As the death toll has risen and the Assad government has become more entrenched, so too have the calls for a more muscular western policy towards Syria. The debate has revolved around two models for managed military escalation: establishing no-fly zones or arming the rebels. Neither involves “boots on the ground”, which is why they can best be characterised as “intervention-lite.” Supporters of these policies argue that they will make Assad more likely to step down, empower the so-called moderates among the opposition, and bring the war to a speedier conclusion. However, there is considerable evidence for such approaches being more likely to lead to a full-scale military intervention by the west, while making a political solution even more difficult to grasp.

The dangers of “managed escalation”: the no-fly-zones option

Western governments have long faced calls to undertake air strikes to knock out the regime’s aerial firepower and to establish safe zones within Syria. Supporters of these policies have multiple goals, including tipping the balance in the military conflict in favour of the opposition, providing rebels with space to mobilise and organise, and creating safe havens for refugees in Syria, partially to relieve the strain placed on neighbouring countries.

However, it is unclear how much killing would be prevented. According to General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, only 10 percent of opposition casualties result from air strikes. Moreover, safe zones could cement the collapse of the central state, and, given existing intra-rebel fighting, competing groups are likely to seek local control through violent means. As demonstrated by developments in some opposition-held areas in parts of northern Syria, this could render them anything but safe for the civilian population. As noted by António Guterres, the UN high commissioner for refugees: “Bitter experience has shown that it is rarely possible to provide effective protection and security in such areas.”

Syria’s collapse accelerated by the establishment of safe zones would also pose a danger to the territorial unity of neighbouring states, fuelling, for instance, existing tendencies towards militia-run zones in Lebanon and Iraq, and thereby potentially feeding a series of regional civil wars. Additionally, the act of establishing safe zones would be an act of war against Syria, with the obvious dangers of escalation and mission creep.

At the moment, leaders in Washington, London, Paris, and elsewhere explicitly reject this approach, but it continues to be supported by figures such as US senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, as well as by vocal commentators in the press. In fact, a better option for dealing with the refugee and IDP crisis will be a political process that is predicated on de-escalation and maintaining Syria’s territorial integrity, among other things.

Arming the opposition

The second model, of arming the opposition, has stronger support in western capitals. British and French officials are currently suggesting that arming rebels represents the best means of getting the opposition (and their regional allies) to come to the table. Supporters of this approach argue that it should strengthen moderates within the opposition, increase their leverage over the regime, and therefore help a negotiated settlement. The emphasis since the 7 May announcement has been on integrating the logic of arming with the logic of the peace conference. Given the difficulties that the west has had persuading rebel forces to take part in a political process, this quest for leverage is understandable, but it is ill advised.

First, it is unrealistic to expect that weapons can be guaranteed to end up in the hands of pro-western actors. The US and its allies were unable to achieve the micro-management of weapons control in Iraq and Afghanistan, even with a massive physical presence there, so it is unlikely that they will fare better doing this with a light footprint. The apparent western conduit, the Supreme Military Council under General Salim Idris, has a limited remit over battlefield groups. This will be particularly challenging given that Jubhat al- Nusra – an organisation with declared ideological links to al-Qaeda – is now considered the strongest and most effective rebel fighting force.

Within Syria, more arms will also further entrench the political economy of war, already breeding warlordism, war profiteering, criminalisation, and intimidation as a way of life. There is a real danger that these weapons could find their way into sectarian tensions in neighbouring countries such as Lebanon and Iraq, supplying oxygen for the outbreak of an arc of sectarian conflict across the Levant. The other neighbouring countries – Jordan, Turkey, and Israel – are all also feeling the ripple effects in different ways. The weapons and those who carry them tend not to respect borders. Worryingly for western politicians, there is also the danger that they could even find themselves being used against civilian targets in the west. There is also the danger posed by a stream of radicalised Europeans travelling to Syria to join armed opposition groups and fears that they could eventually bring the fight back to Europe. According to the German government, as many as 700 Europeans are already fighting the Assad regime.

In any event, the west is ill-equipped to win a race to arm proxies, if its support for rebels prompts Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia to increase their military backing of the regime. The procedures of western states are more transparent, cumbersome, restricted by regulations, prone to diplomatic opposition (from allies such as Israel), or domestic political fall-out than those of countries backing Assad.

Moreover, increased foreign support to predominantly Sunni rebels feeds Assad’s longstanding claim that Syria faces a foreign-backed Islamist plot, enabling him to further mobilise his domestic and international support base. Pro-opposition escalation is therefore likely to be met with escalation by the regime. Despite his military losses, Assad has not yet unleashed the full might of his military firepower and can still mobilise significant domestic support as demonstrated by the growing capacity of his popular militias, the jaysh al-shabi. With all the devastation already inflicted it is worth bearing in mind that neither side has yet “done its worst”. Further militarisation is likely to feed the “fight or die” narrative of existential communal fears that has become the driving DNA for much of this conflict. The sad truth is that escalations and interventions could still take the death toll from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands.

Above all, there is a real question about how far arming rebels and advancing diplomatic de-escalation really can proceed hand-in-hand. Rebels currently unwilling to engage in negotiations with the regime (distinct from accepting the regime’s political surrender, which they are prepared to do) are even less likely to do so once they receive western armed support. Some in Europe have argued that levelling the playing field will give the rebels the confidence they need to accept a negotiated settlement. However, the reality is that the opposition strategy has long been to secure western military intervention on their behalf as the key means of dislodging Assad – sometimes referred to as “getting Western skin in the game”.

Armed support from the west is therefore likely to embolden their ambitions of total victory – making them less likely to accept a power-sharing deal. It also mitigates against reaching a point of mutual exhaustion, a key potential asset in the search for a deal- making space. Given the choice, both sides will always try to convince external backers that their predicament is either sufficiently desperate or promising, so that more weapons and support remain the permanent imperative of the hour. When the lighter forms of intervention fail, as they are likely to do, they will increase the likelihood of a full-scale and prolonged intervention by the west – including a physical presence. This risks drawing the West into a much-expanded conflagration, as well as making the west responsible for reconstructing Syria for many years to come.

A strategy for de-escalation

While many analysts and diplomats acknowledge that military options are unlikely to succeed, diplomatic initiatives are often viewed as even more naive. An understandable sense of resignation pervades most discussions of Syria after the failures of the last two years. However, the 7 May Moscow announcement provides a real opportunity to shape an alternative diplomatic and political approach aimed at de-escalation. It is one that Europe should fully embrace.

The goal should be to set in motion a new dynamic in which external backers are nudging the two sides in the direction of politics rather than away from them. Given both the regime and opposition’s dependence on external support, this approach is more likely to eventually soften the zero-sum ambitions of the players in Syria. And the political overlay and context in which the fighting is taking place will matter greatly.

The Moscow statement by Kerry and Lavrov signalled a return to the Geneva Communiqué of June 2012 as a framework for progress. Under the circumstances, to have a text ostensibly agreed upon by key parties is a precious commodity. Following the initial Geneva agreement, the French and British foreign ministers quickly asserted that Assad would go as part of the agreed transitional government. But this time there should be no attempt to interpret Geneva as placing pre-conditions on talks or excluding parties from them.

Insisting on Assad’s removal and a full transfer of power may represent a morally appealing position for the main trans-Atlantic protagonists but it amounts to dictating terms of surrender and is antithetical to pursuing a diplomatic track with the Syrian regime or its backers. History appeared to be repeating itself when on 8 May in Rome, one day after ruling out pre-conditions in the breakthrough Moscow meetings, Kerry appeared to re-introduce them by saying that Assad could not be part of the transition, a position subsequently repeated by US President Barack Obama. Though understandable as a way to keep allies (including a suspicious Syrian opposition) on board, this is not a practical plan for building a wider international consensus. Building sufficient international consensus will also have to be predicated on taking a more inclusive approach that involves all the regional actors. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Iran was invited to the Geneva gathering in June 2012. This should be corrected this time around.

In order to succeed, a strategy for de-escalation will need three key elements: a set of guiding principles, a wide enough coalition committed to de-escalation, and a diplomatic strategy to get Geneva II off the ground.

Guiding principles

Ahead of the proposed peace conference, the US and Russia should elaborate on the Moscow understanding by translating that original Geneva Communiqué into five guiding principles for the proposed Geneva II peace conference:

1. “All parties must recommit to a sustained cessation of armed violence” (Article 5a of the original Geneva Communiqué). This might include reconstituting the United Nations Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) as and when conditions allow. If it is possible to create rolling and expanding pockets in which ceasefires hold, the case for re- introducing UNSMIS should be given greater priority. It should be understood that the commitment to this principle comes first; its implementation, similar to other clauses here, will take time.

2. “Action Group members are opposed to any further militarization of the conflict” (Article 12b). Implementation of this clause would require that all sides agree to stem rather than increase the flow of weapons to Syria’s warring parties.

3. “The sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic must be respected” (Article 11a). There is a huge difference between a new political effort to which all sides have agreed, a key provision of which is that the territorial integrity of Syria will remain intact, versus a continued conflict in which Syria’s very existence is a point of contestation. A political process that clarifies this common goal is already important progress and a selling point for some of the regional players that will need to be brought on board for this diplomatic effort.

4. “The establishment of a transitional governing body that can establish a neutral environment in which the transition can take place, with the transitional governing body exercising full executive powers. It could include members of the present Government and the opposition and other groups and shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent” (Article 9a). Transition to a different order in Syria is key, though there can be no pre- conditions on what that new Syria will look like. It will have to be shaped by Syrians at the negotiating table. The central questions to be addressed will include: To whom and on what basis to transfer power? What is the role and timing of constitutional reform and elections? What type of elections should be held? What will Assad’s role be, including in any presidential vote? No agreed outcome can produce a return to the status quo ante of the pre-uprising Damascus government; any political process by its nature will favour change and reform.

5. “The Government must allow immediate and full humanitarian access by humanitarian organizations to all areas affected by the fighting” (Article 5d). Humanitarian aid is critically needed. As soon as there is a political opening, one of the first priorities should be to support greater access for humanitarian relief. A number of European Union member states as well as Norway have already taken the lead in humanitarian aid funding, with the top five EU donors being the UK, Germany, Holland, France, and Sweden.

The full report can be found here at the website of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Dictates of the heart

‘Putin — thief!’

As deafening as the first thunder in May, the simple chant carries from a crowd gathered by the old courthouse. Back in the 19^th century, this was the residence of the Kirov governors, and Tsar Alexander II stayed here. Now the building is the venue for the controversial trial of Aleksey Navalny, who very recently announced his intention of becoming president of Russia.

Kirov has for the last few weeks witnessed an unfamiliar parade, with journalists from across the whole world — 200 TV, radio, internet and print media companies — descending on the city. To get into the court on the first day, they had to start queuing the night before, writing their number in the queue on scraps of paper or their own palms. The court has only 60 places, so it was the fortunate few that actually managed to get in, using their bodies, tripods and TV camera equipment to push their way through to the door.

The rest had to content themselves with interviewing supporters and opponents of the accused. The demonstrators had set up a noisy, brightly coloured camp along both sides of Spasskaya street, the banners of the opposing groups making it look like two armies about to go into battle. Everyone, indeed, was ‘armed’ with whatever he/she could find – posters, placards and other kinds of propaganda. Opponents of Navalny from the little known organization ‘Right Track’ even brought a log and a saw, a colourful demonstration of the supposed Kirovles carve-up.

‘Do you really believe that Navalny stole the timber?’ I asked a young man with a tattoo on his left hand, a possible hint that he had recently been in prison.

‘Of course!’ said the young man without hesitation. ‘For the money he stole you could have repaired 5 km of road and built 30 hockey pitches. He didn’t only steal the timber, he betrayed his country. Navalny is an American spy, trying to impose American values on Russian people, but we are a spiritual people and for us money is not the most important thing.’

‘How much were you paid to come here, if it’s not a secret?’

‘Nothing at all! I am following the dictates of my heart!’ The young man was deeply offended by my suggestion and hurried back to his mates in ‘Right Track.’ There weren’t many more like him: a little man with a flag, a broad-shouldered lad with a poster, a fair boy lazily sawing the log and a few other unimpressive characters.

Ivan – a son of Russia

Navalny’s supporters outnumbered his opponents, and were much more active. Over 100 people had come from Moscow, Petersburg, the Urals and the Volga region to support him on the first day of his trial, though their ranks rather thinned out after that, leaving only the most devoted and hardy. I noticed an elderly man with a poster declaring ‘Kirov is not Golgotha — we won’t allow the crucifixion of mind, honour and conscience!’ He stood in the street opposite the courthouse on every day of the trial, from early morning until the evening, like a sentry on guard.

‘Ivan, a son of Russia,’ he introduced himself. ‘I’ve come from Moscow: I was born here but have lived in Moscow for many years.’

‘So Ivan, son of Russia, has come to stand up for Aleksey, son of Russia?’

‘That’s it, for our Alyosha [Rn affectionate diminutive] who is honest and incorruptible.’

‘Don’t you get tired standing here all day?’

‘I’ll stand for a month if I have to. Many people come to talk to me and I tell them that an innocent man is on trial for political reasons.’

‘Navalny — is he a writer?’

On the first day not everyone in Kirov knew who Navalny was.

‘I’m not interested in politics. I’m a student and I’m late for a lecture,’ said a young girl with pigtails, obviously taken aback by my question.

‘He’s probably a writer, perhaps a poet, but I don’t know…’ an educated man in glasses was frowning as he tried to remember. ‘What did he write? A thriller?’

‘He’s a sportsman, a boxer,’ said a young athletic-looking man confidently, his biceps and triceps bulging, ‘a world sports star.’

‘I did hear something on the TV,’ mumbled a toothless old lady with a shopping bag containing a white loaf, kefir, potatoes and a packet of toffees. ‘I think he stole some timber. If that’s so, then he’ll go to prison. I’ve been alive 80 years and never stolen anything. In our day the punishments were much stricter: a handful of grain would get you 15 years and if you were late for work, you’d get 10. The rules should be strict – Stalin was right.’

The old woman’s voice shook with admiration and indignation.

Stalin’s gone to Denmark

As it happens, I spent some time in the office of the Kirov communists with a Danish journalist. He was genuinely amazed at the local communists’ ardent love for Stalin: there was a portrait of him on the front of the Communist Party building, portraits on the wall, calendars, postcards and teeshirts.

‘How can you love Stalin so much? He did away with millions of people during the Great Terror.’

An elderly communist with a bald patch decides to answer the journalist’s question condescendingly, as if he was sharing basic truths with a child. ‘Well, for one thing that was state policy, and it was necessary so Russia could be transformed from a peasant country into an industrial power. It was to neutralise the socially dangerous elements in society – the bourgeoisie, the rich peasants, the nobility, officer class and others. And anyway it was nothing like 50 million people, that figure was simply fabricated by the corrupt liberals like Governor Belykh and his adviser Aleksey Navalny. It was only 3 million, and this is backed up by NKVD [secret police] documents.’

‘Did Navalny really steal the timber?’ asked the Danish journalist, anxious to steer the conversation into slightly calmer waters.

‘They’re all crooks,’ offered Aleksey Votinsev, a young communist leader, in support of his elderly comrade. ‘Two of Nikita Belykh’s advisers are already in prison for crimes relating to Kirovles and Arzamastsev, the head of the property department, is on the Interpol wanted list, so Navalny is the fourth adviser to be accused of criminal activity. The liberals are no better than “United Russia” – they’re all crooks and thieves and we’re against them all, because the communists are for the people! Navalny will go to jail if he’s guilty – so what? He’ll be nearer the people that way.’

The Danish journalist was given a volume of Comrade Stalin’s writings as a farewell present. It was a gift he couldn’t refuse and now Stalin has gone to Denmark.

An ineffectual manager

Other views were expressed in the office of the socialist party, ‘Just Russia’. Here portraits of the party leader Sergei Mironov graced the walls: he is surrounded by the people and the leader of the local regional division of the party Duma deputy Sergei Doronin, both in white overalls at a pig farm. The socialist deputy owned a large agro-holding called ‘Absolute-agro.’

‘You can’t imagine how easy it is in Russia to get rid of someone who becomes inconvenient. Prosecutors, the police, civil servants and “United Russia” party officials - they’re all in it together’ Sergei Doronin, Just Russia party

‘I know Navalny. He visited our pig farm complex. He’s a good lad. Nikita Belykh entrusted him with the modernisation of the Kirovles enterprise. He was to put the sales in order so that the revenue went into the regional budget, rather than people’s pockets. But the forestry managers effectively refused to cooperate with the new working conditions and the reform failed. Navalny is probably not a good manager and he didn’t take account of the local conditions or the way people work, but he’s no thief. You can’t imagine how easy it is in Russia to get rid of someone who becomes inconvenient. Prosecutors, the police, civil servants and “United Russia” party officials - they’re all in it together. The real judge in this trial is not Sergey Blinov, but someone quite different….You know who I mean?’ The deputy looked meaningfully at the portrait of Vladimir Putin.

The case of the minced meat

Judge Sergey Blinov conducts the case calmly and in a businesslike manner, as if trying a presidential candidate was as commonplace for him as washing his hands before a meal. But until recently Judge Blinov was dealing with cases of a very different kind. In the local town of Kumena, for example, a man had stolen 5 kgs of mince, 1 kg of herring and 8 eggs out of his neighbour’s fridge. Judge Blinov convicted the offender, but he was given a suspended sentence as he had pleaded guilty and cooperated with the investigating officer. What will happen to Navalny who didn’t want to cooperate or to plead guilty to stealing timber? Will the judicial meat grinder not make mincemeat of him?

‘36 forestry managers have been called as witnesses for the prosecution. By some strange coincidence they all seem to have suffered from partial or total amnesia.’

36 forestry managers from far-distant districts of the Kirov oblast have been called as witnesses for the prosecution. By some strange coincidence they all seem to have suffered from partial or total amnesia.

‘Winess, do you remember what prices you were offered for the timber when you worked with the Kirov Timber Company?’ asks Judge Blinov.

‘No, your honour, I’ve forgotten!’ the witness smiles nervously, rubbing his huge hands together. The forester had clearly never been in a courtroom before and, in his embarrassment, had no idea how to behave. People in gowns or the blue uniform of the prosecutors made him uncomfortable, because he’s much more used to dealing with logs and planks.

‘Your honour, the prosecution requests permission to read the witness his statement, as he has partially forgotten what he said.’

Each time the judge allows the request, despite protests from the defence.

Two comrades

On the 9^th day of the trial Governor Nikita Belykh is called as a witness. He has recently returned from an official visit to China to attend the trial of his former adviser and comrade in opposition. Judge Blinov is obviously uncomfortable at having to interrogate the head of the Kirov oblast.

‘You may refuse to give evidence against yourself or close relatives and you are entitled to ask for an interpreter.’

A smile plays on the govenor’s lips – the smile of an experienced spectator who knows exactly what the outcome of this comedy will be.

‘What was Aleksey Navalny’s official position in the government of the Kirov oblast?’ the prosecutor asks.

‘He had no official position: he acted as my adviser on a pro bono basis. He was offered a position, but refused it.’

‘Could he give orders to civil servants?’

‘No, this was not in his remit.’

‘Tell us about the state of Kirovles in 2009, please.’

‘It was a loss-making enterprise with very considerable debts and in need of restructuring. The reforms were not Mr Navalny’s idea, because everyone knew how things stood.’

Mr Navalny himself intervenes. ‘Did the director of Kirovles or any of its employees every complain to you that I was forcing them to sell timber at less than market value?’

‘I received no such complaints.’

‘But they could have complained? By requesting a meeting with you, for instance.’

‘Of course they could.’

The lawyer then asks ‘Do you consider that Navalny’s actions damaged the economy of the Kirov oblast?’

‘I have no such information. I know that the Property Department is considered an injured party in this case, but I don’t know what expert analysis has been carried out or why this conclusion was reached. To do that I would have to read the case files and this is not one of my hobbies.’

After the interrogation, Nikita Belykh hurriedly left the courtroom. The journalists followed him like hunters after game, but failed to catch up with him. He obviously had no wish to speak to the press. He got into his car and was driven away.

The prisoner

Governor Belykh’s former adviser, Andrei Votinov, was brought to the courthouse in special prison transport and with a police escort. He looked shrunken and downhearted. The badge on his prison uniform gave the number of his brigade in the open prison at Omutninsk. Votinov was charged with crimes in the Kirovles case and found guilty a year ago. He was accused of extorting 10 million roubles from the Kirovles director, Vyacheslav Opalev.

Opalev is a man of unremarkable appearance, simple and not very articulate, but in the Kirov forests he became a figure that only be described as demonic. To judge by the Kirovles case files, all the governor’s advisers extorted money from him, bribed him and induced him to take part in their criminal plots.

‘Your honour, Vyacheslav Opalev is dishonest and disreputable,’ says prisoner Votinov, a touch nervously. He looks scared inside the ‘cage’ he inhabits in the courtroom. ‘Opalev supported the reforms in the timber industry in word only. All the time he would do his best to put a stop to them, as they represented for him the threat of losing both his job and his income. He knew of the plan to sack him and appoint me in his place. And, by the way, the charge sheet in my case was based solely on Opalev’s evidence, but his evidence was false. I consider that if Opalev is called as a witness for the prosecution in this case, he could mislead the court. I respectfully request permission to read out a statement.’

The respectful request was refused on the grounds that it had no direct bearing on the Navalny case. The former adviser didn’t argue. A few months of prison had wraught very considerable changes in him: the formerly cheerful and confident young man has become a haunted, obedient prisoner, used to answering ‘Yes, sir!’

‘Are you afraid of a Russian prison?’

‘Good question! Next!’

‘Do you really want to become president?’

Navalny gives me a look which is difficult to describe in words.

Could this possibly be the future for the opposition leader Aleksey Navalny?

‘I have no doubt that I shall be found guilty,’ said Navalny to the journalists in the lobby of the courthouse during a break in proceedings. ‘What will be interesting is whether I get a suspended sentence or not.’

‘Are you afraid of a Russian prison?’

‘Good question! Next!’

‘Do you really want to become president?’

Navalny gives me a look which is difficult to describe in words.

The Russian Kennedy

Every day, after many exhausting hours in the courtroom, Navalny has unplanned meetings with people who have been waiting for him in the square outside. There was a rumour that Navalny would be able to help and some of them have brought him their problems from thousands of kilometres away.

‘I’ve come from Saratov,’ an elderly man in a hat talks quickly and nervously. ‘My son has been put in prison, but I know he hasn’t done anything. The police beat him up, so he pleaded guilty to a crime he didn’t commit. I hope Aleksey will be able to help. After all, he’s in a similar situation.’

‘God help Alyosha,’ sighs an old lady in a headscarf. ‘What can I do? I’m no one.’

‘Now, now, granny, you mustn’t talk like that. You’re a Russian citizen!’ Navalny supporters chide the old lady.

I think Aleksey Navalny would look very good as president of Russia. He’s tall, clever, clear-eyed and clearly a hit with the ladies. He could be the Russian Kennedy. Let’s just hope he doesn’t get himself killed.

But can the reform of the Russian state be entrusted to someone who couldn’t reform the Kirovles company? That question is harder to answer.

THUMBNAIL PHOTO: DEMOTIX/ANTON BELITSKIY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

In the aftermath of the brutal murder of soldier Lee Rigby in London's Woolwich yesterday, questions have surfaced on how best to describe the events - are labels such as “terrorism” either warranted or even accurate? While the facts are still emerging, it is now clear the attackers were both British of Nigerian heritage, with one named as 28-year-old Michael Adebolajo who, prior to adopting radical Islamist views, is alleged to have dabbled in petty crime. The men attacked Lee Rigby in South East London with a range of knives before being shot by police officers, as they attempted to turn on them.

Many have questioned why the murder has received such unprecedented coverage, with some pointing out that the equally brutal murder of 75 year old Mohammed Saleem, stabbed to death as he returned home from his local mosque in Birmingham earlier this month, received comparatively little attention. In both cases, a violent minority may be implicated in a murder with political dimensions, in one case politically radicalised Muslims, in the other, the Far-Right. Both could be dubbed a form of ‘terrorism’ and yet, only one has been.

It is a rather trite observation to state that the term ‘terrorism’ has become eminently politicised, used much more readily and easily to refer to violence by certain types of political dissidents, such as those whose violence targets the majority, than to refer, as it was originally devised, to states, or groups targeting minorities.

And yet, there are significant aspects of this case which appear to fit the ‘terrorism’ label. Amongst these, the nature of the target - a British soldier - and the identity of the perpetrators - radical young Muslims - as well as the stated motivation. When asked about his motive by an eyewitness, one of the men responded, “because he has killed Muslim people in Muslim countries”, “I killed him because he killed Muslims and I am fed up with people killing Muslims in Afghanistan”. He added: "You will never be safe. Remove your government". What’s more, the style of the attack, undertaken and filmed in full public view with the objective of publicising the actions to a wider audience, is reminiscent of a strategy employed by the media-savvy loose network, often referred to as Al Qaeda. While there is evidence to suggest Michael Adebolajo became radicalised through the now-banned al-Muhijaroun, the group is well known to security services who monitor it closely and it treads a fine line between espousing hate and undertaking violent actions. Though the group may have laid the foundations for a binary and simplistic worldview, it is likely that further motivating factors were involved in the move to action.

"We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," one of the attackers told onlookers. To those familiar with Al Qaeda’s discourse, this is all too familiar. A veneer of Islamist rhetoric dressing up opposition to the presence of western troops in Muslim majority countries. The perpetrators need never have met anyone vaguely even affiliated to Al Qaeda, they may have simply imbibed the rhetoric, easily accessible online and in the pamphlets and clips of extremists distributed in a murky underground network.

In a posting on a jihadist website in January this year, Al Qaeda said 'coming strikes' would target the 'heart of the land of non-belief' and that attacks would be 'group, lone-wolf operations and booby-trapped vehicles'. If indeed the men turn out to be self radicalised Al Qaeda groupies, the attack would seem to suggest that the security services have become efficient in countering more elaborate plots and that extremists are now left with the “last resort” tactic advocated by Al Qaeda and its satellites - rogue attacks by individual foot soldiers – basic and simple to undertake, requiring little planning or logistics and hence less likely to be foiled. The most recent "lone wolf", self-radicalising extremist was Frenchman Mohamed Merah, who killed three soldiers as well as three Jewish schoolchildren and a teacher in March 2012. If this is indeed the trend in the latest Al Qaeda attacks, they indicate just how weakened the network’s reach in Europe has become.

So should the Woolwich attack be dubbed terrorism? Yes, it appears to fit into the evolving pattern of Al Qaeda inspired attacks. But should we be worried? Not really. Al Qaeda-style terrorism in Europe peaked with the coordinated attacks in Madrid in 2004 and London on 7/7. The most recent plots, from a foiled crude bomb plot at Glasgow airport in 2007, to yesterday’s knife attack on a soldier, are an indication of just how limited their scope now is in Europe.

The fact is the perpetrators want this to be perceived as an act of terrorism. Doing so would put them in a league with the Al Qaeda aficionados they have idealised. Ultimately, it vindicates their sense of purpose, having “succeeded” in etching their names on the wall of terror, alongside the Bin Ladens and Mohammad Sidique Khans of this world. That’s precisely why they requested that the public film their actions and why they appeared to relish a dramatic confrontation with the police. Like all Al Qaida attacks, the force of the attack lies in the ripples of fear and division created as a consequence. A successful attack against European targets is measured not in victims but in the pandemonium and fear fostered.

Thankfully, the British “keep calm and carry on” attitude has largely prevailed. Despite a worrying spike in attacks on Muslims centres in the immediate aftermath, the message from the political class has been broadly reassuring. Cameron was right not to return too promptly from Paris and to advise soldiers to keep wearing their uniform in public. Muslim organisations have vocally condemned the attack and stood united with their fellow citizens, a blow to the intended wedge Al Qaeda seeks to put in place in order to attract its recruits.

Terrorism it might be, but the critical concern now should be to avoid the politicisation of public fear, further unnecessarily impingeing on our civil liberties. In 2009, former head of MI5 Dame Stella Rimington denounced the exploitation of public fear of terrorism to restrict civil liberties, while campaign group Liberty repeatedly warned that, “the risk of terrorism has been used as the basis for eroding our human rights and civil liberties”. Several peers have already pushed for the government to resurrect the communications data bill, rebranding it a tool to fight terrorism. John Reid has reappeared to call for the total observation of all our data communications. So although Cameron has said he wants to avoid “kneejerk responses”, we must remain vigilant. For our security, yes, but also even more crucially, for our freedoms.

This series, exploring the images of the enemy-other, began last year in the aftermath of the mass shooting by Mohammed Merah in Toulouse, France. Since then more than 80 articles have explored the presentation of enemy images to understand the events in Toulouse, the analysis of the Utøya shootings in Norway on the one-year anniversary, the French response to the Mali insurgency and the Algerian hostage crisis, up to Cameron McGrath’s piece on the Boston Marathon bombing which explores the assumptions of enemies and the social costs of indifference toward those seen as the ‘other’.

But more than chronicling these important security events, the contributing authors explored the ways such events are depicted, how power and politics figure in those presentations, and how publics receive these images and narratives. For example, Omer Harari ends the series with a thoughtful examination of narrative constructions of Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, following the fallout from the Toulouse shootings, Brigitte Beauzamy and Ruth Wodak each explored the security turns in European politics, restructuring the narratives of belonging and normalcy. These pieces examine how fear can be manufactured, reinforced, or countered, and how in each instance assumptions and expectations of normative behavior are altered.

The series also presented a number of pieces examining the rise and appeal of far-right political groups all across Europe, ranging from Anton Shekhovstov’s exploration of the Ukrainian far-right movements to Salomi Boukhala and Aristotle Kallis’ pieces on the Golden Dawn, and the shifting narratives of responsibility for the financial and social crises in Greece. Kristina Boréus and Tobias Hübinette examined a longer history of hate speech and violent right-wing extremism in Scandinavia, and Jon Burnett’s sobering account of the attraction of far-right politics across Europe also explored the “geographies of hate” in the UK.

Tony McKenna recounted Slavoj Žižek’s assertion that contemporary Islamophobia emanates from a fascist imaginary that continues to haunt Europe, while Marie Baniff, Sara McDowell and Jonny Byrne explored the relationship between violence and the lack of a shared, common memory in Northern Ireland. It is in this connection between memory, the imaginary and violence that the series plumbed the rarely explored depths of the role of anxiety in conflict. The lack of a shared memory in Northern Ireland, just as in Israel and Palestine, makes it difficult to find common ground as the basis of negotiation, both at an institutional level but also at an immediately social and communal level.

This division of memory and imagination is not merely a disagreement about the interpretation of historical events; rather, social history marks the manner by which sense is made of events. Different events have differing social meaning, but are also linked to other events differently. Receiving and retransmitting these narratives of group history are the performances of belonging, and thus it can be difficult for groups in conflict to reconcile their competing narratives into a common framework, because it can be seen as compromising key performances of identity.

Perhaps one of the more uplifting and inspiring pieces in the series is Mohammed Suliman’s story of man nicknamed “Awsaj”— the Arabic equivalent for Lycium – living in Gaza. In recounting Awsaj’s story, Suliman points to the work that is required to make peace: a critical introspection of one’s own group self, as well as that of the other. He asks us to think of the other’s history and social journey as well as our own. The path to peace is not about changing the other, but reconciling the competing images of self and other, and transforming the self to live peacefully with another party. Recognising the humanity of the other is not enough, nor is seeing resemblances of the self. Awsaj, like Julia Kristeva [1], entreats us to find the other in ourselves. If we ask the other to change, to conform to our desires of peace, surely we – the group self – must do the same. In that we must not only recognise that “they” are like “us”, but perhaps more difficultly for “us” to see how “we” are like “them”.

The series has provided a number of critical insights into the means by which the enemy other is created, made sense of through the construction of narratives, and given a face: the image of the other. To transcend these devices that naturalise the division between a group-self, often depicted as all good, and an enemy other, often depicted as all bad or evil, it is necessary to analyse beyond the image of the enemy other and to find common humanity. This series has been an excellent collection of work that provides insight into doing just that.

[1] Kristeva, Julie (1992) Strangers in Ourselves (New York; Columbia University Press).

In March 2012 I took the train from London to York. I arrived with my friends at King’s Cross station, newly refurbished. We complained. We criticised the non-descript modernism, the peculiar honeycomb structure of the ceiling, tinged with pink light, a pseudo-naturalist touch that leant the concourse and the outlets of the usual corporate suspects a comforting, womblike glow. The space, we felt, was deeply offensive only by virtue of the great pains taken to be inoffensive in every possible way. The new King’s Cross, we decided unanimously, was a place that nobody could ever really love, but most would find difficult to hate. We board the train. Two women are sitting at the opposite table. As we roll out of the station, one of the women leans in at the table, first words. “Doesn’t the new station look nice?”

In openDemocracy’s last Friday essay, Jonathan Moses explored the tendency for capitalism to emulate or appropriate even those cultures that originate from a desire to disrupt it. The theme is nothing new, Che Guevara and the Soviets know all about life on a T-shirt or tracksuit. Moses’ assessment is rather a reminder of an old danger, one made all the more timely by a society outraged by crisis(!) and austerity, and yet apathetic about politics. His is a warning against a consumer culture that will sell your protest back to you whilst doing nothing to alter the injustice that made you want to protest in the first place. Moses writes at one extreme about the characterless, glass-and-steel buildings that conceal the labour relations that built them, while at the other he dissects Byron Burgers, BrewDog and MEATMission, the culture of Dude food and the punk-grunge irreverence that uses bare wood and hanging wires as an aesthetic antidote to conformity. That all this is provided within the convenience of a consumer culture is, needless to say, the final insult to the radicalism that first produced the aesthetic.

There are a couple of stones Moses leaves unturned. MEAT arguably treads closer to nihilist than radical, with water called ‘government juice’ and one burger on the menu named ‘the dead hippie’. In the case of Byron, Moses looks at the Upper Street (London) outlet, decorated as a (painfully contrived) ruin, whereas what I always found more interesting is how the chain creates its decor depending on the punters and styles typical of a local area. A north-east London outlet gets the ‘ruin look’, Cambridge is upholstered in royal green and brown leather, while the residents of Manchester have a matter of weeks before they find out if their new outlet will be styled for Madchester or industrial revolution chic. The Byron model is that of a parasite adapting to the body of the host.

I would argue that we are seeing not only the emergence of consumable radicalism, but also a corporate response to the human need for curiosity and chance. The ubiquitous deli chain, Pret a Manger, has its policy of a ‘joy giveaway’, whereby staff are instructed to periodically give a customer their coffee for free. Bistro-come-bakery, Le Pain Quotidien, have an elaborate tale celebrating the small number of red bowls that are inserted randomly amongst their ordinarily beige ceramic bowls. These are rationalised, top-down initiatives implemented to lend consumer experience a sense of the random in a world that has been meticulously predicted and planned. The article, ‘Rebranding London’, raises perhaps the cruellest incidence of this, whereby historic buildings have their facades protected even as, beneath the walls, development is free to force out local business and pursue the newest and most garish forms of corporatism.

This leads us to the question, who is it that is being tricked? In other words, who are the assumed consumers of the radicalism? The critique implies individuals possessed of political persuasions at once receptive to radical non-conformity, and yet sufficiently lacking in scrutiny that they fail to spot the contrived hand that created it. Does this individual actually exist? Is the Žižek lament of a population sold inauthenticity one that was drawn-up by – and on behalf of – those who have clearly not bought into the illusion? Meanwhile, those who are consuming may well not have defined themselves as radical to begin with. The reflection begins to sprawl, not least because within the code of consumer capitalism is the proviso, the nod to each of our individual intelligences, that everybody else has been fooled by the ruse we ourselves have spotted. Perhaps the entirely gullible consumer is just as much a creature of fiction as the Spartan cynic who has spotted the hypocrisies, and somehow managed to stop consuming.

Living up to my blue china

A brief look at the human relationship to the aesthetic is rewarding. Levi-Strauss advanced aesthetics as part of a bricolage that in turn creates the emotional, mythical tapestry of society, constantly drawing on the objects humans find around themselves. Though his work was ethnographic, it is significant that we no longer afford our own society the same gaze anthropology is expected to lend other cultures. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida makes the useful distinction that society is made up of many ‘Texts’ that need to be read. In so doing, Derrida facilitates the understanding that beneath the visual of the aesthetic lurks much more, but he also frames the idea that not all Texts will be visual. It is Oscar Wilde, however, that provides some of the most accessible accounts of the effect of the aesthetic. His famous line, “I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china”, presents the notion of aesthetics as existing in perfect proportion, creating entities that possess a pristine sense of balance beyond that which humans could ever hope to attain.

For my money, Wilde was wrong. His existence was more significant than that of the aesthetic of his fine china. Yet in consciously and openly scrutinising the triumph of the aesthetic over himself, he admits to the allure that corporations from Byron to Givenchy mean to harness. To look at the social consequences of this, Lord Henry’s statement from The Picture of Dorian Gray is apposite:

“Beauty is a form of genius, is higher, indeed than genius, as it needs no explanation… It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.”

Oscar Wilde acknowledged the triumph of aesthetics

If we take beauty as the highest form of genius, we can understand how growing injustices are tolerated in modern society. Taking Wilde’s perspective, consumer society has not deprived us of fairness and freedom in exchange for nothing, but it has given us an abundance of Beauty in return. Lavish experience is now bestowed upon us: we have been made princes, masters of rebellion or sophistication, or simply owners of garments and accessories that will sparkle for us without end.

It is also valuable not to separate our experience of visual aesthetics from our interaction with other short-term, shallow Texts, sensory encounters that we experience quickly before moving to the next instalment. A similar analysis might also be made of our relationship with news headlines, Facebook notifications, growth forecasts, outpourings of mass public grief, polished pop sounds, foods with high sugar content or synthetically enhanced flavours. What slowly takes shape is a population, and at this point, we may as well refer to ourselves more as a ‘species’, that takes short, shallow doses of pleasure, ease or activation, assembled in such comprehensive bricolage that we need never stray far from something else carefully designed with our user-experience in mind. We are accustomed to a superiority of form over substance so all-pervasive that the triumph of the immediate is complete.

Just past his two hundredth birthday, Søren Kierkegaard remains relevant in helping to explain (if not quite understand) what is happening around us. For Kierkegaard, life consists of the finite, the infinite and the tussle between the two. The banal, physical and finite world craves the meaning of the infinite and ethereal, while the infinite craves the physical presence of the finite. What we see in the sensory experience that stems from product and place is a concerted effort to load the finite with the infinite, transforming life and experience from an organic and time-intensive process, into an endless stream of nanomoments that synthesise what might once have required history, engagement and accumulation. Moses refers to the monotony of modern architecture, the glass which does nothing but reflect our very own individuality right back at us. In Wilde and his blue china, meanwhile, we are left to consider the prospect of humanity crushed by the aesthetics we created through our own longing for the infinite.

As in any school of thought, scholars of postmodernism see their particular discourse as the tool by which we make sense of a world without the many structures and institutions that might once have ordered it. The idea is that postmodernism is smart, rational, empowering; humans outfoxing chaos by the power of intellect. The premise here, however, is that the world around us is in disorder, spinning into a post-structural web of contradictions, distraction and manipulations of truth. And yet what if the scholars have it the wrong way round? What if postmodernism does not describe the world outside of us, but rather the world inside our head? The atoms of the world continue to move much as ever they have done, and it is only in the space between our own ears that the structures have collapsed. The intricacies of postmodernism are direct evidence of the elaborate contortions of thought required to piece things back together.

If carefully designed aesthetics and Texts empower us as individuals eager for emotional experience, perhaps the lasting problem is for those of us with a Text of social and material equality at the core of who we are, for whom there exists the unsettling thought that the equality we are being offered is not the one we wanted. If someone is indeed experiencing a sense of radicalism, euphoria, or plain beauty, is the greater problem that they are… or that we aren’t? “Subjectivity is truth” and “truth is subjectivity”, as Kierkegaard would say. As far as the women boarding the train in a newly renovated King’s Cross station were concerned… the world had just got slightly better.

Kings Cross Station. Image: Craig Shepheard

Elections for the City of London Corporation’s Common Council were for many years politics-free events in which a narrowly drawn electorate voted for a narrow range of candidates. As often as not, sitting councillors stood for re-election in seats that were uncontested. Debate about the sort of organisation the Corporation should be did not take place.

The election on the 23rd March of this year was different. It involved public debates about the Corporation’s future and a genuine choice of candidates in 21 of the City’s 25 wards. The City Reform Group, of which I am a member, encouraged and supported independent, reform-minded candidates to stand and 10 did so. (See my last article for OurKingdom, in the run-up to the elections.) Those candidates presented programmes of reform that were couched in distinctly City-friendly tones, calling for transparency in the manner in which the Corporation spends its money and makes its decisions, advanced new proposals for how it could better deploy its considerable resources (for example, by ploughing money into the City’s police force in order that it may become a serious player in the fight against financial crime) and how it may act as leader in building a culture of professionalism in the financial services industry.

Unusually, since Corporation elections are generally non-party political, the Labour Party also fielded 10 candidates. The Labour manifesto involved similar commitments to reform as those candidates who were supported by the City Reform Group. However, the Labour party pledged a wider range of commitments, including making the Corporation a living wage employer and using its clout to persuade City employers to do likewise. Labour candidates stood in wards in which independent reform-committed candidates did not stand in order to ensure that in as many wards as possible the voters had a candidate who stood for reform of the Corporation.

The voters, having been given a genuine choice they came down emphatically, in favour of the status quo. Only two independent reform candidates were elected. None of Labour’s candidates were, although several performed well and one came within a handful of votes of doing so. The winner of the election was indisputably the Corporation itself. (See the results here.)

One must approach with particular caution the results of an election in which the votes even for successful candidates were in the hundreds and not the thousands. However, it provides a glimpse of the attitudes and approaches that will feature in politics of the financial services industry in the coming years.

The City voters

The Corporation’s electorate is unrepresentative of London and the UK population, but is peculiarly representative of the City itself. It consists of those with property interests within the City and those who have been allocated a vote by corporations who are provided with a number of votes to distribute internally. This franchise means that whilst some of the electorate were small business owners and some were residents, the majority were those who worked within the financial services industry.

The votes for Labour party and independent reform candidates show that the industry does not vote as a monolithic block. But the rejection of reform candidates in the vast majority of seats is significant.

Those who stood for reform offered the mildest recipe for change. They advanced no critique of capitalism, or even of the version of capitalism which successive governments have advanced over the last 30 years. They did not seek to challenge the assumption that here was an industry that should be prized and supported or that the Corporation was the body to provide industry-wide leadership. What they did stand for was an acknowledgment that something had gone very significantly wrong with the way in which many parts of the financial services industry operated and that the Corporation, which is effectively the bridgehead between the financial services industry and the state (the term ‘lobbyist’ does not quite capture the entrenched nature of its influence), was part of the problem.

The election was therefore an opportunity for the City to demonstrate a willingness to acknowledge wrong and commit itself to reform by voting for change within its own representative body.

The City’s commitment to reforming itself has been much trumpeted by the Corporation and other industry leaders to ward off the threat of external regulation (most recently in its submission to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards in which it opposed any additional regulation of the banking industry). If one thing emerges from this election it is that for all those claims, when the City is faced with the test of voting for reform, then in the privacy of the voting booth, the City chose the status quo. When one comes to consider how far the City can be trusted to puts its house in order, this fact deserves to be better known.

The reformers

Although the launch of the City Reform Group was respectfully reported by the broadsheets the election itself was (aside from the coverage by the Financial Times) covered poorly even by the Evening Standard, London’s daily paper.

This may say something about the commitment of that paper to provide serious coverage of important London events and perhaps also about its own pro-City bias. However, even the most right wing news outlet finds it difficult to ignore the news on its doorstep. Perhaps the greatest success of Occupy the London Stock exchange was to occupy the front pages of Britain’s daily papers: the tents in front of St Pauls may have brought the press, but they stayed because the occupation created a sense that the terms of debate had been thrown open: the big issues need not, indeed could not, be left to the political class to debate and decide.

Former occupiers were involved in the City Reform Group but by the time of the Corporation election that radical, reforming spirit had thinned into a genteel, establishment call for moral improvement. Led by Church of England clergymen, supported senior figures in the RSA and WHICH and by conservative MP David Davis, the reform group did not offer a challenge to existing system but a plea for the creation of institutional morality need to make the system work.

It is an agenda of ‘moderate’ reform, centred on professionalization of the industry and ring fencing rather than separation of the deposit-taking and investment arms of the banks, to which the Labour and Conservative parties has already committed themselves and to which the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards has added its voice.

The fact that the Labour Party, which once pledged to abolish the Corporation, now participates in Corporation elections as a candid friend of the financial services industry (‘to bring about the reforms needed to create again a City and Corporation of which we can all be proud’, as the City of London Labour Party website has it, is a small but telling signal that it will not be the party to ‘take on the City’ in the way that the Thatcher government took on the unions. It may institute codes of conduct and greater training requirements, plead for responsibility and issue threats of real change if impossibly vague criteria are not met (Labour currently pledge to break up the banks ‘if there is not a genuine change of culture’ in the City. The City has responded and will continue to respond much as certain trade unions responded to calls for restraint and responsibility in 1970s, by issuing solemn declarations that in practice count for little.

Those who took part in the Corporation election trod a difficult path: they had to be moderate and un-newsworthy in order to have any chance of being elected. Yet it is hard not to see the election as one example of the reform of the financial services industry being re-occupied by the political class, denuded of it radical potential and fading into the foreground of politics-as-usual. ‘Make no little plans’, said architect Daniel Burnham ‘for they have no magic to stir men’s blood.’ It is a warning which City reformers need to heed.

The future reform of the Corporation and the industry

One of the odd advantages enjoyed by the Corporation is that, despite its own self-proclaimed role as the ‘voice’ of the financial services industry, many people persist in regarding it as a harmless, historic local government body. However, this attitude may be changing. The pressure for the Corporation to release information about its private income led it to make disclosures in the lead up to the election. The ‘City’s Cash Overview 2012’ which revealed a fund worth £1.32bn was not a full breakdown of expenditure and pressure must continue to understand how it uses its money to advance the interests of the financial services industry. In March the online campaigning organisation Avaaz started a petition that called for the ‘Rememberancer’, the Corporation official who represents the City’s interest in Parliament, to be removed from his traditional seat in the Chamber of the House of Commons.

Understanding and exposing the role that the Corporation plays in shaping the life of London and the nation is important. However, the Corporation - its institutions, history and public spaces - should also be used to fire the widest debate about the future of the financial services industry, which is a debate about what sort of economy and society we want.

2015 will mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the medieval charter in which the British crown not only undertook to respect traditional liberties but also to respect the freedom of the trading City of London. This freedom has been the source of the wealth and power of the financial services industry. The Magna Carta anniversary is an opportunity to think again about the terms of the licence which the City enjoys: to consider what society requires of the financial services industry in return for the right to make its profits.

2013 is shaping up to be a quiet year for political protest in Greece. You won’t have heard about the riots, protests, or running street battles. There aren’t any. With talk of a slow ‘Grecovery’, Athens is no longer the epicentre of financial and political news.

An empty Syntagma, Jon Wiltshire.

But it certainly remains the pressure point. Social upheaval continues, frighteningly exemplified by the wandering unemployed father and child I met at a community kitchen who move from free meal to free meal looking for food; or the underreported but frequent shootings, stabbings and beatings of migrants by Golden Dawn (see openDemocracy) and those that support their racist and extra-judicial violence [1].

2011 occupation of Syntagma Square

This year feels sheepish in comparison to 2011; a year of surging grass-roots politics, a global political ‘moment’. Back then, Greeks of all ages and most political persuasions had occupied Syntagma, Athens’ central square and most prominent public space, alongside occupiers in the US, the UK, Spain, Israel, Egypt, and beyond [2].

Niovi Laúd, who co-runs a fair-trade cooperative café in Athens, was there: “I saw things I hadn’t imagined”, she tells me, sitting outside her café. From day one it felt like a new way of doing politics; a politics distinct from the slanging matches of the past. Syntagma produced discussions across fractious ideological lines that were notably civil, unusually tolerant. It was an unprecedentedly constructive and energetic coming together, at a time of imposed and impending austerity, mass protest, racism, police violence, and memories of 2008’s riots.

But that was two years ago. Today, the effects of austerity are everywhere entrenched, lagging behind the legislation and memoranda. So what happened to the energy of the occupation? There are reams of pages written on Occupy Wall Street’s fallout (see the Financial Times’ roundup), but where are the Greek occupiers?

Back to the neighbourhoods

They went home. Or rather, they returned to the neighbourhoods. At Syntagma, like in many of the other occupied squares across the Arab and Western worlds, seasoned activists mingled with the erstwhile apolitical. “For the first time, neighbours met their neighbours in a political setting”, Niovi says. “They saw that people they knew from their suburb or their street were troubled by the same problems”. The occupation provided the setting for indignant people of all political colours to form the strong social networks that are the basis for today’s surge in localised, grass roots activism.

Indeed, immediately after Syntagma’s occupation, it was through these localised networks that the ‘Do Not Pay’ (Den Plirono) movement against near-punitive taxes on housing, was so well supported by those with so different a political tendency. And it’s through these networks that, two years on, local people are attempting to help those worst affected by the crisis, those who’ve slipped off the bottom rung [3].

Criss-crossing Athens, most neighbourhoods have established their own non-hierarchical assemblies, regularly meeting to discuss and act upon what they see as local issues. And most impressively, solidarity kitchens regularly feed the city’s poor and act as a focal point for community togetherness. Increasingly, neighbourhood groups have also started their own doctor’s surgeries, pharmacies, tutoring services, and psychotherapy sessions. The locals are stepping in where the state has stepped out.

‘There were two Syntagmas’

“I’m not really sure what happened at Syntagma. I think there were actually two squares, two geographies: one in the square itself, where the assemblies took place, and one up the steps, outside Parliament”. Georgia Alexandri, who is finishing her PhD in urban geography, was also at Syntagma. She’s wants me to think about visually: Syntagma Square is a large, sloping marble plaza with steps at it’s eastern end. Climbing up the steps leads you to wide pavements, four lanes of traffic and, behind ceremonial guards wearing a Greek permutation of the kilt, the pinkish Greek Parliament. It’s here, up the steps, that most political protests and marches begin, end, or at least pass. And it’s here, up the steps, that “they were angrier, simply shouting at the politicians”. Georgia tells me she doesn’t want to “beautify” the occupation; what happened, who was there, and what the outcome was isn’t as clear as some would have it. Yes, as you might expect, strong leftist, anarchist and autonomist networks were created and broadened in the main square, through the ‘people’s assemblies’. But the anti-political surge also attracted enraged citizens who felt their problems might be better solved by the far right.

Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London aimed to expose the financiers, not the politicians. That’s why they occupied public space in the financial districts. Although a false distinction everywhere, those with power and those with money in Greece really are a bit more indistinguishable than in the US or the UK. Perhaps Syntagma was simply the most central space, or perhaps the Greeks were making a point about how in cahoots political parties were (and remain) with most problematic aspects of Greek society.

Either way, Parliament overshadowed the occupation. The actual assemblies held at Syntagma were, by and large, constructive. But Georgia thinks that it was up the steps that those newly disillusioned by party politics began to be inculcated by the far right. She thinks many of those who were there purely because they were anti-politics, eventually ended up supporting Golden Dawn (the Greek Nazi party built on generations-old legacies of fascism).

Two types of local networks

So on one side, we have the previously apolitical, the leftists, the anarchists and the autonomists, all helping those worst affected by austerity through localised, neighbourhood groups. And on the other, there’s Golden Dawn. The party and their supporters, clad in black t-shirts and combat pants, help ‘only Greeks’ through media-friendly and provocative ‘Greek only’ food giveaways or ‘ethnic Greek’ blood donations.

Their involvement signals another development in Athenian localised politics: perhaps unfortunately, altruistic responses to austerity – solidarity kitchens or doctor’s surgeries – are now being used for party political infiltration. Yes, Golden Dawn are organising monthly media stunts. But Syriza, a parliamentary political party, are also getting in on the action. It feels as if what was an extra-party-political movement now isn’t.

Where are the occupiers now?

Syntagma Square’s occupiers forged strong networks of thriving – if underfunded and under-equipped – neighbourhood assemblies that provide the services the state has cut. For the most part, these services are open to everyone; Golden Dawn media stunts are the exception. But what of the other 2011 occupations? Where are the occupiers now? Will basic community service provision on a volunteer basis work elsewhere? Indeed, will it work in Athens, in the long-run? Whatever your politics, running a public doctor’s surgery without state funding is hard, if not impossible.

[1] A ballooning police force are also now enforcing tightened immigration policies in Athens. Often, their methods are brutal, several eyewitnesses I’ve met here talk of beatings of illegal immigrants being commonplace. The experiences of some foreign tourists, mistaken by the police for illegal immigrants, is testament to this.

[2] These movements were occupying, developing structures and debating for different ideological reasons and in country- or even city-specific contexts. Yet, they are intimately linked because they all concurrently – and sometimes in solidarity with one another – adopted the same form of protest: a semi-permanent occupation of a public space; non-hierarchical organisation; and open, decision-making assemblies.

[3] This article isn’t designed to be ‘crisis porn’ – that is, spectacular, emotive, loosely based in the nuances of reality – but the statistics are real.

Throughout history, women have often leveraged their legitimacy and status as mothers—or even as grandmothers—to protest war and violence. In the United States, for example, Carrie Chapman Catt and Jane Addams founded the Woman’s Peace Party in 1915, which eventually became the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Like so many other women of their generation, they argued that women’s special life-giving and preserving role as mothers gave them a unique right to seek universal disarmament in the 1920s.

Between the early years of the twentieth century and the 1960s, union activists and socialists often based their opposition to war on their view of themselves as workers or revolutionaries. Still, the tradition of women protesting as mothers persisted.

That tradition was dramatically challenged on January 15, 1968 by American young feminists. On that day, about 5,000 women peace activists from two generations gathered in Washington D.C. to demand the immediate withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. They called themselves the Jeanette Rankin Brigade, in honor of the first woman elected to the U.S.Congress, a pacifist, who had voted against both world wars.

Interspersed among the crowd were approximately 500 young feminists, who, in a controversial act of defiance, decided to symbolically bury “Traditional Womanhood” at the protest. The ritual was hardly spontaneous. After months of consciousness raising, they had decided that “the Brigade was playing upon the traditional female role in the classic manner. They came as wives, mothers and mourners; that is, tearful and passive reactors to the actions of men rather than organizing as women to change that definition of femininity to something other than a synonym for weakness, political impotence, and tears.” They demanded to be heard as citizens, not as mothers.

After the coalition of women had protested and delivered their petition to the U.S. Senate, about 500 young feminists issued black-bordered invitations to the rest of the Brigade, “joyfully” inviting them to join the torchlight burial of Traditional Womanhood, “who passed with a sigh to her Great Reward this year of the Lord, 1968, after 3,000 years of bolstering the ego of Warmakers and aiding the cause of war.”

They carried a dummy of “Traditional Womanhood” and symbolically buried her at the military’s Arlington National Cemetery. Larger than life, the dummy rode on a bier “complete with feminine getup, blank face, blonde curls and candles. Hanging from the bier were disposable items such as curlers, garters and hairspray. Streamers floated off of it and banners screamed “DON’T CRY, Resist!” The funeral entourage sang songs specially written for the occasion, lamenting “women’s traditional role which encourages men to develop aggression and militarism to prove their masculinity.”

The rest of the Jeanette Ranking Brigade snubbed their invitation. Many of the older women failed to understand why these young women needed to attack activists like the Women Strike for Peace, a group that had successfully fought above-ground atomic bomb testing in the early 1960s and The International League for Peace and Freedom, which had protested the Vietnam War. What was their problem? Why did they need to engage in such adolescent theatrics and make women’s liberation an issue at an all-women’s antiwar demonstration in the nation’s capital? The war, in their view, was more important.

The generation gap could not be bridged. For the young women, the burial of Traditional Womanhood was a critique of the Feminine Mystique of the 1950s, the pervasive cultural imperative that women should live exclusively through their husbands and children. Many of these young feminists were not yet mothers and they insisted that “Our children will not become victims of our unconscious resentments and our displaced ambitions.” Determined to avoid the plight of their mothers’ generation, the young women decided to protest as citizens. The ghost that haunted them wore an apron, lived submissively, and protested as a mother.

But the Burial of Traditional Womanhood also expressed the rage of young civil rights and antiwar activists who had gradually come to realize the power that their men in the movement and elsewhere held over their lives. As they buried Traditional Womanhood, they declared their right to resist war as autonomous beings, not merely as contingent appendages of men and their families. Rejecting the biological determinism of the 1950s, they stressed the similarity between the sexes, rather than the differences. Though they failed to gain many recruits, their counter protest helped consolidate and publicize the rapidly expanding women’s liberation movement all across the nation. Sadly, the legacy of that demonstration is rarely included in histories of the 1960s or antiwar protests against the Vietnam War.

Nor did the attack against protesting as mothers last very long. As women peace activists aged, the terror of the 1950s retreated and their respect for women’s experience and motherhood grew. By the 1980s many of these women peace activists were no longer distressed by the “motherist” rhetoric they had rejected in 1968.

Some used the language of motherhood tactically, believing that as mothers, rather than as feminists, they had greater legitimacy. Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarment (WAND), founded by Helen Caldicott, happily exploited Mother’s Day and other symbols of motherhood to promote women’s organizations against militarism. Aware of how effective women, as mothers, had fought for an end to violence in Argentina, Ireland and South Africa, many peace activists no longer worried about “traditional womanhood".

Still others used a new eco-feminist discourse that viewed women as preservers of the planet and men as plunderers of the earth. The women who participated in the Women’s Pentagon Action in 1980, for example, valorized everything female. Emotionality---excessive displays of weeping, raging, chanting and mourning--- were honored and favorably compared to men’s sublimation of feeling into violence. Traditions inherited—or newly invented-- from women’s past were used to glorify women’s magical healing powers. At a variety of peace encampments in the United States and England, thousands of women in effect said that they had a moral responsibility to wrest control of the earth from men. “For many,” explained two participants at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Encampment, “The issue is about reclaiming power for ourselves, and not remaining victims of a male-defined world characterized by violence.”

Although they employed a discourse that presumed women morally superior—much as mothers had done—they also succeeded in drawing the world’s attention to the danger of nuclear war.

So does it matter which language women use when they fight against war and violence? There is no correct answer. Women should use the discourse that best reflects their own sensibilities and one that resonates in their own society. Every discourse, however, creates its own limitations. Protesting as mothers is often more effective than organizing as feminists, though it may limit women’s rights as citizens. Organizing as feminist peace protesters may offend so many people that women’s demands for peace may be ignored.

The truth is, no matter what discourse they employ, the very act of fighting against war and violence turns women into political actors, which inevitably expands their traditional role in their families and society.

Since 2000, however, women peace activists have successfully employed the language of human rights on the global stage, declaring women’s rights as human rights, challenging violence against women, and ensuring that women be engaged in fighting militarism before, during and after war.

Human rights activists are certainly not the first to argue that women should fight militarism as citizens. Betty Friedan once said, “My own revulsion toward the war in Vietnam does not flow from my breast, nor even from the fact of my draft-age sons, but from my moral conscience as a human being and as an American. A few years before her death, Simone de Beauvoir expressed her firm conviction that “women should desire peace as human beings, not as women.”

The historical significance of the Burial of Traditional Womanhood is that it set the stage for a moment in the future when women peace activists could, without apology, use the language of human rights to protest war and militarism—not just as mothers or morally superior protectors of the earth—but as citizens of the world.

Quotes in this article are taken from an article by the author in the journal Vietnam Generation ( out of print) , Summer-Fall Vol 1, no. 4. 1989, entitled 'Gender and the War: Men, Women and Vietnam'.

This article is part of 5050's series exploring themes to be discussed at the Nobel Women's Initiative conference Moving Beyond Militarism and War: Women-Driven Solutions for a Nonviolent World May 28-31, Belfast, Ireland. Read 50.50's full coverage of the conference

Read more articles on 50.50 from earlier Nobel Women's Initiative conferences

The Doha round of trade negotiations is deadlocked, despite eight successful multilateral trade rounds before it. Climate negotiators have met for two decades without finding a way to stem global emissions. The UN is paralyzed in the face of growing insecurities across the world, the latest dramatic example being Syria. Each of these phenomena could be treated as if it was independent, and an explanation sought for the peculiarities of its causes. Yet, such a perspective would fail to show what they, along with numerous other instances of breakdown in international negotiations, have in common.

Global cooperation is gridlocked across a range of issue areas. The reasons for this are not the result of any single underlying causal structure, but rather of several underlying dynamics that work together. Global cooperation today is failing not simply because it is very difficult to solve many global problems – indeed it is – but because previous phases of global cooperation have been incredibly successful, producing unintended consequences that have overwhelmed the problem-solving capacities of the very institutions that created them. It is hard to see how this situation can be unravelled, given failures of contemporary global leadership, the weaknesses of NGOs in converting popular campaigns into institutional change and reform, and the domestic political landscapes of the most powerful countries.

A golden era of governed globalization

In order to understand why gridlock has come about it is important to understand how it was that the post-Second World War era facilitated, in many respects, a successful form of ‘governed globalization’ that contributed to relative peace and prosperity across the world over several decades. This period was marked by peace between the great powers, although there were many proxy wars fought out in the global South. This relative stability created the conditions for what now can be regarded as an unprecedented period of prosperity that characterized the 1950s onward. Although it is by no means the sole cause, the UN is central to this story, helping to create conditions under which decolonization and successive waves of democratization could take root, profoundly altering world politics.

While the economic record of the postwar years varies by country, many experienced significant economic growth and living standards rose rapidly across significant parts of the world. By the late 1980s a variety of East Asian countries were beginning to grow at an unprecedented speed, and by the late 1990s countries such as China, India and Brazil had gained significant economic momentum, a process that continues to this day.

Meanwhile, the institutionalization of international cooperation proceeded at an equally impressive pace. In 1909, 37 intergovernmental organizations existed; in 2011, the number of institutions and their various off-shoots had grown to 7608 (Union of International Associations 2011). There was substantial growth in the number of international treaties in force, as well as the number of international regimes, formal and informal. At the same time, new kinds of institutional arrangements have emerged alongside formal intergovernmental bodies, including a variety of types of transnational governance arrangements such as networks of government officials, public-private partnerships, as well as exclusively private/corporate bodies.

Postwar institutions created the conditions under which a multitude of actors could benefit from forming multinational companies, investing abroad, developing global production chains, and engaging with a plethora of other social and economic processes associated with globalization. These conditions, combined with the expansionary logic of capitalism and basic technological innovation, changed the nature of the world economy, radically increasing dependence on people and countries from every corner of the world. This interdependence, in turn, created demand for further institutionalization, which states seeking the benefits of cooperation provided, beginning the cycle anew.

This is not to say that international institutions were the only cause of the dynamic form of globalization experienced over the last few decades. Changes in the nature of global capitalism, including breakthroughs in transportation and information technology, are obviously critical drivers of interdependence. However, all of these changes were allowed to thrive and develop because they took place in a relatively open, peaceful, liberal, institutionalized world order. By preventing World War Three and another Great Depression, the multilateral order arguably did just as much for interdependence as microprocessors or email (see Mueller 1990; O’Neal and Russett 1997).

Beyond the special privileges of the great powers

Self-reinforcing interdependence has now progressed to the point where it has altered our ability to engage in further global cooperation. That is, economic and political shifts in large part attributable to the successes of the post-war multilateral order are now amongst the factors grinding that system into gridlock. Because of the remarkable success of global cooperation in the postwar order, human interconnectedness weighs much more heavily on politics than it did in 1945. The need for international cooperation has never been higher. Yet the “supply” side of the equation, institutionalized multilateral cooperation, has stalled. In areas such as nuclear proliferation, the explosion of small arms sales, terrorism, failed states, global economic imbalances, financial market instability, global poverty and inequality, biodiversity losses, water deficits and climate change, multilateral and transnational cooperation is now increasingly ineffective or threadbare. Gridlock is not unique to one issue domain, but appears to be becoming a general feature of global governance: cooperation seems to be increasingly difficult and deficient at precisely the time when it is needed most.

It is possible to identify four reasons for this blockage, four pathways to gridlock: rising multipolarity, institutional inertia, harder problems, and institutional fragmentation. Each pathway can be thought of as a growing trend that embodies a specific mix of causal mechanisms. Each of these are explained briefly below.

Growing multipolarity. The absolute number of states has increased by 300 percent in the last 70 years, meaning that the most basic transaction costs of global governance have grown. More importantly, the number of states that “matter” on a given issue—that is, the states without whose cooperation a global problem cannot be adequately addressed—has expanded by similar proportions. At Bretton Woods in 1945, the rules of the world economy could essentially be written by the United States with some consultation with the UK and other European allies. In the aftermath of the 2008-2009 crisis, the G-20 has become the principal forum for global economic management, not because the established powers desired to be more inclusive, but because they could not solve the problem on their own. However, a consequence of this progress is now that many more countries, representing a diverse range of interests, must agree in order for global cooperation to occur.

Institutional inertia. The postwar order succeeded, in part, because it incentivized great power involvement in key institutions. From the UN Security Council, to the Bretton Woods institutions, to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, key pillars of the global order explicitly grant special privileges to the countries that were wealthy and powerful at the time of their creation. This hierarchy was necessary to secure the participation of the most important countries in global governance. Today, the gain from this trade-off has shrunk while the costs have grown. As power shifts from West to East, North to South, a broader range of participation is needed on nearly all global issues if they are to be dealt with effectively. At the same time, following decolonization, the end of the Cold War and economic development, the idea that some countries should hold more rights and privileges than others is increasingly (and rightly) regarded as morally bankrupt. And yet, the architects of the postwar order did not, in most cases, design institutions that would organically adjust to fluctuations in national power.

Harder problems. As independence has deepened, the types and scope of problems around which countries must cooperate has evolved. Problems are both now more extensive, implicating a broader range of countries and individuals within countries, and intensive, penetrating deep into the domestic policy space and daily life. Consider the example of trade. For much of the postwar era, trade negotiations focused on reducing tariff levels on manufactured products traded between industrialized countries. Now, however, negotiating a trade agreement requires also discussing a host of social, environmental, and cultural subjects - GMOs, intellectual property, health and environmental standards, biodiversity, labour standards—about which countries often disagree sharply. In the area of environmental change a similar set of considerations applies. To clean up industrial smog or address ozone depletion required fairly discrete actions from a small number of top polluters. By contrast, the threat of climate change and the efforts to mitigate it involve nearly all countries of the globe. Yet, the divergence of voice and interest within both the developed and developing worlds, along with the sheer complexity of the incentives needed to achieve a low carbon economy, have made a global deal, thus far, impossible (Falkner et al. 2011; Victor 2011).

Fragmentation. The institution-builders of the 1940s began with, essentially, a blank slate. But efforts to cooperate internationally today occur in a dense institutional ecosystem shaped by path dependency. The exponential rise in both multilateral and transnational organizations has created a more complex multilevel and multi-actor system of global governance. Within this dense web of institutions mandates can conflict, interventions are frequently uncoordinated, and all too typically scarce resources are subject to intense competition. In this context, the proliferation of institutions tends to lead to dysfunctional fragmentation, reducing the ability of multilateral institutions to provide public goods. When funding and political will are scarce, countries need focal points to guide policy (Keohane and Martin 1995), which can help define the nature and form of cooperation. Yet, when international regimes overlap, these positive effects are weakened. Fragmented institutions, in turn, disaggregate resources and political will, while increasing transaction costs.

In stressing four pathways to gridlock we emphasize the manner in which contemporary global governance problems build up on each other, although different pathways can carry more significance in some domains than in others. The challenges now faced by the multilateral order are substantially different from those faced by the 1945 victors in the postwar settlement. They are second-order cooperation problems arising from previous phases of success in global coordination. Together, they now block and inhibit problem solving and reform at the global level.

Climate change

Gridlock exists across a range of different areas in global governance today, from security arrangements to trade and finance. This dynamic is, arguably, most evident in the realm of climate change. The diffusion of industrial production across the world—a process enabled by economic globalization—has created a situation in which the basic consumption of each individual directly affects the life chances of every other individual on the planet, as well as the life chances of future generations.

This is a powerful and entirely new form of global interdependence. Bluntly put, the future of our civilization depends on our ability to cooperate across borders. And yet, despite twenty years of multilateral negotiations under the UN, a global deal on climate change mitigation or adaptation remains elusive, with differences between developed countries, which have caused the problem, and developing countries, which will drive future emissions, forming the core barrier to progress. Unless we overcome gridlock in climate negotiations, as in other issue areas, we will be unable to continue to enjoy the peace and prosperity we have inherited from the postwar order.

There are, of course, several forces that might work against gridlock. These include the potential of social movements to uproot existing political constraints, catalysed by IT innovation and the use of associated technology for coordination across borders; the capacity of existing institutions to adapt and accommodate factors such as emerging multipolarity (the shift from the G-5/7 to the G-20 is one example); and efforts at institutional reform which seek to alter the organizational structure of global governance (for example, proposals to reform the Security Council or to establish a financial transaction tax).

Whether there is the political will or leadership to move beyond gridlock remains a pressing question. Social movements find it difficult to convert protests into consolidated institutional change. At the same time, the political leadership of the great power blocs appears dogged by national concerns: Washington is sharply divided, Europe is preoccupied with the future of the Euro and China is absorbed by the challenge of sustaining economic growth as the prime vehicle of domestic legitimacy. Against this background, the further deepening of gridlock and the continuing failure to address global collective action problems appears likely.

In the aftermath of the Second World War the institutional breakthroughs that occurred provided the momentum for decades of sustained economic growth and geopolitical stability sufficient for the transformation of the world economy, the shift from the Cold War to a multipolar order, and the rise of new communication and network societies.

However, what worked then does not work as well now, as gridlock freezes problem solving capacity in global governance. The search for a politics beyond gridlock, in theory and in practice, is a hugely significant task – nationally and globally – if global governance is to be once again both effective and fit for purpose.

This article summarizes some of the argument in a new book by the authors entitled, Gridlock: Why Global Cooperation is Failing When we Need it Most, Polity Press. It is published on May 28, 2013.

In the London bombings of 7 July 2005 (“7/7”), explosions on three underground trains and a bus killed fifty-two people as well as the four bombers and injured hundreds. Soon afterwards it became clear that the four bombers came from Leeds and Dewsbury in west Yorkshire, 200 miles north of London, and the media quickly descended on the neighbourhoods. On a number of occasions newspaper and TV journalists asked young people of Pakistani origins for their reactions, and these were almost always of horror and condemnation of the bombers and what they had done.

Not infrequently, though, they also referred to Iraq, where the post-invasion violence was at its height. Fifty-two innocent people died in London on 7/7 but that was the average daily death-toll in Iraq - day after day and week after week. The connection was not difficult to make and was reinforced by one of the "suicide videos" released in the wake of the London attacks. It was also angrily and predictably denied by Tony Blair and his government, even if it struck something of a chord with many people in Britain.

Eight years on, British troops have long since left Iraq. That was one of Gordon Brown's less noticed decisions, but it also involved a quid pro quo for Barack Obama in the form of a greater UK commitment to Afghanistan. That war has scarcely been more popular in Britain than was the one in Iraq, but the media attention is far lower and any link between the Woolwich atrocity and Afghanistan is almost entirely discounted.

In part this is explainable by the sheer horror of the action and the immediate spread of appalling images through new social media and the main broadcast and print media. The shock is there, it is visceral, and surely needs no explaining. It is sheer terrorism.

And yet this is not enough.

The new social media may provide vivid and grim dispersal of the Woolwich murder but that same media does the same for the numerous armed-drone attacks in Afghanistan, Yemen and Pakistan, including two drone-strikes in Yemen in the past week alone. These and their counterparts go virtually unreported in the establishment western press; indeed the public image in Britain is of a war rapidly winding down in Afghanistan and hardly observed in Yemen or Somalia, let alone Pakistan.

Where the disconnect lies is in the near-universal lack of knowledge of the intensity of the armed-drone operations as these replace “boots on the ground”. This lack of knowledge has two elements. The first is that the attacks have been numerous. The United States may be the major user of armed-drones in Afghanistan, with over a thousand operations through to the end of 2012, but the UK follows quite closely behind with 349.

The second is the absence of any information on casualties, except for the occasional naming of middle-ranking commanders who may die. This “we don't do body-counts” policy is persistent and was practised to remarkable effect in the air war in Libya in 2011.

At that time, Britain's ministry of defence would - day after day - release details of targets hit by bombs and missiles. These might be rocket-launchers, tank-transporters, anti-aircraft radars or psychological-warfare centres; but the remarkable thing was that no mention was made of people ever getting killed - and this was despite the ready availability of high-resolution bomb-damage assessment (essential in case of the need for retargeting). It was as if every time a bomb or missile was about to strike, the clever people around the target could jump out of the way in a matter of microseconds and escape entirely unharmed. The end result of this was that, to all intents and purposes, no one was getting killed or injured - at least as far as most of the UK media was concerned.

The same applies to Britain's armed-drone attacks in Afghanistan, with one difference: that the new social media, linked to the work of Islamist propagandists, is assiduously used to spread the reality of the strikes in a way that simply did not happen in Libya.

The appalling nature and the open shock of the Woolwich murder are such that it is expecting far too much for this Afghan connection to have any traction with public opinion. Yet there is a connection and the full picture is incomplete without it.

The steady move from boots-on-the-ground to "remote control" has created an apparent assumption that people in the west are safely anaesthetised from the impact - whether it be in Afghanistan, Yemen or, perhaps in the near future, Nigeria as well as Mali

We are not.

It is understandable that the murder of the young soldier is too grim and violent for that to be seen. But perhaps we will somehow have to make that imaginative leap if, in the longer term, we are to avoid further instances of such extreme violence on our streets.