Jeremy Corbyn
Miliband's neocon act
JEREMY CORBYN considers David Miliband's misguided plans for future policy.
LAST night, our esteemed Foreign Secretary David Miliband was speaking about future foreign policy.
It sounded like a depressing reprise of the worst aspects of Tony Blair and George W Bush.
He conceded that Iraq and Afghanistan had been unpopular with the British public, but then asked that we do not allow concern over these conflicts to divert from our moral impulse in supporting movements for democracy.
He went on to deliberately lump together the United Nations and NATO in terms of moral purpose and structure.
As if this tortuous logic was not bad enough, Miliband concluded by criticising the left for being supportive of democracy and human rights but questioning and opposing the use of military force to achieve these ends.
At this point, it all began to sound like a representation of Blair-era "humanitarian intervention," with the the weight of having to run the whole planet hanging like some "North Atlantic burden."
The Foreign Secretary should be aware that criticism of the Iraq war was never about support in any shape or form for the regime of Saddam Hussein and had much more to do with the dishonesty of the perceived "threat" and the motives.
The US wanted war to prove that it could do it, because Iraq has huge oil reserves that Washington wants to control and to serve as a warning to the rest of the world.
The war was completely illegal, as Miliband knows full well. It was against the UN charter and the House of Lords, through the case of the late Gordon Gentle, is currently determining the veracity of the advice given to the British cabinet by the attorney general.
But the arguments about Iraq are not just legal, they are moral. Three-quarters of a million lives have been lost. Two million Iraqis have been forced into exile. For those who remain, life is a mixture of bombing by "insurgents," air strikes by US forces, limited hospital facilities and sporadic supplies of water and electricity.
Yet, despite all evidence to the contrary, Miliband has joined US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Bush in saying that the corner has been turned and things are getting better.
The Afghan war was fought on the assumption that Osama bin Laden was hiding there after September 11 2001 and that the stability of the whole world relies on the West getting its way in that country.
That strategy has ushered in a government with warlords at the cabinet table, it has led to record drug production and the arrival 40,000 foreign troops. Even as the clear absence of a military solution looms large on the world's TV screens, the NATO chiefs have decided to demand more forces from an ever more sceptical European public.
One of the most disturbing aspects of Miliband's speech was the conflation of the UN and NATO.
The UN was founded in 1945 amid a wave of optimism on a system of law and respect for national borders and of universal human rights. Nobody would claim that it has been totally successful, but it provides a framework and a compass as a way of solving disputes and saving lives.
NATO, on the other hand, has no such purpose or rationale. Formed in 1948 as the cold war deepened, it was sold to the north American and European publics as a necessary rival to the Warsaw Pact. Its purpose was military and aggressive.
At the end of the cold war, it should have been wound up. Instead, it managed to take over military operations from the UN in former Yugoslavia and then extended its mandate to become a military alliance with a global reach. It is not a military arm of the UN or an alternative, as Miliband implies. It represents the military weight of Western economic and political interests.
If Miliband wants to develop a foreign policy for Britain that respects human rights and supports democracy and open economies, he should be careful on two counts.
First, he seems to have fallen very quickly into the Thatcherite trap of conflating free-market capitalism with democracy. A simple study of Chile under dictator Augusto Pinochet will show that enormous economic freedoms went hand in hand with the most brutal repression. There are plenty of other examples around the world.
Second, concern for human rights abuses around the world is very selective. The rate of executions in China and the US warrant very little comment. The appalling denial of justice in Saudi Arabia is never commented on.
In a parliamentary answer, the Prime Minister was unable to tell me if human rights were discussed at all with the king during his visit last year.
On the flip side, Venezuela is routinely condemned, yet it has an elected government, recall referendums and an economic imperative which is deigned to eliminate poverty and redistribute wealth. Consistency is clearly lacking in the West's approach.
At its heart, rather than a progressive foreign policy, the vision that the Foreign Secretary has set out is a neocon's view of the world.
A multibillion dollar plan for insecurity
HALF the Polish population is now reportedly opposed to the development of US national missile defence tracking stations in their country.
Similar reports have emerged from the Czech Republic. Both countries have very pro-US and pro-NATO governments.
Under Tony Blair, Britain offered to host a tracking station in Yorkshire. Coupled with the extensive US bases in Britain and western Europe, a new arms race is developing before our very eyes.
The national missile defence system is pitched as a network of tracker stations and launch sites to fire interceptor rockets to protect US interests from "rogue states."
This is a palpably dishonest argument. The US State Department's definition of rogue states normally includes Iran and North Korea, neither of which could develop sufficient military capability.
NMD is actually aimed squarely at Russia and China. It is logical and obvious that the Chinese and Russians should both feel under pressure to counter the US, fuelling a whole new arms race.
The British Parliament has never voted on this subject. The cause of world peace would be best served by the British government simply saying No to the US and refusing to allow this part of Europe to be a frigate for the US battleships.
This weekend, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which is celebrating 50 years of campaigning, is hosting a two-day conference on global security with speakers from all over the world who will explain the effects of militarism on their societies and the waste of resources that the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction inevitably lead to.
Real security is about preventing hunger, poverty and needless child deaths.
Find out more on the CND conference at www.cnduk.org
The late great Rose Hacker
ON Monday, the world's oldest columnist Rose Hacker was remembered at Golders Green crematorium. At 101, Rose died having seen both world wars and spent a lifetime campaigning for social justice, rights for women and peace.
Last August, she attended the Hiroshima Day commemoration in London as usual. I asked her to speak and she electrified the audience with her passion and call for justice.
She was followed by the youngest speaker, aged just 14, who read a poem. They embraced and were photographed together.
It was a magical moment which saw one generation learning from another what justice and commitment really is.
Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North. He can be contacted at corbynj@parliament.uk
