Enablers
Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2026 12:16 pm
Recent political events tend to confirm rather than alter my position as far as patriotism and electorates are concerned.
The United States and the United Kingdom have, since 1945, inflicted more harm on the societies of the Muslim world than any other external actor. Not exclusively - others have contributed to a trivial extent - but disproportionately, through scale of military and covert intelligence capability and the frequency of its exercise. Iran in 1953, Suez in 1956, decades of client-state management across the Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan. The record is not in serious dispute.
What I have always argued is that responsibility for this record lies not with rogue governments or unaccountable intelligence agencies, but with the electorates that sustained them. These are allegedly democracies, after all. Governments were elected and re-elected, and rarely punished for what they did abroad. When they were punished - as Blair was eventually punished in reputation if not at the ballot box - it was much too late and far too little.
The mechanism is not indifference. French electorates, by contrast, were indifferent to what their governments did in Africa. American and British electorates were not indifferent. American and British electorates cheered. American and British electorates waved flags. American and British electorates tied yellow ribbons and stuck poppies on their lapels and thanked people for their service. The patriotic culture of both nations did not merely permit foreign intervention - it celebrated it, legitimised it, made opposition to it politically costly. To oppose the Iraq war in 2003 was to be unpatriotic. A million opponents marched in London; the electorate returned Blair two years later.
This is what I accused then and accuse now. Not Americans. Not the British. The electorates - the collective democratic act of endorsing, rewarding, and never meaningfully restraining governments that were killing people abroad without accountability, from a position of overwhelming military supremacy.
My position throughout was that the US and UK should not merely lose in Iraq and Afghanistan but be seen to lose, visibly and unmistakably, to deter future adventures. Both were finally seen to lose. No government in either country has since dared put troops on foreign soil.
The deterrence worked at least on the politicians but it did not work on the electorates. The same patriotic reflex that cheered troops onto transport aircraft is now cheering tariffs, cheering migrant hostility, cheering strongman posturing under Trump, and will shortly cheer the dismantling of British institutional life under Reform. The target changes, the reflex does not. These electorates never developed the civic capacity to scrutinise what they endorse, because for decades the consequences fell on other people in other countries. Now the consequences are falling at home. These same electorates are equally incapable of evaluating what they are cheering for.
This is scarcely a satisfying state of affairs but I don't find it surprising.
The United States and the United Kingdom have, since 1945, inflicted more harm on the societies of the Muslim world than any other external actor. Not exclusively - others have contributed to a trivial extent - but disproportionately, through scale of military and covert intelligence capability and the frequency of its exercise. Iran in 1953, Suez in 1956, decades of client-state management across the Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan. The record is not in serious dispute.
What I have always argued is that responsibility for this record lies not with rogue governments or unaccountable intelligence agencies, but with the electorates that sustained them. These are allegedly democracies, after all. Governments were elected and re-elected, and rarely punished for what they did abroad. When they were punished - as Blair was eventually punished in reputation if not at the ballot box - it was much too late and far too little.
The mechanism is not indifference. French electorates, by contrast, were indifferent to what their governments did in Africa. American and British electorates were not indifferent. American and British electorates cheered. American and British electorates waved flags. American and British electorates tied yellow ribbons and stuck poppies on their lapels and thanked people for their service. The patriotic culture of both nations did not merely permit foreign intervention - it celebrated it, legitimised it, made opposition to it politically costly. To oppose the Iraq war in 2003 was to be unpatriotic. A million opponents marched in London; the electorate returned Blair two years later.
This is what I accused then and accuse now. Not Americans. Not the British. The electorates - the collective democratic act of endorsing, rewarding, and never meaningfully restraining governments that were killing people abroad without accountability, from a position of overwhelming military supremacy.
My position throughout was that the US and UK should not merely lose in Iraq and Afghanistan but be seen to lose, visibly and unmistakably, to deter future adventures. Both were finally seen to lose. No government in either country has since dared put troops on foreign soil.
The deterrence worked at least on the politicians but it did not work on the electorates. The same patriotic reflex that cheered troops onto transport aircraft is now cheering tariffs, cheering migrant hostility, cheering strongman posturing under Trump, and will shortly cheer the dismantling of British institutional life under Reform. The target changes, the reflex does not. These electorates never developed the civic capacity to scrutinise what they endorse, because for decades the consequences fell on other people in other countries. Now the consequences are falling at home. These same electorates are equally incapable of evaluating what they are cheering for.
This is scarcely a satisfying state of affairs but I don't find it surprising.