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Sean O’Reilly
THANK heavens the Tory leadership contest is drawing to a close.
Truss, almost certainly, will inherit the crown. She will be an awful but, thankfully, short-lived Prime Minister.
Her brief periods as trade secretary and foreign secretary have not equipped her, in any real sense, to take on the top job with any more realistic hope of success than was the case when Boris Johnson disgorged himself into No 10.
At least he had a thumping majority and the endorsement of the British electorate behind him. Neither Truss nor Sunak have anything — except collective responsibility for the mess which Johnson and team have bequeathed to the nation.
Neither one has been in any way convincing in their campaigning or in their proposed solutions to the multi-faceted crises the winner will inherit.
Truss’ puerile attempt to portray herself as knowledgeable and competent on global affairs: her hollow warnings to Russia and, heaven help us, to China, coupled with her fawning over the Americans (well, BoJo did tell his successor to “stay close to the Americans”) merely reflect her wilful unawareness of Britain’s hugely diminished status in international affairs — exacerbated by Brexit (which she opposed but now fully embraces) and to be further exacerbated, undoubtedly, by the arrogance of her approach to the European Union , France in particular.
Truss is no Margaret Thatcher. Not by a very long shot. And her shortcomings will be cruelly exposed in short order.
Johnson, her mentor, of course remains something of a tragi-comedic figure. He is angry and bitter and sulky.
He simply does not get why he was forced from office or what it was that he had done to warrant such treachery from within. Just a few short weeks ago, he was boasting about running for a second and even third term — even as his chaotic first term was disintegrating before his very eyes. He just would not see it. Would not accept that his deeply-flawed character, his innate dishonesty, his lies, his philandering ways and the moral corruption which he allowed to contaminate his administration would, in the end, become so odious that even those closest to him could no longer hold their noses.
Everything was a joke. He chaired Cabinet as if he was hosting another edition of Have I Got News For You. Everything was reduced to one-line put-downs. Anything for a laugh. Even with G7 and other world leaders, he was often gauche, clearly ill-at-ease and always looking for a laugh or a comic photo-op.
It is clear that no-one took him very seriously — least of all the most important of his European colleagues — Macron and Merkel — not to mention those of the “special relationship” across the Atlantic. Who knows what Trump and, later, Biden actually think of BoJo.
Their warnings on the Northern Ireland Protocol, the linkage of progress on any post-Brexit UK/US trade agreement to preserving the Protocol certainly convey an indication of their reservations about the man and his casual, lackadaisical approach to virtually everything.
Johnson himself points to Brexit, the Covid vaccine roll-out and his ‘global leadership’ on Ukraine as successes and key elements of his legacy.
Brexit is a mess. Again, his dishonesty, his and the unspeakable Frost’s arrogant, dismissive approach towards the Europeans, the cavalier manner in which they (and, later, Truss) toyed with the Northern Ireland Protocol — perfectly mirror Johnson’s high-handed, reckless approach on so many other fronts.
The bellicose, anti-EU rhetoric emerging from both Truss and Sunak as they appeal to the Tory far right, will come back to haunt whoever is handed the keys to No 10 (and whoever steps into No 11 as well).
On Covid-19, and to give Boris his due, the vaccine roll-out was certainly well managed.
True to himself, however, he squandered whatever brownie points he and his administration may have been able to bank through, once again, his supreme arrogance and deep-rooted dishonesty — the Party-gate circus.
The string of denials, admissions, apologies followed by formal police investigations, fines, more apologies followed by further revelations, denials, admissions — it all seemed endless. And, to Boris, it was nothing. Beer-swilling and high-octane puking in No 10 while the rest of the nation was in lockdown, was ‘no biggie’ for Boris. Again, he just did not, indeed could not get it. And he undoubtedly still does not get it.
The success of Boris’ Covid-19 response will also be undermined, in time, by the emergence of further details of the extent of corruption and sleaze attendant upon the award of PPE and other Covid-related contracts, frequently in violation of government’s procurement regulations, to companies and individuals with close and even family-links to leading Tories, including government ministers and officials.
And then there is Ukraine.
Boris has always fancied himself as a latter-day Churchill. So, his ‘we will fight them on the beaches…’ rhetoric, his buddy-buddy relationship with Zelensky and his exhortation to one and all that ‘Putin must be defeated’, ‘driven out of Ukraine’ (including Crimea) and that the ‘West should be prepared to fight till the last Ukrainian’ to achieve this, came as no surprise.
Huffing and puffing, neatly usurping Western leadership of what must, ultimately prove to be a lost-cause, was a shoo-in cameo role for Boris to play alongside his Ukrainian mate — another, less-gifted comic actor, thrust into a role way beyond his capacity to manage.
This cameo role also helped to distract domestic attention away from the ever-growing dissatisfaction and disgust generated by BoJo’s disgraceful personal conduct at home.
Whereas the West is certainly outraged by Putin’s intervention in Ukraine, and have invested heavily, in cash and weaponry, in support of Ukraine’s resistance and in sanctioning Russia, no-one in the West — apart from Johnson and Truss — any longer indulges in the same sort of gung-ho rhetoric we heard in the initial stages of the conflict.
International opinion on the conflict and, most especially, the West’s approach, is deeply divided.
The first vote at the UN in New York reflected massive support for a resolution condemning the Russian military action against Ukraine and violation of the UN Charter.
Subsequent votes, both in New York and in Geneva (where Western-sponsored resolutions condemning Russia (and Belarus) and seeking to further isolate the two countries have been tabled before a number of UN Specialised Agencies, have reflected significantly more nuanced outcomes.
Whereas in each case, the condemnatory resolutions have passed (leading, in one case, to Russia’s suspension from the Human Rights Council), with each successive effort by the West to punish and isolate Russia, the votes have been characterised by huge numbers of abstentions, strategic ‘absences’ from the hall at the time of voting, and/or many countries simply failing to cast any vote at all.
In most instances, the number of abstentions, no-votes and ‘absences’ have exceeded the number of pro-Western (anti-Russian) votes. So, although the resolutions pass; they are passed by a minority of the state membership of the UN and its various Specialised Agencies. Many of those abstentions, absences and/or no-votes are African countries.
This should have sent a strong signal to the West.
Almost certainly it explains the recent hastily put-together Blinken visit to three African nations, starting with South Africa which Washington seems to think can ‘guide’ other African nations back to the path of righteousness on Ukraine and away from the exploitative influence of both Russia and China.
Biden will continue the charm-offensive when he convenes a US/Africa Leader’s Summit in Washington in December — the last one (in fact the only one) having been hosted by President Obama in 2014. Suddenly, again, Africa counts in Washington’s eyes.
African leaders will attend.
They are courteous and, of course, curious. But, they are also a lot wiser now. Unless Biden signals a very substantive change in how the US sees and engages Africa — which, from what Blinken set out in his New Strategy for Africa lecture in Pretoria, seems highly unlikely; the Leaders’ Summit will have little if any impact.
Washington’s aloofness, arrogance and its hot/cold approach to Africa, over decades, still rankles.
The staggering hypocrisy and double-standards of the US (and the broader West) also rankle: as, in the current instance, they condemn Russia for its action against Ukraine and punish it for alleged human rights violations while expecting that everyone must just ignore their own, multiple, egregious violations of the UN Charter and International Law: the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and the bombing of Serbia come immediately to mind; but the list is long.
Johnson and Truss led the Western pack in condemning Russia for what they termed its indiscriminate shelling of civilians and the deliberate destruction of civilian (non-military) infrastructure. By way of a minor detour, allow me to quote from an article published in one of the UK’s leading dailies at the time of NATO’s aerial bombing of Serbia….
“(..) I have seen the bridges, electricity plants, government buildings, petrol stations which have been turned into blackened enigmatic lumps; not forgetting the schools, hospitals, old people’s homes and homes in general which have been blasted to kingdom come. In the past 48 hours, the bombs have been feeling especially dumb, hitting a bridge packed with shoppers and a sanatorium full of old people”.
The in situ correspondent who penned those lines? — non other than Boris Johnson himself.
Similarly, the US is quick to accuse and punish African and other countries for alleged human rights violations and abuses while seemingly absolving themselves for past obscenities such as Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, black sites, water-boarding and other ‘enhanced interrogation methods’, the atrocities committed by the notorious Blackwater mercenary outfit and so on: again, the list is long.
Not that governance and human rights are not important. They are. But, instead of the finger-pointing, sanctimonious lectures, sanctions and punishment, meted out, often selectively, by successive US and UK administrations, the West needs to rethink its approach: less condescension, less arrogance, more co-operation.
Blinken’s recent lecture in Pretoria setting out Biden’s so-called New Strategy for Africa contained nothing new. In fact it simply rehashed, in sugar-coated diplomatic-speak, the same so-called ‘values-based” and highly conditionalised approach the US has always arrogated to itself.
It is unlikely to have been well-received in African capitals where it will be interpreted in exactly the manner which Blinken sought to deny – that is this revived US interest in Africa is anchored, primarily, on countering Russian and Chinese influence across the continent : and that, completely contrary to what Blinken said, the US, by way of selecting certain ‘partners’ and favouring them with its largesse, will be engaging in a competition with Moscow and Beijing : a competition for presence, influence and access to resources.
If that is their ‘strategy’, it is likely to fall on largely barren ground. Washington is coming back into the game way behind its identified rivals. Blinken denied that this ‘new strategy’ is linked to China/Africa or to Russia/Ukraine and, within that context, Africa’s overwhelmingly non-aligned stand thereupon, but he is being less than honest. And African leaders know that. Blinken’s Department will be carefully selecting which African leaders to invite – and which to deliberately not-invite, to signal displeasure for whatever reason. Already, therefore, the proposed US/Africa Leaders’ Summit is flawed and reflects Washington’s divisive, ‘them or us’ mindset. They will eventually seek to make African countries choose between aligning with the US or aligning with Russia and/or China. A return to some form of Cold War divvying-up of the continent. It will not work. African Leaders will not allow themselves to fall into that kind of trap again.
To return to the Russia/Ukraine-related voting at the UN : the primary criticism of those who abstain, absent themselves from the hall or who simply do not cast a vote at all, is that nowhere in the text(s) of the resolution(s) is there any emphasis on the need to stop the conflict in Ukraine, or the need for a negotiated resolution to that conflict.
An associated criticism is that instead of putting effort into promoting dialogue and negotiation between the conflicting parties, the West – with the UK, under BoJo (and Foreign Secretary Truss) often being the most vocal and most vocally-invested – appears intent on fuelling and prolonging the conflict by providing an endless flow of heavy and ever-more destructive weaponry to the Ukrainian forces.
A third criticism is that by resorting, again, to unilateral sanctions, diplomatic, economic and financial isolation and a general policy of exclusion with regard to Russia and Belarus (with open threats of similar sanction-measures being applied to anyone daring to breach the sanctions), the West is doing exactly what it accuses Russia and China of doing – undermining the UN Charter and the entire global rules-based system which has been painstakingly constructed over the past 70 years.
Already deeply politicised and polarised, the multilateral system of agreed rules, checks and balances and dispute-resolution mechanisms, is in real danger of implosion: and the West is as much to blame as either Russia or China.
The main losers from any such collapse would, of course, be the countries of the Global South – the developing world. It comes as no surprise therefore that the vast majority of UN member states who abstain, absent themselves from the hall or simply do not vote, hail from the developing world – including a sizeable majority of African countries.
Whereas they certainly do not condone the military action taken by Russia, neither will they sign-up to the West’s zero-sum approach to the conflict and the complete lack of priority given to bringing an end to the shooting and finding a negotiated solution.
The fact that Ukrainian grain and Russian fertilisers are moving from Ukrainian and other ports shows that, where there is political will – and international pressure – negotiations are possible and can deliver some positive results.
In one of his last Churchillian rants, Johnson referred to what he feared was a growing Ukraine-fatigue within Europe and the West more broadly. He was right. You see signs of it in the UK itself with Ukrainian refugee families being ejected from the UK homes into which, just a few months earlier, they were being warmly welcomed.
So far, Europe (mainly) has had to absorb more than 8 million Ukrainian refugees. How many will ever go back ? How many will want to go back ? How many will have anything to go back to ?
The longer the conflict lasts, the worse that situation will get. And the Ukraine-fatigue will become deeper and more extensive.
The reality is that, unless NATO itself enters the conflict – which, barring some catastrophic error, will not happen – a military victory by Ukraine is simply unrealistic. Ukraine knows it. The West knows it. Only Boris (and Truss) seem to think differently.
As the fatigue deepens, and as Europe’s economic slowdown bites – exacerbated by the impact of Western sanctions against Russian energy exports – western enthusiasm as well as its financial and military support for Zelensky will flag. Zelensky will come under pressure – both from within and without – to accept that he has no option but to engage around a table.
Hopefully, as the conflict enters its 7th month and on the basis of the grain agreement reached between Russia and Ukraine (midwifed by the UN Secretary General and the Turkish President), cooler, more rational and less unkempt heads will prevail and commit themselves to working towards a negotiated outcome.
By way of her shrill bellicosity towards Russia, Truss may well have placed herself on the wrong side of the realpolitik which will surely begin to impose itself in Ukraine – more of an observer than a player in what must ultimately unfold there. But, no matter. Her reign will be chaotic at home, virtually invisible abroad and, thankfully, very brief. Bereft of realism and any trace of humility, she will lead her party to well-earned defeat in the next general election which, almost inevitably, will be upon us well before due date.
As the conflict in Ukraine continues and as the West struggles to sort out the unholy mess it has done so much to create, African leaders would be well-advised to maintain their principled and eminently reasonable neutrality, and to be guided by that wonderful North African proverb, “le chien aboie, et la caravane passe”.
Online Reporter