HOW THIN GS FELL APART
A divisive leader in the White House, a warmonger in North Korea, a fallen idol of Hollywood and a Nobel Peace Prize winner scandalised. These were the lead players in 2017, all performing against a backdrop of Brexit, storms and an unnerving sense of imp
THIS was a year that was marked by regressive trends in personal behaviour and in international affairs. In 2017 in the United States, many of the principles of caution, wisdom and mutual respect that have so long governed that country’s behaviour at home and abroad were tossed to the winds. In the United Kingdom, Ireland’s closest and most important ally, the hard Brexit faction of the Tory government displayed an attitude towards Ireland last seen in the duplicitous days of Lloyd George.
In Myanmar – formerly Burma – the leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, had the honour of the Freedom of Dublin removed from her on the grounds that she may have been complicit in genocide.
And in Hollywood, the most successful film producer of his time, Harvey Weinstein, was accused by numerous women of intense sexual harassment going back many years. Weinstein denies all the charges, but his movie career is in ruins, at least for the moment, whilst the actions of his accusers have opened up a whole raft of accusations against other prominent media, music and film stars.
All the while, our planet continued to boil. As ice caps melted and communities in the Pacific faced extinction from rising sea levels, fossil fuels continued to pump carbon into the atmosphere. Carbon emissions further weakened our ozone layer and led to ever warmer oceans. The result was, among others, Hurricane Ophelia, which lasted for ten days in October and which brought, even to parts of Ireland, storm conditions previously unknown. Entire Caribbean islands were evacuated before being flattened. The island of Puerto Rico is still without half of its power grid.
SHOCKINGLY, although the science behind these natural phenomena has been widely accepted for decades, and has led to international treaties bound to a common effort to stop the carbon emissions trend, the United States pulled out of its climate treaty obligations and began to double up on coal and oil. The country which has the technical and scientific ability to aspire to colonise Mars, now refuses to accept the basic alphabet of climate change. The future of the planet is seemingly secondary to its president’s political ambitions.
As if this was not enough, American foreign policy in 2017 became as unstable as a barrel of nitro-glycerine. Trump’s disdain of traditional alliances, his refusal to take on board the advice of friendly countries and his lust for naked confrontation threatened – and continues to threaten – the peace and stability of the world.
The realisation that decades of détente were coming to an abrupt end and that a nuclear war was now a real possibility gathered pace during 2017. In Moscow, it was reported that President Putin and his circle of advisers now believe a major war to be inevitable.
At home, meanwhile, our youthful Government experiThe enced a series of rollercoasters. Although our economy rebounded and employment fell dramatically, the shadow of Brexit with all its incoherent logic, settled like a dark cloud over the future.
The lack of concern, respect – even interest – shown by the government of the United Kingdom for Ireland in its approach and execution of Brexit made it seem at times as if the Good Friday Agreement, an international treaty to which Britain is bound and which has underpinned the peace and prosperity of this island for the last 20 years, was of little or no consequence.
The year ahead will be no less demanding, as the promised referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment takes place, with all its inherent divisiveness.
only constant going forward is that the unexpected is the new norm. Pollsters struggle more and more to predict outcomes. But are these unexpected outcomes really a product of the modern era?
Consider, for a moment, a small, backward and isolated statelet, run by a ruthless oligarch, whose regime is an international pariah. The oligarch, in a strategy to deflect his people from their domestic hardships, creates an external threat to his country. All at once the country is united behind him, poverty and misery forgotten as the new enemy becomes the focus of everyone’s lives. The fact that the
new enemy is the most powerful democracy known is ignored.
Disregarding the complete imbalance of power and the high probability that it will be wiped out before battle even begins, the statelet prepares to attack.
Although North Korea fits this description perfectly, 2,500 years ago it was the tiny, backward city state of Sparta that went to war with the colossal Athenian Empire for reasons that correspond closely to what is happening today.
Sparta, ruled by a dictator, lacked a navy, arts, allies – even a currency. What it did have was a welldrilled infantry and they were marched around the Gulf of Corinth to lay siege to the impregnable city of Athens that was built on the mighty Acropolis. This war is remarkable not just in itself but because it was the first recorded war in all of history, and its historian, Thucydides, made certain observations about human behaviour that he held would remain true for all time.
The venality of human beings was at the root of all problems then as it is now, he said. Moreover, Thucydides believed that to be at war was man’s natural condition: ‘Peace is an armistice in a war that is continually going on,’ he wrote, before adding, ‘Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils.’
If we accept that the grim turn of events in world affairs are simply the same set of human vanities being played again and again, then at least we can put aside our sense of bewilderment whilst retaining that of dismay.
When we look at the strutting, overbearing Trump, we can remember how Thucydides described such men as he was recounting the ultimately horrific circumstances of the Peloponnesian War: ‘Reckless audacity came to be considered as courage [whilst] frantic violence became the attribute of manliness.’
The prospect of a war arising from the sudden tantrum of an egomaniacal US president as he is finally provoked beyond restraint b y t h e equally egomoniacal leader of North Korea would not be the first time a major war broke out because of petulance. ‘Wars spring from unseen and generally insignificant causes, the first outbreak being often but an explosion of anger,’ Thucydides said.
And yet, those who cheer Trump’s setbacks should beware of what they wish for. If the Republicans lose control of Congress or the Senate, or both, in the 2018 midterm elections, the chances of war may increase since Trump’s options for staying in power will have narrowed and the absence of any moral restraint in his character may be fatally decisive.
Despite feeling deep revulsion for him, prayers surrounding Trump may be better directed towards maintaining the status quo and limping forward to 2020 when the American people will have the opportunity to return their country to its true greatness. Closer to home, the implacable decision of the United Kingdom to continue its walk away from the EU and in the process to forgo the great and manifest benefits that such leaving will entail is a mystery to people in Ireland whose instincts are now firmly Europe inclusive. Even if they were not, the looming self-harm to the UK is seen with dismay, since we regard our nearest neighbour more as a frequently irritating member of our family rather than as a foreign country.
LAMENTING the poor decisions of city states that brought misfortune and misery down upon their own heads, Thucydides said, ‘In general, the men of lower intelligence won out.’ If he was to comment on the decision of the UK to leave the EU, Thucydides would apply these remarks not to the voters, but to the promoters of Brexit who, lacking sound arguments resorted to outright lies. (Turkey can’t be stopped joining the EU; the UK sends £350million a week to Brussels; there’s going to be a European army, were just a few of many). ‘Afraid of their own shortcomings, and so they would not lose out in reasoned argument, they moved boldly into action,’ sums up the Brexiteers aptly, even if the man who said it died 2,500 years ago. And so we go forward in a world where human weakness is, as ever, a threat to peace and prosperity. Where only vigilance will prevent backsliding since no amount of legislation will ever do so. Where men of caution will be described as cowards by braggarts whose hunger for power is greater than their intelligence. Where revenge is seen as a virtue and villainy is prized over honesty. Although in the 27-year war which Thucydides recorded, and fought in as a general on the Athenian side, Sparta eventually won, we can gain some comfort from the fact that the tendency of history to repeat itself is interspersed with generations of peace, such as the one we now cherish. While it has been our fate to destroy dreams with impetuousness, and elect weak men to lead us, human nature re-emerges with hope and makes new dreams in the process. We evolve as a species or we are lost. We evolve and as we do so we must believe that we can avoid regressing. Knowledge of ourselves is a precious gift. We must use it to avoid repeating history and, in the process, to proving Thucydides wrong.
Peter Cunningham’s most recent novel Acts Of Allegiance (published by Sandstone Press) is available now.