The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a British think-tank, released a report this week entitled Shared Responsibilities - A National Security Strategy for the United Kingdom. The central policy recommendation of the report was that Britain needs to rethink its role on the world stage, to move away from the idea of Britain as a “mini me” United States and towards closer strategic military cooperation with its European allies. The report does not call for Britain to abandon its “special relationship” with the US, nor does it call for European defence and security cooperation as an alternative to NATO, rather it is of the view that Britain and Europe could play a more effective role in the alliance and on the world stage by working better together. For a very great many reasons, this analysis is absolutely spot on.
In 1962, then US Secretary of State Dean Acheson famously remarked that “Great Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role”. Almost half a century later, Britain resolutely maintains its shoulder-to-shoulder relationship with the United States as the most effective method of enhancing its global influence, though its European policy has been decidely more mixed. British foreign policy towards Europe has, at times, closer resembled a scene from Yes, Minister, in which Britain continues its centuries old European policy of divide and weaken on the continent, as opposed to treating its liberal-democratic European partners with the respect they deserve.
In assessing the direction any country’s foreign policy should take, it is necessary to take a more philosophical approach, grounded in historical lessons and current realities, than perhaps some people do. Those who oppose closer European security integration need to ask themselves why.
“The Global Village” is an apposite simile to describe how technology, the era of instantaneous communications and the ever closer economic integration of states have contracted the world to the point that social and commerical relations can be had with someone on the other side of the earth as easily as if they lived in the same village. No nation is an island any longer, and those that try to be, such as North Korea and Iran, quickly discover that there’s nothing splendid about isolationism. Yet every coin has two sides, and just as the benefits of living in a global village are evident, so too the dangers posed by far away countries of which we hitherto knew nothing are also much more real than they used to be. In the 21st century, regional conflicts are much more likely to produce global shockwaves. Instability in Iran can produce a spike in global oil prices; conflict in Africa leads to hundreds of thousands of refugess fleeing to the West for asylum; the US housing market sneezes, and the global economy catches a very severe cold.
The bad news, given all this, is that the world is becoming a less, as opposed to a more secure and stable place. Global history since the end of the Second World War has given meaningful weight to the idea, first put forward by Immanuel Kant in his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace, though subsequently refined and modified, that democracy is much the most stable and benign form of government. Unfortunately, however, according to data from Freedom House, the number of liberal democracies in the world stands at just 89, a mere 46 per cent of the world’s 183 countries. Worse is the fact that global freedom suffered its third year of decline in 2008, and two of the countries named as heading in the wrong direction fastest, China and Russia, are also two of the world’s most influential, nuclear armed states, both with permanent, veto-wielding seats on the United Nations Security Council.
The decline of the West, relative to emerging nations is not yet terminal, but it is happening. If the United Kingdom wants to play its part in remaining influential on the world stage and promoting liberal democracy abroad, then it needs to realise that liberal democracies work best together. For all their historic differences with Europe, the British need to realise that closer economic, political and military integration is a guarantee, not a threat to their cherished way of life. In Britain, there is in some quarters an almost paranoid phobia of closer European integration as 
somehow a threat to everything honest, freedom-loving Britons hold dear. But let’s sit back for a moment and reflect on what exactly that way of life that we hold so dear actually is. Surely tolerance, freedom of speech and association, freedom of the press, and a legally enshrined respect for fundamental human rights are close to the top of the list. Working with, as opposed to competing with Europe will actually strengthen all these things. The EEC/EC/EU has proved itself to be hugely effective at maintaining peace amongst democracies within its borders, and encouraging liberal democratic reforms in those states outside the union that desperately want in. The likelihood of Europe threatening those other great British traditions, cricket on the green, warm ale and the freedom to complain about the weather, is unlikely to say the least. The greatest threat Europe poses to the British way of life is a sustained challenge to the imperial system of weights and measures.
If Britain wants to find genuine challenges to its traditional way of life, it needs to look beyond Europe’s borders, towards China, Russia, rogue states such as Iran and North Korea and trans-national terrorist organisations. In attempting to tackle all of these challenges, Britain will achieve far more by working with the EU, and other like-minded countries generally, than by pursuing, or even wishing to maintain the ability to pursue, a unilateralist foreign policy.
On the issue of combating terrorist activity it should be made clear from the outset that this is, overall a much bigger and more multifaceted problem than can be dealt with here. However, on a purely strategic level, it should be clear that multilateral cooperation is far more effective than unilateral action. Terrorists do not respect state borders, and countries serious about combatting terrorist activity need to be committed to cooperation on all levels, right from intelligence sharing up to coordinated military action. 
The reluctance of the Pakistani government to cooperate more fully with NATO in its efforts to combat the Taliban operating in the Hindu Kush has been greatly to the detriment of both, and Pakistan’s recent and well documented volte-face on this issue is a clear, if belated, realisation of this fact.
On the issue of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, it is also the case that the United Kingdom cannot operate alone, and in fairness, it does not try to do so. As regards North Korea, there is little that anyone can do to alter the course of that regime, short of somehow persuading China that supporting a highly unstable, poverty-stricken, nuclear armed totalitarian dictatorship on its border is not in its best interests, even if doing so does spite the West. What influence can be had with China is most certainly better projected through the EU as a whole. Likewise on Iran, it is the case that the EU already seeks to coordinate its efforts, though it does not do so well enough. Iran is more dependent on the EU, even with all the existing sanctions, for imports than any single country, including China. If Europe were to use this influence in a bolder, and perhaps more creative manner, then it could wield greater influence in Tehran than it does at present.
On the issue of Russia and China, the challenges are multifaceted, and stem not only from their recent growth in wealth and power, but also from the increased ambition to exert influence abroad that generally accompanies such growth. None of this would be a problem, but for the fact that neither Russia nor China could be counted amongst countries with any meaningful respect for civil liberties and other democratic norms.
China has never made much of a pretence about the repressive nature of its regime. Russia, by contrast, puts up the pretence of being a democracy, whilst in actuality appears to be sliding backwards. In 2005, Freedom House declared Russia “Not Free”, down from “Partly Free”, citing the virtual elimination of opposition parties in the county, and the ever-tighter grip of the executive’s hold on power. The stage-managed 2008 presidential election, which the OSCE went so far as to boycott, and the fact that Russia still ranks as one of the most lethal countries in the world for journalists to operate in, does little to convince skeptics that Freedom House was mistaken in its judgement.
In and of itself this is bad enogugh, but as just mentioned, what is worse is that both countries are currently in the process of seeking to align themselves as alternatives to the United States as poles of global influence. Russia’s recent hosting of the BRIC conference (Brazil, Russia, India and China) in Yekaterinberg, though failing to agree on much, nonetheless signified an overt desire to look for alternatives to the current, Western-led global economic status-quo. Likewise, President Medvedev was candid in his declaration of Russian intent to gain greater influence in Africa, during his visit to the continent that almost immediately followed the BRIC conference. China, likewise, has been increasing its influence in Africa for a number of years, and its booming economy, perhaps most vividly demonstrated by the fact that as a January 2009, it holds a staggering 24 per cent of US public debt, make it a country the West can no longer ignore.
Where this becomes a problem is that both countries, if not actively promoting their political systems abroad, are becoming increasingly assertive in their opposition to Western efforts to promote liberal democratic progress in the developing world. Russia has been traumatised by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the seemingly unstoppable gravitation of former Soviet republics Westward, first into NATO, and then, in many cases, into the European Union itself. Its invasion of Georgia in August last year, and the de facto annexation of the semi-autonomous regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, sent a clear message that Russia is no longer willing to tolerate the perpetual Westernisation of what it sees as its neighbourhood. Likewise, Russia has proved itsef increasingly willing to use its huge gas and oil reserves as a political weapon, particularly against Ukraine since its so-called “Orange Revolution” of 2004-05.
China, meanwhile, in seeking to exert its economic reach in the developing world, has operated on a strict policy of political non-interference in the states with which it seeks to trade, however unsavoury the regime. Nowhere has this policy been more in evidence than in Sudan, 80 per cent of whose exports go to China, and 85 per cent of those in the form of fuel and raw materials that China’s booming economy badly needs. The consequence of this live and let buy mode of foreign policy, which China regularly enforces by way of its veto power on the UN Security Council, is that the genocidal regime of Omar al-Bashir is able to cling to power. Both countries, indeed, regularly use the threat of their vetoes on the UN Security Council to water down meaningful resolutions that seek to promote democratic reforms and the protection of human rights in the developing world. As the humanitarian catastrophe began to unfold in Sri Lanka in April, China and Russia prevented even the discussion of the issue in a proposed resolution put forward by France, claiming it was a strictly internal matter.
Where does all of this leave Britain? On all of these issues, the United Kingdom will have more influence working with Europe than competing with it. Some people may well ask at this point, “Why should we care what happens abroad? How other countries govern themselves is none of our business, and the Iraq war has shown us the danger of foreign meddling.” Yet even if an altruistic concern for universal human rights does not sway such people, the simple equation, democracy equals peace equals prosperity, should. The fact is that efforts at democratic promotion are of proven economic benefit both to the promoters and those on the receiving end. Data from the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Peace Index puts figures on a fact that most people know to be true merely from the benefit of their own observations, namely that democracies are more peaceful than other forms of government, and that peace provides greater prosperity than conflict. Measuring the economic benefits of conflict against the economic benefits of peace, the Index has calculated that global conflict costs the world $7.2 trillion more than it generates. Add to this the fact that 19 of the 20 most peaceful countries in the world are democracies, the vast majority of those being amongst the world’s most prosperous nations, and the link between democratic forms of government and economic prosperity becomes evident.
Prosperous and stable states provide countries such as the United Kingdom with greater trading opportunities whilst simultanously reducing the vast economic and increasingly social burden of foreign development assistance, and absorbing refugees and asylum seakers from failed or conflict-ridden states. A much more robust commitment to the promotion of democracy in the developing world should not be seen as unrealistic idealism, but as the central plank of a pragmatic foreign policy.
In seeking such promotion, the EU is ideally placed. It posesses the foreign policy weapon to beat all others in the 21st century global village, one that it has already used to great effect in its eastern neighbourhood: Money. The EU accounts for a larger share of world trade, for both imports and exports, than any country, and it also has the largest economy on the planet bar none. Money talks, as the saying goes, and it has been the desire to get a larger slice of that prosperity that has seen so many ex-Soviet-bloc countries bending over backwards to implement the kind of civil and democratic reforms that would almost certainly not have been so quickly forthcoming had the economic incentives of EU membership not been in place. The EU needs to use all of the economic carrots at its disposal to encourage the developing world of the merits of democratic reforms, whilst concomitantly making the case that democracy is in the long term economic interests of such countries anyway. Unfortunately, Western efforts to promote democracy and the rule of law abroad are still seen by many in the developing world as thinly disguised attempts at neo-colonialism. Robert Mugabe has tried to fool his citizens with this mantra for many years, and the accusations currently being made by the Iranian government against the United Kingdom are clearly born of a similar objective. The EU, and the West in general, needs to learn to make the case far better that democracy is as much a rational pragmatic choice as it is an ideology.
It cannot be emphasised enough that a vigorous and unified commitment to the promotion of democracy abroad should be at the very top of the foreign policy agendas of all liberal democracies everywhere. The greater the number of countries that share our value systems, the fewer the threats we have to face. As the Prussian soldier and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously observerd: “War is just politics by another means”. It is also the most costly form of politics, and more often than not, it is not a long term solution to the divisions that provoked the conflict in the first place. Better by far, if possible, is to use all the means at your disposal to persuade the opposing side of the benefits of your point of view, thus negating the need for conflict altogether. This will surely come as a statement of the blindingly obvious, and yet amazingly, so much of our foreign policy at present appears to be conducted without much consideration for what should be a guiding principle. Britain, like most other European countries, seems to spend most of its time seeking specific resolutions to localised issues, with little appetite for an overarching strategy of fundamental reform that could and should guide all such efforts. Britain needs to increase the ambition of its foreign policy efforts in this regard, and the obvious vehicle through which this might be achieved is of course the European Union.
In the interim period, Britain needs to accept that on a military and strategic level, Britannia now needs Europe if it wishes to rule the waves. This is not, as stated at the outset, to suggest that Europe should develop a military strategy that seeks to divorce itself from NATO. Rather, Europe must establish itself as a stronger and more viable partner of the alliance than it is at present. Far too many Britons who oppose what they see as a European “challenge” to NATO seem to equate, whether they realise it or not, a wholehearted commitment to the alliance with a total dependence upon the United States for its continued existence. NATO would be a far stronger entity than it is at present if European states worked harder at integrating their military systems and developing common foreign policy objectives that could more easily become those of the alliance.
The rise of China, and to a lesser extent the re-emergence of Russia, are demonstrations of the fact, already touched upon, that in the 21st century, the United States will not remain the unchallenged locus of global influence. The United Kingdom has not enjoyed such a position since the end of the 19th century. Yet in today’s world, neither Britain nor the United States needs to seek global influence independent of any other country. Liberal democracies can and should work more closely together to collectively enhance their global influence on a permanent basis. Geo-politically speaking, the countries of the European Union are particularly well placed to effect such an integration. Britain, in particular, needs to realise that in the 21st century global players work best in teams.
“It is apprehended, that arbitrary power would steal in upon us, were we not careful to prevent its progress, and were there not an easy method of conveying the alarm from one end of the kingdom to the other. The spirit of the people must frequently be roused, in order to curb the ambition of the court; and the dread of rouzing this spirit must be employed to prevent that ambition. Nothing so effectual to this purpose as the liberty of the press.”
So said the enlightenment philosopher David Hume in his essay Of the Liberty of the Press in 1742. His words ring as loudly today as they did more than two centuries ago. The recently exposed scandal of the way British MPs have been abusing the internally-regulated expenses system, often to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds at taxpayers’ expense, has brought shame on the British Parliament, and rightly so. Acres of column inches have been devoted to lamenting the demise of the once immutable British sense of fair play, as it was revealed that it was not so much the letter but the spirit of the expenses rules that had been broken so badly.
Yet in one sense - a sense, indeed, that appears to have been lost on almost everybody - this whole fiasco is tremendously reassuring. The reason the British people are able to get so angry about the whole issue is because they live in a country where they get to hear of corruption in politics from a media unafaraid to write about it in the first place. The truth is, that whatever abuses British parliamentarians attempt to perpetuate, ultimately the truth will out and they will reap the consequences. This was true of the cash for questions scandal of the early 1990s, it was true of the cash for honours scandal in the mid 2000s, and it is true of the expenses scandal now. The two cornerstones of any democratic society, a free press and free speech, are still alive and well in the United Kingdom.
The inquiry that followed the cash for honours affair revealed the strength of the system when it was permitted to go as high as the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who was himself questioned by police. That episode saw Blair the subject of a laughably ironic taunt from then Russian President Vladimir Putin, who responded to Blair’s criticism of Russian democracy at the 2006 G8 summit by suggesting that the British premier could be a useful advisor in the fight against corruption, since he himself appeared to have such intimate first hand experience with the problem. Yet there is a good reason why so little (beyond dangerous speculation) 
has been written about the financial misdealings of Russian politicians, namely that they do not operate in a society that tolerates such a level of exposure and accountability. Since 23 June 2000, Russia has been on the International Press Institute’s (IPI) Watch List owing to its “repression of the independent media… physical harrassment… [and] murder” of journalists who report critically of the Kremlin administration. With two dead already in 2009, Russia is second equal on the IPI’s death watch list, behind Pakistan, and equal with Somalia, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Iraq. Reporters sans frontiers provides a worldwide picture of the state of press freedom generally.
If corruption cannot be exposed, then it cannot be rectified, and in this sense, Britain should be thankful. There are those who question the methods used by the Daily Telegraph, the paper responsible for breaking the expenses story, over how it obtained the data and whether, indeed, it should be prosecuted for aiding and abetting breaches of the Data Protection Act, the Computer Misuse Act, and even the Official Secrets Act. In reality, the paper is performing a clear public service and has a strong public interest defence. The press should not be punished for truth-telling and holding authority to account. Indeed, that is their very raison d’être.
British politics is currently in a sorry state. That even Prime Minister Gordon Brown has seen fit to apologise is a good indicator of just how bad things are. What the expenses system needs is simply a far greater level of transparency combined with tighter rules imposed by an independent authority, such as will hopefully be recommended by Sir Christopher Kelly’s report to be published later this year. What Britons need to be thankful for is that such a review, and such revelations to which it responds, are possible and indeed encouraged in the first place.
Almost ten years to the day after his defining speech to the Chicago Economic Club at the height of the Kosovo crisis, Tony Blair has been in Chicago once again, this time to give a speech on how best to tackle Islamic “extremism”. Blair’s apparent lack of comprehension of the huge complexities of the enemy he embarked upon fighting whilst British Prime Minister would not be such a cause for concern but for the fact that as the Quartet’s official envoy, he is supposedly our man to bring peace to the Middle East. Not only that, but a number of other world leaders appear to hold to his point of view.
One of the major problems is the methodology used by Blair and others who share his position to draw a line between “true Muslims”, whose faith is tolerant and peaceful, and “extremist Muslims” who believe it is justifiable to pursue their objectives by violent means. “They [extremists] are better organised. But they don’t represent true Islam or true Muslims”, Blair said. Similar statements are constantly being made by global statesman to the point that in 2007 this assertion was turned into an operative clause of a UN General Assembley Resolution, which expresses its “deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.” The need to make such statements is understandable. Yet the problem with this distinction between “true Muslims” and “extremists” is that it approaches the issue from completely the wrong angle, grading the legitimacy of faith according to how closely it conforms with Western values, wholly independent of what might actually constitute being faithful to Islam. In no way is this to take the position of Emperor Manuel II, whose famous dismissal of Islam as a religion of violence was recently quoted by Pope Benedict XVI, but it must be understood that the validity of a religious interpretation cannot be graded according to how closely it conforms with liberal-democratic ideals.
Those who argue that Islam does permit the use of violence often cite the law of abrogation, a concept unique to Islam that holds older teachings to be null and void when contradicted by later ones. Mohammed’s early statements whilst at Mecca are by-and-large more peaceful than the more warlike utterances pronounced once the fledgling Muslim community had consolidated itself at Medina.
Blair’s second major misunderstanding is the motivation of those Muslims who see violence as a legitimate means to an end. He dismisses as cynical manipulation the way extremists (for want of a better word) have “successfully inculcated a sense of victimhood in the Islamic world”. Yet these grievences are very real, and central to understanding and thus dealing with the problem. Furthermore, this mindset is not unique to Muslims. Down the centuries, extremism has always been a reaction to perceived injustice. It is also a common reaction of the weak to the strong. In Moorish Spain, instances of what could be termed Christian extremism were a reaction to Muslim ascendency. The terror tactics of the IRA in Northern Ireland were a consequence both of a perceived injustice and the fact that the IRA could not have hoped to beat the British Army in a straight fight. Much the same can said of militant activity in Palestine now. As Clausewitz said, “war is just politics by another means”. This is by no means to excuse such actions, merely to contextualise them.
So-called Islamic extremism is a direct response to Western ascendency and perceived encroachments upon the Islamic way of life. Blair is quite simply missing the point when he says “we have to understand we have not caused this phenomenon”. In his iconic work the “Clash of Civilisations” Samuel P. Huntington made the case very clearly: “Islam [is] a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.” The gradual ascendency of the West over the Muslim world, beginning perhaps with the Ottoman defeat at the hands of the Holy League at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, and culminating with the final Ottoman capitulation in 1918, is a phenomenon very intimately tied up with Islamic extremism today, principally because - in the eyes of the “extremists” - those defeats have yet to be reversed.
The reason this has led to such violent confrontations with the West is because of the highly orthopraxic nature of Islam, that is, the impossibility of legitimately separating church and state. Whereas such a division is made possible in Christianity by Christ’s command to “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things which are God’s”, no such provision exists in Islam. In Islam the success or failure of a human being to find favour with the Almighty very much depends on his or her actions and behaviour. Out of this has come a doctrine advocated in the Quran known as ‘Manifest Success’ which essentially links external success with the notion of being Gods people. In other words, the extent to which Muslims can know divine favour can be directly measured against the extent of their earthly success.
This idea is firmly grounded in the spectacular expansion of the Muslim geopolitical sphere under Mohammed and his immediate successors. The logic clearly follows that because Mohammed was supremely faithful to God’s commands, so he was granted unprecedented earthly success. Mohammed fought for what he believed in and did not capitulate to those who would follow their own laws as opposed to God’s laws. Muslims who wish for an uncompromising return to the laws and cultural standards of Mohammed’s 7th century world need look no further than the humiliation of the Ottoman Empire after it sought to incorporate Western practices in an effort to strenghten itself at the end of the 19th century as vindication of their position. “Extremist” Muslims look at their position today and conclude that only a radical rejection of Westernism and a return to the modus operandi as it existed under Mohammed can hope to see a revival of their fortunes.
Democracy and the nation state have two things in common. First is that they are, in their current form, fairly recent creations. Second is that they are very definitely man-made creations. Democracy rests on the idea that the people should make their own laws and determine their own future. The nation state rests on the idea that an individual’s first loyalty and duty is to his country. Neither was a tenable concept in 7th century Medina and both are anathema to a Muslim who believes in the absolute supremecy and rightness of God’s laws - which provide a clear template for the establishment of an earthly society - and whose first loyalty is to his brothers in faith, in whichever state on earth they may happen to live.
This has very far reaching implications for the way Blair and others need to understand the threat posed by “extremist” Islam. There are very firm grounds within Islam to contend that Western encroachments on perceived Muslim spheres on influence, far from helping solve the problem, are in fact the problem. Highly unfashionable though it may be to say so, the West cannot offer Muslims any kind of system that is compatible with their faith. Liberal democracy and Islam are not compatible systems. That is not to say that Muslims cannot live peacefully in Western societies, nor in fact that, as Turkey has demonstrated so successfully, a majority-Muslim state cannot rest on secular principles and largely Western inspired notions of the rule of law. What it is to say is that such systems are highly imperfect implementations of what the God of the Quran intended, if not outright rejections. Like it or not, there is much more method to “extremist” Muslims’ madness than Mr Blair and others like him appear to comprehend.
The European Commission began legal proceedings against the British Government yesterday over its failure to protect the privacy of internet users. Many in the UK object to the EU on the grounds that it is “invasive” and a threat to British sovereignty and the so-called British way of life. Yet here is an example of the EU acting to uphold the civil liberties of British citizens in place of a government seemingly incapable of doing so.
The case concerns the apparent failure by the British Government to prohibit the unsolicited interception and surveillence of internet users’ communications, as required by the EU’s Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications. Specifically the case focuses on BT’s use of software provided by the advertisement serving company Phorm, which monitors the browsing habits of internet users to deliver individually targeted advertising.
EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding said, “We have been following the Phorm case for some time and have concluded that there are problems in the way the UK has implemented parts of EU rules on the confidentiality of communications.” Phorm insists that their technology is legal and complies with all data protection standards since the data is not stored, but deleted almost immediately and is not retrievable.
On 4 April 2008 the UK Information Commissioner’s Office issued a statement giving BT the green light to trial the technology so long as they had users’ prior consent. However, it appears that BT conducted a trial of the technology without informing users and the Government failed to prevent this from happening.
What is objectionable about this technology is not the purpose for which it is currently intended, but the ends to which it might subsequently be utilised. It is to the potentially lasting misfortune of the British public that they have a government that appears unable to comprehend this threat.
We have been here before. From ID cards to anti-terrorism legislation, the mantra of the current administration has been that strict safeguards are or will be in place, 
and in the case of crime-prevention powers, only wrongdoers need be worried. Yet already, the fallacy of such assurances has begun to emerge. In October 2008, the British Government used powers granted by the 2001 Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act to freeze £4 billion worth of British financial assets in the failed Icelandic bank Landsbanki. Hardly the use for which such powers were intended. Likewise, it was also revealed at the end of last year that half of UK local councils were using anti-terror legislation to spy on individuals suspected of committing “bin crimes“. What is to say that technology originally intended to improve targeted advertising might not subsequently be modified to fulfil more pernicious ends?
It must be hoped that British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith - hitherto one of the greatest proponents of such anti-privacy technology - might have modified her views in the wake of a spate of scandals that should have brought home to her the dangers of putting private information in the hands of those who wish to use it to cause harm.
The EU is right to have started legal proceedings over the UK’s failure to enforce the regulations governing the use of technology such as that created by Phorm. No one is accusing Phorm, BT, or the British Government for that matter, of wanting to use this advertising targeting technology to undermine civil liberties. But that does not mean this technology should not be stopped, for the destruction of civil liberties in the UK will not happen but by degrees.
By iterating his support for Turkish membership of the European Union during a speech in Prague on Sunday, US President Barack Obama must have known he was dipping his toe into stormy waters.
Sure enough, President Sarkozy of France lost no time in hitting back, warning Mr Obama: “When it comes to the European Union it’s up to member states of the European Union to decide… I have always been opposed to this entry and I remain opposed. I think I can say a huge majority of member countries take the same position as France.”
The latest Eurobarometer survey to cover the issue supports Mr Sarkozy’s assertions, revealing that just 28 per cent of Europeans favour the idea of Turkish accession to the European Union.
The reasons for this opposition are as numerous as they are wide ranging. One of the main concerns is Turkey’s record on human rights. 85 per cent of Europeans believe that Turkey cannot join if it does not “systematically respect human rights”. Another major concern is that Turkey is quite simply too different, in both cultural and religious terms. During an interview with the French magazine Le Meillieur des Mondes then Minister of the Interior Sarkozy articulated these concerns when he stated flatly: “We have a problem with the integration of Muslims which raises the issue of Islam in Europe. To say it is not a problem is to hide from reality. If you let 100 million Turkish Muslims come in, what will come of it?”
Yet to reject Turkish membership on the grounds that it is simply too different will cause more problems than it solves. It is true that significant issues already confront the successful integration of many of Europe’s 3.8 million Muslims, but sending a clear message that Muslims aren’t really welcome in Europe is unlikely to help matters.
In fact, what is not adequately appreciated in Europe is Turkey’s own success at combining secularism and Islam. It was the almost overly-zealous commitment to Atatürk’s secularist legacy that that provoked nearly a million Turks to rally in Istanbul twice in one April fortnight in 2007, chanting “no to Sharia”, and protesting, amongst other things, plans by the ruling party to create alcohol-free zones and bids to outlaw adultery.
Turkish membership would serve to give the EU more influence and credibility in the Muslim world, particularly in the Middle East. Though perhaps something of an exaggeration, Portugal’s then Foreign Minister Diogo Freitas do Amaral had good reason when he asserted in October 2005 that “the agreement to start [accession] talks with Turkey will probably displease Mr Osama bin Laden, who has done everything to prevent this moment arriving.”
Turkish membership of the Union also has a number of practical benefits, not least in terms of energy security. The EU is already dependent on Russia for one quarter of its oil and gas. Turkey is the key alternative transit route for Caspian oil and gas and the swiftest route for Iraqi crude.
Giving Turks the unrestricted right to live and work anywhere in the EU that comes with membership would also help remedy the problem of Europe’s ageing workforce. The average Turk is in his 27th year, whereas the average European is almost 40.
Of course, there can be no question of Turkish membership until it fulfills all that is demanded of it by the EU’s rigorous Copenhagen accession criteria. Foremost is the need for Turkey to give equal rights and opportunities to its Kurdish minority, the abolition of Article 301 of the penal code (which makes insulting “Turkishness” and the Turkish Government a criminal offence) and the rolling back of the military in political affairs.
But pulling up the drawbridge of Fortress Europe is not the way to bring these reforms about. Traditionally, the EU’s strongest foreign policy weapon has been carrot as opposed to stick diplomacy: the incentive of membership in return for reforms that would otherwise not be forthcoming.
There is a real danger that if Europe is seen to turn its back on the prospect of Turkish membership too forcefully, Turks will retaliate in kind and the long called-for reforms will fail to materialise altogether. There is strong evidence to suggest, in fact, that this is already happening. The number of Turks who now believe membership would be a “good thing” has fallen to just 42 per cent.
President Sarkozy and others have repeatedly offered the sop of “privilaged partneship” status to Turkey, but this patronishing alternative holds little water. This perceived hostility is causing real damage to the faith Turks have in the desire of European’s to be genuine partners with them. Worryingly, a greater number of Turks now have “warm feelings” towards Iran than they do towards Europe.
Even President Sarkozy can surely see that an outcome where Turkey walks away altogether is in no-one’s best interests.