The ongoing crisis between Ukraine and Russia has once again put into the limelight the strong Anglo-American alliance in foreign affairs. Both the United Kingdom and United States have been resolute in their efforts to avert a crisis by diplomatic dialogue and agreement. Their rhetoric has also been aligned in telling Putin to back down and warning of a “barrage of sanctions” for Russia’s invasion of Ukrainian sovereign territory. These threats have been backed up by the severe sanctions imposed against individuals linked to Putin’s regime.
The alignment of actions by the US and the UK against Russian aggression has given credence to two different views about the nature of the Anglo-American alliance. First, that Britain is a lapdog doing everything that the greater power America tells them to do. Secondly, that the alliance is simply a restatement of the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the United States because of shared values and principles. This dichotomous view of the Anglo-American alliance misses the Archimedean point; the Anglo-American alliance is contingent on shared domestic and foreign interests and the commonality of these interests is not eternal.
The Anglo-American alliance has a long history beginning with the ‘great reproachment’ (1895-1915), where both countries’ interests aligned leading to the alliance in the First World War. Despite the United States’ isolationism after the Great War, the Second World War brought the two countries together again in opposing Fascism and Communism leading to Winston Churchill’s in 1946 describing the alliance as the ‘special relationship.’
The ‘special relationship’ has seen the US and the UK standing side by side during the Cold War, Gulf War and the War on Terror. Hence, it shouldn’t be surprising that the US and UK have acted together and within the same foreign policy line during the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Furthermore, the level of intelligence, military and economic cooperation is unparalleled between major powers in the international sphere. The latest example of this cooperation is the security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States known as AUKUS in response to the growing power of China in South-East Asia.
This strong alliance between countries is also reflected in the strong relationship between US presidents and British prime ministers. The most notable example is the relationship between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Leaders who shared the same political and philosophical outlooks and had a common disdain for communism. Similarly, the ‘bromance’ between Tony Blair and George W. Bush particularly in relation to the Iraq War is reflective of how strong an alliance can be when both leaders get along. Simply being political soulmates, however, is not a necessary prerequisite for a strong relationship.
This strong relationship between countries and leaders has also resulted in accusations that Britain is America’s lapdog adopting policy positions to please the United States. Since the UK has usually followed American foreign policy positions.This is, once again, an overly simplistic view of British Foreign Policy. We only need to look into the modern history of the Anglo-American alliance to see these two countries disagreeing when their national interests are at loggerheads . For example, British and American interests collided in the 1956 Suez crisis when President Eisenhower forced Britain to back down in its intervention in Egypt, Harold Wilson’s refusal to send British troops to Vietnam, David Cameron’s approach to China and the US invasion of Grenada. These examples aren’t reflective of Britain’s lapdog status or a special relationship, but of a realistic relationship between two powers.
The Anglo-American alliance is strong because both countries share many interests, namely, security and free trade. Crucially it is also a pragmatic alliance, where both countries will not entirely agree on everything since foreign policy is directed at maximising the interests of the state. This maximisation of interests leads both countries to take the path that best suits their interest. If the UK’s and US’s interests coalesce or not this merely reflects the volatile nature of foreign affairs.
The alliance should not be viewed as a special relationship nor as an alliance where the lesser power unquestioningly follows the greater power. Understanding this is vital to demonstrating the alliance’s significance to the preservation of peace, security and economic prosperity domestically and internationally. Hence, the strong ties between the US and the UK will continue to be pivotal to coordinating the west’s response to the ongoing war in Ukraine. In short, The United States and the United Kingdom are partners, but it’s time to have a more realistic view of their relationship instead of categorising it as either special or subservient.
Ojel Rodríguez Burgos is a Policy Fellow of The Pinsker Centre, a campus-based think tank which facilitates discussion on global affairs and free speech. The views in this article are the author’s own.
-
The Dishonorable Victoria Nuland
As the Russia-Ukraine Crisis crawls into the second month of conflict, humanitarian disaster, and media sensationalism, many passive observers of the situation have been wondering who is to blame for the biggest military conflict in Europe since 1990’s Yugoslavia.
Mainstream media, OSNIT Twitter experts, and heads of state all make substantial claims about the culprits, the causes, a variety of predictions for the outcomes, and “solutions” that do nothing to actually solve the issue other than to speculate needlessly and obfuscate the reality on the ground in order to garner as much engagement as possible from the online community, and inflame hatred on both sides – dumbing down the debate to kindergarten levels of maturity, driveling the issue down to just another “Kony 2012” bandwagon for everyone to jump on.
In the West – particularly NATO member nations such as the United States and the United Kingdom – there has been a certain disregard for introspection and self-criticism in regards to the lead up to the current conflict. While the reality may not be as clean or as pleasant as we want, the current crisis in Ukraine is hardly a new development, nor had the invasion of Ukraine been completely out-of-the-blue as many pundits make it out to be.
This conflict has been ongoing for the last decade – it seems that most discussing the current escalation are willfully ignorant of that fact.
The people of Donbass, Luhansk and other Eastern oblasts of Ukraine have suffered under similar war-like conditions and humanitarian crisis since the beginning of the Ukrainian Civil War in 2014. No one in the West has cared about it, nor paid any thought, hashtags, or great displays of solidarity for those who have suffered since then – only now paying attention as the conflict escalated from a local regional conflict to a nation-wide one as soon as the Russians directly became involved – all with the help of actually being televised, of course.
Framing the issue as an “attack on the territorial sovereignty”, “democracy”, or “self-determination” of Ukraine is not only blatantly dishonest – it’s entirely hypocritical. Where were the calls to recognize the territorial sovereignty or democratic will of the separatist regions who no longer felt that their interests were represented in Kiev?
Nowhere, of course. Because it wasn’t “our side”.
For most, the finger of blame for the escalation of tensions to all-out war in Ukraine has been pointed directly at Russian President Vladimir Putin for activating the “special military operation” and invading Ukraine. For others the responsibility lies with Ukrainian leadership not compromising on territory claims and security concerns the Russian government has had, and the failure to follow the standards set by the Minsk II protocol signed in 2015. Many others lay the blame with NATO for encroachment and not taking Russia seriously or engaging in any sort of constructive dialogue with Moscow.
As the issue has been brushed aside, ignored, and unaddressed by Western powers who could’ve negotiated a peaceful resolution that would’ve put an end to the bloodshed years ago, the cock has truly come home to roost – metaphorically speaking. By not seriously engaging with any sort of dialogue with the Putin regime, attempting to make a buffer of any sort that addressed the security concerns of both sides, and by not prioritizing the safety of civilians on the ground but rather their own expansion, NATO has done nothing but help fan the flames of this conflict.
NATO, of course, cannot be “blamed” necessarily for the conflict at large. For what it’s worth, as a security organization it has been rather beneficial in creating a level of stability and bipolarity in European politics. It wasn’t always ideal, nor fair, but as a product of its time – the Cold War – it did a lot more good than harm in balancing power and security in the 20th century.
It may have acted as a bulwark against the threat of Soviet Communism back then, but as the Cold War ended it has changed with the unipolarity of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.
Today, NATO is merely an extension of American security and political power. It has shaped the Western world and its response to threats from an American perspective, prioritizing Washington’s concerns above all others. It is entirely a fabrication that the responsibility and configuration of NATO is somehow shared between its member nations; that’s symbolic rather than the actuality. This has been observable in the past couple of years as the projected power of NATO has been growing weaker without an immediate perceived threat, and European member states skimping out on funding the organization or actively seeking alternate security solutions – such as the push for a militarized European Union separate from NATO.
How coincidental that as the crisis in Ukraine has developed, the re-emphasis of NATO power has occurred as it was staring at its dissolution after American security failures in Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East?
NATO, of course, is composed of all sorts of characters and figureheads – both military and political – who maintain and grow the institution the way Washington needs it to. In the last two decades one of the largest forces in shaping how NATO (i.e. Washington D.C.) operates in Eastern Europe and in regards to Russia has been Victoria Nuland, who is currently serving as the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the Joe Biden administration.
If anyone can be sourced as holding key responsibility for laying out the foundations for the current crisis unfolding between Ukraine and Russia, it is her.
–
Victoria Nuland has been described as “brash” “blunt” and “crude” by many who have worked with her, either through the State Department or as her counterparts across Eurasia. The Washington careerist Nuland has spent most of her life entrenched firmly in the circus of the US State Department, climbing the ladder of power with a ferocious tenacity and iron-set will to shape Washington’s policies across the world.
It would be commendable, if her efforts weren’t completely driven by neoliberal globalist ideology that props up the status quo powers and elite D.C. political class. We can see how close she is to the establishment elites, after all she’s married to the co-founder of the Project for the New American Century and Council on Foreign Relations member, Robert Kagan.
Nuland has found herself in a variety of powerful positions throughout her tenure in Washington – from deputy director of Soviet Union Affairs under Clinton, to being the US Ambassador to NATO during the Bush administration, to Assistant Secretary of State under Obama’s 8 year reign. The Under Secretary has previously worked closely with some of the most hawkish characters in Washington, having directly answered to Dick Cheney as his deputy national security advisor, and with Hillary Clinton as the spokeswoman for the State Department.
With mentors and colleagues like these, it is no wonder that Nuland has been able to entrench herself into the new administration rather safely. She doesn’t pull her punches, even if it would be the smart thing to do – preferring to ideologically shoot from the hip with her diplomacy and think later about the consequences of her actions – if at all.
Her attitude and approach to diplomacy may have allowed her to gain many fans in Washington, as brazen approaches are often applauded in the D.C. swamp – but it hasn’t gained her much of a fanbase among European diplomats. Her policy of ignoring the efforts of EU leadership to try and fix diplomatic relations with Russia, and by shipping weapons to Ukraine during the Obama years directly acted against the advice and fears of many EU nations who worried it would escalate tensions with Moscow.
Rather than her actions being a product of her career, Nuland seems to be a true believer in the diplomacy she practices, almost delusionally so. In 1997, along with former Senator Richard Lugar, Nuland published Russia, Its Neighbors, and an Enlarging NATO: An Independent Task Force Report; in which it was “concluded” that NATO should be able to expand into Europe, and that Russian concerns or perceived security threats were unjustified – any attempt to negotiate or compromise should be disregarded. The report is rather short, but statements and conclusions are entirely delusional and a product of liberal elitist thought – the only way for Russia to participate in this changing world would be to cede its own sovereignty and self-determination in order to join the “New Europe” and the authority of NATO (ie. Washington).
I imagine that any Russian authority who were in the effort of trying to rebuild a nation after almost a century of communism and centralized bureaucracy would see the terms laid out in the Nuland report and laugh in disbelief. Trading one bureaucracy for another, but this time with less sovereignty and being subjected to the whims of a former rival.
In the very same report, the issue of Ukraine is emphasized. The task force agreed that NATO’s “doors shall remain open” for Ukrainian membership. Of course we know today this has been one of the driving motivations for Russian engagement in Ukraine, has been the threat of NATO expansion towards Russia’s border with Eastern Europe and one of Russia’s vulnerable corridors for invasion.
Nuland has been wanting, and working hard to ensure that Ukraine joins the American sphere of influence. Whether this is a personal mission, given her Jewish-Ukrainian ancestry, or whether this is completely career-driven doesn’t matter. It has led to disastrous consequences regardless of the motives.
One only needs to look at the Maidan protests and 2014 coup d’etat that Nuland was a key figurehead in orchestrating – a leaked phone call with the then US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt shows how instrumental Nuland was in hand picking the pro-West Ukrainian Arseniy Yatsenyuk administration that took over after the expulsion of Viktor Yanukovych’s Moscow-friendly government during the “Revolution of Dignity”. Whether or not the previous government was a “Moscow puppet” matters little, when the United States and NATO conduct the same actions that they accuse Russia of – infringing Ukrainian democracy and self-determination – even if it is through more covert means.
While the massive shake-up of the government took place, NATO also funded and armed the infamous neo-nazi “Azov Battalion” to conduct operations in the Eastern Ukranian separatist regions, with disastrous humanitarian consequences for civilians in those regions. Everything from wanton destruction to residential areas, kidnappings, and even crucifixions – Azov Battalions have not only been blamed for this, they take pride in their cruelty.
It seems that the US State Department made it a policy during the 2000’s and 2010’s to arm and aid the most depraved groups of people, whether it has been Islamsist militias in the Syria or neo-nazi paramilitaries in Ukraine in order to fulfill their policy goals without getting their own hands dirty – with innocent civilians suffering the most due to this short-sighted, or willfully ignorant decisions.
–
Of course in the mind of someone like Victoria Nuland, the ends justify the means. But what exactly are the ends?
Is it to “stabilize” Ukrainian democracy?
As Zelensky has purged opposition parties and political rivals have been arrested and tortured, we can see by the lack of condemnation that that’s hardly the priority.
Is it to “secure the sovereignty” of Ukraine?
The whole reason this mess has occurred is because Nuland ignored Ukraine’s sovereignty in order to place her own political pawns into positions of power – so claiming that they’re trying to do this is laughable.
Is it to “prevent the humanitarian crisis and deaths of civilians”?
This conflict has been ongoing for a decade, with tens of thousand already dead or displaced before Russia stepped foot into the region. Where were the actions to prevent the humanitarian crisis that has existed for the past decade?
So what are the ends? Because the narrative that Washington and the mainstream media are pumping out are hardly grounded in reality.
If I was a gambling man, I would wager that the end goal of this crisis that has been created is multifaceted; waging the media war against the Russian Federation has been ongoing for the past decade – many Americans, particularly those in red states and from working class backgrounds see the more conservative culture of Russia and the strongman figure embodied by a leader such as Putin as a viable alternative to the current American society that empowers the elite Washington D.C. political class and desecrates the rest of the country. Many saw Trump as a leader like that, after all.
Regime change in Russia to bring it into the “global society” and the confines of internationalism is also a possibility. Nations can’t be seen as breaking away from the “rules-based order”, as that would not benefit Washington D.C. or global institutions like the United Nations or World Economic Forum that have infiltrated the top levels of government and society in order to push their own agendas under the guise of “democratic will”. However, I think this is far stretched and I think the horse has bolted in regards to this scenario – Russia has been cut-off, and I don’t think anyone at the Pentagon or the State Department wants to get involved with what would be a severely messy operation to pull off in trying to oust Putin and his loyalists from power.
What I think is the most plausible situation is actually rather outside the box. As the United States recedes as a global superpower under the weight of its recent failures and crumbling domestic situation, the best way to prevent any other rising power from gaining a foothold at the top is to make a chaotic situation that is so out of control that no-one could possibly control it.
Ukraine has so far proven to be far from a “clean” operation on the ground for the Russians. Victoria Nuland has done a rather outstanding job of shaping Ukraine to be so emboldened by their own ideas of fighting for their “sovereignty” and crafted such a unique identity separate from Russia that they will likely continue to be a rather large thorn in the side of Russia for decades to come, regardless of the outcome of this current war. Russia will be exhausting itself and its resources trying to control the situation.
So while the United States may not be “directly” involved with securing the situation on the ground, at least Washington can be guaranteed that Russia won’t be able to do it either despite their close proximity. All the Americans have to do is keep pumping weapons and resources to keep ground-forces fighting or causing a logistical headache, and in the meantime they can refocus their priorities to other, more pressing situations – namely domestic security.
But if those are indeed the “ends”, are they justified?
To any rational, morally sound and peace-loving person, of course not.
But as we have seen time and time again, Washington D.C. and the elitists that occupy the highest seats of government will create their own justifications, even if completely false or out-of-touch, in order to fulfill their own goals of self-preservation and holding on to power.
This reason, above all, is why Victoria Nuland has been perfectly fit for the job that she has undertaken for the past two decades. Because she embodies those very same insane values.
And Washington D.C. loves her for it.
-
Fukuyama, Huntington and The New World Order
In the aftermath of the Cold War, a 45-year ideological struggle between the two major superpowers, the USA and USSR, several political scholars have offered forecasts concerning the future of conflict and the geopolitical climate post-1991. Two men rose to dominate the debate, one encapsulating a liberal perspective and the other a realist one – and in the decades since, their ideas have come to form the foundations of modern international relations theory.
The first was the political scientist and economist Francis Fukuyama. A Cornell and Harvard alumnus, Fukuyama proposed his thesis in an essay titled ‘The End of History’ (1989), and later expanded on it in his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992). Essentially, he posits that with the collapse of the Soviet Union came the resolution of the battle of ideas, with liberal democracy and free trade having emerged as the unchallengeable winners.
Society, according to Fukuyama, had reached the end of its ideological evolution – global politics has, since the fall of the USSR, been witnessing ‘the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’. Indeed, we’ve certainly seen a massive increase in liberal democracies over the past few decades, jumping from 35 in 1974, to 120 in 2013 (or 60% of states). Additionally, the broad adoption of free trade and capitalism can be seen as delivering benefits to the global economy, which had quadrupled since the late 1990s.
Even communist states, Fukuyama said, would adopt some elements of capitalism in order to be prosperous in a globalised world economy. For example, the late 1970s saw reformists (such as Chen Yun) dominating the Chinese Communist Party and, under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership, the socialist market economy was introduced in 1978. This opened up the country to foreign investment, allowed private individuals to establish their own businesses, and privatised agriculture – these monumental reforms have resulted in spectacular economic growth, with many forecasters predicting that China will overtake the US as the world’s largest economy by around 2028. We’ve seen further evidence of this turn away from communism in favour of capitalism and freedom: upon its founding, the Russian Federation explicitly rejected the ideology, and many former Eastern Bloc states have enthusiastically adopted liberal democracy, with many also having since joined the European Union.
Regarding the example of China, however, the suppression of freedoms and rights has also been a staple of the CCP’s rule, especially under the current leadership of Xi Jinping. This links to a broader and fairly major critique of Fukuyama’s thesis: the growth of authoritarianism across the globe. With Law and Justice in Poland, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines (not to mention various military coups, including Turkey in 2016), liberal democracy is undeniably under threat, and clearly not the globally agreed-upon best system of government (this is particularly concerning as it applies to two major powers, China and Russia). Furthermore, 9/11 and the 7/7 bombings serve as pretty hallowing examples of an ideological clash between Western liberalism and Islamic fundamentalism – more broadly radical Islamism has emerged as an ideological challenger to both the West and to secular governments in the Middle East and North Africa.
The second was the academic and former political adviser Samuel P. Huntington. A seasoned expert in foreign policy (having served as the White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council under Jimmy Carter), Huntington laid out essentially a counter-thesis to Fukuyama’s, which first took the form of a 1993 Foreign Affairs article, and then a book in 1996, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order. Conflicts in the past, Huntington argues, had been motivated by a desire primarily for territorial gain and geopolitical influence (e.g. colonial wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were attempts to expand the economic spheres of influence of Western imperialist powers).
However, in the 21st Century, the primary source of global conflict will be cultural, not political or economic (and will be primarily between Western and non-Western civilisations). Thanks to globalisation and increasing interconnectedness, people will become more aware of their civilisational roots and of their differences with others – they will aim to entrench and protect these differences, rather than seek common ground with other civilisations.
The Clash of Civilisations identified 9 civilisations specifically: Western (USA, Western Europe, Australasia), Orthodox (Russia and the former USSR), Islamic (North Africa and the Middle East), African (Sub-Saharan Africa), Latin American (Central and South America), Sinic (most of China), Hindu (most of India), Japanese (Japan), and Buddhist (Tibert, Southeast Asia and Mongolia).
Huntington also highlighted the possible revival of religion, Islam in particular, as a major potential issue: it would come to represent a challenge to Western hegemony in terms of a rejection of Western values and institutions. His Foreign Affairs article featured the line ‘Islam has bloody borders’, suggesting that the Islamic civilisation tends to become violently embroiled in conflict with periphery civilisations – Huntington cites the conflicts in Sudan and Iraq as major examples.
It is clear, although still a touchy subject for politicians and policymakers, that Radical Islam poses a serious threat to the safety and stability of the Western world. Aside from aforementioned terror attacks, the rise of extremist fundamentalist groups such as the Taliban in Afghanistan and al-Shabaab in Somalia represents a larger opposition to Western values. However, Huntington’s failure to consider the deep divisions within the Islamic world (especially between Sunnis and Shias) is a major criticism of his argument. Additionally, many of the civilisations he identified show little interest in a clash with the West, mainly as it wouldn’t be in their economic interest to do so (such as India, Japan and Latin America, who are all very interdependent on Western powers).
The Clash of Civilisations thesis does, however, offer a number of steps that the West could take to prevent a potential clash. It should pursue greater political, economic and military integration, so their differences will be more difficult to exploit. Just last year we saw a clear example of this, in the form of AUKUS, the security pact between Australia, the UK and the US.
NATO and European Union membership should be expanded, with the aim of including former Soviet satellite states, to ensure they stay out of the Orthodox sphere of influence. Fortunately for the West, 2004 alone saw NATO admit Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia and Slovenia, followed in 2009 by Albania and Croatia. The military advancement of Islamic nations should be restrained, to ensure they don’t pose a serious threat to the West’s safety – a clear example of this is the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, reducing the nation’s stockpile of uranium to ensure it couldn’t become an anti-Western nuclear power.
Finally, the West must come to recognise that intervention in the affairs of other civilisations is ‘the single most dangerous source of instability and conflict in a multi-civilisational world’. This is a message that Western politicians have certainly not heeded, especially in regards to the Islamic world – troops were sent into Darfur in 2003, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011.
In his 2014 book Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy, Fukuyama argues that his ‘End of History’ thesis remains ‘essentially correct’, despite himself recognising the current ‘decay’ of liberal democracy around the world. Both scholars’ predictions have, at periods of time in the post-Cold War era, looked very strong and, at other times, laughably incorrect and misguided. Both Fukuyama and Huntington still offer valuable insights into global dynamics between cultures, as well as the future of global tensions and conflict. However, both theses are undercut by the modern global landscape: democracy is currently on the decline, which undercuts Fukuyama, and civilisational identity remains limited, which undercuts Huntington. Regardless of who got it right, both men have undeniably pushed the debate surrounding the international order to new heights, and will no doubt be remembered as intellectual titans in decades to come.
-
Private property and the environment: competing or reconcilable objectives?
When it comes to the question of the environment and what to do about it, there are a number of assumptions—the outcome of which does, for the most part, map nicely—with respect to who will be saying what about it. For example, that a Leftist is more inclined to refer to themselves as an ‘environmentalist’, coupling their ideological convictions of social progressivism with concern for ecological damage, is, for the most part, true. Equally, that a right-winger is less likely to refer to themselves as an ‘environmentalist’, is also, for the most part, true. I suspect that the inclination of the latter is more out of reaction to the prevailing Leftist narratives around environmental protection, rather than a genuine indifference or lack of concern around the matter considered in itself. Certainly, with respect to myself, as I refer to myself as both a Right-libertarian (of the more ‘reactionary’, as it’s often called, conservative inclination) and an ‘environmentalist’, I seek to present the case in favour of private property and environmental protection as being reconcilable, not hostile or competing, objectives. This I aim to do without too much of a foray into the dense political-philosophical and economic-statistical thicket, where one can get lost rather easily and squarely miss the point.
As a matter of first principles, it almost goes without saying that the Right-libertarian stance is one which emphasises the importance of private property, and therefore of property rights by default, in all human affairs. It is a case of ontological significance for the human being to be able to determine the boundaries and limits, the inclusion and the exclusion, the ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ before one is able to situate themselves appropriately in dealing with the community. In other words, a distinction between what is private, and therefore one’s own, and what is not, is antecedent to one’s proper place in wider society. This is not simply a matter of distinguishing between ‘personal’ and ‘private’ either—a case of semantic hairsplitting if ever there was one—but is a statement of profound significance. That which is privately owned implies not only the antecedent distinction foregoing one’s entry into the community, but further implies the differential of being able to realise gain from peaceful, contractual exchange of one’s goods based upon a value matrix of temporal, or time-based, considerations. It asks: will you defer gratification now for a higher reward at some future date? Some prefer immediate consumption, others delayed gratification; it is the latter case which tends towards a realisation of gain, as foregoing consumption now can provide higher gains, or profit, in the future. Whereas in the case of the former, one values immediate consumption more highly, and therefore does not delay gratification appropriately enough to contribute the necessary goods or assets towards more time-consuming, labour-intensive, and developmental pursuits which tend to appreciate in value. This important factor of time-consideration (referred to in Austrian economic theory as ‘time preference’) is a universal a priori such that it will play a role in any given economic situation. The socialist collective will still include those who prefer to delay gratification and co-ordinate for future returns, and it will most likely be those who form the body of bureaucrats which oversee, and yet do not have a proper investment in (qua non-owners), the administration of things.
From here, the question becomes: who is the right person to which the task may be deferred? There is a lengthy index of things which most of us are happy to defer as a responsibility of someone else. For example, while I could butcher a chicken if required, I would rather not, and am happy to defer that responsibility to another who is paid to do so, providing me with what I need to make dinner. Likewise, I will, in my paid work, take on responsibilities over people and things which others do not wish to do, and are happy to leave to me. Our products or services may be exchanged peacefully through the medium of money (even if, as it currently stands, the money used is horrendously unstable, inflated, untied to anything with a real asset value, etc—fiat currency) and there is no further cause for concern. Similarly, both of us will make our own time-based valuations of goods and capital. Both of us will have to consume immediately at least every day to stay alive and gain some enjoyment of idle time, but one or the other of us may display a greater preference for delaying more capital, in the form of savings and investments.
Carrying this same question over to the issue of the environment, when it comes to making firm judgements with suitable incentive structures, who is the right person to whom the task may be deferred? If the stewardship of the environment is between government agencies and private property owners, then in both cases the task has been deferred to someone else. But who is the better, and why? The Right-libertarian, and therefore my own, case is that environmental concerns are better, as a mutual factor of justice and probability (qualification and quantification), left in the hands of private owners. Those who are more stringently tied to ownership titles are, by default, more inclined to sustain a profound concern over the capital values of assets held.
This principle is equally as applicable to land and what’s on it as it is to anything else in a private economy. At its most basic level, one wishes to realise a greater return on future goods when consumption of them in the present is delayed—why are factors such as land, and how it’s employed, be any different? In the case of government ‘owners’ (nonowners, or ‘caretakers’), there is no stringent incentive structure, and therefore no same level of concern for anything except that which may be looted in a shorter term when held relative to the long-term returns desired by the private owner. These government nonowners may have a concern by way of public law—perhaps some vague notion of ‘value for taxpayer money’ or something to that effect—but this concern alone is not enough, particularly because they do not bear the full cost of waste, inefficiency, destruction, and so on. For example: if 100 people utilise a piece of land and even ten of them trash it, who will foot the bill? Although the clean-up operations will, as things currently are and all else equal, be organised by a local council, there is no proper structure in place to deter or disincentivise such trashing from even occurring. The council clean-up team, and the administrator-bureaucrats who sent them, do not personally front the cost of such measures, and instead rely on a predetermined budget. This means that there is nobody who is personally affected or put out by the presence of trashers. However, were the land privately owned, there is a personal tie (the owner’s) to the asset value of the land, and therefore destructive trashing behaviour will be thoroughly accorded with the appropriate measures, such as compensation, restitution, or expulsion. Equally, the owner being subject to the full-cost principle, will have an interest in keeping down insurance premiums and clean-up costs, and will therefore put in place stringent conditions, e.g. payment-for-entry, as well as security teams charged with monitoring the use of the land by the consumers on it at a given time. A very simple yet very effective yardstick to measure the validity of my claims here—and one which would be satisfactory for those empirically inclined—would be to watch and average the behaviour of consumers when occupying ‘public’ property against utilising space which they have paid to enter and is administered properly, such as private gardens or grounds.
Conditions in place, where does environmentalism factor in? Care for and stewardship of the land imply moral/ethical qualia, and therefore a wholly subjective assessment, of what it means to engage with the natural world, itself a changing and at times dubious human construct. In the economic assessment alone, as outlined (albeit briefly) above, there is little intrinsic merit in saying that any one given moral judgement should be imported into the calculations of profit and cost, capital value and loss, asset utilisation and non-utilisation, etc. For example, one private owner of land may realise greater returns on selling up huge swathes of land for environmentally destructive purposes, such as factory- or house-building. (To be sure, these uses are required and, in the instability of the globalised-state economy, probably desirable to some extent.) Yet in this case, what’s to stop him? It is a matter of two further economic injunctions (before we move onto the place of appropriate moral judgement): opportunity cost and insurance premiums. In brief, land is usually a sought-after investment as a way to stabilise one’s portfolio due to its nature of slow-but-sure growth potential; therefore, if one is set to realise greater returns, and a greater opportunity thereof, for maintaining and even increasing the value of the land in the direction of soil quality for agriculture, forestry for timber, pasture land for animals, and so forth, then the sacrifice made in selling up for more environmentally-destructive measures will not seem worthwhile. In a climate where all roads are leaning former—high soil quality for domestic agriculture and high quality timber are increasingly sought after goods, for example—it is only a matter of time before the former outweighs the latter, the opportunity costs favour the preservation, rather than tarmacking of, land. Likewise, one’s insurance premiums are likely to skyrocket if the behaviour and activity conducted on one’s land threaten pollution, despoliation, or threat to quality of life or even, in extreme cases, to life itself. If everything around the piece of land in this imagined scenario is privately owned—including waterways, hedgerows, and so forth—then the constant threat of legal action, coupled with hiking insurance premiums, altogether disincentivise such behaviour. Externalities are more difficult to slip under the proverbial rug if one is surrounded by other owners, with an interest in appreciating returns (all else equal), who are capable of and empowered to take action and injunctions against undesirable behaviours.
Objective considerations aside, what about the moral/ethical injunctions? Admittedly, these being more subjective, it is usually left to a matter of aesthetic taste and criteria for such moral judgements to hold ground. This is much more suited therefore to the realm of opinion, further away from the domain of tangible economic fact. However, it is worth pointing out that many do, annually, seek retreats (either long, short, or permanent), relief, and respite in the aesthetic beauty of the countryside. Lucrative property portfolios, parks, gardens, walkways, vineyards, orchards, woodlands, campsites, activity centres, trusts, etc spring up, suggesting that there are many who are keen to escape the noise, pollution, smog, dust, and psychologically-overbearing atmosphere of the big cities, and instead find some solace amongst birdsong and woodland.
Likewise, there are increasing reports detailing the way in which certain practices are negatively harming the human population, such as bio-chemical engineering, microplastics, and pollution, to borrow a couple of examples. (To refer briefly to an economic consideration: should these reports prove correct, as I suspect they will, then one’s own insurance premiums for engaging in this sort of consumption will go up, and therefore have an average impact of disincentivising the consumption of goods which are, by all accounts, harmful to both oneself, others, and the environment.) I, as a rural dweller myself, am entirely sympathetic to this need, understanding the desire to maintain the balanced, steadier, quieter pace of rural life itself. It is one of those situations more dialectical insofar as if we didn’t have it, and therefore didn’t know any better, then fine—but we do have it, do know better, and therefore should, in my estimation at least, have some concern for its preservation and well-being.
In the absence of any clear governmental responsibility or concern, and in the absence of any trustworthiness for government programmes (and, I argue, rightly so), the purpose of this piece has been to demonstrate that one can indeed hold tight to two convictions which are not mutually exclusive. The first is the conviction that private property rights are essential to human civilisation and peaceful relations, and the second is the conviction that there are reasons, both objective and subjective, for being concerned about the state of the environment. Human stewardship and responsible management have been practised for centuries, and it is worth resurrecting these practices, both economically and morally, before it is too late, without leaning too heavily on tax-funded, unpredictable bureaucrats to do the job.
The latter situation is akin to asking a bank robber to ensure that ten percent of his loot is donated to a charitable cause, and on this condition he will be let off the hook. It is time to reassess the role of private property rights in this equation, without dipping too heavily into the hysteria around total alarmism—although I appreciate that in the span of this article I have only been able to do so cursorily, and therefore have not given a total treatment of the matter.
