Missiles, drones, flags and statues ; or, the politics of performative posturing

It is notable that the government has started to insist on the greater public visibility of the Union flag at the moment when the existence of the Union is being questioned, and when, after Brexit, more and more questions are being asked about Britain's purpose in the world. One can observe the same phemonenon in the fetishisation of statues (particularly those of Churchill), or in the ubiquity of the phrase, 'Global Britain' (see my previous blogpost in June or July 2020, exploring the meanings of that phrase).

The government is deliberately projecting the importance of symbols at the same time as it constricts those institutions (the BBC, the British Council, the National Trust, museums, international aid) which are dimensions of Britain's 'soft power' (to use Joseph Nye's phrase). The United States has had a similar preoccupation with its own national flag, which perhaps has a lot to do with the (very visible) preference of many Americans since the 1860s for the Confederate flag. As the flag of St. George becomes more popular as an expression of exclusively English national sentiment, the same obsession is evident here. The marked preference for symbols over substance is hard to avoid ; indeed, the substance of worthwhile national institutions is being emptied out, a process that began long before the Johnson regime. Other states, such as Hungary and Poland, have long had such neuroses, which are being exploited to the full by their present governments. However, both these nations have long histories of fragmentation, discontinuity and vulnerability. The appearance of such pathologies in Britain signifies that the very concept of Britain is under threat. This is not to say that the dissolution of the Union is inevitable, but that the strains are very evident.

The recent foreign and defence policy review ('Global Britain in a Competitive Age') highlights these contradictions in a stark way. It envisages a global role for Britain (including expansion into the Indo-Pacific area) while simultaneously cutting back on soldiers and ships. (The proposed increase in the cap on Trident missiles has no strategic value whatsoever, as Trident's value is purely symbolic, and contributes nothing to national defence). It is a cardinal principle of defence policy that aspirations have to be connected to capibilities and resources. Such considerations underlay various strategic decisions in the twentieth century: to spend on the navy rather than the army before WWI ; to focus on the air force rather than the army before WWII ; the abandonment of conscription by Macmillan and Duncan Sandys in the 1950s ; the rejection of 'East of Suez' by Wilson and Denis Healey in 1968 ; and the withdrawal of naval protection from the Falklands, in favour of its commitment to Trident, by the Thatcher government, prior to the Argentine invasion. Whatever one thinks of these policies, at least they were informed by an awareness of the close relationship between ambitions and the ability to pay for them ; and that global aspirations without solid material foundations are delusions. No such awareness informs the government's strategic review. Instead, cynical posturing and opportunistic positioning, designed to intimidate and divide opponents, become the aims of policy, in which the meaning and ends of politics reside solely in a series of performative gestures. In this, the symbols of Trident, flags and statues are replete with meaning and substance, because the substance has been emptied from hitherto more meaningful practices and institutions.