BRITAIN AND ME: IS IT ROGUE STATE ? by Anthony J Jordan

A former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray described the UK as a “Rogue State and a danger in the world and a State prepared to go to war to make a few people wealthy”. He was speaking in the context of the invasion of Iraq and shortly before the Referendum on Scottish independence.

The Irish Free State- Ireland, over its first 50 years of independence has been a mendicant, going to London to seek better access to the UK market for Irish goods. One of the lessons of the first 50 years of independence was that, when you are small don’t find yourself in a room negotiating with a large nation on your own. Our negotiation table with the UK is reversed by Brexit.

It is commonplace for larger countries to feel able to bully their smaller neighbours with impunity. History is full of such examples with Russia and China currently acting thus. James Joyce wrote that colonising countries are rarely driven by purely Christian motives when they take over foreign shores. They despoil the country economically, divide the people and persecute their religion. The bully or the coloniser can be described as a ‘Rogue State’.  Many countries have acted as Rogue States in the past. Some which have such a history often yearn for such power again, as can be seen from their reluctance to abandon entirely their colonial past. They explain that they owe it to ‘their people’ who colonised and whose descendants remain living in those foreign places centuries later, still pledging allegiance to the ‘Mother Country’. Some of these latter countries are now long time democracies and pillars of international associations dedicated to the rule of law and justice. Yet if they feel discomforted in these roles they can be tempted to strike out on an individual path, they feel is their right and destiny. The U.K. has fought a vicious thirty year guerrilla war in Ireland to maintain its power in a sectarian provincial corner of Ireland. It bolsters the economy there with billions of pounds annually.

In 1609, Protestant Scottish and English settlers were given land confiscated from the native Irish in the Plantation of Ulster.

Britain travelled thousands of miles in 1982 to reconquer Falklands-Malvinas from the Argentinians. They have been a British Crown Colony since 1841.  Despite its defeat, Argentina still claims the Falklands and South Georgia.  Britain suffered 258 killed and 777 wounded. Argentina lost 649 killed, 1,068 wounded, with thousands becoming prisoners of war.

Britain retains control of Gibraltar in defiance of Spain. Gibraltar, on the southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula has been a British Overseas Territory since 1713. Spain has laid siege to it in 1727 and 1779-1783. The reclamation of the territory by peaceful means remains Spanish policy. Britain asserts the power to deny the people of Scotland their right to self-determination. The UK retains fourteen overseas territories; some of these places are involved in dubious international financial tax havens.

The most recent example of the UK’s disdain for its neighbours was the Brexit campaign, which among other issues ignored the potential reopening of scarcely healed war-wounds along the border of the sectarian based Northern Ireland statelet. Yet because the UK remains a powerful country, those countries which are most affected by its continued colonisations must remain subservient. Western media have no hesitation in dubbing Russia and China examples of the ‘might is right’ philosophy, but hesitate to pronounce on the ‘Rogue State’ within their midst.