When I moved to Ireland (and thus Europe) quite some time
ago I brought with me my American pre-conceptions and what sometimes turned out
to be a fresh pair of eyes. The former
led me to hold with the idea that of the duo of World Wars the first was a mere
prequel to the main show, the second. After
having spent a small amount of time here however it became apparent to me that
while this might be true in terms of sequence there was no “mere” about it, and
the first World War wasn’t to be regarded in the way I had always thought. To extend the analogy (however inappropriately)
a bit further – if the World Wars were to be regarded as movies it would not be as if the first World War was Star Wars episodes 1, 2,
and 3 followed by the main attractions and the stars everyone knew. It’s actually more akin to the Godfather’s One and Two. Each is equally important to the story – but
you can’t really understand Part 2 unless you know what happened in Part 1.
To be honest, as I sit here on the 100th
anniversary of the “end” of the first World War, I’m pretty sure that the case
can be made that the “Great War” is the single event in these last 100 years
that has shaped our lives more than any other.
In Europe and the Middle East that fact is visible everywhere you go - for
WWI left scars that are exceptionally visible, (except in Germany, a fact that
would have consequences). From O’Connell
Street in Dublin, where the bullet holes in the statues are very much artifacts
of the war; to Belgium and France, where a ribbon of pockmarked land snakes its
way across the landscape marking the trenches that bordered no man’s land; to
the map itself, where the answer to why there is a Saudi Arabia, a Jordan, an Israel (and a Palestine) even an
Iran and an Iraq can only be understood in the maze of crosses and double
crosses coming out of the war.
But the First World War has one overriding difference when
compared to the Second. All of the after
effects of the first war can be known, but they cannot be understood. That is because none of the aspects of the
war, including its very existence, should ever have unfolded the way it
did. (The same cannot be said of the
Second War, which was birthed in evil, but at least you can get your head
around “good versus evil”). The most notable thing about WWI is that it was
birthed in stupidity, run in stupidity and ended in the same overwhelming bath
of stupidity.
The apex of Western civilization is not to be found in the
present day. It most likely was at the start of the second decade of the last
century. In science the mysteries of the
universe were being revealed. In
literature great works were being created in a multitude of languages. In engineering the world was building as
never before. In politics the nations of the world seemed to be stumbling
towards at least some resolution of the importance of the individual. Then, in that second decade, a surprisingly
small number of morons managed to fuck it all up.
The challenge we all have in the second decade of this
century is to not make the same stupid mistakes. We’re making it a very close run thing. Take global warming. Somehow the answer to whether the planet is
endangered by greenhouse gas emissions has become a political litmus test. There should be no politics here – If you believe
the planet is warming due to man made emissions, excessive CO2 is a bad
thing. If you do not believe that (or
are unsure) -well, then, excessive CO2 is still a bad thing. You see, the key here is the word
“excessive”. You can argue about where
that line lies, but the fact that we are throwing too much garbage into our
atmosphere is pretty much uncontrovertible.
On a somewhat less global level – consider the debacle that
Brexit has become. When I moved to Ireland some 20 plus years ago a trip across
the border entailed being stopped at dual checkpoints by automatic bollards and
then armed sentries. Your crossing was
recorded by a massive fortress-like guardhouse, and then you would proceed
through a narrow pass until emerging on the other side of the divide – where you
were, for all intents and purposes, still in Ireland and could proceed to do
your Christmas shopping. There was
nothing more dehumanising, or more unnecessary, than the border between
Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Then came the Good Friday agreement. Within a period of a couple of months not
only were the automatic bollards and armed guards gone, but the guardhouses had
been removed foundations and all. You
could not have found a trace of where it had been with a magnifying glass. Everyone
agreed – this was a good thing. In fact –
the agreement represented probably the most successful resolution of an armed conflict in
the past half century. No one, and I
mean no one, regardless of their political persuasion, was advocating a return
to a hard border between the North and South of Ireland. To do so you would have marked you as
certifiable.
And yet – here we are – with the border being cited as the
reason for the failure to conclude a treaty to implement a “soft” Brexit. It seems that rather than demand the
retention of (let’s say it again) the single most successful resolution of
an armed conflict in the last 50 years – certain elements within the British
political establishment would insist that the border once again be closed – this time due to
the entirely specious argument that people and goods might slip into the UK
through, I guess, Swanlinbar or, perhaps even more outrageously – on the
grounds that to make the border with Ireland anything less than as hard as the
border with say, Belgium, it would mark the North of Ireland as something less
than suitably a part of the UK.
Of course this ignores a few (score) relevant facts. For one, there is a major difference in that at
every other touchpoint the UK has an ocean border, not a land border. Thus the Irish border is unique and so you
should be able to treat it uniquely.
Sovereign states not only differentiate between sea and land borders all the
time – they treat different land borders differently all the time as well. The argument against a differing Irish
standard might stand up a bit better if the Irish border hadn’t been treated
differently from the rest of Europe for every single day that the UK was
part of the EU. First because of the ongoing Troubles, then because the
Troubles were ended. There has been
something called a “Schengen Zone” in the EU for decades. Somehow it never seemed to bother anyone back
then that different standards applied to different borders. Hell – just fly to Gatwick airport from
Dublin. To this day there is a different
standard applied to that sort of travel.
Yet now we are told that to keep the Irish border open would
threaten Britain's security and sovereignty.
I smell, if not a rat, then some fairly rancid fish and chips. In order to uphold some largely imaginary principle
a few witless officials are blindly catapulting an entire region into crisis. No – we are not too far removed from 1914.
Today, of all days, we should take
the time to consider the consequences of folly.
High sounding imperatives – whether the need in 1914 to rush to war so
the other side wouldn’t get their trains loaded before you, or the need to
insist that abandoning the (one more time) single most successful agreement of
the last 50 years is “the only course open to us” – will generally lead to disaster. On many fronts, we are fumbling towards catastrophe.
“Dim through the misty panes and
thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.”
