Paris
attacks must shake Europe’s complacency
The
idea that the west should shoulder blame rests on a corrosive moral
relativism
Philip Stephens
There is an impulse
in Europe’s political discourse, by no means the exclusive property
of the left, that assumes nothing bad happens in the world without it
being somehow the fault of the west in general and the US in
particular. This is the mindset that casts Saddam Hussein as a
victim, Hugo Chávez a hero and Russia’s Vladimir Putin as a
bulwark against Nato expansionism. The mass murder of Parisian
concertgoers and Russian tourists may be crimes, but they are surely
also the product of unprincipled great power intervention.
Listen to Jeremy
Corbyn. The leader of Britain’s Labour party cannot censure the
outrages of extremist jihadis without reference to the supposed
crimes of the US: the siege of Falluja, say, or killing rather than
arraigning Osama bin Laden. “We have created a situation where some
of these forces have grown,” was Mr Corbyn’s reflection on the
slaughter in Paris.
There is no shortage
of criticisms to be made of the west — and they do not start or end
with the invasion of Iraq. I find it shocking that Saudi Arabia is
still treated as a staunch ally even as it exports the extreme
version of Islam that informs the murderous credo of the jihadis.
Then there is a welcome afforded Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah
al-Sisi whose violent repression of the Muslim Brotherhood opens the
door to Isis. With its oil and autocrats, the Middle East is a
graveyard for anything pretending to be a principled foreign policy.
None of these
hypocrisies can be held up in exculpation of the tyranny of the
self-styled Islamic State. Those who think it better to explain than
condemn forget that by far the greatest number of victims of Isis’
crimes are fellow Muslims in Iraq, Syria and, most recently, Beirut.
Or that the caliphate replaces liberty with theocratic intolerance,
subjugates women and murders homosexuals. The idea that the west
should shoulder blame rests on a corrosive moral relativism blind to
the essential evil of those who kill and maim. Indiscriminate murder
is wicked. It demands unvarnished condemnation. Full stop.
You could ask
whether anyone cares what Mr Corbyn thinks. The Labour leader’s
formative memories are of the Vietnam war and the nasty campaigns
waged by the CIA in central and Latin America during the 1970s. He
has not stepped out of the time warp. He will never be prime
minister. Even Fidel Castro thinks it is time to move on.
Yet Mr Corbyn’s
response illuminates a broader strand of European thinking — a
complacency that takes for granted the Enlightenment and has sapped
the willingness to defend its essential underpinnings. Somehow it is
easier to blame the west than to admit that there are those for whom
freedom, tolerance and the rule of law are natural enemies.
We saw this when Mr
Putin overturned the continent’s postwar security order by sending
his army into Ukraine. The reaction of many on the right as well as
the left was to mutter that the fault lay with Nato’s decision to
welcome the new democracies of eastern and central Europe.
Paris Attacks
There are many more
who have decided in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations that
the principal threat to Europe’s freedoms comes from the electronic
“snooping” of domestic intelligence services rather than from
jihadis wielding Kalashnikovs and wearing suicide vests. Hopefully
the balance will shift somewhat in the aftermath of the Paris
attacks.
The original sin was
the assumption that the end of the cold war did indeed mark the end
of history. The complacency straddled the boundary of economics and
politics. Liberal markets would create permanent prosperity, while
political pluralism would become the default system of governance.
The international order would be remade in the image of European
multilateralism.
The first of the
illusions was shattered by the financial crash of 2008, but
governments and electorates have held on more tenaciously to the idea
that democracy is the natural destination of politics. When things
have gone wrong — the terrorist attacks of al-Qaeda and now Isis
and Russia’s revanchism — the instinct has been to treat them as
exceptions. The curtains, though, have now been torn open, not least
by the influx of refugees fleeing violent chaos on Europe’s
periphery.
What is required is
a readiness to fight. This means a lot more than simply sending more
warplanes to attack Isis in its strongholds, though the case for
fiercer military action is a strong one. Fighting means recognising
that the values that form our societies cannot be taken for granted;
that the postmodern order imagined after 1989 is at very best some
way off; and that even as they confront the enemies of freedom and
tolerance European governments must address deprivation and
marginalisation within their societies.
This in turn demands
a willingness to admit there will be costs. But then anyone who has
glanced at the history of the 20th century will know that today’s
liberties came at a price. Nor should we imagine that governments
will not have to make ugly compromises — not least in Syria — if
some order is to be restored.
Above all, it is
time for Europeans to celebrate what they have built and recognise it
is under threat. The streets of Paris this week have seen a
heartening resolve not to be cowed by the murderers. If Europe does
not stand up for its values, who else will?
philip.stephens@ft.com
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