National Security
What does ‘national security’ mean to you? The same as to Rishi Sunak?
“ No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main”
- John Donne
Military
What do you think of when somebody mentions national security? I suspect most people’s first thought is of the military. And it is true that nuclear bombs make the world less safe. It would not take many nuclear bombs to cover the UK with lethal radiation, for example, so we seem to be stuck with having nuclear bombs and sophisticated defence systems ourselves. And because Russia has nuclear weapons and Ukraine does not (thanks to the Budapest Memorandum of 1994), the US is planning to station nuclear weapons here. The UK’s Fylingdales Early Warning Radar is already part of the United States national missile defense system. Russia is sabre-rattling. So, national security cannot be achieved by closing our borders, and we are not self-sufficient in weapons.
While providing many jobs and huge profits for the Military Industrial Complex, every penny spent on defence is a penny not spent on more positive things. After all, every bomb is either blown up or never used. We don’t convert swords to ploughshares. And since it uses foreign chips, it is not secure.
Nuclear tests have blighted the lives of those who live near test sites and the military sent there.
The Military Industrial Complex is a great source of donations for politicians, and in the U.S, they have taken care to provide jobs in every state so that even honest politicians do not dare to cross them.
We need to be more intelligent about physical national security.
Law and order
If a government goes rogue, it helps the people if they can appeal to an international court.
Winston Churchill helped create the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in the 1950s (before the EU, which it is not a part of). There’s a clear and amusing summary of the benefits of membership here. Some Tory politicians, including Rishi Sunak, want to break the law, so they want out of the ECHR. As Sunak said a few days ago:
“And when it comes to the ECHR I’ve been crystal clear — if a foreign court, including the European court, forces me to choose between our country’s national security and membership of that court, I’m going to choose this country’s national security every single time.”
Similarly, Trump wanted out of the International Court of Justice.
What they mean is, they don’t want anyone telling them that they are in the wrong — it has nothing to do with national security.
Intelligence
We need to know what our enemies and potential enemies are up to, without letting them know our secrets. This is not possible if we elect people who are careless about security or who are not on our side. So, this is an aspect of national security that involves every voter.
In the U.S., the president is not required to pass a security clearance and can override the intelligence services to give clearances to others, as Trump did with Kushner. The family has many ties to Russia. Trump outed not only an Israeli spy, but apparently got hold of a list and compromised several American spies too. Trump had private talks with Putin. He sent Rand Paul to Moscow with documents. He took secret documents away to Mar-a-Largo and left them where foreign agents could access them and copy them.
Republicans and the media they own are promoting Russian talking points and withheld aid from Ukraine, much to the delight of Putin.
Here in the UK, Tories have befriended and taken donations from Russians. Sanctions have been ineffective. Boris Johnson took a secret trip to a party at an Italian villa hosted by a Russian oligarch. Wannabe MP Nigel Farage in the UK has taken Russia’s side.
Climate change
Climate change may not mean the end of the world, but it is an existential threat to our way of life. Extreme weather causes extreme droughts and floods, which cause food shortages, mass deaths, mass migration, wars and disruption to economies. Yet many governments are so myopic they do nothing but stick plasters (band aids) on the problems. Again, we voters need to elect people who get it.
Economy
There will always be trade. It brings us things we cannot produce ourselves. But economies need to be stable, as even Rishi Sunak agrees, though he has a funny way of going about it.
Fossil fuels are sold on the international market and prices are therefore subject to manipulation by the OPEC cartel, yet he wants us to produce more of it rather than renewables. Rather than support our farmers to produce more, conservatives have been busy signing trade deals which are detrimental to our farmers.
Our economy depends on the city, but investors are fickle and other countries want a piece of the pie. Rishi Sunak’s ‘class’ may be able to profit from market movements, but it is folly for the country to be so dependent on the City. It should be the jam, not the bread and butter.
Sourcing so much of our food and other goods from abroad leaves at the mercy of greedy multinational corporations and disruption to supplies.
Encouraging inward investment may bring money into the country in the short term, but in the long run, the profits go abroad and our own entrepreneurs struggle to compete against international giants. It is the way to become a third world country, with others exploiting us.
If Brexit had meant more support and protection for our own, as America did in the early years and China has more recently, bringing both growth and prosperity, I might have been for it. But the conservatives believe in a global economy where it is big global giants who profit and national values go out the window.
Decentralisation
Politicians love big projects that they can put their name to, or which they can profit from. But that leaves us vulnerable. For example, Russia targeted the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine (as well as other power plants), decimating Ukraine’s power grid as well as risking nuclear fallout and using threats to it as a bargaining chip. COVID taught us that allowing so much manufacturing to be concentrated in China, particularly in Wuhan, can lead to shortages. Allowing so much of the world’s grain to be grown in Ukraine, which admittedly is a good place to grow it, led to shortages and price spikes when Russia invaded.
So, while at first glance it may be more efficient (lowering costs for manufacturers and producers even if they are not fully passed on to customers), in practice centralization leaves us vulnerable (which causes spikes in costs) and insecure. If we had more local renewables, there would be less suffering — people who could not survive without power could seek help from those nearby who had it (e.g. for insulin storage) which would not be possible if we relied on large power plants and they were attacked.
National values
It used to be possible for people to be proud to produce British goods or American goods. These days with so much globalisation, far fewer people can feel that. More of our politicians listen to foreigners — whether Russia, or the Saudi oil billionaires, or other billionaires around the world — not to the people. Rishi Sunak in particular has the values of a hedge fund manager, not those of the people whom his gaffes show he does not understand at all. Same with Donald Trump, though by stealing Bernie Sanders’ talking points he was able to mimic a man of the people quite well during his 2016 campaign.
Even iconic brands are now foreign-owned, for example Cadbury’s chocolate. Massive international chains have replaced local businesses.
It is difficult to feel secure when the sense of nationality is being frittered away. Perhaps that is why so many politicians seem devoid of any real connection to their country and people.
As the sense of Britishness or Americanness is watered down by globalisation of trade and ideologies, it is a lot harder to feel secure in one’s own nationhood.
Immigration
Consider as an analogy the human body. It is made of many cells, with varying sizes and purposes. Each cell has a membrane. That membrane allows in things that the cell needs, like sources of energy, and lets out things it does not need or which are toxic. They do not attempt to block everything from coming in, the way some countries try to close their borders. They are often flexible enough to accommodate variation in the number and types of things that seek entry. They have had millennia to perfect this. We need to develop more intelligent borders. By blocking movement from Europe, the conservatives deprived the NHS of much-needed staff and agriculture of much-needed seasonal workers.
The human body has mechanisms to eject the unwanted rapidly. Our legal systems cannot cope and we have asylum-seekers hanging around for years, where they can fester and turn against us.
Terrorism does not necessarily come from immigrants. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes. The 9/11 terrorists came in legally. Terrorists can be home grown, and influencers foreign and domestic can stir up nationals to commit acts of stochastic terrorism. Racist rhetoric by the likes of Trump and Braverman have emboldened racist thugs to commit acts of violence. Any politician or pundit embracing divide and conquer tactics is a threat to national security.
Disease
People, livestock and plants travel all over the world these days, increasing the risk of spreading disease.
There’s not much to be done about diseases spread by nature, like bird flu, apart from working against climate change. Climate change is, for example, currently threatening to allow insects such as malaria-carrying mosquitoes to survive year round in Britain. In the Americas, diseases and disease-carrying insects are spreading north.
But there is far more commerce of animals and plants than is necessary. Reducing that would reduce the risks, and that means more home production. Even trade of non-live things is a risk, if it is packaged in such a way that disease can travel with it, or travels by ships which discharge water into foreign seas.
Much travel for business could and should now be replaced by video conferencing, and more holidays could be taken at home now that the climate is warmer. There is so much of interest to be seen in our home countries.
Foot-and-mouth disease (hoof-and-mouth disease) and mad cow disease would have been less of a problem if the entire lifecycle of the animals had been kept local.
As COVID showed, pandemics can threaten every aspect of society.
We need politicians who understand what national security is
So, governments should not be thinking that they have got national security sorted if they order some more jets, submarines or missiles or bombs, or if they withdraw from international treaties. They need to work to reduce our vulnerability to the global economy, diseases, climate change and other international threats.
We need to vote in politicians who are competent and have a broad understanding of national security.