Must you have an interest in peace to want to broker it?
SOCIETY. UKRAINE. No man’s land, and how to dodge the bullets
No man’s land: defensible, or is it sitting on the fence?
I recognise these two truths among many: one, that I am hopelessly naive; two, that I am ebulliently hopeful. I am intractably drawn to the middle ground. The middle ground is not a fence upon which to sit, a place of indecision or domain where only compromise can reign. It is a place of debate, of positions backed with reason, of appreciation of counter-viewpoints and - hardest of all - reconciliation of hard, opposing principles and conflicting paradigms.
The middle ground is a no man’s land, and it is the hardest territory that was ever fought for. A cop-out? It’s a windswept field where the bullets come in from all sides, where the sole defence is to ask how an attacker will answer his enemy’s stance; the no men in that land field the questions, and they garner few answers from the missile-batteries that gleefully assail them, entrenched as they are in their certainty of right, as no man endeavours to bring a solution that weighs evidence, pleads for rationale and settles differences.
For, each, upon being confronted by an arbiter with the vacuity of his response to his opponent, deems the arbiter to be self-appointed, and therefore the ally of his opponent. The result is so often to empty the middle field of all no men, and leave the field open for the artillery assaults to determine which opponent will wipe out the other.
Two agents of arbitration that have long stood a test of time are elections and courts of law. In elections, the people stand as arbiters of the rights and wrongs of a political party’s manifesto; the decision falls with a majority ballot; by convention, the opponents acquiesce in the result. In a courtroom, the state, even the parties themselves, convene in an arbiter to decide between their points of difference; again, the result of their deliberations is acquiesced in. These are our models for dispute resolution. But, until such time as an electorate or bench of judiciary are invoked to settle an argument, the views of those who would temper the heat of the debate are frequently discarded as unwanted, unhelpful, even obnoxious. The voice of reason is a meddling imposter, who must prove his nonpartisanship, his independence, his disinterest in the matter; who, in such a case, would, then, intervene? What interest would they have?
Plenty. It is no comfort to observe those who engage in mudslinging; ignoring their vociferous cries of vitriol and hatred is no option when all know that peace and tranquility, common understanding and a sense of harmony achieved through graceful acquiescence play to the benefit not only of belligerents but of onlookers and co-habitants too.
The law labels as “culpable omission” any failure to intervene in a situation of danger to which one might otherwise, without undue danger to oneself, act to save a life. That same law imposes no obligation upon a third party to an argument to intervene in order to broker peace. A life in jeopardy is worthy of saving; but the peace that might obviate such jeopardy even arising is discounted as irrelevant. When an argument escalates and weapons are produced, the public’s duty is distilled down to a minimum standard: call the cops.
It is the police we look to in order to cool the engines. Skilful negotiators within their ranks can defuse tensions and restore order; but they come with arms, and less-skilful ones may resort to their use as a means to bring calm. When they do so, they take only the action that one of the parties was themselves intent upon. When tempers rise, peace gets little chance.
So it is that I am hopelessly naive: naive enough to believe that, given reason, right will obtain. And ebulliently hopeful: because reason has so often succeeded in brokering peace that, thus I conclude, peace always has a chance, even if it gets little chance. But peace’s chance is dependent on mutual convention as to where the middle ground lies; it requires of the belligerents that they contemplate it, and at least inwardly accept it as a potential outcome: they must befriend it so that, when it is proffered, they may embrace it. The middle ground par excellence is the law. Law created by democratic process; enforced by independent judiciaries; respected by electorate and party litigant alike. And we are losing that, globally.
There are many arguments ongoing in our world today. In the US, that which rages between Democrat and Republican is far from abating. Criticism and comment are turning to vitriol and brimstone. Attack is becoming the best means of defence; the pistols are still holstered, but fingers are trigger-happy. It is time to de-escalate, and return to a recognition of a mutually convened middle ground in which the interests of all can be preserved, even if the interests of some cannot. I naively believe that that is attainable; I am ebulliently hopeful that it will be attained.
In A Man for All Seasons, Robert Bolt put into Thomas More’s mouth the following words:
“What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you - where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast - Man’s laws, not God’s - and if you cut them down, d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.”
These are hard words. Because giving the Devil benefit of law was exactly what More did. And, though it was for his safety’s sake, it spelled his nemesis. More was a man of outstanding moral mettle; and a man is a man, but a party is a collection of men and women, and moral mettle is of varying quality in any political party. It’s not something you can read in the party’s programme or its minutes of meetings. It is look and feel, and insofar inchoate. But it is real. And it requires upkeep.
If we take a look at the speeches of Volodymyr Zelenskiy up until the Bucha revelations, they are, on the whole, astonishingly measured in their tone. For three or four months, Russia bombarded Ukraine, which replied in tones akin to, “Excuse me, do you mind?” When words of such measure come not from an arbiter but from one of the belligerents themselves, hope springs in the human breast and the achievability of a settlement augments, even when the opponent remains stubbornly intransigent.
For me, Zelenskiy generated faith, worthiness, trust, believability. Some Democrats in the US, outraged at the antics of Donald Trump, call for his denunciation, prosecution, imprisonment and even death. They vaunt adherence to the law and some advocate its breach in the very same breath. Yet, why has Mr Trump not been prosecuted, an act within the purview of the same Democratic Party that denounces him? Does the Attorney-General lack good lawyers? He should by now have served a summons or publicly declared there to be no case to answer. One or the other. The law is supposedly clear; the facts likewise, after 21 months of digging. Did the Commission waste its and our time?
For breach of God’s law there is no sanction in this life: that is reserved for the next; whether you believe that or not is immaterial; I do, and it’s therefore a consideration in my actings, mine and many people’s. Whether or not we delude ourselves, at the point when we know for certain, no one’ll be able to tell us, nor we our detractors, “I told you so.” So, does it change anything?
Yes. Elections are fought on future promises. People vote for a promise, and its believability. The Democrats and Republicans are highly critical of exercises of prerogative and power, which get labelled as abusive, unfair or cynical. Filibusters; the speaker position of Mr McCarthy; redrawing of electoral charts; the passing of laws to obstruct free voting. All these and more the Democrats complain of. But has the Democratic party opposed the filibuster? Was Mr McCarthy not duly elected? He wheeler-dealt, but politics is wheeler-dealing, is it not? Was any electoral chart redrawn contrary to law? And was any law passed such that it was vitiated?
What would More answer? The quotation above is preceded by its premise: “And go he should if he was the devil himself until he broke the law.” More’s principles served to protect Sir Richard Rich, the man whose perjury would eventually be his downfall. Because he believed so highly in the rule of law. More would be honoured as a saint, by both Catholics and Protestants; his duty to God, which he would never disavow, is a great plank in his canonisation; but my own admiration of the man, this man for all seasons, surges to a brink of excruciating elation to know that he knowingly contrived against himself, his life and his steadfast belief in his Lord to ensure justice for the man who connived for personal gain to bring about his downfall; and, what is more, he would do precisely likewise, even if he knew of the strain of treachery in Rich’s own character. It is this more than his unwavering belief in God that makes him more than a saint to the Church, and renders him an example par excellence to every man and woman, believer or not.
More’s ultimate downfall came because he placed faith in the law of Man, which Man then changed to corner him in an impasse. They may as well have worded the Oath of Allegiance “It is hereby lawful to execute Sir Thomas More.” For its effect was exactly to procure that. If the excesses of which Republicans are accused were unimagined before they arose, are they blameworthy for going to them in the exercise of prerogatives that are their right and title? Or does the lack of checks and balances rather belong more to the domain of him who made the rules?
In England at Christmastime, children attend theatre shows called “pantomime”: fairy tales full of music, fun and buffoonery. There’s a standard gag: the lead pleads to the audience, “He didn't, did he?” Children squeal in delight, “Oh, yes, he did!” And there ensues a duel of words: “Oh, no, he didn’t,” “Oh, yes, he did.” There is never an arbiter to intervene in these exchanges; the audience is left convinced that he did. The actor dismisses them, convinced he didn’t. Such is the theatre of suspended belief.
Postscriptum: less than an hour after writing and posting this article, I read of Mr Waters’ endeavours at intermediation in the war between Russia and Ukraine. You can imagine that that piece drew my rapt attention. If the proof of a pudding was ever in the eating, this was ever a pudding whose taste was immediate and apparent.
