Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Protests about the unfortunate and apparently very bad film made in America, but nobody seems to know by whom, which insults Islam, has led to an ever widening area of protest, which now goes beyond Arab counties right across the Islamic world. America is shocked by the death of its Ambassador to Libya. It is deeply hurt by the fact that it is being abused by the very people whose freedom to organise these protests is, in many cases, available only because America and its allies helped overthrow  repressive regimes, which kept order with an iron fist, supported by death squads and torture chambers.

Unfortunately maverick and unwelcome films can be the product of a free and open society and these episodes cannot be prevented with any certainty by any acceptable means in the modern world of total communications. A reclusive nutter now has the power to inflame a whole and distant continent without stepping from his lair. Unfortunately, too, western foreign policy, especially the use of NATO and taking sides in civil conflicts either directly as in Libya or indirectly as in Syria, fails to recognise just how unpredictable the forces at work in these developing societies are and how unwise it is to go beyond the humanitarian dimension of any form of aid.

We now have a post Iraq War (which the barmy neo-cons declared would herald the age of democracy in the Middle East and be a beacon of freedom) situation in which instability flares across the Arab world, through Afghanistan and into Pakistan, all because of a film, however offensive and insulting. If this does not underscore the fragility of the status quo, you are not paying attention. Meanwhile the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians remains unresolved and new tensions with Iran grow daily.

For the Western diplomatic community this is not a good report. At the very least it is time to start finding consensus with Russia and China. Without unity of purpose in the Security Council the chaos will grow. The West must learn that no longer will it be able always to get its own way. It owes far too much money to the rest of the world for that. The US and the UK owe the most of all.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 15th, 2012 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Malcolm Blair Robinson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.