Oh, I’m happy to lament the tidal wave of economic migrants that is destroying my country and its culture, while blaming nice Mr. Cameron for his reckless blunders. The law of unintended consequences is very harsh when you start playing around with foreign intervention, but the poor dozy PPE-graduate wasn’t to know that.
The point is, what are we going to do about it? My favoured option is mass deportation.
Correct. As a first step THEY should be deported to our former Detention Camps in Northern Ireland, and from there encouraged to ‘escape’ to the Irish Republic, who will undoubtedly welcome them with open arms.
As for the wretched Cameron, along with Mrs May he should be charged with High Treason.
Please. Blame the Americans, specifically the American left. ISIS, Ukraine, Gaza, and of course Haiti and Libya is their failing. Democrats, then, are children of a larger growth.
Stephen Walsh
6 months ago
If all that was holding back a refugee influx into Europe was the continuation of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, then it was always going to happen, sooner or later. A collapse was inevitable: the only uncertainty was around timing and form.
True, except that one might hope that a very wealthy country at the north-western edge, surrounded by sea, might be able to mitigate the effects somewhat.
Being an island is an advantage, or should be an advantage.
Edwin Blake
6 months ago
I am surprised that the author seems to take western statements of humanitarian intentions at face value, and only criticizes the lack of consistency in implementation. Surely no one is that naive?
I remember being taken aback when Mandela called the western attitude to Libya racist, but in retrospect he was right. Part of that insight is borne out in that shocking gloating psychopathic cackle of Hilary Clinton caught on video: “we came, we saw, he died” on response to Gaddafi dying in a ditch.
Wasn’t he sodomised with ‘Stanley knife’ to add insult to injury?
Harry Child
6 months ago
So the so called West is damned if intervenes and damned if it doesn’t A day doesn’t go bye without some media hack demanding that the West should intervene in some internal dispute in other countries.
Damned in the sense of people grumbling, but I wouldn’t feel all that damned if we saved the lives of our military, billions in revenue, and our culture and services from an influx of often murderous “refugees”.
It’d be a nice change of pace if they stopped intervening for 5-10 years, you know, just to see what would happen. They could throw the money they’d save from the military away on frivolities like infrastructure, health services and (insert your solution to societies problems here!) The rest of the world would be very disappointed, but at least it might be fun to try.
That’s exactly what I say, America is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. The ultimate catch 22.
Malcolm Webb
6 months ago
Libya is another glaring example of foolish politicians taking action without properly considering the consequences. I am not sure it is purely a Western thing – more about the short sighted hubristic ill considered follies of modern politics.
Rasmus Fogh
6 months ago
The conclusion would be that the good thing to do is to back bloodstained dictators like Ghaddafi, Saddam Hussein, or Assad when they try to crush their rebellious people, because any government is better than anarchy. Maybe that would also be a reason to back Xi as he is suppressing his ethnic and religious minorities; the logic is about the same. Now all this might actually be true, at least in many cases, but we would have to say and defend it oppenly. It would be a bitter pill to swallow for even western conservatives. As for the progressives, don’t ask!
Good point Ras. So much of the thinking of progressives and traditionalists, is within a very narrow bandwidth of binary options, The immutable features of the world, and human nature, are much more complex. Best to revert to a diversity amongst people and nations, pursuing what works for them. Nature abhors monopolies and other singularities, economic or political.
Hang on it was all the lefties who demonstrated against the Iraqi invasion. Corbyn was one of the few labour MPs who voted against it. How many Unherd subscribers were in that 1 million strong demo? It’s actually the left who have always been against foreign interventions.
I was in that demo – one of very few I have ever been to.
It is also the left who want a morals-based foreign policy, and who is against being friendly with foreign dictators, like Saudi Arabia, Chile, or Apartheid South Africa. No non-interference there. But for simple consistency, if Assad and Ghadaffi deserve friendship, then what is wrong with de Klerk, Bin Salman, or Pinochet? Unless of course the lefties think that we have a moral duty to be helpful to our enemies and obnoxious to our allies?
As with so many other things, both extremes are unpalatable. Ignoring things entirely has few short term drawbacks but issues pile up over the long term if not addressed. Furthermore, seemingly inconsequential foreign problems can can turn unexpectedly into direct threats to national interest, 9/11 being the prime example. On the other hand, the failures of more recent doctrines of preemptive regime change and nation building are apparent to all. Introducing western democracy to non-western cultures has been a categorical failure. Neither complete disengagement from these problems nor enthusiastic interventionism is the wisest course. A middle path of moderation and measured responses which takes national interests as well as local cultural values and trends into consideration. I’m skeptical our leaders are either pragmatic enough to see past their ideology and/or competent enough to pull off a more sensible, measured approach.
I still think that once we accept that “Introducing western democracy to non-western cultures” is never going to work, we would need to do some major rethinking on our foreign policy goals.
Michael Walsh
6 months ago
Collateral damage of the Libya intervention would have to include the non-proliferation movement. KaDaffi was widely praised for unilaterally giving up WMDs. If he had kept them, he might still be alive today, his country still functional and amenable to diplomatic overtures instead of being run by warlords, slavers and worse. Oh, and while I’m at it: cursed be Samantha Power, may she keel over.
Gordon Arta
6 months ago
States which are riven by ethnic, tribal, sectarian, etc hatred and distrust, baked in by dogmatic and intolerant religious ideologies, and characterised by generations of conflict, can only be effectively governed by ruthless b’tards, capable of suppressing dissent and internal conflicts by whatever means are necessary – Gaddaffi, Assad, Saddam Hussein, the Egyptian Army, etc. The West simply isn’t capable of the same single-minded ruthlessness, so cannot begin to govern such places. As we will soon find in France, Sweden, the UK etc as we import those ethnic, tribal, sectarian etc hatreds and conflicts and they grow within.
Peter Kwasi-Modo
6 months ago
The worst Western interventions in Africa have been the ones that led to the massive increase in population by decreasing mortality. For most of the countries from which the “refugees” are “fleeing”, the population has doubled since the 1990’s. On paper, African countries might be resource-rich and have a low population density, but the kleptocracies there are incapable of exploiting their resources for the good of the citizens.
Guns make one strong, butter makes one fat, and at the end of the day the American ambassador’s violated corpse was dragged through the streets, a victim (and far from the first or the last) of Clinton and Obama’s feckless, lethal bungling.
To blame European policy makers is risible, as countries without militaries to speak of can be neither victors nor villains. One can and should blame us Americans, primarily those of the Democrat persuasion.
ISIS, Haiti, Honduras, Ukraine, Gaza. As Auden would say, mismanagement and grief – we must suffer them all, again.
The long list of dead people grows alarmingly long when American neoliberals win elections. For all of Trump’s retrograde bluster, Pax Americana held together under his administration.
Bernard Hill
6 months ago
Samantha Power and Fiona Hill, the UK’s gifts to America and therefore the planet.
Actually to be accurate, “Great Britain” is the the geographical and cultural identity I intended to identify, not the “UK” which is a purely a polity description.
Benedict Waterson
6 months ago
If Libya’s state failure has washed into the European countries which precipitated it, then how are popular democratic objections simply ”xenophobic”
Yoram Mimoun
6 months ago
The Europeans indeed made mistakes that could have led to a refugee crisis. But they did not need that for this crisis to happen. There is no reason for an African inhabitant not to seek to flee to Europe if he can: the interests are so obvious that this is in reality the main reason for this crisis. Do not forget that causality and correlation are not the same.
Last edited 6 months ago by Yoram Mimoun
Charles Stanhope
6 months ago
Have we already forgotten that on occasion naughty Mr Gaddafi did use to supply the IRA with a teeny weeny bit of SEMTEX,**to blow ‘our boys’ to bits in Northern Ireland?
Well, I haven’t forgotten.
About ten years ago BBC4 aired a highly revealing Storyville documentary about Gadaffi’s brutality. Titled Mad Dog: Gaddafi’s Secret World it was the kind of documentary our state broadcaster occasionally produced. No longer available on BBC Select but can be viewed on Amazon video. An antidote for those who have convinced themselves that Gadaffi was basically a decent chap who did a lot for his people and whose only real crime was to defy the US.
Yes, so many on here complain about the refugee influx into Europe, without ever mentioning the western interventions that led to it.
Indeed. Offering them free shelter and housing, benefits, as well as building places of worship for them.
Oh, I’m happy to lament the tidal wave of economic migrants that is destroying my country and its culture, while blaming nice Mr. Cameron for his reckless blunders. The law of unintended consequences is very harsh when you start playing around with foreign intervention, but the poor dozy PPE-graduate wasn’t to know that.
The point is, what are we going to do about it? My favoured option is mass deportation.
Correct. As a first step THEY should be deported to our former Detention Camps in Northern Ireland, and from there encouraged to ‘escape’ to the Irish Republic, who will undoubtedly welcome them with open arms.
As for the wretched Cameron, along with Mrs May he should be charged with High Treason.
I remember Douglas Herd making the case, against the tide, for avoiding involvement in foreign conflicts in relation to Kosovo
Old school: Eton, KS, Royal Horse Artillery, Trinity Cambridge. Need I say more?
Please. Blame the Americans, specifically the American left. ISIS, Ukraine, Gaza, and of course Haiti and Libya is their failing. Democrats, then, are children of a larger growth.
If all that was holding back a refugee influx into Europe was the continuation of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, then it was always going to happen, sooner or later. A collapse was inevitable: the only uncertainty was around timing and form.
True, except that one might hope that a very wealthy country at the north-western edge, surrounded by sea, might be able to mitigate the effects somewhat.
Being an island is an advantage, or should be an advantage.
I am surprised that the author seems to take western statements of humanitarian intentions at face value, and only criticizes the lack of consistency in implementation. Surely no one is that naive?
I remember being taken aback when Mandela called the western attitude to Libya racist, but in retrospect he was right. Part of that insight is borne out in that shocking gloating psychopathic cackle of Hilary Clinton caught on video: “we came, we saw, he died” on response to Gaddafi dying in a ditch.
Wasn’t he sodomised with ‘Stanley knife’ to add insult to injury?
So the so called West is damned if intervenes and damned if it doesn’t A day doesn’t go bye without some media hack demanding that the West should intervene in some internal dispute in other countries.
Damned in the sense of people grumbling, but I wouldn’t feel all that damned if we saved the lives of our military, billions in revenue, and our culture and services from an influx of often murderous “refugees”.
This will be the theme of my future magnum opus ‘Occidentalism: the West and its foreign discontents ‘.
But I can’t seem to find my slippers….
It’d be a nice change of pace if they stopped intervening for 5-10 years, you know, just to see what would happen. They could throw the money they’d save from the military away on frivolities like infrastructure, health services and (insert your solution to societies problems here!) The rest of the world would be very disappointed, but at least it might be fun to try.
That’s exactly what I say, America is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. The ultimate catch 22.
Libya is another glaring example of foolish politicians taking action without properly considering the consequences. I am not sure it is purely a Western thing – more about the short sighted hubristic ill considered follies of modern politics.
The conclusion would be that the good thing to do is to back bloodstained dictators like Ghaddafi, Saddam Hussein, or Assad when they try to crush their rebellious people, because any government is better than anarchy. Maybe that would also be a reason to back Xi as he is suppressing his ethnic and religious minorities; the logic is about the same. Now all this might actually be true, at least in many cases, but we would have to say and defend it oppenly. It would be a bitter pill to swallow for even western conservatives. As for the progressives, don’t ask!
Good point Ras. So much of the thinking of progressives and traditionalists, is within a very narrow bandwidth of binary options, The immutable features of the world, and human nature, are much more complex. Best to revert to a diversity amongst people and nations, pursuing what works for them. Nature abhors monopolies and other singularities, economic or political.
Don’t over-think it. The conclusion is to recognize one’s limitations, and the propensity of interventions to make things worse.
Hang on it was all the lefties who demonstrated against the Iraqi invasion. Corbyn was one of the few labour MPs who voted against it. How many Unherd subscribers were in that 1 million strong demo? It’s actually the left who have always been against foreign interventions.
I was in that demo – one of very few I have ever been to.
It is also the left who want a morals-based foreign policy, and who is against being friendly with foreign dictators, like Saudi Arabia, Chile, or Apartheid South Africa. No non-interference there. But for simple consistency, if Assad and Ghadaffi deserve friendship, then what is wrong with de Klerk, Bin Salman, or Pinochet? Unless of course the lefties think that we have a moral duty to be helpful to our enemies and obnoxious to our allies?
It still took 146 Tory votes to get Blair’s Iraq War off the ground. By rights they should all be HANGED.
As with so many other things, both extremes are unpalatable. Ignoring things entirely has few short term drawbacks but issues pile up over the long term if not addressed. Furthermore, seemingly inconsequential foreign problems can can turn unexpectedly into direct threats to national interest, 9/11 being the prime example. On the other hand, the failures of more recent doctrines of preemptive regime change and nation building are apparent to all. Introducing western democracy to non-western cultures has been a categorical failure. Neither complete disengagement from these problems nor enthusiastic interventionism is the wisest course. A middle path of moderation and measured responses which takes national interests as well as local cultural values and trends into consideration. I’m skeptical our leaders are either pragmatic enough to see past their ideology and/or competent enough to pull off a more sensible, measured approach.
Well, no one can disagree with that.
I still think that once we accept that “Introducing western democracy to non-western cultures” is never going to work, we would need to do some major rethinking on our foreign policy goals.
Collateral damage of the Libya intervention would have to include the non-proliferation movement. KaDaffi was widely praised for unilaterally giving up WMDs. If he had kept them, he might still be alive today, his country still functional and amenable to diplomatic overtures instead of being run by warlords, slavers and worse. Oh, and while I’m at it: cursed be Samantha Power, may she keel over.
States which are riven by ethnic, tribal, sectarian, etc hatred and distrust, baked in by dogmatic and intolerant religious ideologies, and characterised by generations of conflict, can only be effectively governed by ruthless b’tards, capable of suppressing dissent and internal conflicts by whatever means are necessary – Gaddaffi, Assad, Saddam Hussein, the Egyptian Army, etc. The West simply isn’t capable of the same single-minded ruthlessness, so cannot begin to govern such places. As we will soon find in France, Sweden, the UK etc as we import those ethnic, tribal, sectarian etc hatreds and conflicts and they grow within.
The worst Western interventions in Africa have been the ones that led to the massive increase in population by decreasing mortality. For most of the countries from which the “refugees” are “fleeing”, the population has doubled since the 1990’s. On paper, African countries might be resource-rich and have a low population density, but the kleptocracies there are incapable of exploiting their resources for the good of the citizens.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Guns make one strong, butter makes one fat, and at the end of the day the American ambassador’s violated corpse was dragged through the streets, a victim (and far from the first or the last) of Clinton and Obama’s feckless, lethal bungling.
To blame European policy makers is risible, as countries without militaries to speak of can be neither victors nor villains. One can and should blame us Americans, primarily those of the Democrat persuasion.
ISIS, Haiti, Honduras, Ukraine, Gaza. As Auden would say, mismanagement and grief – we must suffer them all, again.
The long list of dead people grows alarmingly long when American neoliberals win elections. For all of Trump’s retrograde bluster, Pax Americana held together under his administration.
Samantha Power and Fiona Hill, the UK’s gifts to America and therefore the planet.
Actually to be accurate, “Great Britain” is the the geographical and cultural identity I intended to identify, not the “UK” which is a purely a polity description.
If Libya’s state failure has washed into the European countries which precipitated it, then how are popular democratic objections simply ”xenophobic”
The Europeans indeed made mistakes that could have led to a refugee crisis. But they did not need that for this crisis to happen. There is no reason for an African inhabitant not to seek to flee to Europe if he can: the interests are so obvious that this is in reality the main reason for this crisis. Do not forget that causality and correlation are not the same.
Have we already forgotten that on occasion naughty Mr Gaddafi did use to supply the IRA with a teeny weeny bit of SEMTEX,**to blow ‘our boys’ to bits in Northern Ireland?
(*Irish Republican Army)
(** Plastic explosive.)
Well, I haven’t forgotten.
About ten years ago BBC4 aired a highly revealing Storyville documentary about Gadaffi’s brutality. Titled Mad Dog: Gaddafi’s Secret World it was the kind of documentary our state broadcaster occasionally produced. No longer available on BBC Select but can be viewed on Amazon video. An antidote for those who have convinced themselves that Gadaffi was basically a decent chap who did a lot for his people and whose only real crime was to defy the US.
Thanks for that link, I didn’t see it at the time.
Off course the lives of British soldiers mean absolutely NOTHING to the ‘Woke Luvvies’ of Quislington, never have done and never will do.