“If you don’t have a Sphere of Influence, then you are in one.” According to Sir Alex Younger, former head of MI6, the chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov said that. It is an arresting aphorism. A characteristic, perhaps the defining element of any form of subjugation, say, that of the abused spouse, the decrepit elderly relative being gently coerced towards Dignitas, the bullied, the gaslit, the downtrodden, the despised and rejected, is that, unless confronted, the controlling behaviour of the strong over the weak is invisible. Customs officials have politely enquired of me, when passing from Portugal to Spain, or from Canada to the United States, “Why on earth do you want to go there?” It’s a form of passive aggression, the only mode of expression available to the underdog.
I wonder if Garry Kasparov was thinking in terms of chess strategy when he passed his remark. People often liken international politics to a game of chess. The Masters of the Universe look down upon the field of play, conjure scenarios of “if this, then that…” into the future, and make their move. The balance of power is all important; either you are evenly matched, or you are in a dominant position, or you are being dominated. But the trouble is that real life is not remotely like a game of chess. Chess can be played, and won, by a computer, because there is always a demonstrably optimal move, available to those with a big enough brain. Chess can be played out. Real life is more like a game of poker. There is the element of chance, both in not knowing what is in the mind of your opponent, nor in having any control over the hand you’ve been dealt. How can you play for a grand slam if you’ve been dealt a chicane? As President Trump memorably said to President Zelenskyy, “You don’t have the cards.” Then again, real life isn’t like poker either. The stakes are too high, or, as President Zelenskyy replied to President Trump, “This isn’t a game.”
It’s hard to comprehend that, almost, but not quite, within living memory, Great Britain in its Empire controlled the greatest, or at least the biggest, Sphere of Influence the world has ever seen. It was an accident of the amalgamation, or conglomeration, of the industrial revolution and the rise of naval power. We had command of the high seas. As God made us mightier yet, we exported a kind of swashbuckling Christianity. We were self-confident. We ruled the waves, and were quite sure we would never ever be slaves. We espoused noble causes. We even abolished slavery. We were happy to bestow upon others the Pax Britannica, so long as it was not challenged. By the time of the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, it looked as if the empire upon which the sun never set would indeed last a thousand years. George Orwell did not take such a sanguine view. As a young man, working as a policeman in Burma, he came to the conclusion that Empire was essentially a money-making exercise.
What went wrong? Within a single generation, it seemed likely that Great Britain would be invaded and occupied. The Royal Navy would have been requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine, and the Empire would have ceased to exist. This was certainly the prediction of the US Ambassador to the Court of St James, Joe Kennedy, at the outbreak of the Second World War. The US might have, to borrow a recent expression Sir Keir Starmer, “shed few tears”. This might have happened, but for the pigheaded bloody-mindedness of a maverick PM, and the valour of a handful of airmen. As it happened, we survived, but although Winston said he had not become PM to preside over the dismantling of the Empire, that, like it or not, became his role.
So the Empire became the Commonwealth and, for his second term, Winston devoted himself, insofar as his failing health would allow, to the formation of international institutions and the cause of world peace. He didn’t get very far. He tried to organise a “summit” – he even coined the term – of the three great powers who had periodically met in conference during the war. But the US and Soviet Russia weren’t interested, and Winston quietly resigned during a newspaper strike.
Still, there remained close ties with the US, the Commonwealth, and Western Europe. Out of the ashes of the League of Nations arose the phoenix of the United Nations. The idea of a “rules-based international order” took root. The stakes were very high because two opposing ideologies were nuclear armed. They glared at one another across the “Iron Curtain” that stretched from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic. But at least there was an international forum based in New York, and a “permanent security council” originally formed by the allies of World War II.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was even more spectacular than the demise of the British Empire. For no apparent external reason, German youth climbed on to the Berlin wall, and started to demolish it, without fear of being shot. Two years later, the historians pronounced “the end of history”.
But it seems to be easier to win the war than to win the peace. Russia was arguably taken over by the mafia, the oligarchs who were content to send their children to the English public schools, and flood the City of London with laundered money. Mr Putin deeply regretted the eclipse of Russian power. He kindly laid out for us a blueprint of his conception of the Russian Federation’s “Sphere of Influence”, and prepared to attack Ukraine. He advised us not to interfere in this sphere, lest he, if we understood him correctly, unleashed nuclear weapons.
All of this was arguably quite predictable, but could we have predicted the attack upon Caracas? Well, yes. The build-up of naval power in the Caribbean was a hint, and President Trump did tell us that he wanted to purge the area of “narco-terrorists”. In fact, in his recently published National Defence Strategy, he gave us a blueprint, much like Mr Putin, of his conception of his own particular Sphere of Influence. This is described as the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. President Trump wants the US to dominate the entire Western Hemisphere. When he said he wanted to make Canada the 51st State, and to take over Greenland (not ruling out the use of force), we all thought he was joking. Donald just being Donald. Now it doesn’t seem so funny.
Some people think that untapped Venezuelan crude, the largest oil resource in the world, is the real reason for President Trump’s preoccupation with Venezuela. Not the traffic in fentanyl. After all, if it were all about drugs, why not attack Mexico, or Bolivia? Some people think – are they being uncharitable? – that the accusation of “narco-terrorism” resembles Mr Putin’s accusation, levelled at Ukraine, of “Nazism”. A pretext.
When President Trump was asked on board Air Force One whether President Maduro had been kidnapped, apparently he nodded and said, “That’s a good word.” The rules-based international order has gone, to be replaced by the Rule of Might, the Big Beasts with their Spheres of Influence.
Should we have seen this coming? Orwell did, as far back as 1948. He thought there would be three spheres, three great “superstates” – Oceania (the absorption of the British Empire by the United States), Eurasia (the absorption of Europe by Russia), and Eastasia (China and the countries to the south of it, Japan, and parts of Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet).
Each New Year, the political pundits on the BBC have a radio programme where they make predictions about the coming year. What will 2026 bring? The irony is that this year, they recorded the programme the night before the US bombed Caracas. This was not foreseen. As Mr Macmillan said, “Events, dear boy…” So it would be a wise man, or a foolish one, who predicts how events are to unfold. But let us suppose Orwell was right. We would have to conclude that President Trump would, at least for the time being, stay out of other people’s Spheres of Influence. So we might expect the war in Ukraine to grind on, and Russia to continue pushing west into Europe. We would expect Mr Xi to carry out a Caracas-style copy-cat manoeuvre on Taipei. And we would expect that the British PM, when asked to criticise President Trump, might shrug and say, “I’m not going to shed tears over Mr Maduro”, because after all, if you don’t have a Sphere of Influence, then you are in one.
jamescalumcampbell 