Arguments in the foothills of war are always the same. Those for war shout loudest and beat their chests, eager for tanks to rumble and jets to roar. Those against are dismissed as wimps, appeasers and defeatists. When the trumpets sound and the drums beat, reason runs for cover.
The visit to Taiwan of the US congressional speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has been so blatantly provocative it seems little more than a midterm election stunt. She declares it “essential that America and her allies make clear that we never give in to autocrats”. China’s gross overreaction is a classic example of precipitate escalation. Yet when Joe Biden asserted that the US would defend Taiwan militarily, the president’s office instantly backtracked, reasserting a policy of “strategic ambiguity”. It remains the case that no one quite believes the US will go to war over Taiwan – so far.
A similar ambiguity infuses the west’s attitude towards Russia over Ukraine. The US and Britain reiterate that Russia “must fail and be seen to fail”. But can Russia really be relied on to tolerate ever greater destruction of its armaments without escalation? The west seems set on holding Ukraine to a drawn game, hoping to postpone some horrific penalty shootout. All Russia can do is perpetrate ever more atrocities to keep its team in play. Suppose it escalates something else?
These are the same uncertainties that overwhelmed European diplomacy in 1914. Rulers dithered while generals strutted and rattled sabres. Flags flew and newspapers filled with tallies of weaponry. Negotiations slithered into ultimatums. As the frontline pleaded for help, woe betide anyone who preached compromise.
During the two east-west nuclear crises of the cold war, in 1962 over Cuba and 1983 over a false missile alarm, disaster was averted by informal lines of communication between Washington and Moscow. They worked. Those lines reportedly do not exist today. The eastern bloc is led by two autocrats, internally secure but paranoid about their borders.
The west is blighted by weakened and failing leaders, striving to boost their ratings by promoting conflicts abroad. What is new is the conversion of the old western imperialism into a new order of western “interests and values”, ready to be prayed in aid of any intervention.
Such an order has become arbitrary and knows no boundaries. Despite Pelosi’s claim, the west “gives in” at its own convenience, intervening or failing to do so. Hence wayward policies towards Iran, Syria, Libya, Rwanda, Myanmar, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and others. Britain abandoned Hong Kong to China and donated Afghanistan to the Taliban, the futility of the latter intervention shown last week in the drone killing of al-Qaida’s leader in Kabul.