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by Alan Pleydell, Quaker Peace and Social Witness (QPSW) Programme Manager for the Post-Yugoslav Countries
The topic is a perennial one, sparked in my mind on this occasion by the appalling atrocity in Beslan, N. Ossetia, last September. Not only the atrocity itself, but the bungling self-rightousness and disinformation of the Putin government in handling it – or rather failing even to attempt to handle it – through negotiation, and the resultant staggering loss of life to the local community and beyond. Yet criticism from western countries has been extraordinarily muted, both at the time and later. Despite its scale, it seems already forgotten. Some of the real human cost of the blanket subordination of basic decencies to the claimed necessities of state security, and the apparently casual acceptance of this by Western governments, is revealed in Anna Politkovskaya’s books – A Dirty War (Harvill 2001), A Small Corner of Hell (Chicago, 2004) and Putin’s Russia (Harvill, 2004), as well as her Guardian article ‘Poisoned by Putin’ of 9 September 2004.
The Beslan incident recalls the sorry history of the British Government’s more general attempts to influence the notoriously brutal and indiscriminate attitude of the Putin government in dealing with what it blandly represents simply as terrorism in the North Caucasus and further afield in Russia – as if there were no intelligible political history or contextual background to the situation. The Putin government has insisted on handling things in its own way, unchecked either by scrutiny or moralistic interference by outsiders, not only from 1994-6, when much information did indeed get out, but again from 1999 to the present, this time with an almost 100% successful news blackout. All the major powers that have signed up to the ‘war on terror’ have now satisfied themselves that if there is going to be journalism at all, it had better be ‘embedded’.
Since 9/11, the ‘Global War on Terror’ has provided a perfect cover for the hands-off policy asserted by the Russians and accepted without much protest, as far as we know, by Britain, whilst mindless repression, and ever more outraged and outrageous reaction, continue unchecked. In an early press conference, Tony Blair tried to score a point off Putin over his human rights record and was roundly resisted and lectured back for his pains. (He had a similar experience in Syria with Bashir Assad over Israel/Palestine). There is not much sign that he has tried particularly robustly since. And, given the sobering history of the last two years in Iraq, and all too justly invoked points about glasshouses and stones, it is unlikely to happen again.
A penchant for quiet diplomacy ...
None of this is new. The traditional view behind all of it is the long-asserted belief of successive British Governments (and many others) that it is best to seek change in the behaviour of other governments by quiet and diplomatic ‘good offices’ behind the scenes, and that the more you ruffle feathers, particularly publicly, the less likely anyone is to entertain your concerns or respond favourably. In international relations, it is often said – quite rightly as a broad truth – that we have to deal with all sorts of unsavoury characters and regimes (not that some of the actions and policies of our own governments are beyond reproach) but that channels must be kept open if there is to be any chance of continued movement or change for the better. Then again, it is held, there may be greater issues at stake and one set of imperatives may in the real world have to be subordinated to another. The crucial thing is to keep the talk going, in the hope of an eventual concession to reasoned persuasion.
Now to typically ‘peace loving’ people with an attachment to reasonableness, this view has a certain appeal; and for all we know it may in many cases represent what those who propound it really think and feel. It sounds very reasonable – ‘softly softly catchee mousee’. But it does rather depend on the genuineness, as well as the at least occasional effectiveness, of the behind-the-scenes approach. And because cast-iron assurances of secrecy may be the price to be paid for securing the safe atmosphere and trust required for negotiations to have a chance of success, the results of the behind-the-scenes approach may be kept under wraps more or less indefinitely. Because of this we, the public, are most of the time unlikely to know what successes this approach has produced in the past.
Yet on the other side of the argument there is at least this to be said: that generations after the issues in question have lost their urgency and when the principals are all dead (for instance with the lapse of 30-year rules), we hear a lot about scandalous private lives and ‘dirty’ political deals – far less about how significant changes of heart were brought about in serial human rights abusers by means of quiet diplomacy. In addition, there is the notorious example of the decades of collusion of successive British governments with Apartheid, excused by constant and frequently hypocritical reference to the better prospects of the ‘softly softly’ approach. The ANC government has always been clear that it was public pressure which made the difference.
To be sure, there may well be instances of success achieved though the genuine pursuit of the quiet approach. Indeed, in the field of unofficial mediation there are known examples of restraint being secured by behind-the-scenes diplomacy and the appeal both to reason and humanity, notably in the ending of the Nigerian Civil War. But these are cases where the broker of the diplomacy was not in any sense engaged in threat, counter-threat or bluffing, and was a genuinely disinterested party.
... or a preference for inaction
The penchant for quiet diplomacy may be genuine and sincere – or on the other hand it may itself be a cover for what is really a preference for inaction. It may also be intended to dampen down public unease or outrage, invoking not only reasonableness and playing the ‘trust me, there is a more subtle game afoot of which you know little’ card, but also relying on the short attention span of the public with regard to most long-running international issues, and not seriously expecting to be called on to deliver improvement at the end of the day. Or, again, it may simply arise out of a self-deceptive and wholly unrealistic sense of one’s own powers of persuasion (c.f. John Kampfner in Blair’s Wars). Whatever the truth in a particular case, both public pressure and advocacy and determined, quiet diplomacy may be called for, together with an open acknowledgement of one’s own side’s manifest imperfections.
In Putin’s War Anna Politkovskaya cites what may be a counter to this scepticism in the case of Gerhard Schroeder’s very helpful intervention on Russian policy in Chechnya. But looking at the general history of British policy, there is at least room to doubt if our governments really do speak and act out of a profound sense of common humanity and their own fallibility. It is one thing to be moralistic, which can so easily result in an overplayed hand and exposure for hypocrisy; quite another to make the longer and harder attempt to remain consistently moral.
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