A Quick Thought on Self-Defence, and one or two other matters

Mr Bob Aldridge writes to ask: ’If self defence is the sole justification for war, does that mean that both Britain and the USA should have stayed out of the First and Second World Wars? Should the USA not have helped Britain over the Falklands? Where does self defence begin?' 

As I think I have said before, I remain quite baffled by Britain’s 1914 declaration of war on Germany, based on a very generous interpretation of our treaty obligations to Belgium, and not in our national interests.  It had been clear since 1870 that Germany was now the dominant power in central Europe, for solid reasons of population, economic strength, military skill and general inventiveness and energy. British foreign policy, based upon maintaining our global position as a trading empire and naval superpower,  should have been aimed at taking advantage of this inevitable development, not trying to frustrate it.

And, as I have also said many times, our decision to declare war in 1939, for a cause we didn’t care about, for a goal we could not actually attain and had no intention of gaining, on the basis of a promise we had made when we had no intention of keeping it and no forces with which to keep it, with an army we didn’t have, at a time which didn’t suit us and which we allowed to be chosen by others, must rank as one of the most stupid diplomatic decisions ever taken by a major nation.

Both wars left us socially, morally and economically devastated, and neither achieved their objective. The myth created to justify the 1914 war retrospectively - the ‘War to end War’ - has long been exploded, not least by the rather blatant fact that it was no such thing. The myth to justify the 1939 war - that it was a war of principle fought for freedom and to save the Jews from Nazi murder -  remains as yet unexploded, though the mere facts that its main European effect to was hugely to expand the murderous tyranny of the USSR, and that it didn’t directly save, or even try to save, a single Jew from Nazi murder,  directly contradict these claims.  Jews were of course saved by the eventual collapse and defeat of the Hitler state. But the Allies discounted courageously gathered reports of what was going on in the death camps, and declined to bomb the railways leading to them.

The entry of the United States into the 1914 war seems to have been manipulated by propaganda suggesting a German threat to the USA, providing at least a pretext of self-defence, and there was also the complex issue of German submarine warfare and its effect on American citizens and shipping. Personally I think Britain would have been far better off if we’d listened to Lord Lansdowne and signed a compromise peace, thus avoiding the Bolshevik revolution, the great German inflation, the Washington Naval Treaty and many other reverses and disasters. In 1941, Germany declared war on the USA, which had sensibly waited before entering the European war.

I shall be accused of all kinds of horrors for saying this. My motivation is, however, quite simple and unadorned – the interests of my own country and its people.

Mr Henry Noel asks, similarly ‘I hope that by "self defence" one does not mean waiting for the aggressor's knife to be in one's gut before responding.'

Well, my policy remains the sensible one of maintaining strong and effective armed forces, on the assumption that you never know from which direction danger may come. As Switzerland has shown more than once, this is quite effective.

I am not quite sure what the Falklands are doing in this question. Didn't Argentina invade the islands? And sending material help to an ally who's been attacked seems to me to be covered by 'self-defence'.

A reader who complained to the BBC about the handling of my ‘debate’ with Russell Brand has received a reply which contains the following immortal words ‘As impartiality is the cornerstone of our entire programme making process there is certainly no bias against Peter Hitchens’

I am having this sentence stuffed and mounted in a glass case.