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When Sapper Ian
Collins lay dying in a university hospital in Macedonia in the
small hours of Monday morning, having been hit on the head by
a piece of concrete thrown at him by Macedonian youths, he may
well have asked, "Why did they do this to me?" and "Why was I
sent here in the first place?"
Why indeed? Britain is always in the front line when it comes
to sending Western troops to fight other people's wars. The present
NATO deployment to Macedonia is overwhelmingly composed of British
soldiers, yet they were sent there without a whiff of public debate.
The government made no statement to the House of Commons, still
less did it recall Parliament to seek approval. The prime minister
did not even bother to interrupt his sun-bathing in the South
of France.
Our foreign policy is now rather like our policy on foot and
mouth disease. We respond with massive and indiscriminate force
whenever there is an outbreak of instability. Despatching British
troops is now the routine answer wherever there is trouble –
Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and now Macedonia. Our European partners
are more circumspect. The Germans have been having a proper debate
for months about whether it is right to send German troops to
Macedonia. They probably won't do it.
Tony Blair sends British troops abroad with gay abandon because
of his obsessive desire to be both a "leader" in Europe and a
"bridge" with America. He knows he cannot lead Europe economically
– Britain has not yet committed the requisite economic suicide
by abandoning its national currency – so the only remaining avenue
for his personal ambition is the army. He seems to think it makes
sense to send our boys to disarm rebels in Macedonia in 30 days,
although we have been unable to disarm our own paramilitaries
in Northern Ireland in 30 years.
Like all of the British political class, Mr. Blair also unquestioningly
regards being Number One ally of the United States as an overriding
political priority. Having lost our own Empire, we seem to want
to behave like the crack troops of the American empire instead.
We have therefore now lost the capacity to question whether these
foreign escapades are in our national interest. Political reactions
yesterday to Ian Collins' death confirmed this mental block: from
Kenneth Clarke to Menzies Campbell, opposition leaders simply
said that British troops might now have to stay longer and do
more shooting. It did not occur to anyone that we should never
have gone there in the first place.
Britain is first in line for foreign escapades because we are
a soft touch. We have become so collectively lobotomised in this
country that we now treat the despatch of British troops to foreign
lands as the moral equivalent of sending the St. John's Ambulance
Brigade to a village fete. This is highly dangerous. Sending troops
into other people's countries is the cutting edge of power politics.
It is the stuff of which wars are made. And Tony Blair has just
put British troops into a place where they are very unwelcome
indeed.
The last time I was in Macedonia, in June, the anger felt by
ordinary Macedonians against the West was palpable. A TV journalist
acquaintance of mine was beaten unconscious; I was myself nearly
attacked by a furious drunk. Ordinary Macedonians, like the youths
who threw the brick which killed Sapper Collins, are incensed
at what they see as the West's support for Albanian rebels who
have killed scores of Macedonian soldiers, committed terrible
acts or murder and torture, and driven tens of thousands of civilians
from their homes. Throughout June and July, there were so many
signs that the Americans were secretly helping the Albanian rebels
– just as they did in Kosovo – that it seemed they wanted a
pretext with which to justify a NATO intervention. Macedonian
anger therefore rose to fury during the weekend when NATO announced
it would collect only 3,000 weapons – less than one weapon per
NATO soldier and vastly less than the Albanians' arsenal.
Because none of these official explanations of what is going
on make any sense, Macedonians are convinced that NATO's real
motive is a desire to make Macedonia into a protectorate like
Bosnia and Kosovo. They point out that the Americans are building
an oil pipeline across the Balkan peninsula which will eventually
provide a significant proportion of the West's energy supplies.
This pipeline will have to be protected militarily. But American
public opinion will not permit any American soldiers' lives to
be put at risk, so they get the British to fight their wars for
them.
Unless we in Britain realise that the British army is for defending
this country and not for indulging in imperial escapades – particularly
not in a part of the world, the Balkans, which has been a graveyard
of empires for centuries – then poor young Ian Collins' name
will be only the first on a very long list.
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