The Golden Strawberry

For the BBC, 'Spooks', the series about MI5 operatives counter-acting terrorism through increasingly spectacular and tense missions, is little more than fiction. Its recent storyline regarding America and Iran trading nuclear weapons secrets was only ever trivial fiction, a believable, but unrealistic vision of the immediate future in which the 'good guys' (by definition the British) strive to stop the world blowing itself apart. For the British, maintenance of world order has been top of their international agenda for the last couple of centuries.
From the French revolution, and the climatic battle at Waterloo, right through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, all Britain strived to do on an international level was maintain the peace. Obviously this was in her own interests, as maintaining the peace would keep Britain at the top of the international pile as the front runner in industry and democracy. Maintaining the peace was undoubtedly important, some argue it is why we went to war in 1914, why we declared war on Germany twice in the twentieth century, why we entered the Falklands in the 1980's, and why we followed America into Iraq in 2003. I fall into this camp. I do believe, as naive as it seems, that Britain entered these conflicts in a vain attempt to secure a lasting peace right around the world. They entered these events so as when they eventually won (something which was inevitable, after all, the British never lose- right?) they could dictate the peace, after every worldwide event. It is this which makes the British absence from Vietnam all the more surprising. Britain, and her leaders, regardless of party, wanted a world in which Britain, allied with America from the 1920s, could lead the way forward, providing a light to those countries who had been troubled. 'Out of the darkness comes light' a beer slogan once ran, and it is fitting that this seems to be the British motto to a tee. Yes there will be bad times, but we the British will be there to lead everyone through it, onto something better.
Except things are rarely that smooth. Obviously the world is a darker place than that naive view wishes to imply. Britain were and are still just as culpable as any other country in the continuing troubles around the world. This story, based on events from the 1970s serves to indicate that Britain is not the clean, honest country the ardent nationalists wish to imply. Britain, as much as any other country has a murky past and an even murkier present. That we supplied another country with military equipment is to be expected. What was not expected was what Iraq proceeded to do with this equipment, which, by the end of the 1980s was enough for America to be concerned enough about Iraq to invade for the first time. Quite how supplying military information to another country was meant to deter conflict I'm not sure, but the nett result is an ongoing conflict, which despite pledges to the contrary, looks destined to continue throughout 2008 and into 2009. For Britain to be able to dictate the peace, they first have to win the war, something which appears unlikely.
It seems sad that Britain, in a poorly conceived attempt to introduce democracy to a dictatorially ravaged country has to use military might to bring this about. Such a strategy seems sadder given the events of the past couple of days in Pakistan, whereby one of the lights of world democracy has been extinguished. I do not pretend to know enough about Bhutto, but I can understand that she very much stood for democracy.
Democracy via war seems an odd concept to justify, something neither America nor Britain has really adequately done yet. As we enter the fifth year since the invasion of Iraq, it is probably worth thinking about how such situations came about in the first place, the root causes for events and Britain's continuing role in world affairs. Creating a peace has never been so important, but nor has it seemed more unlikely either.

Luke