Britain’s regime change operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria have been catastrophic. A key reason is that UK policy has no moral consistency — friends and enemies are interchangeable over time, based purely on short-term pragmatism and rarely on ethical concerns or the national public interest. It’s high time for a fundamental transformation.
“We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies,” Lord Palmerston famously told the British parliament when he was foreign secretary in 1848. Over a century and a half later, during the so-called war on terror, Britain has abided by Palmerston’s morally ambiguous approach towards international relations, with disastrous results.
The head of Britain’s military, General Sir Nick Carter, illustrated this perfectly when he said last week: “I think you have to be very careful using the word enemy. I think people need to understand who the Taliban actually are… and the plain fact is that they happen to live by a code of honour and a standard… [which] has honour at the heart of what they do.”
Carter said the Taliban are “country boys” who, despite killing 457 British troops, are: “bound together by a common purpose which is they don’t like corrupt governance, they
— source declassifieduk.org | Phil Miller, Mark Curtis | Jan 3, 2022