Political commentary

Eighteen years on

Charles Moore

Aked about the American invasion, the Foreign Secretary said, 'I think it has long been recognised that where swift action is necessary to save lives, a nation is entitled to take it.' As to the continued build-up of American forces on the island,

he would only say, I have not expressed a judgment'. But, in a statement to the House, he did appear to support American claims that Cuba was involved, ... leader- ship was provided at least in part by persons who had received high-grade instructions in the technique of armed revolt.' He also ad- mitted that the invasion took place without consultation with Britain, 'As I recollect, we were informed almost simultaneously of the action being taken.'

The American President appeared on television and said that the invasion had been necessary to protect lives, but he went on to enunciate a doctrine which explained the action more fully. 'The American na- tions cannot, must not, and will not permit the establishment of another Communist government in the Western Hemisphere'.

The Washington correspondent of the Times attacked the President. 'Alliance and special relationship are becoming obsoles- cent words, without much practical mean- ing,' he wrote, and 'The concepts of super- power, devised by an array of thinkers and tested on computers, have revolutionised

alliance diplomacy If an ally does not share in the burden of carrying the doc- trine round the world it has no right to be consulted or informed.'

All this was said in May 1965. The speakers were Mr Michael Stewart, Presi- dent Johnson and Mr Louis Heren, and the occasion was the American invasion of the Dominican Republic.

The parallels between the Dominican Republic and Grenada are not exact. The former was much harder for America to justify. US troops were not invited in, and when they came, they were accused by Pro- fessor Bosch, the social democratic former president whose supporters were fighting right wingers, of 'smashing a democratic revolution'. But the differences only make the comparison more interesting. How was it that a Labour government, including Mr Denis Healey, now the new-found scourge of American aggression, as Defence Secretary, found it pretty easy to avoid criticising America and to avoid being criticised for not doing so? Why is it that President Reagan is now so widely describ- ed as an aggressive maniac without peer in American history for attempting a much more moderate version of what several of his predecessors have got up to? How can it be, if Louis Heren was right, that both the

Western alliance and the 'special relation- ship' are still going 18 years after they were pronounced dead?

Part of the reason for Britain's strange position this time must just be extreme muddle. Even worse than the incredible ig- norance of the Foreign Office was the fact that Grenada is part of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is a disabling political concept because, although it means next to nothing, it tends to invoke sacred allegiances. It particularly disables Tories because it involves the Queen. You have only to draw the Queen into controversy for millions of flaming swords to be drawn on her behalf and waved indiscriminately by Conservatives whose loyalty is stronger than their grasp of constitutions. Grenada's membership of the Commonwealth does not demand anything of Britain, but it rather feels as if it does. The Queen is said to be in 'anguish', and Tory politicians are expected somehow to assuage it.

In the absence of proper information, then, and flustered by Mr Healey bellowing about 'duty to the Palace', the Government had to develop a policy. It had to do so without much assistance from Tory MPs. Their line, after Sir Geoffrey had floundered in the chamber, was that it did not matter whether Britain supported or opposed America, so long as she did one or the other with appropriate emphasis. So Mrs Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey had to make it up themselves, with the simple stipulation that they made it up fast.

One would like to think that Mrs That- cher arrived at her final position by the measured consideration of the need not to get sucked into American problems, balanced by the need not to annoy an ally too much at a difficult time. But it rather looks as though she followed her more customary method of moralising and per- sonalising the whole affair. By going on the World Service, she presented herself as a spokesman of political morality to the English-speaking world. 'I never set foot in anyone else's sovereign country,' she said, rather as if she were saying, 'I never drink alcohol'. During the Falklands, she entren- ched herself as the person who believed that people should never attack other people's countries, victim of her urge to make a universal principle out of every political action. Now that just such an attack has been welcomed by Grenadians, has suc- ceeded in beating Communists and even ap- pears to have been asked for by the governor-general, Mrs Thatcher is left looking prissy. If she had snatched the chance to ask for dual key on Cruise missiles, her position would have given practical advantage. As it is, it appears doctrinaire.

On all occasions like the invasion of Grenada, people invoke principles with greater abandon than they do in domestic politics but also with greater confusion. However general the proposition — that, for instance, one should not invade a sovereign state — there is a sort of tacit acknowledgment that what you really feel about it depends on your political hopes and sympathies more than your general beliefs. Some would say that is just because people have low motives; but might it not really be because most of the principles of international conduct in which the 20th century specialises are flawed? A cen- tral tenet of these principles is that all events like the invasion of Grenada are very im- portant, President Reagan thinks that they are important in the great battle for freedom and against Communism. The United Nations men (n.b. the main op- ponents of the Labour Government over the Dominican Republic were Philip Noel- Baker, Michael Foot and Lord Brockway) imagine that the peace of the world and the brotherhood of man are urgently threaten- ed. But what about the idea that Grenada just does not matter much?

It is not true that in foreign affairs everything relates to everything else. Mrs Thatcher was wrong to say that the Falklands would show that aggression would not pay in the world, and her American critics were wrong to think that the Falklands conflict would be bound to produce a confrontation of the super- powers. Mr Enoch Powell is wrong to say that American readiness to ignore Britain over Grenada means that she will be equally contemptuous over Cruise. It is obvious that the way the United States treats its im- mediate neighbours is different from the way that it treats its European allies.

The point of international law, and of bodies like the United Nations is that they are supposed to restrain the worse urges of nations by compelling agreement to com- mon principles and bringing international disaproval to bear. But what they actually produce is a permanently neurotic interna- tional condition in which the slightest local movement is taken to be part of a grand design, and a political language so full of cant that genuine moral principles become almost impossible to express. Suppose, for instance, that there was no Security Council in which the powers had to produce some sort of opinion on matters which do not concern them, suppose there was no Reagan/Thatcher rhetoric about the battle between light and dark, and no Leftist counter-rhetoric about imperialism, is it likely that the invasion of Grenada would present itself to the Bundestag or the House of Commons as something that should af- fect missile deployment? Politicians need to be able to work out quickly what is relevant to what. The Labour Government in 1965 was better at doing this than is the Govern- ment of the Thatcher landslide.