road” initiative and of China’s plan to be the industry leader in the technologies of the future like solar power, electric cars and gene editing.

A wise US leader would be seeking to compete with China by building closer economic ties with its allies, rather than using them as punch bags in a political show designed to win votes in the midterm congressional elections in November.

Brexit

The G-7 spectacle should prompt deep reflection on this side of the Atlantic. A looming trade war makes Brexit less attractive for both the United Kingdom and the EU. Both parties need to take time out to think. It is a pity that the time limits in the Brexit process do not allow both sides to take a moment to develop a wider strategic view of their mutual interests before the UK leaves the European Union. This needs to be reconsidered in light of the prospect of a bitter trade war with the US and the rest of the developed world.

Such a strategic review cannot be completed by October. An extension of the Article 50 time limit for the Brexit negotiation makes far more sense now than it did a month ago. Time limits create tension, but right now it is reflection that we need.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: The White House

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At a recent conference, I heard Owen Patterson, a Conservative MP and former secretary of state for Northern Ireland, say that the United Kingdom should renege on the “backstop” agreement on the Irish border given by British Prime Minister Theresa May to EU negotiators. He admitted that Irish public opinion “hates Brexit,” but seemed to expect the Irish government to make Brexit easy for the UK. That is naive.

At the same event, Lord Alderdice, former leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, said the 1998 Good Friday Agreement came about because the protagonists put the emphasis on developing new relationships between the communities in Northern Ireland, rather than on detailed rules and economic questions.

Business, Not a Relationship

It seems that the absence of this sort of broad thinking in the UK about the European Union led to Brexit. British public opinion saw joining the EU as a business transaction, instead of a long-term relationship-building exercise.

When then-Prime Minister David Cameron decided to hold a referendum in 2016 on leaving the EU, it didn’t occur to him to call a meeting of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, which was set up under the Good Friday Agreement, to explore how this might affect relations between the UK and Ireland, between North and South, and consequently within Northern Ireland. This was myopic. It demonstrated a lack of seriousness, which persists today.

A similar myopia affected the UK relationship with the EU as a whole. UK decision-makers saw the European Union in purely functional terms, rather than as a means of developing new relationships. The UK still hopes to negotiate access for itself to the customs union and single market, without joining either of them and without allowing the free movement of people that all EU members grant to each other, or accepting that the rules will be interpreted by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

This is unrealistic. Any dilution of freedom of movement would require an amendment of the EU treaties, which would require the unanimous agreement of all 27 EU states. This will not be forthcoming. The ECJ is essential to ensure uniform interpretation of market rules, especially in services.

British politicians and opinion formers forget that the EU is a rules-based organization, with a common system for making, interpreting and enforcing the agreed rules. In this, the EU is different from other international bodies. The treaties founding the EU are the equivalent of a written constitution, which is hard to amend. As the UK has no written constitution of its own, it finds this difficult to accept. These differences in perspective between the EU and the UK will continue to cause trouble, unless British politicians educate their electorate about the nature of the union.

The Irish Border

At this stage in the negotiations, the UK is seeking to interpret Article 49 of the Joint Report, the so-called “backstop,” to cover the whole UK, not just Ireland. The wording of the is as follows:

“49. The United Kingdom remains committed to protecting North-South cooperation and to its guarantee of avoiding a hard border. Any future arrangements must be compatible with these overarching requirements. The United Kingdom’s intention is to achieve these objectives through the overall EU-UK relationship. Should this not be possible, the United Kingdom will propose specific solutions to address the unique circumstances of the island of Ireland. In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement.”

Reading the paragraph as a whole, it is clear that it is about Ireland, not the two islands. In any event, there is no possibility of the other EU countries allowing the entire United Kingdom to enjoy the benefits of full access to EU markets simply by aligning its rules, but without allowing free movement of people and accepting the jurisdiction of the ECJ.

The UK government is committed to having a frictionless border in Ireland and is considering two possible customs arrangements with the EU to achieve this.

The first is a customs partnership, which would see the UK collecting the EU tariffs on goods entering the UK but destined for the EU, and then passing the money on to Brussels. It is hard to see the EU subcontracting its revenue collection to an external power over which it has no control. The Palestinian experience of subcontracting its revenue collection to Israel has not been a happy one.

The second customs option, called “maximum facilitation, entails doing the customs controls — currently done at the border — remotely using technology. This technology is untried and there would be data protection and privacy concerns. It would still entail the preparation of customs declarations for all consignments of goods. This bureaucracy will add between £17 billion ($22.7 billion) and £20 billion to business costs, or £32 per declaration, according to the UK revenue authorities. This will make trade unprofitable in many cases.

The fact that, even at this stage, the UK has not made up its mind between these options and has yet to make a detailed proposal is disquieting. The EU will not be bounced into agreeing a half-baked proposal, presented just before the EU summit later this month, which attempts to evade the consequences of the UK’s own decision to quit the single market and customs union. Those decisions were taken by Prime Minister May, not Parliament, and should be reversed.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: Brilliantist Studio / Shutterstock.com

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Ireland will soon commemorate a conflict that took place between 1919 and 1923. It is customary to refer to the conflict between 1919 and 1921 as the War of Independence and that between 1922 and 1923 as the Civil War. In fact, both were civil wars.

In the 1919 to 1921 war, the initial victims were Irish members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and Irish members of the judiciary. The first police victims were RIC Constables James McDonnell and Patrick O’Connell, killed at Soloheadbeg, County Tipperary on January 21, 1919. Both were Irish-born Catholics, as were many RIC victims. The first magistrate to die was James Charles Milling, a Mayo native, shot through the front window of his home in Westport in March 1919. He was a member of the Church of Ireland and is buried in the Holy Trinity Cemetery in Westport. These Irishmen had supported the then-existing legal order as they saw it, and paid the ultimate sacrifice in so doing.

LOOKING THROUGH HISTORY

The tragedy of these conflicts is reflected in two books I recently read. One is The Irish War of Independence by Michael Hopkinson, and the other is The Redmonds and Waterford: A Political Dynasty, 1891-1952 by Pat McCarthy.

Hopkinson’s book shows how the threat of the introduction of conscription in Ireland, in March 1918, radicalized Irish opinion and laid the foundation for the Sinn Fein electoral victory over the Irish Parliamentary Party nine months later in the general election, which took place when the Great War was over.

Sinn Fein won the election on a manifesto of abstaining from Westminster and seeking recognition for Irish independence in the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference. The manifesto claimed that “the right of a nation to sovereign independence rests on immutable natural law and cannot be made the subject of compromise.”

This rejection of compromise was reckless. It made conflict of some kind inevitable. But the Sinn Fein manifesto did not seek an explicit mandate for armed insurrection, although it did speak of the “use of any and every means available to render impotent the power of England to hold Ireland in subjection.” It is hard to argue that, by voting for Sinn Fein in 1918, the Irish people gave a clear democratic mandate for the waging of war.

From the beginning, the preferred Irish Republican Army (IRA) tactic was the shooting of policemen — whether armed or not, whether on or off duty — and of magistrates. Policemen and magistrates were, and still are, the executors of state authority in every locality. Killing them was designed to undermine that authority.

Hopkinson claims that both Arthur Griffith and Eamon de Valera were opposed to the shooting of policemen and would have preferred more conventional warfare. But their policy of appealing to the Versailles Peace Conference yielded no results, despite de Valera’s efforts to rouse opinion in the US.

The struggle was evenly balanced. Despite many IRA successes, by July 1921, there were 4,500 IRA internees, compared to around 2,000 active in the field. Shortage of ammunition was a problem for the IRA. Shortage of manpower was a problem for the authorities. The British had other military priorities, in places like Egypt.

The possibility of partition had been a main reason for the rejection — by Sinn Fein and wider nationalist opinion — of the Home Rule policy of John Redmond in the 1916 to 1918 period. But when it came to negotiating a truce to end the hostilities in 1921, partition was no longer so central. Hopkinson claims that David Lloyd George was told through intermediaries that “the Dail [Irish parliament] would accept the exclusion of the six counties provided that fiscal autonomy was granted to the twenty six.”

This is, in fact, how things turned out. Ireland got fiscal independence but partition remains. The key issue in fiscal independence was the ability to impose tariffs. One of the perceived inadequacies of the Home Rule proposal had been that a Home Rule Ireland would have remained in the UK Customs Union and would not have been able to impose tariffs on British goods. Fiscal autonomy, under the treaty of 1921, enabled the free state to impose tariffs.

When the war began in January 1919, Home Rule was on the statute book, but remained unimplemented because of differences over the exclusion of some Ulster counties. But Northern Ireland had not been created and partition had not been formalized.

That happened in 1920 when the UK Parliament passed a new Government of Ireland Act, creating two Irish Home Rule parliaments in place of one: a Parliament for Ulster, which became Stormont, and another for the rest of Ireland, which was boycotted by Sinn Fein and was stillborn.

THE BOOKS

This is where the theme of Pat McCarthy’s book on the Redmonds intersects with Michael Hopkinson’s book on the civil wars. When the new Government of Ireland Act, setting up Stormont, came before Parliament in London, there were very few Irish Nationalist MPs there to oppose or amend it. This is because the constituencies in southern Ireland had elected Sinn Fein MPs, who declined to take their seats.

There was one exception: Captain Willie Redmond, who had defeated the Sinn Fein candidate and won his father John’s old seat in Waterford City. Along with T.P. O’Connor, who represented a Liverpool constituency, Patrick Donnelly (Armagh South), Joe Devlin (Belfast West), Edward Kelly (East Donegal), Jeremiah McVeagh (South Down) and Thomas Harbison (Tyrone NE), Redmond was there to speak against the Government of Ireland Act.

But this small Nationalist Party in Westminster did not have the votes to insist on amendments that might have protected the minority in Northern Ireland from what were to be the discriminatory excesses of the Unionist-dominated Stormont Parliament.

McCarthy’s book explains how it came about that a city in the southeast of Ireland could resist the Sinn Fein tide that swept over the rest of the south in December 1918. It was due to a devotion to John Redmond in Waterford City that lasted long after his death. Redmond had protected the economic interests of Waterford City, bringing it funds for housing and building bridges. He forged an alliance with the local pig buyers association and the trade unions. Like Redmond, Waterford City had remained loyal to Charles Stewart Parnell unlike most of rural Ireland, and this Parnellism added to Redmond’s appeal in Waterford.

After 1922, Captain Willie Redmond was elected to Dail Eireann and founded his own party, the short-lived National League. He was later re-elected as a TD for Cumann na nGaedhael, a political party, in 1932. He died later that year and his young widow, Bridget Redmond, continued to represent Waterford City in the Dail as a TD for Fine Gael until she died at a young age in 1952, just after having got her largest ever vote in the 1951 election.

Because it is concerned with a particular family and locality, McCarthy’s book is full of human interest. But it is also a serious and balanced work of history. Hopkinson’s narrative and analysis of the war of 1919 to 1921 is necessarily more superficial, but it is well worth reading too.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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It is very hard to predict where the Brexit negotiations will end — or indeed if they will ever really end. UK public opinion is shaped by images from the Second World War era when Britain was able to stand alone, at least until the United States entered the war on its side. It is also shaped by a sense that, together with the US, the United Kingdom was at the center of an English-speaking world, which had shared interests and affinities that transcended economics.

But in that era, countries were much more self-sufficient than they are today. Being an island meant much more security in 1940 than it does 2018. Living standards in the UK and elsewhere were also much lower than they are now, to an extent we find it hard to imagine. So, expectations were much lower too. People are less patient nowadays.

The UK was a free-trade advocate in the 19th century, whereas the US was protectionist. It was not a golden era. It ended tragically in July 1914. Prosperity has since made countries far more dependent on one another than they were back then. And that interdependence requires a shared set of rules, and one of the rule makers is the European Union. The rhetoric that characterizes the UK political debate has not adapted itself to the reality of rule-based interdependence. Nor has the rhetoric of the US debate.

English Identity

My feeling is that the decision to opt for Brexit was based on a deep-seated wish to assert an English sense of identity. Just as Irish nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries defined Irishness as being in contrast with “Britishness,” Englishness today is defined — in the minds of many in England — as being in contrast with continental Europe, as reflected in the European Union.

I spend a lot of time in bookshops when I am in Britain, and I am constantly struck by the number of books on the shelves about the Tudor era (when Henry XIII rejected continental dictation on whom he might marry) and about the Second World War (when Britain stood alone). Books about eras when Britain was comfortable as a part of a wider European system (100 BC up to 1500 AD) seem not to sell as well or to occupy as much shelf space.

My conclusion from this is that Brexit is an emotional manifestation, rather than a rational calculation. In the absence of a major crisis or a heroic exercise of political leadership in Downing Street, rational argument on its own will not reverse the course toward a progressively wider gulf between the UK and the rest of Europe — during and after Brexit.

Part of the problem is that the UK politicians who argued for EU membership did so on the grounds of tactical advantage. The EU was presented as just one of the many ways the UK used to exercise global influence. The United Kingdom never presented itself as fully committed to, or at the heart of, Europe. Arguments about how Britain was a truly European country, and had made supreme sacrifices to protect the European order in 1914 and again in 1939, were not presented as examples of how Britain’s destiny is entwined with the destiny of Europe. The reality of Britain’s geography was forgotten.

Not the End of Brexit

The present Brexit negotiation will not be the end of the drama. Once the UK is outside the European Union and has no vote in its decisions, the gap between the EU and the UK will become progressively wider. Post-Brexit UK governments will find it all too easy to continue to blame the EU for any setbacks they encounter, especially as they will no longer have any vote in the EU. If the UK can persuade itself that it is a victim of the EU — when it actually had a direct say in union decisions — it will be all the easier to blame the EU for things that go wrong when it no longer has a say. That will lead to constant renegotiation and friction between the EU and the UK, which will be fed by the euro-hostile press in Britain.

England needs an emotional reconciliation with Europe. European solidarity with the UK over alleged Russian activities in Salisbury is an example of the sort of thing that can help Britons feel more European.

The crunch moment will come in November. That is when the full political, strategic and economic cost of Brexit will become clear.

If the UK is to reverse course, it will need time. An extension of time under Article 50, whereby the UK would remain in the EU while negotiations continued, might be considered. It would be much better than a transition deal, where the UK is outside the union but has to apply all EU rules without any say in them. One might also consider if there are gestures that can be made toward the UK that do not damage the integrity of the EU, but which would make the UK feel more at home as a member.

Umbrella organizations, such as the Commonwealth, may have creative uses here if there is a willingness to use them. The UK itself is a union of different nations, with certain important unifying symbols. Can similar unifying symbols be found that would enhance England’s sense of belonging in Europe?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: Ivan Marc / Shutterstock.com

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On March 2, British Prime Minister Theresa May delivered a key speech on the United Kingdom’s future relationship with the European Union. My first reaction was that the UK is going to put itself and other EU countries through a lot of trouble just so it can leave the union and then rejoin it in selected areas.

The UK wants a partnership with the European Union on customs, state aid and competition, transport, energy, broadcasting, financial services, atomic power, aviation, the enforcement of court judgments and a long list of other fields. As an EU member today, the UK already has a partnership with the 27 countries of the union on all these things. This was worked out painstakingly over 45 years of UK membership of the EU. It now wants to tear that up and negotiate a new partnership on all these different questions. And it wants to get the job done within two years.

All this is being done in the name of “taking back control,” but it appears that, in many areas, control is being taken back only to be given away again immediately. A lot of work for very little product!

Just as Gordon Brown, the former prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer, had five “tests” for joining the euro, which were so loose that he could interpret them any way he liked, Theresa May has five tests for an acceptable Brexit outcome, which will mean different things to different people. In fact, they sounded more like the introduction to an election manifesto than a prism through which to measure the success of a negotiation on some of the most technical and specialist of legal topics.

Irish Border After Brexit

Originally, the UK promised a frictionless border in Ireland. But May seems to have retreated from that, speaking of a border that would be “as frictionless, as possible.”

Her idea of a customs partnership to avoid a hard border in Ireland seems like a smuggler’s charter. She envisages the UK having different tariffs on goods entering the country to the tariffs charged on goods entering the EU. That is the whole point of leaving the customs union. She then suggests the United Kingdom would charge the UK tariff on goods “intended” for the UK and the EU tariff on goods passing through Britain but “intended” for an EU country (most likely Ireland).

In this way, May hopes no customs checks would be needed at the Irish border or in Irish ports. The scope for abuse and exchanging of goods seems to be unlimited here. Consignments could be substituted for one another, and there would be no check on them when they cross the Irish border. Such an arrangement would very difficult to police and is unlikely to satisfy the EU customs code. If the EU and the UK are to have different rates of tariff, her idea of exempting small businesses along the Irish border from any control at all seems like an invitation to smuggle.

Presumably, May will want the EU customs code amended to take on her ideas. But if that is done, similar concessions will be demanded along all the other borders to which the customs code applies, such as the EU borders in Eastern Europe. Prime Minister May should not forget that whatever she negotiates will have to be approved by all 27 EU members

The most valuable test that May wishes to apply to a Brexit agreement is that it should be one that would endure and not require constant renegotiation. But she said things elsewhere in her speech that will make it very difficult to pass that test.

She stressed that any trade agreement with the EU could be changed afterward by the British Parliament. That is a recipe for instability. At the moment, Parliament cannot overrule an EU ruling to which the UK had previously agreed. After Brexit, that would no longer be so and, as result, business would know that everything about any future UK-EU trade agreement would be subject to the vagaries of British politics. British politics has already forced the UK to renege on 45 years of treaty-based agreements with the EU. So, a mere trade agreement in the future will not be a solid base for investment. Every time that Parliament would try to go back on something in the agreement, there would have to be a new negotiation.

European Court of Justice

Furthermore, May said that UK courts would not accept the decisions of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on many disputed matters. The best she could say was that the UK courts would “look at” ECJ rulings before making their own decisions. This means that UK interpretations will gradually diverge from the standard EU/ECJ ones. When that happens, renegotiation will be inevitable.

She advocated, instead of accepting ECJ jurisdiction, the idea of an “arbitration mechanism” that would be independent of the EU and the UK. That might work for a country that trades a limited number of products with the EU. But May herself said that she wants an agreement with the EU that would cover more subjects that any trade agreement anywhere else in the world.

An arbitration mechanism, covering the vast range of the EU’s dealings with the UK, if it is to be truly independent, would soon become a rival to the ECJ. It could develop a different interpretative philosophy to the ECJ. That would undermine the common legal order of the EU and is unlikely to be accepted.

The United Kingdom

One of the tests that May set for an acceptable Brexit was that it would strengthen the union between the four “nations” that make up the United Kingdom: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But the process of Brexit itself is having the opposite effect. In the way the referendum was set up, a majority of English and Welsh “leave” voters were allowed to overrule “remain” majorities in the two other “nations,” Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The Brexit referendum of June 2016 was a crude exercise for English power to satisfy a purely English political agenda. There is growing dissatisfaction in the devolved assemblies, including in Wales, about the way Westminster is making decisions on EU-related matters that are the prerogative of the assemblies in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast.

It is good that Theresa May has, at last, got into some detail in her speech. This will have had some educational value for her party. But the text of the withdrawal treaty is not yet agreed, and that must be done before the substantive negotiation can begin. But the fact that the UK has not come up with a legal text of its own — to reflect the agreement that the prime minister made in December 2017 on the withdrawal treaty with EU negotiator Michel Barnier — but is still criticizing the EU version virulently shows that we have long way to go on this unproductive and time-wasting road to Brexit.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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In his book Fateful Choices, which describes how country after country tumbled into what became the Second World War, British historian Ian Kershaw wrote: “The fateful choices that were made were not predetermined or axiomatic. But they did reflect the sort of political system that produced them.” A global war was not anyone’s preferred option, but a combination of ideology, a fear of being encircled or preempted, and miscalculation of the intentions or reactions of others gave the world the most destructive conflict in human history.

There are similar blind forces at play in the Brexit talks. The current political system in the United Kingdom, and the anxieties and obsessions it has generated, determine the British position on Brexit. This expresses itself in an artificially inflexible and brittle interpretation of the 2016 referendum result.

The British government has, so far, been unable to convert that into a detailed, legally viable and constructive outline of its desired relationship with the European Union. If it went into detail, the disagreement between cabinet members is so deep that the Conservative Party would split and the government would fall. The Labour Party opposition has a similar problem.

It suits both of parties that the EU is insisting that substantial progress must be made on other issues before talks about future relations between Brussels and London can begin. This is because if the British government had to set out a detailed position on the future relationship, it is liable to split. Party and public opinion in the UK has been polarized and is unready for compromise. The Conservative Party is consumed with its leadership struggle and cannot be relied upon to make a deal that will stick. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s four “red lines” make compromise impossible.

TIME IS RUNNING OUT

Likewise, the EU political system determines the union’s approach. There is quite understandable annoyance that the UK, for whom so many special deals were made in the past, now wants to leave the union it freely joined over 40 years ago. The EU negotiating position is inflexible because it has to be determined by 27 countries. It can only be changed by consensus among them, and that can only be arrived at very slowly.

Yet the time limit set in Article 50 of the EU treaty is very short. It will require immense speed of talks on a range of difficult questions. These not only focus on the EU and the UK, but also potentially with the World Trade Organization (WTO) and perhaps the European Free Trade Association, which the UK would have to join if it wants to be in the European Economic Area like Norway. All of this will have to be done between January and November 2018.

Theresa May © Drop of Light

Both sides in this negotiation should ask themselves: Are they at risk of finding themselves on rigid tramlines heading straight for a cliff? If so, should some side rails be put in place just for a moment of reflection before they go over the edge?

Franklin Dehousse, a former judge at the European Court of Justice, recently argued that separating trade issues from those concerning the Irish border end up artificially disconnecting those connected topics, and thus limited the possibility of constructive tradeoffs. But he also insisted that the UK must first come up with “precise proposals on all withdrawal matters.”

He’s right. There is no point in the UK asking the EU to move on to trade matters unless and until the country itself is capable of spelling out what it wants and says exactly what trade, environmental and consumer safety policies it will follow after Brexit. It is because the United Kingdom is unable to even say what it wants in the long term on these issues that there has been no progress on discussing the Irish border.

Meanwhile  the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO), in an article by Professors Alan Winters, Peter Holmes and Erika Szyscak, has suggested that Prime Minister Theresa May’s idea of a “transition” or “implementation” period of two years — after the UK has left the EU — might be very difficult to implement. If so, the United Kingdom will crash out of the European Union in March 2019. They saw several problems with May’s transition idea. They are not trivial issues. One was that, when the UK leaves the EU, it will automatically be out of the EU Customs Union. Therefore, they claim it would have to negotiate a new temporary customs union with the EU for the transition period. It would have to notify the WTO of this temporary union, which could potentially lead to protracted talks with WTO partners.

London and Brussels would also have to agree on how all EU regulations and directives would apply in the United Kingdom during the transition period, with complete certainty on how mutual recognition of testing and certification and the free mobility of labor would work. According to the UKTPO authors, the status of such an agreement under EU law would not be certain. But because it would cover issues on which EU member states retain competence, this might mean that the transition agreement itself might require ratification by all EU member states too. That would take time. Meanwhile, the UK and its EU trade partners would be in limbo. The UK might be already out of the EU while its transition deal has not yet been ratified and is inoperable.

Given the delays to ratifying the EU-Canada deal, which got bogged down in the politics of the French-speaking part of Belgium, this is a daunting prospect. Imagine going through all of that for a deal that might only last two years, and then going through the same process all over again for the final deal. So, negotiating and ratifying a transition deal could be almost as difficult as negotiating the final, permanent deal.

EXTENSION

The UK needs to engage itself seriously with the complexities of Brexit. If it looks at all these issues thoroughly, it may then conclude that, despite Johnson’s anxiety to leave quickly, the time limits are far too severe and that more time is needed. If Britain is wise, it would ask its EU partners to extend the negotiation time from two years to around six years. That extension could be done by unanimous agreement among the 27 EU states and the UK. With a longer negotiation period, the UK would need no transition deal and would remain a member of the EU until the final exit deal is done. There would be only one deal to negotiate and ratify: the final one.

There are really no good options here. It would be politically difficult for any UK government to ask for an extension to the negotiation period. Leave supporters would suspect betrayal. There would be very deep reluctance from the EU to grant such a request. Some member states would feel that extending the period would be far too easy on the UK and that the Brits need a reality check. Others would argue that prolongation of the exit process might destabilize other EU members and distract the union from other urgent work. These are valid objections, but they are arguably less damaging than the real likelihood that the UK will crash out of the EU without any deal.

Extending the period to six years would, however, allow the UK electorate to consider — in a more informed way — the full implications of the course they are following. The present tight timeframe minimizes the opportunity for creative thought. Instead, it maximizes the influence of blind, bureaucratic and political forces. It increases the likelihood of miscalculation and the situation of the UK leaving the EU with no deal at all. That would be very bad for Ireland and the European Union as a whole.

If more negotiating time cannot be agreed, then the tempo of talks must be immediately and dramatically increased. Unfortunately, there is little sign that the current UK government, the originator of Brexit, understands this.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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On September 13, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker delivered a speech to the European Parliament. He stressed what he called European values and singled out three in particular: the rule of law, equality and the freedom to voice your opinion as a citizen or a journalist.

The discussion on the rule of law is important in light of what is happening in Poland. The European Union is facing a long and difficult confrontation with that country, and the Polish government will whip up nationalist sentiment. But the EU must not back down.

In this context, he also mentioned how important it is that the rulings of the European Court of Justice are accepted as final and implemented by all member states. Without this, the EU would wither away. This is being called into question in Poland and Hungary in respect of accepting refugees.

On equality, Juncker stressed that there should be equal pay for equal work in the same countries. This is a concern of French President Emmanuel Macron.

I am glad that freedom of speech was also discussed. Freedom of speech is important if we are not to see democracy turned into the tyranny of the majority. Prevailing opinions must be open to challenge, and sometimes that may give offence or be misconstrued. Those who are offended have the right of reply, and if someone is libeled they can go to court. Apologies for mistakes in the use of free speech should, in general, be accepted.

Journalists should not be forced out of their jobs to serve the commercial interests of advertisers who have come under pressure from social media. That is happening in Ireland at the moment and can be just as much a threat to free speech today as state censorship was in the past.

OTHER ISSUES

I am glad that President Juncker mentioned a European deposit insurance scheme to help make banks safe, but there should also be a limit placed on banks buying too many bonds from their own government, which can lead to dangerous concentration of risks.

He stressed the strengthening of Europe’s defenses against cyberattacks. Apparently, 4,000 ransomware attacks are made every day in the EU. Juncker also talked about the need for a better defense against state-inspired and organized cyberattacks of the kind suffered by Ukraine and Estonia. Ireland should play its part, through the EU and the NATO partnership for peace — of which it is a member — in working to strengthen Europe’s cyber defenses. In the cyber world, the fact that Ireland is an island is no defense and will be even less so when the United Kingdom leaves the EU.

I agree with Juncker’s support for having some members of the European Parliament elected on an EU-wide list. That would be a small step — through the debate it would engender — toward creating a Europe-wide informed public opinion

As I pointed out in a recent speech in Cahirciveen, Ireland, there are huge differences between EU states’ voters in their views on what the union should prioritize, and little understanding of other countries’ needs and fears. An election campaign in which every voter would choose between different European parties on the basis of their programs would help build a sense of ownership of the EU by all voters of Europe and a better understanding of what the EU is and is not capable of doing.

But I am not keen on Juncker’s idea of merging the roles of president of the European Council and that of president of the European Commission. The commission is the guardian of the treaties, whose provisions it must uphold without fear or political bias. The council is a political body, which, with the European Parliament, must make political judgments on commission proposals. That separation should not be changed.

Some division of powers is appropriate to a confederal union, like the EU. The European Union is not a state and is not going to become one. The fact that the UK can leave it proves that the EU is a voluntary union, unlike the United States of America.

TAX MATTERS

I was surprised to hear Juncker propose to move policymaking on tax matters to majority voting. This would mean that big countries could set the tax policies of small countries, which is not acceptable. It would alter the balance of the EU fundamentally. On the face of it, this would seem to require an amendment of the EU treaties. President Juncker seemed to suggest that majority voting on tax policy could be achieved by using a passarelle provision in the Lisbon Treaty, which allows some issues, currently decided by unanimity, to be moved to majority voting by the unanimous agreement of all EU heads of government (without actually amending the treaties).

I am satisfied that this agreement will not be forthcoming and that the proposal to move tax policy to qualified majority voting (QMV) will not go far. In light of the 1986 Crotty judgment on the constitutionality of the Single European Act, it is likely that demands would be made for a referendum in Ireland on a move to majority voting on tax policy.

The European Council gave the following assurance about the interpretation of the effect of the Lisbon Treaty to the Irish people in June 2009: “Nothing in the Treaty of Lisbon makes any change of any kind, for any member state, to the extent or operation of the competence of the European Union in relation to taxation.” The European Commission would be prudent to take special note of this in pursuing this aspect of President Juncker’s agenda.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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