No one seems to know whether it was Lord Milne or Jan Smuts who first said that war consists of ‘short periods of intense fear and long periods of intense boredom’.
At the moment, we seem to be in a period of waiting. We are waiting for the centenary in 2014 of the start of the First World War – the first part of the so-called ‘European Civil War’ that laid the ground for the Second World War and the devastation in Europe that led to the founding of the European Union.
Lenin once wrote: ‘Wars between capitalist states are usually the result of their competition on the world market, since each state strives not only to assure itself of a sphere of export, but also to conquer new regions, and the principal part in this is played by the enslavement of other peoples and countries. These wars then arise from the continuous armaments produced by militarism, which is the principal implement of class domination of the bourgeoisie and of the political subjugation of the working class.’
Although France and the UK continue to be relatively bellicose compared to other EU member states, the Union in the common cause may to date have played a part in avoiding another European civil war.
At the time of writing, we await the results of the European Parliament (EP) elections held in May, and thereafter the jockeying for position between the various party political groupings, and the negotiations as to who will be one of the 28 EU Commissioners, who President of the Council of Ministers, who President of the EP, who President of the European Commission and who the Foreign Affairs Chief.
As Winston Churchill said: ‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time'
In the meantime, we have also had the Crimean plebiscite; Nikita Khrushchev had transferred Crimea to the Ukraine in 1954 to mark the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav of 18 February 1654, which still bitterly divides Ukrainian nationalists and pro-Russians to this day. The results of the Ukraine elections in May will be known by the time you receive this issue of the STEP Journal, and we can only wait to see how the power play between east and west will resolve. Will democracy provide sufficient leadership in the EU to enable it to find an accommodation with the Commonwealth of Independent States?
In April, we had the Afghan elections and the Indian elections. We also have the Swedish general election and the Scottish independence plebiscite in September 2014, a little after the 700th anniversary of the defeat of the English at Bannockburn in 1314. We are waiting to see how Sweden and Scotland will vote.
In May 2015, the UK as a whole will have a general election. How the Scottish plebiscite will affect that election and any subsequent UK plebiscite on UK membership of the EU is uncertain. Those in favour of Scottish independence assure everyone they will be able to negotiate terms of independence from the UK and terms of entry back into the EU within 18 months. That seems rather ambitious, but important, because there are to be Scottish parliamentary elections in May 2016. The example of the Faroe Islands haunts Edinburgh. The Faroes voted for independence from Denmark in 1946 but, before the vote could be implemented, the government lost the next general election, and the islands remained linked to Denmark.
One of the main planks in the argument for Scottish independence relates to things happening for which the Scottish people did not vote. The same argument is used by London in relation to Brussels.
Edinburgh does not flag up the extraordinary extent of the influence that Scotland currently has in the UK, just as London does not flag up the extraordinary extent of the influence that the UK has had in the EU. Edinburgh fears the enslavement of people by London. London fears the enslavement of people by Brussels.
Power and peace in the common cause is not mentioned. Democracy is everywhere, but how democratic? This year has been a good year for psephologists. As Winston Churchill said: ‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’
Perhaps extended periods of intense boredom are no bad thing. Let us hope they long continue and we avoid the other intense experience.