MATTHEW JAMISON -- A New Alliance with Russia Based on Respect

MATTHEW JAMISON | 21.08.2017 | OPINION

A New Alliance with Russia Based on Respect

There is a growing hostility towards Russia within the West – specifically Theresa May's Britain – and certain quarters of the American Government and NATO afflicted with an outdated and reactionary «Cold War» mentality. This anti-Russian hostility is not only short sighted and misguided but it is also deeply disrespectful and offensive given the great historical debt the United Kingdom and Europe owe the Russian people for their supreme sacrifice against the Nazi Third Reich during their epic and titanic struggle to defeat German fascism. What was then the USSR lost over 20 million citizens in its war of attrition against Hitler most starkly and bloodily displayed at the Battle of Stalingrad which saw the Red Army and Russian people victorious against the invading Nazis. When viewed through this prism recent comments by the Secretary of State for Defence are inappropriate, offensive and ungrateful to say the least.

The fact is that it was down to the United States and the Soviet Union who rescued Britain and Europe from Hitlerian Nazism. Whole towns and villages in the Soviet Union where left without men and boys. And it is also true that if it where not for the USSR thrusting from the East and the United States thrusting from the West, Britain in all likelihood would eventually have been invaded and the British people assimilated into the Nazi Third Reich and Hitler's Empire. Certainly the United Kingdom would never have been able to have defeated the Germans and liberated Nazi occupied Europe without the strength, raw muscle and super power of both America and Russia and certainly the holocaust of the Jewish people would not have been put to a stop without the involvement of the Soviet Union and the United States.

Regardless of modern day Russia's political structure or the political structure of the former Soviet Union - Russia and the Russian people, the Russian State, the Russian Government, Russian Institutions, Russian culture (including the tremendous contribution in the arts, ballet. music, science) the Russian military and most importantly Russian views, ideas, proposals and thoughts on policy making and diplomacy - must be paid attention to, respected, and engaged with constructively in the spirit of mutual respect, mutual collaboration and mutual admiration. As a great military power (one of the greatest and indeed the strongest alongside the United States and China of the 20th and 21st centuries) it's position must be given equal weight in the Councils of the World when considering serious international and regional issues of peace, security and stability for example during the deliberations of the United Nations Security Council apropos the Iraq War 2002-2003; the Libya Intervention 2011 and Syria during the genesis of the conflict in 2011. 

This status and position it has rightfully earned through its blood sacrifice in defense ironically of Western Civilization during World War II. Rather than constantly demonizing Russia has as has been done in the past during the Bolshevik Revolution against the Tsar; or the British Nazi Appeasement of the 1930s; or the Cold War - the West led by the United States - should be seeking to work and partner with Russia to forge a new strategic partnership for peace to combat some of the globe's most pressing and serious problems just as the United States, Russia and China all fought together on the same side during the Second World War against German and Japanese Imperial Fascism. 

When it comes to now stamping out religious fanaticism and fundamentalism in the form of Islamist terrorism; Western far-right nationalism and dealing with the pressing issue of the breakdown of the balance of peace and stability in the Middle East and Korean Peninsula as well as showcasing that through common interests and shared values great objectives can be achieved across non-traditional and non-conventional boundaries - all of this is what a new Alliance with Russia based on respect could achieve. It could also once again help stabilize to as great extent as possible through shared insight and expertise how to contain and manage the issue of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It could also help foster greater peace, stability and security in Eastern Europe. It was wrong of NATO to expand towards the frontiers of Russia by enveloping the former Warsaw Pact members at the end of the 1990s. It should have been understood that the Iron Curtain existed for a reason and that due to what the Soviets had suffered during the invasion of their home land by the Nazis and the sacrifices the Red Army made the Moscow Government was well within its legitimate geopolitical national interests by insisting on a sphere of influence to enforce a buffer zone between itself in the East and Germany in the West. NATO went too far, became too arrogant and became too greedy towards the end of the 1990s and needlessly poked the Russian bear in the eye by admitting former Warsaw Pact members as both NATO and EU members. Perhaps it would have been wiser for both the EU and NATO to have stayed a truly Western force. 

However despite the false starts of the Obama administration's valiant Reset in 2009 and the attempts made by the Bush Jnr administration in 2001 to reach out to President Putin there is still time to Reset to a New Alliance with Russia if it is based on mutual respect, mutual collaboration and mutual admiration instead of short sighted and immature campaign of demonizing and vilification. One of the most productive and most over looked and under appreciated Governmental Diplomatic Alliances of recent times was the Reagan/Thatcher/Gorbachev troika and the productive creative and confident relationship and Cold War diplomacy between American President Ronald Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. 

MATTHEW JAMISON --Theresa May's Dirty DUP Deal

MATTHEW JAMISON | 28.06.2017 | WORLD

Theresa May's Dirty DUP Deal

Theresa May has finalized a shameful and disgraceful deal with Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party to help her cling on to power and prop up her minority Tory Government. Never in Mrs. May's wildest nightmares could she have imagined when she called the ghastly 2017 General Election in a naked power grab for a landslide majority, she would be returned to 10 Downing Street having lost seats with a share of the national vote only 2% higher than Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, and no majority of her own to govern effectively in the House of Commons.

So she has had to buy votes from one of the most right-wing, racist, homophobic, sexist, Islamophobic, sectarian and backwards parties in all of the UK. What can one say about the DUP? They are a freak circus of inarticulate, antediluvian bigots who exist in the stone ages. The DUP have a long history of close links and associations with the Protestant colonist terrorist «loyalists» of Northern Ireland. The loyalist terrorists started the conflict in Northern Ireland not the IRA. It was the virulently anti-Catholic sectarian DUP and their allies in the loyalist terrorist groups such as the UVF, UFF and UDA who waged a vicious campaign of violence, civil disobedience and discrimination against the Roman Catholic, Irish nationalist minority in Northern Ireland from the early 1960s onwards in much the same way white supremacists in the United States fought against the Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King. 

The DUP under their abominable Cult leader, the maniac «Reverend» Ian Paisley, opposed every single initiative and proposal to bring peace between the warring communities of Northern Ireland up until 2007 when Ian Paisley was able to become First Minister. Paisley's road to Damascus was about forty years in the making and because of him and his politics of bigotry/fear and his methods of whipping up the uneducated Protestant loyalist masses, quite a lot of innocent people lost their lives during that period. The members of the DUP are quite a motley crew. We have the former DUP Leader and First Minster Peter Robinson and his wife Iris. Mrs. Robinson had to resign her seat in disgrace from the House of Commons and her membership of the DUP was terminated when it came to light she had an extramarital affair with a 19-year-old in 2008 and she and her husband were faced with allegations of financial impropriety related to the affair. 

The Robinsons were also major culprits in the 2009 Parliamentary expenses scandal. Mr. Robinson has had a long history of being involved with loyalist terrorists and was involved in a financial scandal of his own while stating that he: »wouldn't trust Muslims devoted to Sharia Law, but I would trust them to go down to the shops for me». Another DUP MP a Mr. Sammy Wilson has been embroiled in a racist scandal of his own. Ironically for the DUP which is militantly anti-gay quite a few of their members are repressed homosexuals. Then we have their current leader a Ms. Arlene Foster who gave away half a billion pounds in public money to her cronies in the infamous «Cash for Ash» scandal. If this had happened in China, Ms. Foster would be in jail, not handed a further 1 Billion Pounds of public money by Theresa May to waste, as she wasted the last Half a Billion Pounds.

MATTHEW JAMISON -- Intelligence Wars

MATTHEW JAMISON | 20.01.2017 | OPINION

Intelligence Wars

There has been much in the media of late regarding the claims of Russian cyber hacking to influence the outcome of the recent American Presidential election. However, just as the Russian cyber hacking storyline has dominated the American and Western media, the bigger story here is the dubious activities of both American and British intelligence services and the politically partisan conflict that has engulfed the American intelligence community with the nakedly political interventions of both the FBI and CIA in the American political process. Indeed, it was American intelligence in the form of the FBI that did more to influence the outcome of the US Presidential election than the speculated machinations of any external foreign power. The latest twist, that the FBI is to be investigated by the Inspector General of the US Justice Department with regards to its handling of the investigation into the private email server run by Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State is quite astonishing.

Whether or not Russian intelligence was involved in a campaign of cyber espionage to influence the American Presidential election is beside the point. There as yet has been no hard, concrete evidence presented on this issue to back up the argument articulated by the Obama administration. Yet, what is very clear, is the FBI acted in a nakedly partisan and irregular fashion during the election campaign to inflict as much political damage on the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as possible. It wasn't the Russians that did Mrs. Clinton in, it was the FBI. Quite clearly from the actions of the FBI Director Comey, the FBI is a highly politicised, Republican/conservative leaning organisation, which is not politically impartial and which acted in a partisan political manner regarding its investigation into Mrs. Clinton's private email server. I for one could not believe it that the FBI Director Comey decided to write to Congress a week out before the Presidential vote was held to regurgitate the email scandal. What Comey did was a political hit job, far more damaging and destablising that anything Wikileaks did. Mr. Comey knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote to Congress on October 28th with the political bombshell that the FBI was reopening its investigation into Mrs. Clinton's email server and in doing it inflicted far more damage on Mrs. Clinton's campaign than the hacked and leaked emails from the DNC or the Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

As Hillary Clinton herself has acknowledged and many members of her campaign, it was the Comey letter that cost her the election. The hacking and leaking of the DNC emails and John Podesta's emails pale into insignificance compared with what the FBI Director did. As one of the most respected election gurus Nate Silver stated: «I'll put it like this: Clinton would almost certainly be President-elect if the election had been held on Oct. 27 (day before Comey letter)». In writing to Congress a week out from the Presidential election Comey violated the principle that US intelligence and law enforcement agencies do not make interventions in election campaigns during a sixty day time frame before election day. He did this without consulting the Justice Department and did it deliberately to cast doubt on Mrs. Clinton's integrity and trustworthiness a week before the vote, which had always been her Achilles Heel with a large section of the American public. It was even more farcical that it only took the FBI roughly a week or so to sort through and examine 650,000 emails and then two days before the election exonerated Mrs. Clinton for a second time that she had done nothing criminal. Yet that second exoneration came too little, too late as it was designed to be and the damage had already been done with the Clinton campaign on the defensive during the final week and rumour, intrigue and speculation dominating the headlines. This is what Comey and the FBI had intended. It is clear from the actions of the FBI Director that he and his organisation were against Hillary Clinton becoming President. Why he did not recommend criminal charges back in July 2016 after a year long investigation is because the FBI really could not find grounds to recommend criminal charges which could be prosecuted against Mrs. Clinton. So they opted for the next best thing. Political death by a thousand cuts not one fatal slash.

MATTHEW JAMISON -- Trump vs US Intelligence

MATTHEW JAMISON | 12.01.2017 | WORLD

Trump vs US Intelligence

If it had not already been one of the most extraordinary and dramatic American Presidential elections in modern political history, the 2016 Trump v Clinton contest continues to become even more surreal, even though the vote was held over two months ago. The final twist in this epic piece of political theatre which students of politics are bound to analysis for generations to come, just weeks before the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States, sees the incoming President embroiled in one of the most unbelievable plot twists imaginable, at war with the very intelligence agencies he will soon be charged with. Setting aside the claims of the United States CIA, FBI and Director of National Intelligence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a cyber campaign of disruption to support Donald Trump, what has been even more remarkable is President-elect Trump's open rejection of the US intelligence communities assessment of the hacking claims and his and his team's open scepticism and denigration of American intelligence.

Donald Trump has broken with many political and diplomatic precedents during his successful run for both the GOP Presidential nomination and then the Presidency itself. In many ways he has broken nearly every political rule and taboo there is. Where more conventional politicians fear to tread, President-elect Trump has shown no such inhibitions. Such is the situation now as Trump takes on the collective might of the American intelligence community. To see an incoming President engaged in a war of words with America's spies is highly unusual. According to the outgoing President, Barack Obama, and the CIA, FBI and Office of Director of National Intelligence the Russian Government engaged in a cyber-hacking campaign during the United States Presidential election aimed at boosting the chances of Donald Trump becoming President and discrediting his rival Democrat Hillary Clinton. It is claimed by the various US intelligence agencies that the Kremlin designed a plan to hack into the email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and top Clinton campaign aides such as Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta, then passed the hacked emails to third party intermediaries such as WIKILEAKS for publication during the election campaign to undermine Hillary Clinton's chances. 

MATTHEW JAMISON | 16.12.2016 | OPINION

One of the Greatest Tory Prime Ministers That Never Was

Political history is littered with towering figures who never quite made it to the very top of politics. In Britain there are giants of past political eras who make the politicians of 2016 look like pygmies. On the Labour side one need only think of the likes of Denis Healey, Barbara Castle and their SDP renegades Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams. For the Tories Michael Heseltine ranks high. So too, does Ken Clarke, who is the subject of this article and has just released his memoirs 'Kind of Blue.' 

With the unedifying spectacle of «trousergate» shedding a light on how petty, thin skinned and juvenile the current Tory Prime Minister is (as well as her aides such as the former football journalist Fiona Hill and the Tory MP Nicky Morgan) one yearns for the days of substantive «big beast» intellectual heavy weight politicians with real gravitas such as the former Chancellor Ken Clarke. I recall having a conversation many years ago with a former Deputy Director of the Conservative Party's «Research» Department (which in fact is not exactly a research department more of a propaganda outfit) who described Mrs. May as a «lightweight». The spectacle of the Prime Minister spending nearly 1000 pounds on a pair of leather trousers, which for all the money involved looked rather tacky, and then another Tory MP, the former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, making remarks about it was bad enough. Mrs. May to then show such a thin skin and dis-invite Ms. Morgan from a meeting was playground politics at its worst and reveals worrying insecurities in the Prime Minister over such frivolous matters. As too was the manner in which it was carried out by her equally lightweight, insecure and obnoxious Joint Chief of Staff Fiona Hill.

The spectacle of three women politicians acting like cats over a pair of trousers has sadly reinforced all the worst stereotypes about female politicians. It has also reinforced the vacuum of gravitas at the top of British politics. In many ways British Government would be so better off if it was led by a political figure such as Ken Clarke. I first met Ken Clarke when I was debating on the same team as him alongside the former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind at the Cambridge Union back in January 2007. We were debating a motion regarding the use of force in world affairs and we were up against the former diplomat Craig Murray and Mick Jagger's ex-wife Bianca. We won the debate. I was extremely impressed with Ken Clarke, and indeed Malcolm Rifkind. I found Mr. Clarke to be an extremely warm, down to earth and charismatic politician with a great manner and temperament. No airs, no graces, no pretentious nonsense. And also a brilliant debater and clearly an intellectually substantive individual with deep knowledge and a super brain. 

Ken Clarke first entered the House of Commons in 1970. He has always been in the centre ground of British politics, a moderate «One Nation» Tory committed to market economics but not enthralled with the more extreme and wilder aspects of free-market Thatcherism. He has also been a passionate and committed pro-European, believing strongly in the cause of European unity and of Britain leading in the European Union. He has had the strength of his convictions and has always stood by them, even when it would have been expedient for his own political advancement to jettison them. On foreign affairs he is a sensible, pragmatic, realist who has never embraced the wacko doctrine of neoconservatism. Indeed, he was one of only a handful of Tory MPs to vigorously oppose the Iraq War. It is this deep common sense and rejection of ideology in favour of pragmatism which sets him apart from some many of his more extreme Tory colleagues. 

Clarke enjoyed a stellar Cabinet career serving as Margaret Thatcher's Health Secretary and Education Secretary and then John Major's Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. After the Tory wipe-out in the General Election of 1997 at the hands of Tony Blair's New Labour Party, which resulted in a massive Labour landslide with an astonishing majority of 179 in the House of Commons, Ken Clarke put himself forward for the leadership of the Tory Party. Sadly and stupidly the Conservatives were blinded by their prejudice and hostility regarding all things European including Clarke's support for Britain joining the European single currency, the Euro. Instead of going with the «big beast» of the Conservative Party with a huge amount of political and Government experience and an endearing personality personified in his love of jazz and hush puppy shoes, the Tories opted for the 39 year old William Hague. Hague's only Cabinet position before he became leader of the Tory Party was Secretary of State for Wales. He had only been an MP for 8 years or so. He also was the ultimate caricature of the Tory boy having given an excruciatingly cringe-worthy speech at the Tory Party conference of 1977

He was also not extremely adept at public relations deciding the best way to present himself to the public after his election was to go to Alton Towers wearing a baseball cap with his surname emblazoned on it. Hague would go on to run an extremely Europhobic and homophobic regime. He took anti-Europeanism and xenophobia to new levels. Hague made opposition to all things European including further European integration and the Euro the single issue of his General Election campaign of 2001. He also unleashed a campaign of demonising asylum seekers and refugees and campaigned to keep Section 28, an extremely nasty and bigoted piece of homophobic legislation introduced by the Conservative Government in 1986 and rightly repealed by the Blair Government. Hague made an infamous and truly vile speech in the run up to the 2001 General Election in which he said Britain had become a «foreign land». Hague's leadership of the Tory Party which reached its ugly climax in 2001 was a forerunner for the campaign that Donald Trump would run. 

The Tories went down to another crushing defeat under Hague and Tony Blair was re-elected with another huge majority of 166 in the Commons. The Conservatives were then offered once more a great choice in the form of Ken Clarke. But yet again they rejected him in favour of the deeply objectionable Iain Duncan Smith. The less said about that appalling individual the better. As John Stuart Mill once remarked: «Not all conservatives are stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives». Duncan Smith was one of the most disastrous leaders of the Tory Party in its history, lasting only 2 years. Under his leadership the Tories supported Tony Blair over Iraq while Ken Clarke opposed it passionately. If the Conservatives had elected Clarke over Duncan Smith in 2001 and opposed the Iraq War they could very well have won in 2005 defeating Tony Blair. And then again they rejected Clarke in 2005 after another massive defeat at the hands of Tony Blair's Labour Party and went instead for David Cameron who was unable to deliver them a full majority in the 2010 General Election despite the economy being in its deepest recession since the Second World War and facing a deeply unpopular Labour leader in the form of Gordon Brown. Clarke went on to become a elder statesman in the administration of David Cameron and became Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, fitting for a Cambridge trained Queen's Counsel barrister. 

Ken Clarke has once again shown his political strength and conviction by being the only Conservative MP to oppose the Government's timetable for triggering Article 50 for withdrawal from the EU in a recent Commons vote on Britain's doomed expedition out of the European Union. It is a tragedy for the country that it has no leadership equivalent to a Ken Clarke to guide it through these precarious and tumultuous times. Theresa May, like her successor David Cameron, is clearly out of her depth. If Ken Clarke had of been prime Minister in 2003 Britain would never have gone to war in Iraq. If Ken Clarke had been prime Minister in 2016 there would never have been this nightmare of referendum of Brexit in the first place. So, Ken Clarke will go down in British political history as one of the greatest Tory Prime Ministers that never was. 

MATTHEW JAMISON -- The Mad Man Theory: Trump & Taiwan'

MATTHEW JAMISON | 10.12.2016 | WORLD

The Mad Man Theory: Trump & Taiwan'

In Niccolò Machiavelli's 1517 «Discourses on Livy» the famous Italian historian and political philosopher argued that sometimes it is «a very wise thing to simulate madness». The «Madman» theory was indeed a consciously deployed facet of President Richard Nixon's foreign policy. The Nixon administration carefully projected a deliberate image of President Nixon as a volatile, erratic, almost deranged hot head. The objective was to create confusion among American adversaries, primarily in the Communist world, and unnerve them due to the unpredictability the «madman» Nixon engendered thus keeping them off balance allowing America to set the agenda, control responses, seize the initiative, keep US enemies constantly guessing and keep hostile provocations to the minimum for fear of a disproportionate response from the «unhinged» Nixon. President Nixon's infamous Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, wrote that Nixon had confided to him:

«I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, 'for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry — and he has his hand on the nuclear button' and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace». Nixon's National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State, the brilliant Dr Henry Kissinger, was in on the act and portrayed the 1970 US incursion into Cambodia as a symptom of Nixon's «instability». I can just imagine Nixon conferring with Kissinger before a diplomatic meeting and telling him: «Right Henry, this is how we are going to play. I'll storm in and wave my arms around, talk about how I feel like bombing the hell out of such and such, spit some profanities out and then storm off. You will then rush in and say ' now you can understand what I have to deal with! Leave it to me. I'll calm the old man down». Could it be that the new President-elect of the United States, Donald J. Trump, is also employing the «Mad Man» theory? Indeed, as Polonius put it in Shakespeare's Hamlet: «Though this be madness, yet there is method».