When to stand up in an increasingly insecure world

When war is ‘othering’ by other means, the brutal realities of our world can be overwhelming. Ziya Meral contemplates what it means to take a stand.

Ziya Meral

Dr Ziya Meral is a researcher, advisor and programmes director specialising on global trends shaping defence and security, politics and foreign policies. He is a Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute.

Recently, I found myself sitting quietly at a cathedral buzzing with tourists, reflecting on demanding global developments and uttering a few words of prayers, not for world peace, but for guidance on how I should live my own life amidst all these.

Today’s world is a brutal reminder of timeless truths about the human condition, about continuum of violence and aggression in human affairs, about exclusion and marginalisation of the ‘other’ amidst economic downturns, about how fragile peace and prosperity are, and how the future might not always be better than the past.

There is a bitter realisation that there is no clear end ahead of us in the near future to this war of choice by Russia.

As I write these lines, Russian forces continue their brutal invasion of Ukraine, killing tens of thousands, forcing millions out of their homes, destroying town after town, and intentionally pursuing a scourge earth policy to destroy the habitability of towns and cities and sustainability of life. Ukrainians continue to bravely advance their counter offensive to push Russian forces as much as possible, while NATO leaders gear up for a summit in Lithuania in July, which will assess and discuss future support to Ukraine. There is a bitter realisation that there is no clear end ahead of us in the near future to this war of choice by Russia. Some sort of ‘frozen’ peace might be achieved by stopping or reducing violence, but no matter what Ukraine needs our prolonged support to ensure it does not face yet another wave of invasion a few years down the line. This is why even President Macron, who has been cynical about NATO, is now talking about Ukraine’s membership to the alliance as lesser of all of the risks ahead of us.

We have entered a new era, that is not simply just about Ukraine. For the last decade we have seen a major shift in global affairs as not only world’s two major powers, US and China, increasingly saw each other as a competitor and threat against national interests, a long list of medium-sized powers actively used force in invading other countries, or pursuing proxy wars and meddling into politics of other countries. From cyberwarfare to a new era of espionage to attempts at influencing other nations and altering trajectories of their politics, investments into a new generation of nuclear weapons and increasing of nuclear stocks to major investments into defence, most states in the world are gearing towards a decade of instability ahead of us.

Thus, it is not surprising that Sweden and Finland gave up historic policies of neutrality and decided to join NATO, or that Japan is pursuing a historic investment into its defence in a break away from its historic stand, or that China is going to double (or more) its nuclear stocks by 2030, or that even France is about to undertake a historic level of investment in its defence. The list goes on. All of these happen within a context of genuine existential risks to our existence. Like climate change, there are the domino effects of conflicts into our lives from faraway places. From energy prices, to food shortages, to disruption of trade and electronic parts, to new technologies like AI raising all sorts of ethical and practical questions and risks. There are hundreds of millions of human beings living in geographies and countries that are not able to care, provide and protect and give them a sustainable and meaningful life. Irregular migration, named ‘illegal’ in today’s tabloid language, is only increasing across the world, with only a small percentage ever making it to UK or Europe. Human beings do not simply leave their lives behind and take clear risks if they do not feel they have to.

We are far from being the first-generation processing news of wars and conflicts.

All of these are overwhelming realities, ones that we cannot simply ignore. It is normal for us to feel guilty as our daily lives continue in relative peace and property compared to millions of others out there, and it is normal for us to feel helpless and at times despair about all these developments that are clearly out of anyone’s control.

But as I sat there in the cathedral, I could not help but think that this is not the first time the world has gone through such a convergence of insecurities, and unlikely to be the last time, and that we are far from being the first-generation processing news of wars and conflicts and seeing nations take aggressive postures against one another. I thought about so many heroic figures across history that stood up for truth, for peace, for reconciliation, for justice in such moments and so many heroes that gave their lives to defend us against those seeking to harm us. Their legacies remind us that we all have a decision to make, a stand to take and a role to play in such historic moments. On my part, I am all aware of my limitations, and at times feeble attempts to be part of conversations that point towards solutions. I am also all aware of the deep darkness out there, but also as a Christian, a gentle hope that lies within it. The light shines into the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. The promise I find in the figure of Christ on the Cross is not an escape to another world, but embracing of the only one we have here and now, in prayer that all of our efforts could together amount to something much bigger than we realise. As TS Eliot put it, for us there is only trying, the rest is not our business!

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Comment

Economics

Morality

Politics

27 September 2024

4 min read

The Conservative Party needs a moral reset

A party member recalls that Adam Smith was a moral philosopher as well as an economist.

Jean Kabasomi

Jean is a consultant working with financial and Christian organisations. She also writes and broadcasts.

A statue of a Georgian man looks to the left.

Adam Smith, looking right to left.

Glasgow University.

The election of a new government in the United Kingdom has felt like an opportunity to fix some of the daily challenges faced by the people of these isles. As a member of the Conservative Party, it also presents the chance for those of us who are Conservatives to take stock of what it means to be conservative and how best that definition can serve the people of the UK in a way that benefits the whole and not just specific parts.

Those who follow the internal machinations of the Conservative Party will know that the battle for a new leader has already begun. For the most part, it has focused on whether the Party needs to move to the right to combat the offering by the new kids on the block – Reform, or to the centre in order to block the leaking Shire vote that shifted to the Liberal Democrats. I want to propose a different approach.

For years as I was growing up, probably influenced by the media and how it presents politics, I assumed that the idea of a minimum wage was a socialist idea or what we might today describe as progressive politics. Things changed, when I studied the history and influence of Christian thought on Western economics, as part of a Masters in Biblical Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

Adam Smith is the father of modern capitalism and hero to many conservatives. His foundational text, The Wealth of Nations, was on the reading list. Prior to these studies, I had heard and seen many conservative commentators use that text to support their claims around small government. I had also seen liberal commentators vilify his work for being the source of our broken Western systems. Many claimed that it was the basis for the economic thought and principles of Hayek and Friedman, the prominent economists who influenced the policies of the Thatcher government in the UK and the Reagan government in the US.

It tells us that our dogmatic positions should not prevent us from focusing on what is in the best interest of the people that politics and economics are supposed to serve.

When I read The Wealth of Nations for myself, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe how much of what he had actually said was ignored or had been misrepresented. Reading it for myself changed my assumptions and my learned narrative on capitalism. One of my greatest surprises was that Smith held what I had known to be a socialist policy, the idea of a minimum wage. To him it was such a fundamental truth that it was only briefly mentioned. Perhaps, that’s the reason so many people miss it.

Another shock was discovering that Adam Smith wrote about the place of government in regulating large corporations. For Smith, the wealth of large corporations was to be invested back into the areas from which the company was built. Jobs were to be kept local so that as many people as possible in society benefited from the wealth generated. Smith outlined that government regulation should prevent large corporations from moving their manufacturing operations to cheaper international locations to reduce costs and sidestep local communities.

Adam Smith, the father of capitalism – a protectionist and believer in the rights of workers! But what has this got to do with a discussion about the Conservative Party? It tells us that policies that do not always favour corporations but help workers or local communities are not unnecessarily anti-capitalist and by extension unconservative. It also tells us that our dogmatic positions should not prevent us from focusing on what is in the best interest of the people that politics and economics are supposed to serve.

My party needs to move away from policies that are focused on ideological battles and economics rooted in abstract ideals. And, instead, look to policies that will tangibly help everyday people. Or put differently, the party needs to move away from Oxford Union politics (I have nothing against the Union, I am a lifelong member!) and focus on real-world grown-up politics that improve the lives of the ‘many not the few’!

Lord Cameron tried to move the party to a position often dubbed Compassionate Conservativism. In fact, the origins of capitalism have long been connected to moral principles. Adam Smith not only wrote The Wealth of Nations but also considered issues around morality in his The Theory of Moral Sentiments. For a government to govern effectively and an opposition to oppose properly, morality and the interests of the many must be reflected in policy. And in my humble opinion, it is not unconservative to do so.