Regrettably war is a fact of life and will always be with us

LISTENING to many “experts” on foreign affairs and international relations in recent months, you may be forgiven for thinking that the world is witnessing events without any parallel in recent ­history.

Barack Obama’s national address yesterday, although chiefly concerned with Islamic State act­ivities in Iraq, was in many ways provoked by criticisms at home and abroad of current US foreign policies. One criticism has focused on failure to take stronger measures to stem the loss of life and flood of refugees arising out of the conflict in Syria. There are, however, two points to note in relation to events in Syria.

The first is that the Assad regime is facing an insurrection that, if successful, will result in the deaths of all members of the regime and probably also many members of the Alawite group across the country. In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that the regime is fighting to the bitter end.

The second point to note is that, although the conflict has been brutal on both sides, the spectacle of a government killing large numbers of its own people is far from unusual in modern times. Without canvassing the merits of the disputes, recent examples include the suppression of the Tamil insurgency by the Sri Lankan government, the conduct through many years of the regime in Myanmar and numerous cases in African states.

Almost everyone deplores the loss of life in these instances, but the question of when intervention by other countries would be justified is a difficult one and, as it happens, intervention did not occur in any of these conflicts.

The other major source of criticism for the Obama administration has been the conflict in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin is a singularly unattractive character but his lack of charm should not lead observers to ignore the political realities of this situation.

Because of its location, Ukraine falls naturally within the Russian sphere of influence and was formerly part of the Soviet Union and the old Russian Empire. There is traditional and significant division between its western and eastern segments with the latter having strong links with Russia.

In these circumstances the overthrow of an elected pro-Russian government and the adoption by its successor of policies hostile to Russia was bound to result in some form of conflict. Nor has the Western desire of one day of incorporating Ukraine into NATO helped.

The West does not have to approve of Russian conduct in relation to Ukraine but it does need to recognise that in the long run it cannot prevent that country being part of the Russian sphere of influence. The use of economic sanctions to try to force Russia to temper its policies in this region may have some effect, although historically such measures have seldom worked, particularly in the case of great powers that are able to absorb considerable financial hardship without facing internal collapse.

In any event, there is something artificial about a discussion of sanctions in circumstances where Russia supplies one third of the natural gas used by the EU. This fact is scarcely mentioned because the EU cannot do without the gas and Russia cannot do without the revenue that results from its supply.

The lack of realism reflected in calls for action on the part of the West in relation to Syria and Ukraine is in part a product of the rise of a class of international bur­eaucrats and human rights lawyers who consider themselves cit­izens of the world. They often hold passports from one or more countries but owe their allegiance to none, seeing themselves as agents of a global community that is entitled to intervene in the affairs of nation-states whenever the governments of those states engage in policies with which they disagree.

Most of Obama’s closest advisers on foreign affairs belong to this group, although so far he has shown considerable caution in resisting demands for US intervention in a range of foreign conflicts. Some of these demands have also come from several Republican senators and congressmen in Washington, placing them in an apparently unlikely alliance with the citizens of the world.

What both groups have in common is a belief in the moral superiority of the West and its ability to shape history in a way it has never been shaped before (the “global community” that citizens of the world like to invoke really consists only of the US and the EU).

“History is over” is the implicit slogan of both the hawks and the citizens of the world; the struggle between great powers and rival conceptions of the good life supposedly has given way to a new and permanent liberal world order in which force, for the hawks, and law, for the citizens of the world, will prevent any regression. But the world is what it is, and history isn’t coming to an end any time soon.

Michael Sexton SC is the author of several books on history and politics.