11th Hour

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 100^th 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.”