Category Archives: History

Foreign Affairs, Government, History, Middle East, Syria, United Nations, United States

The US Secretary of State faces challenges, but is John Kerry sufficiently supported?

US FOREIGN POLICY

John Kerry has illuminated the paradox of current American foreign policy. No where is this more embodied than in the Middle East, the region that continues to consume so much time and effort for the US Secretary of State. Rarely has the diplomacy and energies spent been as active and as bold as they are today. But flamboyant charges that the US is enfeebled and in retreat are also accusations that are running in parallel.

Mr Kerry is tacitly involved on three immensely challenging and overlapping fronts: his efforts to end the bloody civil war in Syria; the continued search for a nuclear deal with Iran that might end more than three decades of hostility between Washington and Tehran; and, the renewed and engaging process to secure a two-state settlement between Israel and Palestinians that has eluded negotiators since 1948.

An analysis of the progress being made will reveal a mixed picture. Encouragingly, the best advances have been made with Iran, with an interim deal that parts of the country’s nuclear programme have been frozen for a period of six months. This deal could yet unravel, but the U.S. and Iran are engaged in a process of constructive dialogue.

To the other extreme, Syria constitutes a total failure. The recent Geneva conference which could not even deliver an agreement on bringing humanitarian aid to tens of thousands of civilians, trapped by the savagery of the conflict, epitomises this rank failure. Vladimir Putin’s Russia continues to arm and supply the regime, while progress on securing Assad’s chemical weapons and stockpiles is, at best, described as being limited. More accurately, it would not be amiss to say that progress in removing Assad’s arsenal has been brought to a stuttering halt.

The current state of play in dealing with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is less clear. Whilst Mr Kerry has been doggedly determined in keeping talks going, his indefatigability may be perceived from different angles of thought. For those who support him, this involvement and persistent diligence is proof of resolve. It is also recognition of his courage by placing his prestige on the line in a way that many of his predecessors never did. For the detractors, though, the US Secretary of State is merely on an ego trip, driven largely by the naïve belief that hope will triumph over experience. The more impartial may wonder whether Mr Kerry’s goal of a ‘framework’ plan – an agreement by the two sides on the shape of the final agreement with the details being worked out later – is really any different from the other diplomatic formulae’, such as the ‘road maps’, that have littered nearly seven decades of futile peacekeeping.

Underpinning Mr Kerry’s efforts on all three fronts is the ‘damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t’ scenario faced by the US in the Middle East. Most expect America to lead, even if its ability to shape and bend the region to its will is often grossly exaggerated. When the U.S. has taken decisive action, as in Iraq or Afghanistan, it has been accused of being a blundering warmonger. Following on from these two long and costly interventions, Americans will have no appetite for another. Yet, when it steadfastly refuses to robustly intervene in Syria (or to a lesser extent in Egypt), it is denounced for abandoning its responsibilities, and of condoning and supporting human rights abuses. It can hardly wave a magic wand and expect all to be well.

American history tends to suggest that the most effective Secretaries of State tend to be those that have been closest to their respective Presidents. Henry Kissinger, for instance, under President Richard Nixon, or James Baker who held post during the reign of President George HW Bush, spring to mind. Secretary of State Kerry is barely a year into his tenure, and so it is too early to say whether he will join this company. Success, however, on one of the three major challenges he is faced with would amount to a distinguished and noteworthy achievement.

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Arts, Books, History, Scotland, Spain

Book Review: ‘Homage to Caledonia: Scotland and the Spanish Civil War’…

SCOTLAND: ANSWERING A CALL

SEVENTY FIVE years ago, in 1938, the International Brigades were disbanded. Never was there a better time to document and celebrate those Scots who fought, and often died, in the 20th century’s first international battle against fascism.

In many ways the term ‘Spanish Civil War’ is a misnomer. Most people knew it was no more than a rehearsal for an even bloodier conflict to come, and that the ideas being killed and died for – communism, revolution-ism, parliamentary democracy and fascism – would go on to shape the future of the entire world.

Some 549 men and women from Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow, Lothian farmlands and the Highlands are known to have left for what was then a distant and alien country. They went illegally, as the British Government had, shockingly, adopted a policy of non-intervention in the face of yet another European country falling to a Nazi ally.

The book, acknowledged in its foreword by Tony Benn as being ‘important and powerful’, is not only a culmination of extensive academic research but a personal gathering of information from relatives of those engaged in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.

The book, acknowledged in its foreword by Tony Benn as being ‘important and powerful’, is not only a culmination of extensive academic research but a personal gathering of information from relatives of those engaged in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.

Although the British, French, and American governments proclaimed support for the freely elected Spanish Republic, their every move in the war betrayed their preference for a victory by the rebel generals over a communist or, even worse, a revolutionary Spain. The Scottish volunteers crept over the border at Perpignan after an uncomfortable journey, many of them having covered long tracts of it on foot and with little to eat on the way. They fought together with Spaniards, Italians, Russians, Germans, Irish and many other nationalities at Albacete, Jarama, the Aragon Front and in the Battle for Madrid. More than 2000 British soldiers fought; over a quarter of those Scots that travelled never returned.

 

ALMOST a quarter of all British volunteers were from Scotland; more than most other countries by head of population. It was an extraordinary level of commitment, and defiance, for a small nation. People of all classes signed up for the fight against Franco’s version of ultra-conservative Catholicism, but the majority of those committed to the cause came from working-class areas such as Shettleston and Calton. Their stories, though, have never been adequately told. Daniel Gray has done them justice.

Mr Gray was perfectly placed in writing this book. A curator at the National Library of Scotland, he is in his element amongst archives and historical records, histories and memoirs. For Gray’s cleverly titled book, he has drawn on national and overseas sources, and has organised a very complex story into a well-constructed and compelling narrative. Daniel is a capable writer; his prose is unfussy, fluent and warm. Pointedly, he has squared the circle of producing accurate history while retaining a deep respect for those who archive and steward it. Homage to Caledonia is in no way hagiography – a chapter is dedicated on those Scots who supported Franco – but, Mr Gray’s admiration for those volunteers who risked their lives is subtle and elegant.

Daniel Gray has a remarkable intuitive sense in knowing when to let the soldiers, nurses and writers tell their own stories. Sydney Quinn’s testament, for instance, is expressed:

…Whenever I see the thousands of Spanish children streaming along the road away from the fascists, my thoughts revert back home, and I can see you and your brothers in the same circumstances if we don’t smash the fascist monsters here.

Mr Quinn wrote that paragraph to his family back in Glasgow on the eve of going into action against fascism.

Steve Fullarton wrote from the thick of battle:

… I found George Jackson lying stretched out. George came from Cowdenbeath … Charlie McLeod of Aberdeen was lying with his head on George Jackson’s chest. And Malcolm Smith was lying about a yard or so away. All were dead…

Gray studies the reasons for the Scots’ decision to volunteer. Over half were affiliated in one way or another to the Communist Party. Garry McCartney, a blacksmith from Dennistoun, commented:

…We weren’t fighting for communism; we just wanted to beat the fascists.

The personal letters of David Murray, a member of the Independent Labour Party, cast a fascinating light on Spanish anarchists and those who fought alongside them. The death of Larkhall’s Bob Smillie, for instance, whose death to this day still divides the Scottish left – did he die of natural causes or was he kicked to death by Spanish Communists? Ethel Macdonald, the so called ‘Scottish Scarlet Pimpernel’, who reported from within the anarchist camp in Barcelona, vehemently documents the belief in the latter. Mr Gray’s chapter on MacDonald is a revealing examination of the fault-lines on both the Scottish and Spanish left.

 

FOR the men and women who went to fight, or to help in whatever capacity they could, doctrinal differences were of little or no importance. Rather, a sense of solidarity – amongst the Scots themselves and the volunteers from countless countries – and a sense of fighting at an historic and honourable moment:

…One day we shall tell our children about the defence of Madrid; this epic story can never die in the pages of world history. I think of Jock Cunningham from Coatbridge out in Spain… leading his men fearlessly and unafraid, dancing with death.

Daniel Gray has written a deeply moving account of one part of human history that is thought-provoking and vividly emotional, not only of those 549 Scottish people, but of two nations – Scotland and Spain – battling with an evil that would soon darken the whole of Europe.

– ‘Homage to Caledonia: Scotland and the Spanish Civil War’ written by Daniel Gray is published by Luath Press for £16.99. 

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Arts, Government, History, Politics, Society, United States

John F. Kennedy and his legacy 50-years on…

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY

The reputations of presidents’ are based on a number of factors, but luck plays a significant part – not just in terms of what happens while they are in office, but also the luck of who writes their biographies once they have gone. Wars, for example, give presidents a boost, whilst, conversely, any financial crises will have the reverse effect.

The pre-eminent political biographer, Robert Caro, delivered a monumental multivolume labour of love that has, in many respects, redeemed the reputation of Lyndon B. Johnson. Some may deduce that LBJ emerges as the luckiest president of the past century.

Robert Caro’s LBJ depicts and portrays an ultimate fixer, a politician who knew better than anyone how to get his way in the challenging and demanding burrow and nest of Washington. Because of how Caro has written, it’s Johnson’s guile that people look to when they ask how President Obama could do better in his dealings with Congress.

But, as the established stock of LBJ has risen, John F. Kennedy has become the man who merely talked about the transformative legislative programme that Johnson himself turned into reality. In the long shadow cast by LBJ, Kennedy is perceived as a glamorous but slight figure, a crowd-pleasing president who was brave, attractive and ambitious, yet ultimately ineffectual. On the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, many of his admirers are trying to reverse this image. For example, Caro focuses on foreign policy, which was Kennedy’s strength and Johnson’s weakness. LBJ’s achievements were undoubtedly domestic; Caro, as yet, has failed to explain the terrible mess Johnson made of Vietnam. Caro’s ‘unfinished’ biography will surely have to tell in some future volume the tragic coda of this calamitous episode.

The presidency of John F. Kennedy ended just as he was finding ways to move beyond the stagnant and terrifying philosophical logic of cold war confrontation that had taken the world to the brink of catastrophe in the Cuban missile crisis. In 1963, it looked as though Kennedy had stumbled on the path to a more peaceful future. Johnson was the man who departed from it.

During the last year of his life Kennedy’s quest for safer relations with the Russians is evidenced from the speeches Kennedy gave in the summer of 1963 about war, peace and the means of moving from one to the other. The Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT), a nuclear arms control agreement that Kennedy signed into law in October 1963, was probably his proudest achievement of his presidency up to that point.

Some commentators may suggest this was a sure indicator of things to come, the first step towards a stable and secure coexistence between the superpowers. Others, like economists, may treat Kennedy as a moral visionary, but economists are not historians. A man, they say, who possessed the gifts of oratory and character that was able to change to change the course of history at this perilous juncture is based on two questionable assumptions.

The first is that treaties matters. The LTBT was only what it said it was: limited. It specifically prohibited further nuclear testing in space or underwater but clearly permitted it underground. The treaty had been watered down from something more comprehensive, first by Russian qualms about international oversight and then by the misgivings of the US joint chiefs about the government of Nikita Khrushchev. Charles de Gaulle refused to sign it.

Arguing, though, that it was a landmark moment (as opposed to changing the course of history) is probably better placed. The treaty certainly signalled that the US and the Soviets could agree on something substantial. It also showed that a US president could get such an agreement passed the Senate, which had a tendency of shooting down plans for peace. We should look no further than from all of that which followed-on from the failure of Woodrow Wilson to get the Senate to ratify the League of Nations in 1919, a deficiency that continually haunted Kennedy. Kennedy did, however, secure ratification of the LTBT by an impressive margin of 80 votes to 19. This subsequently opened the door to the creation and ratification of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was approved by the Senate in 1969 and has been vital in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons around the world.

The contention that speeches actually matter is highly dubious. In his book, ‘To Move the World: JFK’s Quest for Peace’, by Jeffrey Sachs, the author believes that Kennedy’s oratory in 1963 – above all the ‘peace speech’ he delivered in Washington, DC, on 10 June that year – was crucial in persuading Russia’s leaders, US politicians and people all over the world that the time was right for a sea change in international affairs. Whilst Sachs talks up Kennedy’s logic with beauty and how it had the power to move, he provides no evidence that such rhetoric made the vital difference. Are we to conclude that just because Kennedy said it was time for peace the Soviets quickly signed a peace treaty? Sachs does infer that such a treaty came into being because they had been persuaded by what Kennedy had said.

The near calamity of the Cuban missile crisis is recognised as persuading both sides to look for alternatives. However, we should not take for granted that this took the form of turning away from war to peace. It wasn’t so much the risk of Armageddon, but the temporary loss of control that terrorised both sides. The LTBT and NPT were ways of reasserting control as the two superpowers had struggled for something to cling onto as they moved wearily about in the dark without direction. The treaties may have limited the ability of others to get nuclear weapons but it didn’t stop the superpowers from ramping up their own arsenals or persistently pursuing proxy wars around the globe.

Kennedy’s decision to focus on foreign affairs in 1963 was not without cost. It came at the expense of doing other, equally urgent things. The last 100 days in office encompassed both sides of Kennedy; the statesman and chancer on the one hand, the moralist and opportunist on the other.

Other commentators like Thurston Clarke in his book, ‘An Intimate Portrait of a Great President’, also celebrate Kennedy’s great achievement in getting the LTBT passed the Senate but suggests it was done by calling in political favours that could not then get cashed in elsewhere. Forcing the treaty through, for example, came at the expense of a concerted push on civil rights legislation. Clarke says that was a choice between ‘ethics and history’ with Kennedy, a vain, and when he needed to be, a cold-hearted man, choosing history. He was known to weigh himself after every swim, terrified that he was turning into a jowly, middle-aged man. Kennedy’s charm could be turned on and off like a light switch.

Nevertheless, like most commentators Clarke is convinced that this was a great man cut down at the moment of his greatest potential. He insists that Kennedy would have enacted his own comprehensive civil rights legislation in his second term, and argues that Kennedy had seen the folly of his Vietnam escapade and was determined to get out. He was just waiting for the right moment, which would come with his re-election.

The plausibility of this must be questioned. Presidents invariably think they will achieve in their second term what they failed to do in their first but it rarely happens like that. Kennedy’s mantra in 1963 was talked up as being what he was going to do ‘after 1964’ but he was also a well-established ditherer who made sure there was always a get-out clause. There is no evidence, for instance, that he knew how to get round the openly racist Southern bloc in the Senate. In 1963, he sounded more like someone who had parked comprehensive civil rights legislation than a politician who knew how to accomplish it. The day after his peace speech, he gave a powerful talk on civil rights – but he also told black civil rights leaders that they should learn to be more like the Jews and focus on education as the path to improvement.

Clarke cites as evidence of how much Kennedy meant to people and how much his passing mattered. In an unsentimental age, when it was unusual to shed tears in public (and unthinkable for many men), so many cried when they heard of the president’s assassination. According to a Gallup survey 53 per cent of Americans had wept in the days following his death. They shed tears because ordinary people felt a connection and shared a feeling that his death represented the loss of some unspoken promise.

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