would have to vest any new trusteeship either in a local power like the Egyptians or in a former colonial power, presumably in this case the Italians. If this is unlikely to happen — and it is — then the job of feeding the hungry and helping the sick must in future be left to civilian aid agencies and private charities. Military intervention without an attainable purpose creates as many problems as it solves.
The combined effect of interventions in Bosnia, Somalia and, indeed, Rwanda has been to shake the self- confidence of key Western powers and to tarnish the reputation of the UN. Yet a dangerous trend is increasingly evident: over the last few years, culminating in the latest intervention in Haiti in September 1994, the Security Council seems prepared to widen the legal basis for intervention. We are seeing, in fact, that classically dangerous combination — a growing disproportion between theoretical claims and practical means. All this may have further unwelcome consequences in the longer term.
If there is now a threat approaching the gravity of the Cold War, it is that of Islamic fundamentalism. The concern of policy-makers is certainly justified. The implications for Europe, the Middle East and Russia alike if more moderate or secular Muslim countries should fall under Islamic extremist regimes are indeed serious.
But it is one thing to estimate a danger, quite another to know how best to overcome it. The West has in the past disastrously misjudged the political potential of Islam. It has been well observed that: ‘The two Middle East countries most torn apart by violence and civil strife since the mid-1970s were among those previously regarded as the most stable, modernized, and Western-oriented — Lebanon and Iran.’[91] There is a risk that in discussing ‘fundamentalism’ we will come to regard conservative- minded Muslim countries as inevitable hotbeds of Islamic revolution. Yet the success of Islamic parties does not always reflect the religious commitment of their supporters; rather, it reflects the fact that communism is now discredited, leaving Islamic oppositions to benefit from discontent with the incompetence and corruption of existing governments. In fact, the umbrella of ‘fundamentalism’ shelters a range of distinct and often mutually opposed phenomena, from Gulf and Lebanese Shiites with links to Iran, to the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, to the mish-mash of elements woven together in Colonel Qaddafi’s ‘Third Way’ — quite apart from many pious Muslims who are only ‘fundamentalist’ in that they are seeking a return to austere Islamic practice.
Within the Islamic world, Iran has, of course, a special position. It has acquired — and continues to acquire — weapons of mass destruction from Russia, Ukraine, China, North Korea and elsewhere. It has moved into nuclear research. It has close links with terrorist organizations and seems to feel no inhibitions about intervening to achieve its objectives from Lebanon to Argentina. And in addition to these material threats, Iran is the standard-bearer of a kind of Islam that is both revolutionary and traditional and that puts it at odds with most Arab rulers. Like Revolutionary France, Iran is the bearer of what Burke called an ‘armed doctrine’. The international community has no ideal way of dealing with this phenomenon. But the best available model seems that of containment.
Otherwise, the tensions between Islam on the one hand and modern, Western liberalism on the other will ultimately have to be worked out by Muslims themselves. The West, for its part, must respect the values, traditions and beliefs of Islam — while insisting that basic human rights should be honoured and aggressive policies forsworn.
I have set out what I consider the tenets of a conservative foreign policy should be. But there is really no substitute for commonsense. In my years as Prime Minister I was always convinced that aggression must not be allowed to pay. If it did, automatically the threat to our peace and security would increase. I also reckoned that would-be aggressors are a great deal more rational than most people imagine. They ask themselves whether those of us likely to oppose them have the weapons to do so, the means of deploying those weapons sufficiently quickly, and above all the resolve. So we must make our resolve plain.
And finally, there was what I came to call Thatcher’s law: ‘No matter how well prepared you are, the unexpected happens.’ How you cope then remains, of course, the real test.
CHAPTER XV
Virtue’s Rewards
A CONTINUING DEBATE
Social issues usually loom larger in political debate when economic problems, particularly the problem of inflation, are less of a worry. Low inflation and rapid economic growth were the background to the preoccupation with the environment, urban renewal and the Health Service which dominated politics after the 1987 general election. Low inflation and resumed economic growth in 1994 have had the same effect.
There are, however, three differences between the two periods. First, whatever the economic future holds, it seems unlikely that the arguments about social policy (which have opened up on both sides of the Atlantic) will peter out inconclusively, because too many raw nerves have already been struck. Secondly, in contrast to the years 1987 to 1989, these debates are now taking place on the traditional conservative territory of law and order, welfare dependency and the family. Thirdly, there is a new understanding of the
It is, therefore, the more surprising that with a few notable exceptions, political leaders have been reluctant to frame policies based on the remarkably similar analyses of academics and commentators; partly, perhaps, because those who have tentatively sought to do so have incurred instant vilification on both sides of the Atlantic. Vice-President Quayle and Peter Lilley were similarly pilloried for saying things which are now generally agreed to be commonsense: namely that the growth of single parenthood is bad for the children growing up without a father, and imposes heavy costs on society. Yet as long ago as 1987, for example, Michael Novak and several other distinguished scholars of different viewpoints agreed a number of challenging conclusions in a publication called
Talking honestly and intelligently about such matters has been obstructed — in slightly different ways — on both sides of the Atlantic by a combination of prejudice and vested interest.
Most senior politicians and professionals in the areas of penology and social work rightly feel some measure of responsibility for the liberal policies pursued since the 1960s, and are understandably reluctant to confess their failure. Or if they do make such an admission it is generally qualified by the suggestion that although present approaches may not work, nothing else will work better. This is, of course, a strange justification for a hugely costly and vastly complex system operated at the taxpayer’s expense. Secondly, there is an understandable human reluctance on the part of comfortably-placed politicians to adopt a social analysis that places some of the responsibility for their condition upon the poor themselves — in the jargon, ‘blaming the victim’. This reluctance is especially marked, again understandably, when the poor in question are drawn disproportionately from racial minorities. Paradoxically, however, policies which shrink from placing the responsibility where it belongs help to create more victims.
If this is not always recognized, it is because the forces of ‘political correctness’ also muddy the waters, particularly in America, but covertly and increasingly in Europe. If, for instance, a disproportionately large number
