AND ANOTHER THING
Who's in charge of the clattering train?
PAUL JOHNSON
Yu would have to go back a long way — to the shameful days of the late 1930s, perhaps — to find a parallel to the present vacuum in world democratic leadership. It is particularly noticeable because we had become accustomed to something better. During the Eighties, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher provided all the free nations with clear and co-ordinated gener- alship. Reagan was sneered at by intellectu- als as a simple-minded California movie actor but the fact is that he had the true gift of popular leadership: strong, clear beliefs on the few issues that really mattered and the ability to communicate them to the masses. And, where he sometimes lacked persistence in the right, Mrs Thatcher, the very embodiment of will-power, was there to stiffen and sustain him. It was one of the great partnerships of history, making possi- ble a decade of unprecedented prosperity and relentless pressure which finally shat- tered the Marxist monolith.
The Nineties are in most ways a less dan- gerous decade for that reason, and it is just as well, for, as the poultry thief said from the depths of the hutch, 'There ain't nobody here but us chickens.' George Bush, strolling nervously around the devas- tation of Los Angeles with one negligent hand in his pocket — then taking it out to sign a few federal cheques to throw at the problem — supplied the perfect image of a non-leader. He has his defenders whose opinions I respect. But on his first test of will-power, the Iraqi war, he failed miser- ably, and allowed his prostrate adversary to escape and remain a pestilential nuisance to his neighbours. Those other troublemak- ing desperadoes, Fidel Castro and Colonel Gaddafi, seem equally safe while Bush is in charge. Whereas Reagan looked every inch the sheriff, Bush, as head of the first sole superpower and the nearest thing we have to a world policeman, has a poor record of arrests. In domestic matters he seems to take the view that America's economy will best right itself if left alone, and that may well be sensible. But he has done nothing to restrain expenditure or tackle the profli- gacy of deficit and mounting debt which makes his country a stricken giant.
It is no use looking to Japan for leader- ship, even though it may well overtake the US in key measurements of economic power during the decade. Anyone who has studied Japanese history — a far from reas- suring experience — knows that its political
culture strongly deprecates personal initia- tives, and reinforces its distaste, if needs be, by assassination. This culture will change but not yet, and for many years to come Japan will have to be coaxed to give its col- lective backing to any wise guidance the West contrives to supply. So that leaves Europe, a depressing substitute. In hand- ling the disintegration of Yugoslavia, its first test as a burgeoning supranational force, it has failed even more comprehen- sively than Bush failed over Iraq. The For- eign Office and Quai d'Orsay first tried to hold together the bloodthirsty conglomer- ate they had created — thus antagonising Germany, which successfully used its mus- cle — and, now that even they are shamed by the savagery of their Serbian protege, have retreated into sullen and baffled inac- tivity. Thousands of innocent lives have been lost, and endless resentments stored up for future mayhem, by the stupidities, cowardice and divisions of the Community bigshots.
Nor is this surprising, if you look at them. Chancellor Kohl, who ought to carry the most weight, is an adroit operator whose vision is strictly confined to German needs, a dwarf Bismarck. His trusted foreign min- ister has deserted him, and he neither chose nor wanted the replacement. Point- less to look for an enlightened lead, or indeed any lead, there. In France, Francois Mitterrand cannot find a prime minister of substance, or a foreign minister who is more than a cypher, and his own leadership — which was, at its best, negative and self- centred — is winding down into eccentric senility. There is nothing, at present, to be expected from Spain, which lost the habit of asserting itself internationally more than three centuries ago; and in Italy the accu- mulated corruptions of the regime have broken the political mechanism which pro- duced its governments, weak though they were. Among the smaller EEC powers there is no sign of the spirit and genius which once produced a Henri Spaak and a Trygve Lie.
The opportunities for Britain, then, are obvious, more particularly since we are the only substantial power with the prospect of stable government for four or five years. But we are unlikely to rise to them. John Major, it is only fair to remember, is very young: at his present age, even Mrs Thatch- er was only a yes-woman in the Heath cabi- net. His views on international matters are forming even more slowly and diffidently than his domestic programme. Too anxious to please, too ready to listen to all and sundry, he recalls Haig's judgment on Lord Derby: 'Like the feather cushion, he bears the impression of the last person to have sat on him.' He tends to leave international business altogether too much to Douglas Hurd, who is no more than a Foreign Office man. The trouble with Hurd is that he is so misleadingly self-assured, so skilled at getting things wrong, so plausible in backing the wrong horse, such an immense- ly competent muddler. An honourable man of course, reminding me of his predecessor, Austen Chamberlain: 'He always played the game, and always lost it.'
Indeed, the only man in Europe who knows exactly what he wants and is deter- mined to get it is Jacques Delors, a relent- less, blinkered, unreconstructed bureau- cratic socialist of the most obdurate and arrogant kind, dedicated to burying the Community alive under a mountain of minute regulations forcing us to do every- thing in exactly the same way, from brush- ing our teeth to making love to our spous- es. Delors being Europe's main problem, it is useful to have a counter-force in the shape of Margaret Thatcher, a strident and now unrestrained Valkyrie who can ride to the rescue of threatened liberties. But none of this has much to do with providing world leadership. When Lord Beaverbrook phoned his newspapers late in the evening he would ask, 'Who's in charge of the clat- tering train?' A good question, then as now. So far as the world is concerned, the train of events clatters on into the night, all signals green. But there is no one aboard except passengers.
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