“To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.”
Winston Churchill
The news that Sajid Javid has replaced Matt Hancock as Secretary of State for Health demonstrates again the broad spread of Boris Johnson’s senior team. Rishi Sunak, Nadhim Zahawi, Priti Patel, Kwasi Kwarteng and Alok Sharma have already been providing professionally effective and well-diversified leadership: this is now being strengthened further with Sajid’s arrival at the Department of Health.
Meanwhile, for many enjoying the civilised nature of national competition in the European football league, which seems to have taken over most other forms of broadcasting, last week’s confrontation in the Black Sea must have come as a bit of a shock. Judging by newspaper reports, the decision to route HMS Defender quite so close to the Crimea may not have been entirely unanimous among cabinet colleagues, but the threatening and immediate response from Russia shows that they get the challenge.
We may have said farewell to Trump's presidency, but the world is still full of bullies obsessed with their national character: it's therefore just as well that the G7 is showing both integration and solidarity in response. So in this commentary we share some thoughts about the intelligence and understanding which needs match this national assertiveness.
The world is full of areas where the movement of people over the centuries has generated flashpoints. The list is long - South Africa, Ireland, the Crimea and the Balkans to name but a few. It's only been in areas where the indigenous population was too small to stand up to the migrating masses, such as in the Americas (North and South), Australia and New Zealand, that a new settled population has become possible: and even that has been challenged by slavery in America.
In some cases, migration resulted from political ambition; in others, from the desire for a more comfortable lifestyle - and now it's increasingly driven by oppression and economic despair. As communications and travel draw the world ever closer together and as cross-fertilisation results in mixed peoples this will only increase.
Flexing muscles is not, therefore, a long-term solution to international tension: as populations mix and merge, we must learn to prioritise dialogue.
This need to accept and welcome strangers is also deeply embedded in religious and cultural traditions. At the recent diocesan synod in Oxford, Bishop Steven drew his address from Ezekiel 47. His focus was on climate change, and there is a beautiful symbolism of the ‘river of life’ in that chapter, which he adapted for our current challenges.
However, later in that chapter there's a really important piece about assimilation of strangers:
‘“You are to distribute this land among yourselves according to the tribes of Israel. You are to allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the foreigners residing among you and who have children. You are to consider them as native-born Israelites; along with you they are to be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. In whatever tribe a foreigner resides, there you are to give them their inheritance,” declares the Sovereign Lord.’
Perhaps it is inspiration from writings like these which have encouraged Israelis to establish a Government which reaches out to their Arab minority: let's hope it can find a new way forward for that troubled land, where there is so much evidence of flexed muscles.
The origins of our species has been much in the news last week, both from Israel and China; and no doubt the debate about human evolution will continue. However, there is no doubt that our ability to store memory and to build on progress from one generation to another is the feature which distinguishes humans from the animal world. They need muscle-flexing: we increasingly do not, although it's great to see it in sport.
What we do need is respect for others, wherever they come from, whatever their background or condition. It is the natural sequitur of ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ - and who is my neighbour? It is the alien, the foreigner, and Jesus went on to say ‘for as much as you did this for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it for me’.
So we need to get inside the minds of those who find this teaching so difficult, ad in particular the minds of those bullies and dictators. There's no doubt that greed and domination are major drivers when the Russians annex the Crimea and other parts of Ukraine, or when the Chinese oppress their Uighur and Hong Kong populations.
But it's not just domination: there's also a heavy dose of fear. Who finds it difficult to understand the Russian people feeling fear, when over the last 250 years they have suffered twice from massive European invasion, first by Napoleon and then by Hitler? And is it surprising that the Chinese want to be in control of their own destiny, after the devastation of the Second World War and opium exploitation in the centuries before it?
These deep national fears can only be addressed by dialogue, and the natural venue for that is the United Nations. So, once Biden has consolidated a sense of purpose within the G7, perhaps he will turn his attention to how the United Nations can be strengthened.
‘Jaw, Jaw’ is so much to be preferred over ‘war, war’. Of course, we must negotiate from a position of strength, but negotiate we must.
Someone who understands reconciliation better than most is Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury: it's a subject frequently addressed in the Christian Church. Perhaps a space could be found for him amongst the peacemakers.
Gavin Oldham OBE
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