Books

HALT! Who Goes Where?
The Future of NATO in the New Europe -1991

As always there is more history in the making than lies behind us, and reports of the 'death of history', circulating in the United States soon after the recent reversals of communism, have been greatly exaggerated. Judged by the pace of current events, history is still a sprightly young athlete. The trouble today, as the psychologist RD Laing has put it, is that change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is disappearing.

In 1917 the Romanov throne crumbled under the deprivations of the First World War. For eight months, the Moscow spring took over from centuries of Tsarist repression and disdain for the humanity of its subjects.

Seventy years later, the Leninist commissars who usurped that revolution also had to give way in the face of economic blight. A society bled white by the senseless ambition to become a military superpower had once more turned upon itself. Decades of repression and denial of democracy in that vast empire east of the 'Iron Curtain' had finally led to popular uprisings, the overthrow of Leninist doctrine, the discarding of Marxist orthodoxies, and tl1e instituting of democratic - if not yet pluralist - elections.

Without firing a single shot, the steadfastness of the NATO alliance had achieved its major aim. For the men in the Kremlin, its demonstrable unity and cohesion had made it a determined adversary. The sacrifices of the sixteen NATO members and their peoples in maintaining the ultimate in preparedness had also ensured that the race for supremacy became intolerably expensive. For a rare moment in history, possession of a full armoury and a readied war machi.ne had not led inexorably to war.

Today we have a chance to build a settlement with honour on all sides, and without the vengeance that marked Versailles. In our time there is no victor, no vanguishcd, and no diktat for one to imfYOse upon the other. Despite the understandable elation of those who held the li.ne and stiffened our resolve to resort to arms if the need arose, we have not won the cold war. Victory, if there was one, belongs to the peoples of Eastern Europe who took to the streets and defied their oppressors. It belongs to their sacrifices at least as much as ours, for theirs were by far the greater. When wn:; there ever an age when the walls of the prison crumbled from within, when the prisoners could walk freely from darkness to liberty, from poverty to the chance eventually to participate in the abundance of the western table?

Half a century later, no longer with the hot pride of victory, we can consider a wise and lasting peace. We have had time to reach political maturity, to abandon notions of supremncy because we now know its price, and to develop new institutions appropriate to our concerns. Without passion, we can look at past errors and incompetence and avoid the fatnl flaws which enmity and prejudice caused us to build into our endeavours.

Politics, moreover, is short-term. Irritation with the cheguered response within the EC and Japan to the needs of the Gulf campaign could inflict long-term damage on the alliance. Worse, hasty tinkering with the military limitations imposed by the post-war constitutions of Germany and Japan could rock the pillars on which the world's peace has rested. Here, too, the politicians will need to weigh temporary expediency and short-term goals against long-term good.

As with man, so with his works and institutions. They are like some great orchestra which at times seems driven not by the conductor but by some unseen hand of fury. At other times the score on the rostrum is blank and uncharted, or it shows no key. Most of the time, different sections play in counterpoint rather than unison. There are long discordant passages when one yearns for the harmonies to reassert themselves. One after another, different desks project their voices, some querulously, some plaintively, others inevitably with great clashes of percussion. And then suddenly, everything is brought together in a great healing resolution.

We have the grace to have arrived at one such majestic passage today. It would be good to think that we might have a hand in completing the score, to engage all the genius of the old and the new world, and for a while to make the harmonies endure.

Asymmetries of Conflict

Too Many Lives of John Leech v.R. - 2017

The train of history rolls unceasingly, as images of beauty and desolation flash past its windows. Like the temptations of Christ, it lays out for me the immeasurable riches of the earth, and the almost unreachable heights of the human spirit attained by the chosen few - those selected to be purged and driven to divine desperation. Theirs - the Rembrandts and the Botticellis, the Michelangelos and the Kollwitzs, the Bachs and the Mozarts, the Shakepeares and the Goethes - theirs is a lonely calling, the happiness imputed to their creations denied to them, the heroism shared devoid of recognition. 'Genius is sorrow's child,' said John Adams. Yet it is their art, and the acute consciousness from which it is born, which incites the human herd to make its rise above the beast.

Torn apart by the richness of these my lives, these homes, these journeyings, these claims of past and future choices still to be made, I finally begin to understand the secret that these artists have striven to reveal: the grain of sand under one's feet contains as much truth, fascination and mystery as all the treasure the world can muster.

As I write these lines in the year AD 2017, I have just received my annual AA membership card and on it I see 'Member since 1949'. It brings back the joy of motoring in those days and the decades between; of cheap fifth-hand pre­ war wrech.s, bought for what seemed a fortune, and breaking down at least once on a journey of any length; of hired Morris Minors that fared no better; of eventually discovering the heady joy of driving an unbelievably sleek Jaguar; and then of reaching the supreme status of owning a series of second-hand Mercedes Diesels for our later Continental treks. But I am getting ahead of myself. Perhaps the most profound experience of those days was being driven by Ravelli in his age-old Lancia (what else?) from South Wales to London. Shades of Ven ti Miglia, all seemed well until the perilous descents on the Welsh borders, hairpin bends and precipitous falls, all driven with total abandon, Sopasso style, by a buccaneering Italian maestro. With my heart in my mouth, it prompted me in desperation to paraphrase Tennyson, 'Ours not to Ross-on-Wye, ours but to pray and die!"'

I live - and smart - with daily reminders of the millions upon millions of populations uprooted today, seeking refuge as once I was myself, but with so few to welcome them, and so many ready to add to the trials of their transit.

... when we fly together, Noretta is caJmed at least by the thought that we would enter the next world together. Not leaving loved ones behind, moreover, is a trait of her family. In the middle of an earthquake with an epicentre barely 125 miles from Trento, a power failure and crumbling masonry, her father gathered the family around his bed and confirmed 'How good that we shall all go together - but what a pity John isn't here!'

The only flight that Noretta ever truly enjoyed was the last leg of a series of visits to the new countries I was reconnoitring after 1969. The itinerary turned out to be least costly as a round-the-world tour: Sri Lanka, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines, a brief stopover in San Francisco, then Washington DC for talks with the World Bank and IFC. Remarkably enough, with very little added from my own pocket, we were able to make the final flight to London on Concorde. That journey has remained unsurpassed in my millions of miles in the air, from Imperial Airways and BOAC before, to BA and a hundred different airlines since. First, the somewhat ordinary terrestrial lift, like a thoroughbred shaking its wattles, then the crossing of the Maryland coast - and then full throttle and up with its sharp nose, pushing us back firmly into our seats to watch the mach-meter climbing to 1 and tl1en way towards 2. It was afternoon when we left, but before long, as we reached cruising altitude, one could clearly see the curvature of the earth and, in the domed sky above, a distinct line dividing day from approaching night. All too soon it was time to prepare for an unremarkable landing, having stored unforgettable memories - and no end of cossetting by way of celebration. Three and a quarter hours from take-off.

For me, flying is an experience to be savoured. Unashamedly, I enjoy being aloft, looking down on a world whose cares have suddenly been left below, diminished by altitude and distance from the point of departure. I enjoy this interval between two seemingly separate sections of one's life, the being and the becoming, for once clearly defined, at least by the destination written on one's boarding pass. If outcomes remain uncertain, the point at which normal existence resumes is fixed but still agreeably distant.

I am moved by the contrast between the temporary luxury in my space station orbiting at 600+mph and the placid progress of caravans of primitive nomads scoring the desert sands below...

Almost symbolically, my first flight had taken place in April 1939, from Berlin to Croydon, London's one-time international airport. It was a flight in two senses: not until the 12-seater Dornier had refuelled at Hamburg and we were well out over the North Sea did we begin to feel safe. It was also to remain the most expensive flight of my life: not only the cost of the tickets, but the passports, the exit permits and the mi.nin1al foreign currency allowance had to be bought for a King's ransom. Yet one never knew if, in the end, the official stamp - the eagle and the swastilrn - would be honoured. Perhaps that experience has left me with a lifelong optimism about arriving at my destination. For me, enjoyment of travel still includes the conviction that it is equally good to arrive.

The Gift of Music

Europe and You - Aid and the Community

Whole and Free - 2002

These papers were substantially written before the events of 11 September 2001. Far from being invalidated, they have been given a sombre but sharper focus. There may also be effects on the pace and remit of [EU] enlargement. But supremely the terrorist attacks and their consequences have provided a jolting reminder that the transatlantic relationship exists not at will but is an inescapable fundament of our society. On the European side, the events have reawakened a sense of kinship long overlaid by the concerns of affluence and relativities of power. But America, too, has woken to the imperative of seeking dependable allies, even though it is militarily fully capable of proceeding on its own. Suddenly, the true cement of the transatlantic community has been laid bare, and with it the realisation that for Europe the US is not the partner of choice but of an inextricable destiny. Like most other matters, EU enlargement has to be seen and pursued in that light.