The space between peace and war
On MI6, Mitt Romney, and the steady stream of new opportunities to do better than those who have set up an unstable world
Blaise Metreweli, the chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (also known as MI6), made a very public declaration on December 15th: “We are now operating in a space between peace and war.” It’s the kind of thing a spy chief might have said nearly anytime in the last 80 years, but there’s good reason to take it more seriously than at any other point in living memory. Exactly as Mitt Romney called it in 2012, there is one particular state engaged in a non-stop hostile campaign against a peaceful world order.
■ Metreweli cuts right to the chase, flagging Russia for “Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. Drones buzzing airports and bases. Aggressive activity in our seas, above and below the waves. State-sponsored arson and sabotage. Propaganda and influence operations that crack open and exploit fractures within societies.”
■ The Economist highlighted the British warning as part of a larger survey of readiness and security concern across Europe, noting that there are some countries where supermajorities think they face a high risk of war with Russia in the foreseeable future, but where considerable majorities in Italy, Germany, Poland, and even France don’t think their countries can defend themselves.
■ As the crow flies, it’s exactly a thousand miles from the Kremlin to the Brandenburg Gate (and about another 500 miles to Paris). European distances often elude American perspectives, so it helps to think that a thousand miles is the same as the road trip from Chicago to Denver: Not next door, but not out of reach in a single day’s drive. The road trip from Moscow to Berlin would take longer, but it’s not the road trip that should be on German minds.
■ The “space between peace and war” is not at all where it felt like we were headed back in 1998, when Mikhail Gorbachev starred in an ad for Pizza Hut. Choices have been made along the way -- many of them, and by many actors -- that have put us where we are now. That is bad news, inasmuch as many of those choices have been self-serving, cowardly, or short-sighted.
■ But it’s also good news, inasmuch as it means we are presented with a steady stream of new opportunities to do better. Margaret Thatcher said it in words that should be read aloud to every world leader before bedtime each night: “I do not believe that history is writ clear and unchallengeable. It doesn’t just happen. History is made by people: its movement depends on small currents as well as great tides, on ideas, perceptions, will and courage, the ability to sense a trend, the will to act on understanding and intuition.”
■ It probably isn't too late to correct course and take seriously both the threats and the opportunities to show courage and intuition, but it's best not to wait any longer. Alliances matter. Principles of liberty matter. Peace through strength matters. A just, tolerant, and free world matters.
