Here we go again: learning from history

This is the text of the 2022 annual lecture for the Council on Christian Approaches to Defence and Disarmament (CCADD) of which I am a Vice-president. It was delivered on Wednesday 6 July 2022 at Westminster Abbey. The lecture was intended to feed into a discussion which, in the event, turned out to be very rich and challenging; it raised further and wider questions which are too long to go into here and now. I understand it was recorded, so a link might follow for the CCADD website.

I have only been to Sweden once. Following a big celebration of the thousandth anniversary of the Diocese of Skara, we returned to the hotel for a dinner with royalty and the great and the good. After dinner I was told (for the first time) that I was to give a speech and would follow the Bishop of Bavaria. Fair enough. The Bishop of Bavaria then disappointed me by concluding his speech in Swedish. All I could think to say at the beginning of mine – having allowed a significant silence – was that the only Swedish I know (excluding IKEA, of course) is: “Mamma mia”, “Gimme gimme gimme”, “Money money money” and “Dancing Queen”. They laughed – helpfully.

You will remember that ‘Mamma Mia’ is followed by the words: “Here we go again”. And this is the line – and the song – that spins around my head when I look at elements of the world we currently inhabit. If I turned it into a question, it would be: “Do we ever learn?”

You will remember George Santayana’s famous aphorism: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. This builds from Karl Marx’s assertion that “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” I will leave it to the historians to debate whether either is demonstrably true, but I am suspicious of both. History – by definition – cannot repeat itself, but we can learn from it, if we choose to do so. Learning can clearly go in different ways – for example, it isn’t a given that we learn only positively from the mistakes or experiences of the past; we might learn how to do terrible things more efficiently in future – but learning should at the very least imply a serious and considered attempt not to recreate the negative conditions of the past which open the door to ‘bad stuff’ (as Donald Trump might put it).

This is why some observers are now pointing (with hindsight, it should be said) to the complacency of the West since the Second World War and, later, the collapse of the Soviet Union: that “never again” will we tolerate war on Europe’s soil and “never again” can there be genocide on our continent. Well, the Balkans disposed of the latter and Ukraine casts doubts on the former. Only three months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, dismissed the informed observations of his fellow MP Tobias Ellwood at the Liaison Committee meeting in Parliament on 17 November 2021: “We have to recognise that the old concepts of fighting big tank battles on European land mass are over, and there are other, better things we should be investing in, in FCAS, in the future combat air system, in cyber, this is how warfare in the future is going to be.” Well, that didn’t age well.

A similar problem can be found in the Integrated Review of 2021. Remember its subtitle: “Global Britain in a Competitive Age, the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, describes the government’s vision for the UK’s role in the world over the next decade and the action we will take to 2025.” The assumptions on which this review was built became exposed to reality only months after it was published. Barely a reference to our European neighbours in the European Union, but all eyes on China and the Pacific. And now, in 2022, we find ourselves in a changed world once again, probably with a need for a revised integrated review which checks some of the assumptions in the original. And we are nowhere near 2025.

(While writing this an argument is raging about cuts from 80,000 to 72,000 in army numbers at the same time as NATO is boosting the numbers of troops being mobilised on the eastern borders and we are being reminded of the threat from an aggressive Russia. The Cold War bipolar world gave way to a supposedly unipolar order … which is now giving way to a tripolar or even multipolar world, if we consider Russia, China, India, the European Union, USA to be increasingly singular agents. This must have an impact on any decisions made in and by the UK, dependent on a realistic appreciation of capacity.)

Is it possible, then, to learn from history when it comes to geopolitics and military defence? I do wonder when we see the Russian military using in Ukraine the same tactics (with the same rationale) as they did in World War Two and, in my personal experience, in their aborted Afghan campaign in the 1980s. This was a campaign running while I was a Russian linguist at GCHQ. What is even more curious for me personally is that the rhetoric the West aimed at the Soviet Union in the 1980s (“you can’t win a war in Afghanistan, and you’ll all go home in coffins”) was exactly the same rhetoric used by the Russians against the West when we moved into Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. The differing rationales behind the two invasions/occupations do not dispel the pragmatic problems of conducting such operations in such a place – something history tells us are fairly insurmountable.

But, the abrupt departure of the Western Allies from Afghanistan last year, the questionable ways in which this operation was conducted, and the way in which some of our moral obligations towards those left behind were neglected … all raise questions about the politics of forward planning in the light of past experience and the context of current exigencies. Could this withdrawal have been conducted differently? It is not for me, an observer, to say; but, many commentators who understand politics, diplomacy, military and humanitarian factors better than I do clearly think so.

What ,then, might be the preconditions for wise learning from history? I am no expert and am not a historian, but my possibly shallow thinking leads me to these for starters:

First, politicians need around them historians who can identify and articulate past phenomena that might educate us when making short-term decisions that will, inevitably, have long-term consequences. This is partly the classic ‘how do we get out of what we are about to get into?’ question. A good and fairly recent example of this is how German Chancellor Angela Merkel made her cabinet read Christopher Clark’s remarkable and readable 2013 book Sleepwalkers – on the origins of the First World War – and then set aside a day to engage on it with the author-historian. Not everybody likes Clark’s book, but the Germans are serious and intelligent enough to deal with argument and ideas and the importance of learning. Of course, historians will offer differing perspectives: that’s the point.

Secondly, we have to remember the nature of contingency. For every decision made, there is a context … which includes a complex set of human beings with limited vision and a propensity to seek immediate solutions to today’s threat or problem without preparing for the possible various consequences that might arise from them. At this point I will introduce a question that bothers me more generally and which we might want to discuss later: centralised authoritarian regimes like Russia and China are far better equipped to think strategically in the longer term than are western democracies where the political eye is always on the ball of the electoral cycle – therefore, the inability to guarantee that any longer-term strategy can be seen through to a conclusion … and hence the short-term tactical (rather than strategic) thinking that might win votes.

(I might add here, though we will come back to it later, that Russia is a single entity with a single government dominated by a single man, but he is dealing with an opposing coalition of interests, the cracks between whom can easily be opened and exploited, especially over the longer term when popular patience or tolerance wear thin. We have seen this with Putin’s twenty or thirty-year strategy to ‘reclaim and reunite’ Russia, centralising power, changing laws in order to reinforce his power, re-building and modernising his armed forces and their military hardware, interfering in Western democracies and their elections (using cyber and human agencies), assassinating on Western soil and getting minimal response, testing the West (Donbas, Lukhansk, Crimea) and getting little effective opposition. He is probably surprised by the unity and re-engagement of the west following the Ukraine invasion in February 2022, but he also knows that Western memories and passions are eminently exploitable.)

Thirdly, all decisions are made uniquely, despite past experience. The world keeps changing and so do the factors that shape how we see and think about it. This is why history cannot repeat itself any more than the water in a river can re-visit where it has just swept on from. Therefore, it is the principles that can be derived from history that have to be appropriated and considered when decisions of strategy are being made. Sorry if that sounds like a statement of the blindingly obvious.

We might, then, look at the current war in Ukraine to help us think this through. I want to preface this with two comments: first, that the Daily Telegraph’s report on 23/24 June (and lifted by the Times and Daily Mail), allegedly based on a background paper for a General Synod debate on 8 July, was erroneous and misleading (deliberately, I think … and described to me by a conservative acquaintance as “at best disingenuous, at worst deliberately mendacious” – I prefer “illiterate”); secondly, the debate at the General Synod is intended to do what it says on the tin: open thoughtful debate about how we think about Ukraine and how we as a church should respond to the various elements of the conflict – defending Ukraine, holding Putin’s government to account for its evils, and responding to humanitarian need. Issuing platitudinous slogans of support and condemnation respectively might make us feel better, but it won’t necessarily achieve very much effectively in either defending Ukraine or holding Russia to account for its intentions and crimes.

Let me absolutely clear: I want Ukraine to win its war, recover its territory and restore its independence and democratic institutions. I would like to see Putin in a War Crimes Tribunal and held accountable for the death and destruction he has ordered in a sovereign and independent neighbouring country. I would like to see this conflict end as soon as possible and with the least possible further bloodshed of military and civilian people. I will wave a flag, if that helps. But, none of what I have just said absolves any of us from doing the hard work of thinking through potential outcomes that might not accord with my desire, all of which will bring with them wider consequences for both short- and longer term political and economic settlements. So, just to avoid any misunderstanding – deliberate or otherwise – let me repeat: debating options is not the same thing as siding with one or betraying another. I hope that is clear as well as obvious.

What also needs to be clear is that questioning previous actions by the West does not equate to a justification of Putin’s aggression. Even where assumptions of American exceptionalism clash with notions of Russian exceptionalism, playing games of moral equivalence is dangerous territory. We must resist this increasingly polarised and binary thinking that sees every statement as a taking of sides rather than an attempt to face reality and navigate complexity in which moral or political intent is often compromised.

The challenges are many. For example, what happens if, in the end, Russia occupies half of Ukraine and fights to a stalemate? What then will be the grounds for negotiating a peace? Because unless one side utterly defeats the other, there will have to be some diplomatically negotiated settlement. That isn’t an opinion – it is a statement of the obvious. Future relationships still have to be developed, whatever the outcome of the bloody conflict. But, let’s think further: if Ukraine defeats Russia, what happens next … and in the following thirty years? The end of the war, however it happens, will not resolve for ever the problem of history, identity and territory. So, how will Ukraine and the West deal with a defeated Russia? This is where the options become complex (and distasteful), but if a future is to be imagined, it has to involve the building of a defeated country along lines which don’t embed deep nationalistic grievances which then nurture the claims and violences of the following century. Remember Versailles and Yalta?

Let’s remind ourselves of the key background issues in the current conflict. We might begin this with a question that bugs many such debates and conflicts: when did history begin? Vladimir Putin has been angling for years not for the restoration of the USSR, but for the renewal of the Holy Rus and the concept of Russkiy Mir. Every time he leaves the Kremlin he passes a statue of Vladimir the Great, the man who united Kiev, Moscow and Minsk – Ukraine, Russia and Belorussia – over a thousand years ago.

Now, historical ‘memory’ can be romanticised and shaped teleologically to justify current ideological preferences, but there is always a starting point from which any people charts the ‘living’ story of their people or nation or empire. In the case of Ukraine, is it the Holy Rus which the Orthodox Church and Russian nationalists date as the founding date? That is Putin’s (rather contorted) understanding of what he is trying to restore (in terms of ‘Russkiy Mir’), and he has corralled the Moscow Patriarchate into sacrificing both people and theology on this particular altar.

But, now read the most accessible history of Ukraine, Anna Reid’s excellent Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine. She illustrates clearly the challenge any modern Ukraine faces, viz. that it was not seen by its neighbours as a separate country until after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1990-91. It was not a sovereign country until then and its democratic institutions and culture have been developed remarkably in only the thirty or so years since then. Reid puts the question bluntly: are Ukrainians  Central Europeans or a species of Russian? To Russians Ukraine was always part of Russia; but, to Poles it was part of Poland. Look at the shift of borders following two world wars in the twentieth century (which was not the beginning) and you will see the problem of working out which narrative (and from which people’s perspective) is to be the defining one.

Ukraine, of course, is not unique in this. Look at Israel-Palestine. Look at the former Soviet Union and the territories – if not nations and ethno-linguistic groups – it held together which, when the glue was dissolved, immediately drew apart and sought their unique identity. Look at the former Yugoslavia and its artificial uniting of ethnic nations which fell into violence once the authoritarian grip was loosened.

My point is simply (and painfully obviously, I fear) that solving one crisis or problem does not resolve any conflict for ever. I grew up in the post-war world reading maps that looked settled for the future. Yet, they have kept changing ever since the previous settlements were established ‘for ever’. So, I return to the challenging and unwelcome question: however and whenever this current conflict ends, there will have to be a way of securing peace and co-existence that takes seriously the costs and consequences of whatever settlement is arrived at. And, at this point in time, no one has any idea what that situation will look like or how any future settlement might be shaped. En route, the parties involved have to navigate the potential for tactical (if not strategic) miscalculation and escalation.

What we can say, however, is that passionate demands for Ukrainian total victory and total defeat for Putin and Russia will by definition create new problems and challenges. The end of one phase will bear the seeds of future conflicts, claims and demands. And these have to be prepared for now in order that the real costs of potential settlements, short-term solutions and longer-term determinations can be properly, transparently and intelligently assessed and engaged.

It worries me that the rhetoric of Western leaders seems to see a single desirable outcome (which I would also like to see) and eschew any discussion of actual and potential scenarios. For example, Boris Johnson said last week that he would resign if the UK could no longer supply Ukraine with what it needs in terms of financial or military support. If that scenario emerges – and remember that the MOD mentioned that the UK does not have sufficient ammunition to support a long-term war – what will the UK then do? Pool all resources with NATO? Or with the EU (which would be anathema for this government, regardless of wider realities)? Simply back off and leave Ukraine to its own fight? These questions have to be addressed now and not reacted to when events turn to a conclusion for which no one is prepared.

In other words, where is the scenario planning that takes post-conflict options and realities seriously? We can only hope that, despite the rhetoric of politicians, the diplomats and military are doing some serious thinking and planning. This is precisely where we need to learn from history: from Versailles and Yalta, from the Sudetenland and the Balkans, from Ireland and Africa, from the trenches of Flanders’ Fields to the trenches of Donbas and Odessa. What are the non-negotiables from any peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia (if such a thing is either desirable or possible): a Ukraine without Donbas? A Ukraine without Lukhansk? What about Crimea? (Crimea was gifted to Ukraine by Khruschev in 1954, before which it was an integral part of Russia in the Soviet Union.) And if, from a UK or Western perspective, all these territories are non-negotiable and are integral elements of Ukrainian territory for the future, why did we do nothing effective to deter Putin when he moved into these territories before and after 2014 and strategically mobilised ethnic Russians to gradually take control over a number of years before the military invasion in February 2022? We can’t say we didn’t know it was happening – even as we lauded oligarchs and sucked up their dirty money.

I want to open up a further relevant question at this point before concluding, and it derives from this notion of deterrence. We could say much more about the errors of the past and red lines that proved as definitive as the stripes on a covid test, but this might emerge during our discussion.

If you believe in the credibility and importance of nuclear deterrence, the Ukraine situation raises some uncomfortable questions. NATO made it clear – rightly – that nuclear weapons would not be used by their forces in this conflict. Russia kept the option open and continues to threaten their use – not only tactical battlefield engagement, but the obliteration of cities and countries (see his remarks about destroying the islands of the United Kingdom and London in particular – like swatting a fly). Now, regardless of the rhetoric and the possibly overblown and hubristic game-playing here, it might appear to some that the West has been deterred by Russia’s weapons and weaponisers, but Russia has not been at all deterred by the West’s. OK, we don’t know the end of the story and we don’t know what is going on behind the scenes; but, this at least raises interesting questions about the effectiveness of deterrence itself, if it doesn’t de facto deter. I throw that in as a discussion starter rather than as a conclusion.

I have said nothing so far about theology. There will be different theological insights into how we should see and conduct ourselves during conflicts such as this one. Any reading of the Scriptures would make it clear that an essential element of discussing any international dispute – however serious and complex or trivial and incidental – must be a commitment to both telling and hearing the truth. We need say nothing about Putin’s control of media and selective propaganda. But, it is vital that his opponents – especially in the ‘free press’ and media of the West – take care to report and comment carefully and truthfully. If Ukraine and Ukrainians matter, then we all have an obligation to the ninth Commandment: that we do not bear false witness against our neighbour, however passionate we feel about mustering our evidence and arguments for a particular end.

Secondly, peace making is harder than peace keeping. But, Christians cannot avoid the obligation to do the hard thinking and hard working of making peace amid the pragmatic complexities of unresolved conflict. Peace making is costly. It is not for Western Christians to decide what cost Ukrainian people should pay for this current war, but, like it or not, we are bound inextricably to Christians on other sides of the conflict and cannot avoid the strictures and demands imposed by this relationship. The challenge is not primarily about a peaceful conclusion to the war, but about how a peaceful post-conflict settlement, rooted in concepts of justice, accountability and sacrifice, can be achieved.

In his book on Dostoyevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction, Rowan Williams makes the point very clearly that the last word has never been spoken in this world. Once we say there is nothing further to say or hear, that conversation is now closed, that every argument has been either settled or concluded, then we have died and the world has ended. There is always more to be said and heard. This theme runs through Dostoyevsky’s fiction and we need to hold to it, too. Christian theology tells us clearly that death, violence and destruction do not have the last word: God does, and it is ‘resurrection’. However, the hard and costly task for Christians (and, I would suggest, for all people) is to work out what that might look like in terms of people and land and ‘stuff’.

At the outset of the conflict there was a quietly expressed fear that the limited conflict might spread, that there was a risk of strategic miscalculation inherent in its developing course of (Russian) action and (Western) reaction. Well, look at the energy crisis and the growing global food crisis that will add to the migration crisis that is rooted in the climate crisis. Any thinking about the future of Ukraine and Russia cannot avoid setting this in the context of global demands and relationships. Once again, as I argued earlier, it is not simply about kicking Russia out; whatever follows next will lead to a fresh set of questions, crises and conflicts.

I think we need to acknowledge that ultimately everyone will lose in this conflict, whoever eventually is deemed to have won. It seems that neither side is ready now for negotiations (although these will be going on through back-channels). But, the time will come, and all parties will need to be ready for the costs as well as the gains. We need to think about what a good peace will actually look like in reality.

I pray for the end of suffering and the establishment of a just peace. But, I have no illusions about what this might entail or what are the risks of getting it wrong. It will be evident from what I have said that the questions are easier to articulate than the answers. We might begin now, with humility and courage, to discuss this together.

Thank you for your attention.

 

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving in the USA – the 400th celebration. I wrote this script for Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme while in the House of Lords in London. By the time I got back to Leeds late evening, the news had moved on and this script was no longer appropriate. As I said in the last post, here is the original script which I publish simply to illustrate how this slot works and how a new script is sometimes required in the early hours of the morning.

Every time I hear the term “peanut butter and jelly” I want to shout “it’s jam!” – quite a lot in the last few days as they are the names given to the American turkeys whose lives have been spared by the President for Thanksgiving. I gather they are now living in a hotel – but, we’d better leave that thought for another time.

Peanut Butter and Jelly are probably unaware that today is the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving event. The early settlers in America had good reason to be grateful. They had escaped the old world of monarchy and religious control, and had overcome the initial challenges of shaping a life in their new world. And their instinct was to be grateful for their new freedom … which, of course, brought with it new limitations and challenges. It was a beginning, but not an end.

However, there is a clue in the phrase “their new world” that not everyone had reason to be grateful for this new settlement. I guess the 90 indigenous people who sat down with the 53 new settlers 400 years ago could not have imagined what was to follow – violence, dispossession and a legacy of cruelty and tension. It won’t come as a surprise, then, that many indigenous Americans celebrate a National Day of Mourning instead of Thanksgiving.

If anything, this recognition should evoke in anyone a certain humility in the face of a complex history. As we know, the scars of our ancestors’ continue to bleed for generations to come. And it is really complicated to work out what ‘justice’ or healing might look like for people who live now in a different world, but a world shaped by the grievances or victories of the past. But, complexity doesn’t solve the paradox. Closer to home, look at Sathnam Sangera’s ‘Empireland’ or the continuing injustice experienced by the Windrush generation.

I have to apply imagination and empathy to this exercise. The legacy of my own ancestors has not landed me in a bad place, after all. But, I come from a Judeo-Christian tradition that compels us to look through the eyes of the other. The Israelite settlers in the Land of Promise instituted rituals – involving body, mind, spirit and economics – so that they would never forget that once they had been slaves and must not enslave others. They didn’t learn quickly. Mary’s song – the Magnificat – makes clear that good news for the poor will be costly for the rich, and Jesus’s own ‘manifesto’ in Luke’s gospel recognises that liberation for some causes a problem for others.

If Peanut Butter and Jelly understand anything of their happy situation today, they might also see that not all turkeys will be celebrating their joy. Thanksgiving and humility belong together.

 

Dominion

Coming to Headingley for the third day of the third Ashes Test match was as much an act of hope (if you are English, that is) as optimism. A clear determination to enjoy the game, regardless of the outcome – a heavy and embarrassing defeat for England a couple of days short of the five-day limit or a miracle – was what characterised historian Tom Holland‘s Twitterfeed all day yesterday.

This attitude is one that runs through his writings and is best exemplified in his new book Dominion, to be published in a week or two. I have been reading a proof copy.

Holland tackles a huge task: not to describe the theology of Western Christianity since year zero, but to describe with breathtaking clarity and zest how the development of theology (and the people shaped by theology – i.e. everyone) has shaped the way western people see the world, understand history, assume morality and regard the rule of law and human rights. The ambition is great and he pulls it off. Like his other books, in my experience, it is very hard to put down once started as the narrative drives the reader on for more.

Yet, it isn’t just the content of the book that thrills (not a word I use often). The writing never fails to add colour to the description of ideas and movements. One example regarding Gerrard Winstanley in 1649 (page 350):

His foes might dismiss Winstanley as a dreamer; but he was not the only one.The occupation of St George’s Hill was a declaration of hope: that others some day would join the Diggers, and the world would be as one.”

He got John Lennon into a line on a seventeenth century dissenter and it is perfect.

Tom Holland doesn’t need me to review or commend him, but he is unique in his ability to bring history alive, particularly in its sweep and not just its detail. It is the big narrative that occupies the direction of this book. His contention that Christianity has shaped much of what is assumed in western culture and might not survive when Christianity’s roots are severed from the tree (human rights did not descend from nowhere and should not be assumed to be universally held or eternally guaranteed) is one with which I have a huge sympathy (predictably?). However, setting out a narrative rationale in the way Tom Holland does it in Dominion offers a basis for arguing the point and a provocation for those who see history differently. He seems to be asking that prejudices against religion or theology be suspended and the mind opened to what history itself might suggest to us.

I hope and expect that this book will prove to be the opening bat on a fertile wicket and I look forward to the game, which, judging by the plethora of reviews already ahead of publication, should itself prove to be thoroughly stimulating.

 

Babylon

This is the script of this morning’s Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

Just about a year ago I skirted the Isis stronghold of Mosul in Iraq. I was out there with colleagues visiting refugees, internally displaced people, church leaders and politicians in Kurdistan – particularly in and around Erbil and Dohuk. We spent time with Muslims, Christians and Yazidis, hearing harrowing stories of loss and fear and hope.

Yet, Mosul, so solid a base for Isis only a year or so ago, is now seeing the possibility of release and relief. How the mighty fall.
This shouldn’t come as any surprise. After all, this is the part of the world where civilisation as we know it actually began. When you read the narratives of three thousand years ago which we call the Old Testament, the events recorded took place here – between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Here we find the ruins of the most ancient societies – where human beings brought order out of chaos and the first empires were built.

And this is what the story of Iraq teaches us. Now is not the end. There was a time when mention of the words Babylon, Assyria, Egypt or Rome struck fear into the hearts of ordinary people – not least those conquered by the apparently invincible powers. Living in what is often called ‘the ultimate Now’, it is hard to see beyond the suffering or success of the present day – to hang on to the possibility of freedom or the defeat of the empire which controls life and death now.

So, when we read texts like those of the Old Testament – their poetry, their protest and passion – the point is clear: empires come and go; the powerful will be brought down and the meek raised up; tomorrow will not always look like today.

But, such a perspective demands a rare discipline. We have to be able to see the present as transient – not the defining reality. Put differently, we have to be drawn by hope and not driven by fear. Our central core as individuals and as a society has to be rooted in a clear understanding of what makes a human being and what makes a humane society. Christians would say that whatever the state of the world now, wherever power is seated, it is the God of resurrection who draws us into a future that is not held captive to the past. It is a vision drawn from a reading of history and scriptures that keeps power and suffering in perspective – that death, violence and destruction do not actually have the final word.

Now, not everyone will be fired by the same conviction. But, the warning to Babylon, to Isis, to global military, economic and political powers, has not changed since human society emerged in what is now Iraq: you won’t be here for ever and you might be called to account.

 

Populism, nationalism and international order

This is the basic text of my speech in the House of Lords this afternoon, not wanting to repeat what had already been said and trying to make a contribution (in a five minute speech limit) that others might not.

This House takes note of challenges to the liberal international order posed by the development of populism and nationalism around the world.

This is an important debate because it invites us to go behind the popular terms of discourse and to identify some of the philosophical dynamics at play in contemporary political developments.

The excellent Library Note makes it clear that language matters – that definition of terms is not incidental. Populism is clearly more than a movement of people who listen only to the facts that support the prejudices they have already nurtured; but, it can exploit assertive language in such a way as to obscure truth.

And this is what I wish to focus on here. Whereas others will discuss the importance of a rules-based international order, I want to say something about language in a post-truth or post-factual world, and pose a couple of questions about the assumptions we make regarding history.

The United Kingdom (as illustrated by the unfortunate reference of the Foreign Secretary yesterday) has defined itself by its share in the defeat of fascism in the twentieth century. Have we moved on? If we assume that our domestic order has been defined for ever by a past victory, we should not be surprised when our complacency finds itself undermined by events that are not trapped in that same narrative. Democracy and the rule of law are not natural and immutable givens, but are goals for which we must struggle in each generation.

This is why the narratives that guide our self-understanding as a nation among nations on a very small planet in a very large universe matter so much. It is why the UK seeing itself through the lens of a long-gone empire is so facile. It is why seeing Germany simply through the lens of Adolf Hitler is ridiculous. It is why illusions of power are dangerous when they shape language and rhetoric that are heard differently by other audiences. We need new narratives for the contemporary world – narratives of hope rooted in an authentic anthropology that takes seriously the destructive elements of human nature (what used to be known as ‘sin’).

Western liberalism has become complacent about its own self-evident superiority. It is arguable that the proper balance between individual rights and concerns for the common good has not been established. I would argue that this complacency has contributed to the sense of alienation and detachment being seen in what is being called political populism. Progress is not inevitable; it is not true that things can only get better; human rights cannot be assumed to be self-evidently right. Battles for peace, order and social cohesion are not won once and for ever. The tendency to entropy is powerful and finds it easier to pull down rather than build up.

The sorts of populism we see now (and I am trying not to load the term beyond the observation that certain demagogues claim to speak on behalf of ‘the people’) are destructive precisely because they evidently collude in destruction without a compelling vision for what should be constructed. Hence, we have seen a referendum campaign fuelled by lies, misrepresentation and an easy readiness to abuse language.

Who are the elites? Especially when they are being condemned or ridiculed by public school and Oxbridge-educated journalist-politicians who command six-figure incomes above and beyond their basic salary, and who will, whatever the outcome of Brexit, not suffer greatly? Why does it not matter that promises can be made in a referendum campaign that simply get dismissed within hours of that campaign ending? Can liberal order survive the corruption of language and the reduction of truth or fact to mere political convenience or expediency? It is not a game.

Tomorrow sees the inauguration of a US President for whom truth is a commodity to be traded. Direct contradiction of what is proven fact is loudly asserted without shame or embarrassment. I make no comment or judgement about his ability to govern the United States or contribute intelligently and wisely to the establishment of a just international order; I simply observe that the corruption of language and truth is in itself dangerous for everyone.

This debate is about the challenges to the liberal international order posed by the development of populism and nationalism around the world. The liberal international order is not a natural given or an inevitable right. It begs as many questions (of inherent legitimacy) as it addresses. Populism and nationalism are not new phenomena, and their development is a constant in societies that feel uncertain or have lost the security found in a clear sense of common or mutual identity. The particular danger of today’s developments around the world is that instability is far easier to create than stability; that order is fragile and chaos a tempting attraction; that the spectre haunting Europe and the world has little to do with ‘what the people – whoever they are – want’ and much to do with how they can be manipulated into thinking that what they are told they want is in fact what is good for them. The anti-elitist anti-establishmentarians are perpetrating a fraud in their elitist and self-promoting rhetorics. But, they will not be the people to pay the price.

I suspect that the order of the past is being challenged by the threat or promise of a new order. It is essential that we articulate a compelling vision for an order that serves the common good, shapes a good society and resists the claims of a post-truth rhetoric which tells us lying is acceptable as a means to an end.

 

Who is Martin Luther?

This is the script of this morning's Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4's Today programme:

I went into a bookshop last week to get a book I'd seen reviewed and, on a first look around the ground floor, couldn't find it. So, I went to the assistant and asked if they had the new biography of Martin Luther by Oxford academic Lyndal Roper. The conversation went something like this:

“You mean Martin Luther King?”

“No, I mean Martin Luther.”

“I've never heard of him. Who is he?”

“He was a German monk who set off the Reformation in Europe.”

“A German monk? He's probably in 'Religion'.

Eventually I went upstairs anyway and found it myself under 'German History'.

Well, I was a little alarmed about this. Not so much because of the religious illiteracy it demonstrated, but the historical ignorance. When I tweeted this exchange, a friend reminded me of the occasion when someone went into a bookshop and asked where he could find Oscar Wilde. The answer? “He's not in today.” Other funny comments followed.

Call me old-fashioned, but it is impossible to have any understanding of the modern world – especially modern Europe – without some reference to the German monk. And for me this is personal: I will be speaking in Luther's Erfurt at the end of October this year to kick off the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in Europe.

The challenge this presents is this: which histories need to be known if we are to know who we are and what got us to where we are? I lived and worked in the Cold War, so inhabited a divided Europe: my kids did not, and for them the Soviet Union is as remote as the Boer War. Yet, some histories shouldn't be ignored.

Luther was a complicated man: intense, argumentative and bad-tempered. He said some terrible things about Jews (which in turn had terrible consequences even four centuries later) and wasn't exactly a proto-feminist. He challenged one political power only to find himself colluding with others. He was brave, disciplined and sharp as a knife. He changed the German language for ever, and shaped what became the modern world by following up on an idea: that God loves us anyway.

In other words, Luther was a complex human being – just like the rest of us. We don't have to ignore his faults or take him out of his times in order to make him palatable to twenty-first century sensibilities. Praise him or damn him, we still have to take seriously what he did at the time he did it.

Essentially Luther was empowered by one simple discovery: we can never be perfect, but we can be liberated by knowing we are freely loved by God. 'Grace' it was called. It changed him, and he changed the world.

We see around us plenty of anger, strife and disputation. Surely it wouldn't be a bad thing to re-discover grace. And also to re-discover history.

 

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Memory and vision

This is the script of this morning's Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4's Today programme:

I have just got back from the reading of fat books on holiday. The one that grabbed me this time was Tom Holland's 'Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar'. It all sounded so contemporary. The voice in my head kept repeating the plaintive phrase from the book of Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun”. Power, violence, subterfuge, ego, leadership struggles, populism and politics – it's all there. It always is.

I also kept hearing the line from Proverbs: “Where there is no vision the people perish.” The problem with vision is that it emerges from memory. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said this week that Judaism is a religion of memory. So, I would argue, is Christianity. Both remind us, for example, that empires come and go, that hubris is ultimately embarrassing, and that history sadly repeats itself. Christianity makes no sense at all without rituals that are there to compel compulsive amnesiacs to re-member their story: in this case that by recalling that we were once slaves, we will refrain from treating other people like slaves; that we are set free to serve; that we are to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God (and one another). For Jews the Passover goes to the heart of this memory; for Christians the Eucharist re-tells the story into which we fit ourselves and shape our future.

We can only know who we are if we know from where and from whom we have come. The problems emerge when either we think we have been born into the ultimate 'now' – that nothing valuable went before us – or we choose the bits of memory that are convenient to our present or future self-justifications.

And that is as dangerous for nations, continents and communities as it is for individuals or religions.

With this in mind, and having read about the Caesars, I wonder if every government should appoint a Cabinet Historian to remind it of the past and challenge policy for the longer-term future in the light of experience.

Of course, all readings of history are partial, and memories are always susceptible to selectivity. But, some of the challenges we face (for example, in the light of Brexit) would be informed by a sober re-membering. Memories are short, but how will anyone born in this millennium understand Russia and Ukraine when they have no experience of the Cold War – and a world divided not just by affluence but by starkly competing ideologies? Memory is not quite the same as history, but both can become commodities in struggles for power, as the biblical narrative reminds us.

Well, I won't hold my breath, but without a memory the people cannot form a vision. And without a vision the people perish.

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European amnesia?

The Reimagining Europe blog continues to provide space for a different sort of conversation about the future of Europe ahead of the UK referendum in 2017.

2017 is, of course, the 500th anniversary of the Reformation (when Martin Luther is said to have nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Schloßkirche in Wittenberg). And, of course, you can't understand the shape of Europe or its history without understanding the Reformation.

So, I have posted a piece about the need to remember well, even when this might offend our prejudices or ideological interests. All in the interests of promoting the debate.

 

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Born somewhere

This is the script of this morning's Pause for Thought on the Chris Evans Show on BBC Radio 2 (following last night's Sandford St Martin Awards ceremony at Lambeth Palace):

If truth be told, I'm a bit on the tired side this morning. Last night I was presenting awards for excellence in religious broadcasting and my head is full of great stories. We had some brilliant examples of radio and telly that got under the skin of how people live – and why they live the way they do. After all, religion is about life, not a niche for weirdos.

And perhaps that's why when we get to anniversaries of momentous events, some sort of religious celebration stands at the heart of the remembering. This week is particularly poignant as it ends on the seventieth anniversary of D-Day – a day of triumph, but a day of blood.

But, this week also sees a musical anniversary. Today is the thirtieth birthday of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA. I can't believe it is thirty years since the Boss attacked my ears and got me hooked on music that gave words to memories and took seriously the importance of place for human beings. We need to know where we belong – that we belong somewhere.

I wasn't born in the USA – surprisingly. I was born in Liverpool when the Beatles were getting together and Merseybeat ruled the airwaves. I know where my cultural roots are and they partly tell me who I am. And what Springsteen did was to open up to everyone – wherever they come from – the need to remember. As a rabbi once pointed out, when a generation dies out, memory becomes history – and when that happens – inevitably – history becomes a commodity over which people fight.

The point is we need to know who we are. Way back in the Old Testament the people had to divide the year into rituals that compelled them to remember where they had come from – that when they prospered, they recalled that once they were slaves and had nothing. This was supposed to root within their consciousness a sense of humility and generosity that shaped their politics and economics as well as their culture.

Anyway, Bruce Springsteen isn't that old. But, Born in the USA invited us to do the same task: to remember who we are and that all of us were born somewhere.

 

 

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Isolating Putin

I remember reading a paper once in which the writer kept using the word 'insulation' when he meant 'isolation'. And now I wonder if I am seeing the same thing when I listen to Western political leaders claiming that Putin and Russia will be 'isolated' because of the annexation of Crimea.

Will western threats turn out to be, in fact, the very moves that insulate Putin within his own 'bloc' and cement his position? And will such insulation/isolation actually render any possible negotiation or policy amendment impossible?

These are questions more eloquently put by Dr Charles Reed in his good and clear post today.

They are also the sort of questions lurking behind my original post on Ukraine and subsequent linking in to this of reflections on the events behind the sleepwalking into World War One in 1914. Some intended actions turn out to have unintended consequences – but it is not the politicians who pay the price (unless in terms of the loss of a job later).

Running under all this stuff is also the question of memory – and whose narrative is allowed to become 'official'. As this article in today's Observer illustrates tragically and seriously, attempts to rewrite 1990s history in Serbia and Bosnia is not just of academic interest … especially to those who see the physical world around them being shaped to tell a lie.

And where did World War One begin…?

 

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