Naiveté alert.
Watching the comings and goings of the last few months, the seemingly endless country dancing patterns of negotiation, accusation, pacification, appeasement, negotiation that is the standard fayre of international relations, I wonder whether we will ever get to a situation when enough is enough.
No country is perfect. They all have shadows on their histories. And present generations shouldn’t be held accountable for the atrocities of their forebears.
But, when it comes to current behaviour, present crimes against humanity, accepted morality, common decency, where is the line drawn?
The UK at the moment is in a tailspin, trying to grab any half-extended hand of friendship to save us from the free-fall of Brexit. And that includes potential trade deals with countries with less than glowing records of good behaviour.
So, if a country acts in an immoral way, do you disconnect as a statement of non-acceptance? Or do you stay linked, in the hope that relational osmosis will somehow bring them to the light.
I suppose the latter has happened in the past, but do you put a time limit on it? or do we separate morality from trade?
No country is inherently immoral, even if their leaders may be. So, do we punish the whole to attempt to change the few?
These are not new questions, and they still do not easy answers. The collapse of apartheid in South Africa was helped by international boycotts. Russia, or Putin, at the moment, is getting stronger from the same approach. And international inconsistency.
We supply the means of population destruction to Saudi Arabia, reeking havoc in Yemen. We need the money as a country, but at the price of thousands of lives destroyed or damaged forever. And the support of an extremely unequal society.
Israel has disenfranchised a large section of its population, but nothing is said. And Jaffa oranges are everywhere.
Trump plays fast and loose with structures that have maintained stability and mutual respect for years, and we chase the dollar and ignore the rest. After all, what is a few hundred dead students, African-Americans. And the steady removal of hard-won rights any rational person would take as the minimum.
I am more than aware that we do not live in a binary world, but when will we be able to pass the next generation a world without having to wipe the blood from our hands first?
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