by Jake Wallis Simons
Image: Unsplash
This Week’s Thinking: Soft power only works when something hard is underneath it.
There is an old rule of geopolitics that our rulers seem to have forgotten: if you behave as though your country is weak, eventually other countries will believe you and start behaving accordingly.
Take RAF Fairford. Yesterday, five men were arrested nearby on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act and explosives offences. The finger points at Iran. Yet Britain still has not proscribed Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In July, ministers settled for a lesser designation that leaves its front organisations largely untouched.
To put it another way, the Ayatollah was killed in his office in Tehran in February, but his London office remains open for business. Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s foremost jihadi group, also operates unmolested on our shores. We can find five men with explosives outside an air base in an afternoon; we cannot, apparently, find the will to ban terror organisations.
Geopolitically, meanwhile, Britain is wobbling. Argentina is rattling the sabre over the Falklands. Caribbean governments are demanding reparations. Separatists are working to dismantle the United Kingdom. Jihadis and tyrannies have been emboldened by our sanctioning of Israel, which confirms how easy it is to turn us against our own national security interests when the propaganda is potent.