November 2016 – Page 8

Independent 16 Sep 2009

When did you become a Liberal, and wasn’t that considered bad form in the Marines?

Actually, I become a Liberal when I was at the Foreign Office, which was after I served in the Royal Marines. I wrote about this in my autobiography A Fortunate Life, which received extremely favourable reviews in all newspapers (except, alas the Independent). A Fortunate Life is available from all good bookstores at £15 – and very good value at the price!

What’s the biggest regret of your political career?

Not becoming Prime Minister.

Did Tony Blair suggest to you in 1997 that if you worked closely with him, you would get proportional representation? You could have killed the Tories once and for all.

Yes to both. There were discussions. It was a time when we could have realigned the forces of British politics for good and brought I fair votes which would have given the voters more power and would in the future prevent the kind of scandals we are seeing in our politics now .

When did you first suspect that Charlie Kennedy had a problem, and ought to resign?

I was in Bosnia at the time as High Representative overseeing the implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement. So I was unaware of the problems Charles was experiencing.
Why should anybody have a place in our legislature who wasn’t elected by the people? Isn’t it time to abolish appointed Lords?

They shouldn’t and it is. The House of Lords is an archaic institution. The either get there through the patronage of the Prime Minister or of your great grandmother slept with the King. You should not exercise power in a democracy except through the ballot box. I only agreed to go to the Lords so that I could use my vote to abolish it. We should replace it with a Senate elected by proportional representation, representing the regions of Britain . But the changes we need in our political system go far beyond simply electing the upper chamber. We need to change the way we vote to end the scandal of MPs with jobs for life in safe seats, we need the right to sack MPs who have had their fingers in the till, and to take big money out of politics so that the Ashcrofts of this world can’t buy their influence. While we’re at it, it’s probably worth making sure everyone who makes laws in this country pays full tax in this country too. We need a written constitution and fixed term Parliaments. And we need to make sure Westminster does less – only those things which are genuinely national and that much of its power should be handed down for the communities and nations of our country to decide. And if Westminster did less it would probably do it better and with about half the number of MPs. And if we made more decisions closer to the people then decision making would be better there, too. What we need in short is a new Great Reform Act for Britain

Do you think you would have done better than you did as leader if you had the advantages of the Iraq war, as Kennedy had, or TV debates, as Clegg has?

I would have killed (and apparently I was the only MP trained to do so) for the opportunity Nick Clegg has for national debates. But what I am convinced of is that the more people see Nick Clegg in these debates and have a chance to compare him to Mr Brown and Labour who have so failed Britain and Mr Cameron who stands for nothing I can detect, the more they will like what they see. I think the British public have concluded that Mr Brown’s Labour deserve to lose this election, but Mr Cameron’s Tories don’t deserve to win it. That gives Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems a chance as never before and the TV debates will highlight this.

Given the Bosnian people didn’t elect you, wasn’t your time as their Supreme Leader akin to an Emperor’s reign?
I believe the actual title was High Representative, although Supreme Leader does have a certain ring to it. Seriously, the comparison to an emperor simply doesn’t stand up. I was appointed, Bosnia as the international represntative which was required under the terms of the peace in Bosnia agreed by all Parties. And when I was there, every law I proposed had to be agreed by the Bosnian Parliaments and every legislative decision was subject to the agreement of the Bosnian courts. I was not just responsible for my actions to the Security Council of the UN and the international community, but also ultimately to the consent Bosnian people themselves. Doesn’t sound much like being a Supreme Leader to me !

If Afghanistan isn’t going to be a democracy in the next decade, and if the people don’t want us there, shouldn’t we leave?

I don’t agree that the people don’t want us there. The evidence from Afghanistan is that they overwhelmingly do. In the recent Presidential elections in Afghanistan, both the leading candidates stood on the basis of support for the international community and got more than 85% of the vote. And poll after poll consistently shows that 65% plus of Afghans support the international presence and only 5% want the return of the Taliban. Of course it’s not going to turn into a European style democracy over night, but we have leave some kind of stability there. The form of governance has to be rooted at in some part on popular legitimacy. Having said that, it’s true that the central government is failing and we need to work with the grain of local communities and the tribal structures that have existed there for centuries, particularly in the south. But you are quite right. The moment the Afghan people do not want us there, we should leave and would have to

Can you now confirm that the argument that our mission in Afghanistan has anything to do with the safety of British citizens is wholly spurious?

I don’t buy this at all. The situation in Afghanistan is directly related to our security. In a world of global security threats, just because a place is far away doesn’t mean it won’t impact on our security. That was the revelation of 9/77 and 7/7 and the Madrid bombs and the Bali bombs etc etc. If Afghanistan fails it will have a devastating knock on effect in Pakistan, it will release Al Qaeda back into the ungoverned spaces of Afghanistan that it held before and it will deal a serious blow to the credibility and stability of Nato, which remains one of the pillars of our security. There’s a huge amount at stake.

What’s the biggest regret of your political career?

Not becoming Prime Minister of course!

Did Tony Blair suggest to you in 1997 that if you worked closely with him, you would get proportional representation? You could have killed the Tories once and for all.
Is David Cameron the most impressive Tory leader since Churchill?
David Cameron isn’t even the most impressive Tory in the current Tory party. I find the idea of comparing him with Churchill so absurd as to be laughable. In David Cameron we have a man who went straight from Oxford to the back rooms of Tory central office, the highlight of which was his role in the catastrophe of Black Wednesday, and then straight into PR. And not just any kind of PR, PR for the media industry. His real world experience is seven years as the spin doctor’s spin doctor. He’s then parachuted into a safe seat, from which he writes for Michael Howard the most right wing manifesto his party has had for generations. His greatest success for the Tories has been giving it a cosmetic makeover. Most impressive since Churchill? Come on.

When did you first suspect that Charlie Kennedy had a problem, and ought to resign?

How many seats, roughly, in the south west and elsewhere, do you think [Lord] Ashcroft’s money will cost the Lib Dems?
None. Never underestimate the resilience of Lib Dem MPs. The Conservatives are spending vast amounts of money on glossy leaflets and such, but they are taking on popular local MPs with reputations for being dedicated and hard-working and really fighting for their local area. That’s what you get with Lib Dems. My colleague and next door neighbour David Heath is a great example. He was elected in Somerset and Frome in 1997 with a wafer thin majority and at every election since the Tories have pulled out all the stops to take his seat. Yet every time the voters are asked if they want David to remain as their MP, they say yes. And don’t underestimate the intelligence of voters in their South West, it’ll take more than a few gargantuan airbrushed posters of David Cameron’s face to persuade them to vote Tory. I dare say they won’t take too kindly to the suggestion they are being bought by a man who has spent a decade making laws while refusing to pay his full taxes in the UK either.

Are you still fluent in Mandarin? And do you wish you’d gone to University?
Yes, although I’m probably a little rusty for lack of practice. It’s the most beautiful, melodic language and now, after English, the most important in the world. If you can speak English and Chinese you can speak to half of all humanity. As for university, I think I’ve done pretty well without it.

Has the liberal cause advanced or receded under Labour?
The country is less equal than it was in 1997. There is a vast gap between the life expectancy of those born in poorer areas and wealthier ones. The opportunities you will receive in life are still in many ways dependent on how rich your parents are. The Government has become increasingly more centralised and presidential, with the state dictating so much of what we can and can’t do, not least through the more than 4,000 new laws the Labour Party has created. Billions upon billions of pounds of your money and my money has been handed over to banks after years of unregulated risk taking and profligacy. We have an unfair tax system and a discredited political system. I could go on. Labour has done some very good things – the minimum wage, Surestart, civil partnerships – but under their stewardship there can be no doubt that our great nation has not become a more liberal place. The sad truth is that, measured against the great promises of Tony Blair, Labour has let us down

When are you going to retire?
You know, the thought has never crossed my mind. I’m not much good at pipe and slippers. And anyway I am enjoying myself too much helping Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems and writing my seventh book – it’s a thriller so hold onto your hats!

Independent 21 Apr 2014

“On a huge hill,

Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will

Reach her, about must and about must go,

And what the hill’s suddenness resists, win so.

Yet strive so that before age, death’s twilight,

Thy soul rest, for none can work in that night.”

John Donne Satire 3

Since the age of sixteen, I have always had a copy of the complete poems of John Donne’s, somewhere close at hand.

For me, sixteen was a watershed year. I had not been a good student – at best strugglingly average, to the despair of my father. In truth the class-room interested me far less than the rugby pitch, the athletics field and the girls at the local Bedford High School. One evening a friend I admired, but thought quite weird persuaded me, against my strong disinclination, to go with him the School poetry society run by one of the masters, who I regarded as equally weird, John Eyre. The evening changed my life. For that night I walked through a door, opened by Donne to a world of poetry and literature I had never even known existed and have spent a life-time joyously exploring ever since.

The moment may have been life changing for me. But it was not for John Eyre.

I know this for many years later, with others among his more distinguished students, we gave him lunch at the Reform Club. Among those present were contemporaries of mine – Michael Brunson the ITV political journalist, Professor Quentin Skinner the renowned intellectual historian and many others ranging from Ambassadors, to captains of industry, to senior civil servants. He had words for them all, reminding them of the successes and faults and the major parts they had played under his direction in the School play (I had only been a wordless monk in Auden’s “The Ascent of F6” and a soldier in Macbeth entrusted with the single line “Sound the alarums without”). Finally he came to me (I was at the time the Leader of the Lib Dems). He said simply “Ashdown – ah yes. You surprised me.”

Later, when as a young Royal Marines officer, I was involved in the little war in Borneo, I carried a leather bound copy of Donne’s poems which my wife gave me everywhere I went, until the ravages of jungle damp and termites dismantled it into a collection of mouldy pages I had to abandon. It has been replaced many times since. My current copy – The Penguin edition, edited by A.J Smith – is on my iPhone and I Pad.

Of course Donne, though the greatest poet, is not the only one. But he is the one who opened the pages for me to all the others – and can still take my breath away when I least expect it.

Int Herald Tribune – Bosnia Sep 2012

After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s statue, arguably the most iconic image of the Iraq conflict is that of President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Hubris has often proved a close companion to international intervention – and never more so than when it comes to announcing success and losing interest too early.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the rather few international interventions which we can point to as successful and the only one – so far -which has been both US led and conducted in a country in which Muslims form the largest proportion of the population.

I say “so far”, not because the field is crowded with others heading in the same direction – but because Bosnia’s success is not yet assured and can still be lost if the international community takes its eye off the ball too early. Which I fear is what some of the Western capitals most engaged in Bosnia’s reconstruction, are in danger of doing.

Troop numbers in the country are now dropping fast. And that is right. Peace has returned to Bosnia; 1 million refugees have gone home; two armies, three intelligence services and two customs services have all been welded into single state institutions; a broadly effective state government, funded by a single VAT taxation system, has been established; all three ethnicities are cohabiting peacefully if not yet co-operating enthusiastically and the Bosnian economy is now growing sustainably, albeit from a very low base.

The soldiers were there to stabilise the peace and their job is now largely done.

But that of the international politicians, charged with creating a sustainable state has not.

Below the level of state institutions, the Dayton Agreement monster with its thirteen Prime Ministers and mini governments for a country of 3.5 million, still exists. The US led attempt to reform this dysfunctional muddle of interlocking bureaucracies failed last year, chiefly I believe, because the European Union was not prepared to make constitutional reform a condition for EU membership. Now the predominantly Serb entity, Republika Srpska, emboldened by the international community’s concentration on Kosovo and apparent nervousness about offending Belgrade, is seeking to reverse some of the key state reforms of recent years. NATO is perceived in both Belgrade and Banja Luka, to have relaxed its conditions on the capture of Karadzic and Mladic as a price for membership of its Partnership for Peace and these two primary architects of the Bosnian atrocities now look, if anything, further away from justice than ever. Meanwhile, the final but essential stone in creating the edifice of State institutions, police reform, is in danger of descending into a series of Potemkin compromises which will hobble the country’s capacity to ensure its own rule of law, long into the future.

Bosnia is held on the road to reform by the magnetic “pull” of the Brussels institutions (NATO and the EU) and the tough “push” of the power of sanction vested in the High Representative by the Dayton Agreement. In the last year the first has visibly weakened as European capitals have become more sceptical about further enlargement and the latter has all but vanished. And the consequence has been that local politicians have felt free to return to old habits, rather than grasping new opportunities. The forces of radical Islam are showing renewed interest in the country, having been comprehensively rebuffed by the determined moderation of Bosnian Muslims in the past. At best Bosnia’s remarkable progress these ten years has come to a juddering halt; at worst things are actually beginning to go back wards. The danger here is not a return to conflict – that is now well nigh impossible with a massively downsized single state army. The danger is that the opportunity to finish the job and create a sustainable EU standard state is being lost and Bosnia will be left as a dysfunctional space which we do not have the will to reform, but cannot afford to ignore.

The problem of Kosovo will neither be easy to solve nor, comfortable to cope with in the short term. But in the long term, Bosnia is the fulcrum of peace in the Balkans. Compromising on standards in Bosnia in the hope of achieving a quiet life in Belgrade will cost us much more in Bosnian dysfunctionality and an unanchored peace in the future. The international community – and especially Washington and Brussels, need to be much clearer about the standards they seek and, especially in the case of the EU, more muscular in exercising conditionality in order to achieve it

Success in this remarkable little country is within our reach – but it is not yet within our grasp. A new High Representative will soon be appointed in Bosnia. It is vital that he or she arrives with a clear plan and the full backing of international capitals to carry it through and finish the job.

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What is to be done about Hamid Karzai? – 17 October 2009

What is to be done about Hamid Karzai?

As Nick Clegg tellingly asked the Prime Minister recently, what do we say to those many in Britain who wonder why our young men should be dying for a Afghan President whose support is plummeting (and ours with it) because of corruption and whose attempt to get re-elected has been, to say the least questionable.

The UN Commission commenting on the election has said that the level of corruption in its conduct was so high that there should be a run off between President Karzai and his principle opponent Abdullah Abdullah. It seems possible, but unlikely that Karzai will resist this. Despite his associates initial comments about foreign interference, it would be almost impossible for him to resist the combined international pressure if he tried. But a run off election would be extremely expensive, very difficult with approaching winter and would dangerously extend the present damaging period of instability, from which only the Taliban is benefitting. And, as Hilary Clinton admitted yesterday, even if there was a run off, it seems almost certain that Hamid Karzai would be elected.

What then?

Some say that Karzai II must be very different from Karzai I and the international community (and especially Washington) must make it is so.

He must be persuaded to have a Government of National Unity (GNU), which would include his main rival in the election, Abdullah Abdullah and also the representatives of all ethnicities in multi ethnic Afghanistan. He must then reach out and run an administration for the whole country, rather than one whose primary driver is the Pashtun interest. And finally Karzai II must at last begin a serious programme to tackle the corruption which is embedded in his Government (and some say even in his family) and which is eating away at his support – and ours – amongst the people of Afghanistan and especially among the Pashtun’s, who are increasingly turning to the Taliban in consequence.

This all makes perfect sense and we should certainly try it. But we should be aware that it is far from certain to work. A GNU is precisely what Karzai I started out with. He was genuinely elected by all sections of Afghanistan and his first Government was a genuinely national one. But President Karzai has not proved very good at holding together broad coalitions and it was not long before his early allies, especially in the Northern Alliance, soon became his most determined opposition. I am not at all convinced that he would be able, this time to make a success of what he so signally failed to make a success of previously.

And to ask him to tackle corruption seriously in the way that we would hope, would be to ask him to knock away one of the principle props of his Government. He has not proved keen on doing this in the past, despite heavy pressure from the US and others. I am not at all sure that this is likely to change in the future.

Could we find a more subtle way of responding to the election of President Karzai Mark II?

One of the major problems we have faced in Afghanistan is the mismatch between the theory and the practice of Afghan Government. Thanks in large measure to the intervention of the West, Afghanistan is, in theory, a centralised Governed country in the model of the classic Western nation state. But in practice, Afghanistan is what it has always been for the last 1000 years- a deeply decentralised country based around its tribal structures.

Could this be the opportunity to tackle that issue head on, by shifting our emphasis from building up Kabul structures, to building up local ones, running with, rather than against the grain of Afghanistan’s tribal system? Next year there are local elections in Afghanistan and these could offer a perfect moment to make this shift of emphasis, by switching much of the aid we are currently pouring in to help President Karzai build up his Government, towards increasing the capacity of local and regional government in the country.

This switch could have three fairly immediate beneficial results.

First it would mean that we were at last working with rather than against the grain of Afghanistan’s decentralised and tribal nature.

Second it would deal with the problem of President Karzai, not be rejecting his election (as some foolishly suggest) but by the simple expedient of making him matter less, both in Afghanistan and to our effort there. I don’t suppose we could ever or quickly get to the position of Switzerland, where everyone knows there is a President, but no-one knows who it is – but we could at least travel several large steps in that direction.

And lastly, shifting the government Afghanistan towards the local and tribal level would create a much better context for an energetic pursuit of the new policy of “Taliban reconciliation” that everyone, from President Obama down, now seem to recognise has to be a key part of the future mix, if we are to begin to turn things round in the country.

When it comes to contemplating a second Karzai Presidency in Afghanistan, we have a real chance to turn a problem into an opportunity. We should grasp it.

Article Guardian Middle East 28 July 2006-07-28 By Paddy Ashdown

Article Guardian

Middle East 28 July 2006-07-28 By Paddy Ashdown

As Tony Blair returns from Washington contemplating the Middle East, I would commend to him the prayer of Archbishop Grigua: “Lord, things are serious – this time please come yourself and do not send your son, for this no time for a boy”.

Sometimes events surpass hyperbole – and this I fear is one of them. It is impossible to overstate what is now at stake in the Middle East. What is already clear is that the shape of the Middle East cannot be the same again. But with so much dry tinder about and so many firebrands, what we cannot know is whether this will affect us all on a much wider and more dangerous scale.

It is also difficult to comprehend the exquisite nature of the dilemma on whose horns we find ourselves impaled.

On the one hand we would all like to see a cease fire, preferably immediately, backed by a settlement and the quick interposition of a peace keeping force on the ground in Lebanon and Gaza. But I remember the cease fires in Bosnia. They came and went like sunny afternoons. And when they had gone, they left the intervening force, UNPROFOR once again as impotent observers to a conflict neither side wanted to end and no-one in the international community was prepared to stop. A cease fire without the ingredients of a lasting peace and a willingness by both sides to observe it, would place any intervening international force in an equally impossible position. If they were weak they would very quickly be turned into UNPROFOR. If they were strong they would soon become an occupying force standing between the combatants, especially Hezbollah and Hamas, and the war aims they had not yet forsaken.

On the other hand, if this conflict continues the chances of it widening and widening grow greater and greater with every passing day. Shutting it down quickly must now be an imperative aim of Western policy.

Hezbollah may have started this with an outrageous breach of international law and a sustained and flagrant contravention of a UN Security Council Resolution. But it is not Hezbollah’s position which is weakening now. It is Israel’s. Their stated war aim was to destroy Hezbollah. I am not entirely certain why, having failed to do this by occupying Lebanon, they thought they could achieve it by bombing. But whatever their thinking, they have been unable to deliver the knock out blow to Hezbollah which was their primary military aim. From now on, Hezbollah does not have to win. It merely has to survive as a potent force – and it appears to be doing just that. Meanwhile the political damage done to Israel through miscalculation, overreaction and targeting errors is incalculable. But there is no comfort to be taken in the thought that Israel may be reaping the whirlwind it has helped to sow. A defeat for Israel and a victory for Hezbollah would have terrifying consequences for the Middle East, which would probably begin with regime change on a wide scale (but not the kind Washington looks for) and could end with the very battle for survival which Israel has always claimed that its use of military force was designed to avoid.

And on the anvil of Israel’s failure also sits the failure of what I suspect was the strategy of Blair and perhaps Bush. The most positive construction which can be put on this is that they hoped Israel would weaken first Hezbollah and then Iran and Syria, and thus create the context for a wider Middle Eastern settlement, incorporating Palestine and easing our problems in Iraq. Israel’s failure so far to achieve its war aims, means that this strategy, too is in danger of being frustrated.

The world should get very nervous when the US feels frustrated and Israel faces defeat. This is the time when miscalculations of even greater magnitude become even more possible. There are powerful voices amongst the neo-con Christian right who are currently so influential in Washington, that the US policy aim should be to use Israel’s excesses to draw in Iran and Syria, so that the US could “take them down”– as a prelude to re-shaping the Middle East for democracy etc. This is the Clint Eastwood, “c’mon punk make my day” strategy. If it were adopted it would be bound to lead to a widening conflagration which would embrace the fragile tinderboxes of central Asia, and goodness knows where beyond. I have to believe that no responsible government, in Washington or elsewhere would follow such a path. But…….I wish I felt more confident, in that confidence.

There is only one solution to this crisis. And it is the same solution we have to find in Iraq. To go for a wider Middle East settlement and to do it urgently. The US cannot do this. But Europe can. Would this mean talking to Iran and Syria? of course it would. You cannot make peace by talking to your own side – you can only make peace by talking to the other side. Would this mean a solution to Palestine? of course it must, for this is the burning coal that lies at the heart of the fire. Would this be unwelcome to Washington at the moment ? probably. But not if, in the end it provides a way out of the impasse in which they find themselves. Would this mean Europe embarking on its own course? Yes – but this is the right time to do it.

I cannot believe that America’s strategy is to widen the war. But, just in case Europe’s strategy now should be to widen the peace. It is the right thing to do – and we should do it now.

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Gordon Brown – Sunday Mirror 12 Sep 2012

A week – as they say – is a long time in politics. As they clock up another New Year, the old stones of Downing Street must be musing to themselves that they have rarely seen as much change as in the last one.

A year ago this was a pulsating palace of light, whose windows were always ablaze and in and out of whose ever open door sluiced a gay tide of pop stars and poets and Italian media mogul Presidents accused of corruption and all the paraphernalia of London and international glitterati.

A year later Camelot has turned into Gormenghast. All is sepulchral gloom. A single guttering candle shines in some high casement window as our son-of the manse, workaholic Prime Minster pours over the nation’s accounts, or some abstruse political text which only academics have read, or maybe contemplates whether he really could, as Gladstone before him, bring in a regime for counting the number of postage stamps his Ministers use.

It is not, for sure, a joyless place. But it is now a serious place.

Gordon’s style is serious, too. Gone is the sofa and fireside the chat. Now we do business. And it is based on facts. Tony used to view meetings as group therapy sessions and then, often in a way which was quite feline, but almost always by a process no-one could quite work out, he would arrive at his view.

Gordon has a view before he starts. It is not one lightly formed. He has studied it; he has read the books; he has listened to the experts; he has gone off into the wilderness to eat locusts and honey (or in his case his cottage in Fyfe with a trunkful of books) and he has returned, not with an idea, but with an opinion. I was amazed when he asked me to join his cabinet. Actually we talked briefly and very courteously about his kind proposal and my brief reply. But we talked extensively about the battle against international terror. And I didn’t have to explain anything to him. He had already read all the books I had read. He had already reached the conclusions I had reached. He was already ahead of me.

But knowing is not the same as governing.

There also has to be magic in government – and even mystery – and, nowadays a lot of showmanship, too. Tony was a master magician, who could always manage the mystery and excelled at the showmanship. Gordon is not good at any of these. We will see in the next year whether this really matters and if so how much.

Being a Lib Dem 29 Oct 2012

A Liberal Democrat is not somebody who looks for the easy ride to success.

The very roots of this party come from the belief that there is better and fairer way to run this country – one not based on a discredited and undemocratic two-party system. Inevitably, this means challenging those who are only too happy to continue with the status quo and will fight mightily to retain it.

The party has had, over the years, many great successes in overturning the expectations of its detractors. We’ve won parliamentary seats against all the odds. Through sheer hard work and dogged determination we have taken control of vast city councils and local authorities all over the UK.

In 2020, however, when the country was in a deep economic crisis, the party took an historic leap. It decided, with Nick Clegg at the helm, to go into government.

We knew that this would change the party forever. Liberal Democrats would no longer be the party that debated fine policies that never saw the light of day. We had, at last, the opportunity to put those policies into reality.

But it wasn’t easy. Pluralist politics – something that liberals feel in their very bones is the right way to govern – means compromise. And working with the Conservatives – not a natural bedfellow – has demanded courage and resilience, not least by Nick Clegg.

There have been huge successes – the Pupil Premium, taking one million people out of paying tax, the Green Deal, (MORE).

We are now a credible party of government. We have made a significant difference – helping to make a fairer and more equal society. And remember, it would not have happened under the Conservatives. And it certainly did not happen under Labour.

So this Coalition government presents us with the first opportunity in our history to show the electorate exactly what Liberal Democrats can achieve in government.

We have two and a half years to prove to the voters that we have both the economic nous and the compassionate desire to make this a stronger and fairer country.

We also now have the mechanics to deliver our message. Liberal Democrat HQ has been restructured with the sole aim of making sure the party can coordinate and run a first class campaign in the run up to 2015.

These are tough times – I know, I have been there before. But outwitting the pollsters and scaremongers is not new territory for this party. In the past, we have shown the character needed to dumbfound our critics – and we can do it again.

We will not, however, achieve anything by retreating into our comfort zone. Bringing about a more liberal and democratic society is too important a task to sit back and nurse our bruises.

We must not allow the time that Liberal Democrats were in government to become just a small interlude in the political history of Britain.

I know that Liberal Democrats have the drive and ambition to show how a government can really work for all its citizens. This time we are even better prepared.

We must start now and, with your help, we will achieve our aim.

Afghanistan FT Feb 2008

Article Financial Times By Paddy Ashdown

The great sixth century BC military strategist Sun Tzu wrote “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”[1]

With fighting in Afghanistan now entering its seventh year, no agreed international strategy, public support on both sides of the Atlantic crumbling, NATO in disarray and widening insecurity in Afghanistan, defeat is now a real possibility. And the consequences for both Afghanistan and its allies would be appalling; Global terrorism would have won back its old haven and created a new one over the border in a mortally weakened Pakistan, our domestic security threat would be gravely increased and a new instability would be added to the world’s most instable region.

British Foreign Secretary David Milliband is right – in the face of these consequences, withdrawal is not an option.

But then neither is continuing as we are.

So what should we do?

Some say more troops – and they are certainly needed. Some say NATO members who are not sharing the burden of the fighting, should do so. And they should. Some say we need more aid – and we do. We are putting into Afghanistan one 25^th the troops and one 50^th of the aid per head of population, that we put into Kosovo and Bosnia.

Increasing resources in Afghanistan is clearly necessary. But it is not sufficient. Even if we were to provide what was necessary and even if everyone pulled their weight, we would still find it very difficult to turn the tide which is now running increasingly strongly against us.

What we lack above all is a strategy which all (including, crucially, the Afghan Government and the international military) can buy into. We know well enough what the objective is – to help President Karzai’s government, govern so that we can hand over the tasks we are doing – including the fighting – to them. But we have not yet turned this aim into a plan. Neither have we agreed a single person to head up the fractured international effort, with the authority to bash international heads together and provide the support the Government of Afghanistan need to begin winning again.

Here is the plan I assembled over the last four months, as I reluctantly considered what I would do, if I had had to do this job.

Firstly, we (the international community) have to concentrate fiercely on the necessary and not be distracted by the merely desirable. To have too many priorities is to have none.

I fixed on three priorities for the period ahead.

The first is security. We have to convince ordinary Afghans that their Government can provide them with better security than the Taliban. I do not mean here just military security – it is human security that matters. And that includes electricity, the rule of law, effective governance and the chance of a job in a growing economy. What this means is a much closer co-operation between the military and the civilian side. It is no good soldiers winning a battle with the Taliban if the civilian reconstruction takes too long to begin to improve the lives of the people afterwards. We British have a tendency to be rather self-congratulatory about our skill at this and and a bit sniffy about our US allies’ ham fistedness and clumsy use of force. But it is very foolish to underestimate the US military’s ability to learn lessons fast, just as they did after Vietnam. US counter insurgency practise is now as good as the best – and better than any when it comes to getting the civilians in straight after the military (DfID please note). We also have to start looking at security from a political angle. Breaking up the Taliban by winning over the moderates, is a far better route to success than bombing and body counts.

Our second priority should be governance. Until we have strengthened the mechanisms of Afghan government, we cannot ask them to do more, they cannot deliver what their citizens need and neither of us will be able to persuade Afghans that Kabul is a better bet for their future than the Taliban. We should make improving governance the first – and if we can the only – priority for all future aid programmes. Here however we hit a dilemma. According to its constitution. Afghanistan is a centralised state. But on the ground it is a highly decentralised one. Which end of the pipeline of governance to start with? The answer is, start at the bottom and work with the grain of the Afghan tribal structure.

And the third priority, linking these two, is strengthening the rule of law, from the judiciary, to the police, to the security structures, to the penal code. Corruption is always endemic in countries emerging from war and Afghanistan, where drugs super charge the problem, is no exception. Unless and until the rule of law is established, there can be no safe democracy, no trusted government, no successful economy and no security for ordinary citizens.

We have not lost in Afghanistan. Indeed the more I looked at it, the more I could see positive things to be built on. But we will lose, if we don’t start doing things differently. What we need is a strategy, not a disconnected collection of uncoordinated tactics. What we should not need is a Chinese philosopher from twenty six centuries ago to tell us that.

906 words

[1] The Art of War

Foreign Affairs -The New Statesman 30 October 2013

New Statesman article

We are on the edge of one of those periods in history when the pattern of world power changes; when the established order shifts, and a new order begins to emerge. These are almost always difficult times for the weak, tough for those whose power is waning, and usually bloody for almost everyone.

This economic recession is not like any other we have recently experienced. We will not plummet down and bounce back comfortably to where we were before. This is about something deeper. The tectonic plates of global power are shifting, and when it is over we in the West will, relatively speaking, be weaker and those in the East will be stronger.

The last time we saw a shift of power on this scale was when leadership of the world passed from the old powers of Europe to the emerging power of the United States. And we all remember the convulsions which followed that collapse of empires and the emergence of a new order.

Some propose China’s ascent will follow a straight line, but I do not believe that. China’s ascent to great power status – and great power is her most likely destination – will not be smooth. Their economy may be largely liberalised, but unlike India, their society is not. My guess is as they begin to lose their old communist structures in favour of a freer society, there will be considerable turbulence. Chinese history is littered with instances when the nation, as disparate and ethnically diverse as Europe, stood at the edge of greatness and then descended into dissolution and chaos.

Nor do I agree with friends who tell me, often with ill disguised glee, that the United States has passed the zenith of its glory. The symptoms of decline in nations are scleroticism, institutional arthritis and resistance to change. And the United States shows none of these – as the still remarkable election of Barack Obama clearly shows.

But though the United State’s position as the world’s pre-eminent power is unlikely to change soon, the context in which she holds that position is certain to. We are no longer looking at a world dominated by a single superpower. The growth of new power centres means the emergence of a multi-polar world; one which will look more like the nineteenth century balance that great British Foreign Secretary George Canning used to call “The Concert of Europe”.

This will have a number of important consequences.

The Atlantic relationship will remain key on the both European and American side. But it will not serve as a lynchpin for all other policies, as it has over the last half century. The United States will have interests which do not always coincide with those of Europe, and vice versa. For Europe, this will mean a more subtle and sophisticated foreign policy, not simply hanging onto the apron strings of our friendly neighbourhood superpower. And for both, it means developing a more mature relationship, in which we can disagree without shouting betrayal.

Arguably the important consequence of this new shape will be this: we are reaching the beginning of the end of six centuries of the domination of Western power, Western institutions and Western values over world affairs. We are already discovering that, if we want to get things done – redesigning the world economic order, intervening for peace – we can no longer do them within the cosy Atlantic club. We will have to find new allies in places we would never previously have looked.

Power is not just shifting laterally from West to East; it is shifting vertically, too. It is migrating out of the structure of nation states and into the global space, where the instruments of regulation are few and the framework of law is weak.

Look at the institutions having difficulties at the moment – national governments, political structures, the old establishments. Note that nearly all depend on the nation state; their range of action confined within borders. Now look at those institutions growing in power and reach: the internet; the satellite broadcasters; the trans-national corporations; the international money changers and speculators; international crime and terrorism. Note that all operate oblivious of national borders and largely beyond the reach of national regulation and the law.

Not only power but problems, too, have been globalised. The uncomfortable truth – which Westminster refuse to acknowledge, and our old institutions find no way to cope with – is that almost no problem can be solved within the nation state or by its institutions alone. Not our ability to protect ourselves; not the cleanliness of our environment; not our health; not our jobs; not our mortgages. These and more now depend not on the actions of our governments, but on their ability to work with others in a set of institutions which are global in scope and international in character – of which history may say the EU was the first, albeit highly imperfect example.

Another factor is shaping our age in a way different in scale from anything before, and this is our increasing global interdependence.

Of course, what happens in one nation has always been of interest to its neighbours and allies – that’s why one of the oldest government functions is diplomacy. But today’s interdependence is of a completely different order. Nations today are not just linked by trade, commerce and diplomacy, they are intimately interlocked in almost every aspect of daily life.

What happens in one can have a profound, direct and immediate consequence on another. An outbreak of swine flu, the collapse of Lehman brothers, the revelations of 9/11 – these can set in train a domino effect across the entire globe in a matter of moment.

Everything is connected to everything, and this interconnectedness applies not just to external relations; it applies to internal organisation, too. But the problem is that our governments are not structured to do things in an interlocking way. They are made up of vertical stove pipes, steeped in a stove piped culture and are run, in the main, by people with stove piped minds.

Our present government took its form – as did every advanced Western democracy – in the nineteenth century. It followed the fashionable structures of the Industrial Revolution and the era of mass production: strong command chains; vertical hierarchies; specialisation of tasks. This was right and appropriate, for it suited the age.

But it does not suit our age. For this is the age of post industrial structures, of flat hierarchies; of networks dedicated to bringing disparate inputs together at a single focal point.

Government structure and culture remain resolutely stuck in the past. Ministers and Senior Civil Servants are judged on how well they hold the territorial integrity of their department, preserve its budget and defend its payroll. Networking with other departments is regarded as a threat, not an opportunity. The screaming of gears heard in Whitehall is the sound of institutions knowing that they ought to network, but finding it impossible to do so.

Time now to unveil my third law for the modern age: The most important part of what you can do, is what you can do with others.

It is an institutions’ ability not to do, but to network, which matters most. If you want to see the price of failing to understand that, you need look no further than Afghanistan. The chief reason for failure lies not in the ineffectiveness of the Afghan government, who we love to blame, but in our failure to have a co-ordinated international plan: our inability to work between nations, our determination to look solely through the prism of national, rather than international action and our refusal to speak and act with a single purpose. The real scandal of Afghanistan was that our soldiers paid with their lives because our politicians could not or would not get their act together.

It does not matter if you are an army unit, or an NGO, or an aid deliverer like DfID, or a Ministry like the Foreign Office – the most important part of what you can do is not what you can do by yourself, but what you can do with others.

And because everything is connected to everything, another revelation of our age is this: we increasingly share a destiny with our enemy. This concept is not new of course, for it has always been the proposition of poets and saints and visionaries that we should learn to live together. The great John Donne poem No man is an island says it all: “every man’s death affecteth me, for I am involved in mankind. Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee”.

[William E.] Gladstone said it too in 1879, when Lord Roberts invaded Afghanistan, in his second Midlothian campaign:

“Do not forget that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan amongst the winter snows, is no less inviolate in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own. Do not forget that he who made you brothers in the same flesh and blood, bound you by the laws of mutual love. And that love is not limited to the shores of this island, but it crosses the whole surface of the earth, encompassing the greatest along with the meanest in its unmeasured scope”

But here is the difference between their age and ours. For Donne and for Gladstone, these were recommendations of morality. For us they are part of the equation for our success and maybe even our survival.

Observer -Europe – 11 December 2011

Observer –Europe – 11 December 2011

When Hugh Gaitskell sat down after making his “end of a thousand years of history” speech against joining Europe at the Labour Conference of 1962, he turned to his wife and said “Look how many are clapping, dear!” She replied “Yes dear. But it’s the wrong people who are clapping”.

This week-end, it’s the Euro-sceptics who are clapping. Many British newspapers are clapping Mr Cameron for “standing up for Britain” – at last. French ones are clapping M. Sarkozy for sticking it up “Albion perfide” – at last. Those who see Britain as Norway without the oil or Switzerland with nuclear weapons are clapping. But those of us who believe our island’s greatness has been about taking the risks of engagement rather than the false security of isolation, feel bereft, sad and depressed.

It’s important to understand how we got here.

It wasn’t because Mr Cameron’s demands were immodest – in fact they had been negotiated down within the coalition to very little indeed (and preceded by dozens of European phone calls from Nick Clegg to smooth the way). No demands for repatriation; almost nothing which was unique for Britain except the right to have stronger regulation for the City. Mr Cameron’s “asks” were rejected, not because they were too great – but because it was he who made them. No other British Prime Minister of recent years would have had difficulty getting this package through. This was Gallic pay back time for all that unwise Cameron lecturing – and sometimes worse – from the side-lines these last months. I suspect that if he had asked for a cup of tea, M. Sarkozy would not have lost the opportunity to refuse it. Not a statesmanlike reaction from M. Sarkozy to be sure; but a human one nevertheless. But beneath the tragedy of last Wednesday night, lies a deeper and more disturbing fact than M. Sarkozy’s personal pique. Long years of anti-European prejudice from the Tory Euro-sceptics, laced with downright insults from their supporting press, has now generated a growing anti-British prejudice in many European capitals, not just Paris.

Some say, to paraphrase Lewis Carrol’s Lobster Quadrille, never mind; “the further we from Paris be, the closer are to Washington”. Not so. Washington was there last Thursday; in the margins; willing Europe to come together. They are now going to be much more interested in those inside, than the one nation who is out.

So what happens next?

Perhaps it will all fail, we comfort ourselves – just as we did when the whole European process began back in 1957.

It may indeed not work. The views of the Euro-zone’s democracies still have to be dealt with. And the markets still have to be reassured through some process of mutualising debt. But the Germans were never going to stump up for that, until they had proper financial controls. And that happened on Thursday morning.

But, here’s the rub. If the Franco-German plan doesn’t work, things will not be better for Britain they will be much, much worse as our main trading zone collapses. Yet we have rejected being in, helping to prevent collapse, in favour of being out, hoping for the best.

Even if our European colleagues cannot make this work at the level of seventeen, they will make it work at a core level and then build back later. The difference between Britain as an “out” and all the other “outs” is that, over time they went to get in – we want to get even further out. How does that increase our leverage?

There are domestic consequences, too. The Euro-sceptics are now in control of the referendum agenda. And Mr Cameron has given them a much more powerful argument; if being in results in such isolation, then why not be out?

Mr Salmond, too has been given an uncovenanted gift. If England is to be out of Europe, why should Scotland not be in?

Will the Coalition survive? It must and we must find ways to make it so. But the Coalition is as disliked amongst the Euro-sceptics, as Brussels. Having won one victory over a hated enemy, why not a second? Those who worry that it’s now the eighty-one Euro-sceptics who run the Prime Minster, not the other way round are right to wonder; if he has given them this, what will he resist?

And so we have used the veto – but stopped nothing. In the name of “protecting the City”, we have made it more vulnerable. At a time of economic crisis, it is now more attractive for investors to go to northern Europe than to isolated Britain. We have tipped 40 years of British foreign policy down the drain in a single night. We have handed the referendum agenda over to the Euro-sceptics. We have strengthened the arguments of those who would break the Union. We have isolated ourselves from Europe and diminished ourselves in Washington.

Not bad, for a policy aimed at “standing up for Britain”!

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