Most people would say that they have two grandmothers – the mother of their father, and the mother of their mother.
However, for the fifteen nations that make up the Commonwealth Realms, I believe it can be equally said that we all have three grandmothers. The mother of our fathers, the mother of our mothers, and the mother of nations.
Queen Elizabeth II was the nation’s grandmother, one who was dearly loved and cherished.
For many alive Elizabeth II was not just The Queen, but The Queen. A whole generation of people has been born, grown up and died only knowing Queen Elizabeth II as the Queen of the United Kingdom, the Queen of Canada, the Queen of Australia, the Queen of Jamaica, etc. She has been an almost constant presence in modern British history, from the dark and troubled days of the Second World War to the turbulent and chaotic times of the 21st century.
It’s still hard to describe just how strange everything feels now. The Queen is dead, and the world will never be the same again.
All of us will remember her unfailing service, her sincere faith, her eternal good cheer, and her unflinching desire to make good her promises to the Commonwealth so many years ago. Those who had the privilege of meeting her recall her warmth, her razor-sharp wit and dry humour, and her capacity to make you feel like you were the most important person in the room, not she. She was a giant of her times and there is not one figure in recent history who can command as much respect or adoration.
Queen Elizabeth II oversaw the transition of Empire to Commonwealth, of a war-torn society to a burgeoning modern democracy, a world riven by authoritarianism stepping into the light of liberty. She faced down apartheid in South Africa, applauded her former colonies as they embraced independence, and prayed each year for the good fortune and happiness of all her subjects.
Under her Crown, we were all one people.
It was undeniably the highest honour imaginable to have been a subject to such a monarch, and it is my keenest sorrow to witness her passing. I know that she found courage in her faith in Christ and the Church of England, and I have no doubt she we will walk with the King of Kings through the gates of Heaven.
Her son, King Charles III, has now assumed her throne. I have every confidence in him to ably succeed her in this heavy burden that he has now been called by Grace to take upon his shoulders. He has had a lifetime of tutelage under one of Britain’s most beloved and respected monarchs in her history and has demonstrated remarkable insight and wisdom that was truly ahead of its times.
He inherits a Commonwealth equally at a time of change as his mother found it, a United Kingdom facing challenges at home and abroad, and a Royal Family constantly shifting to keep up with the demands of its age. A trying time for anyone, but His Majesty is up to the challenge. I eagerly look forward to seeing the fruits of his reign.
I was honoured to have been a subject of Queen Elizabeth II. I am honoured still to now declare myself a loyal, obedient and joyful subject of His Majesty King Charles III.
God save The King.
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On Freedom of Navigation
Amidst the present difficulties in transmitting knowledge from one generation of educated people to the next, one principle that seems to have been mislaid is freedom of navigation. This has been laid bare by commentary on the recent Anglo-American operations in the Red Sea against the Houthis. Hence, it is worth offering a short explanation of freedom of navigation: what it is, its history prior to its modern codified universalisation and its defences up to the present.
Before its codification by the United Nations, freedom of navigation was part of customary international law, by its nature quite distinct from how modern international law is established and enforced. It originated in the Dutch Republic’s rule of mare liberum (free seas), coined by influential Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius in 1609, which considered neutral ships and their goods inviolable on the high seas. Naturally, this could benefit trading powers like the Dutch, but came into competition with competing Consolato customs. These were named after the Aragonese Consulate of the Sea, both a body to administer maritime law and a collection of maritime ordinances codified since at least 1494. These rules determined neutral ships could be attacked in times of war to seize enemy goods, but even on enemy ships neutral goods could not be taken. By the seventeenth century, Consolato was often paired with the concept of mare clausum (closed sea), coined in 1635 by English jurist John Selden, which held that areas of the sea could be entirely closed off from foreign shipping. Both principles were supported by the major naval powers of the day, including England, France and Spain.
As was the case with a number of pivotal concepts in European history, mare liberum was often fought for over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, first by the Dutch alone but later by the nascent American Republic and the Russian Empire as a right of neutral states. The cause of freedom of navigation was greatly assisted during this period by the Dutch victory in the Eighty Years’ War against Spain, as well as the later decline of Spain and Portugal as dominant powers who had attempted to apply mare clausum to the New World’s seas. Another conceptual innovation emerged to resolve some discrepancies between the rival customs in 1702, as Dutch jurist Cornelius van Bynkershoek formulated that maritime dominion corresponded with the distance coastal cannons could effectively protect it; the range of the most advanced cannon at the time was three nautical miles. Beyond the Dutch, naval powers still employed the Consolato principle into the nineteenth century against other countries, especially during major conflicts, but this could be superseded in treaties by freedom of navigation. Ultimately, this became the case for all European powers at the end of the Crimean War in the 1856 Declaration of Paris Respecting Maritime Law, which synthesised the two customs into a rule that enemy goods were covered by a neutral flag whilst neutral goods could not be seized on enemy ships. Arguably, this built upon the Congress of Vienna’s grant of freedom of navigation to key European rivers, which constituted multiple states’ new borders and economic arteries, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. The exceptions to the rule outlined by the 1856 declaration were effective blockade and contraband, whereas privateering (in other words, state-sanctioned piracy) was confirmed to be abolished. As Europe proceeded to dominate the world in the nineteenth century, so too did the inviolability of neutral commercial shipping and their freedom to navigate the seas as their juridically innocent business permitted.
Of course, the growth of freedom of navigation did not result in the disappearance of piracy, nor pirate states. For instance, the United States, Sweden and Sicily fought wars against the Barbary corsairs in the early nineteenth century to ensure the freedom of their merchant ships from ransom and enslavement in the Mediterranean, despite only Sicily possessing an obvious interest in the region. In recent weeks, the Houthis have proven themselves to be another such pirate state through their rather indiscriminate attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. In response, Britain and America (with support from several other countries) have attempted to neutralise this threat to freedom of navigation under Operation Prosperity Guardian. In theory, this should be the least controversial Middle Eastern intervention conducted during this century thus far, since the Houthis are plainly violating the neutrality of benign ships under neutral flags. At the time of writing, there is no hint from the intervening powers of the neoconservative adventurism which defined the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor strong intentions to impose changes on Houthi internal affairs beyond the immediate issue at hand. In practice, the war in Israel has entirely toxified any discourse surrounding events in the Red Sea. Instead of realism, one witnesses what is allegedly another instalment of the clash of civilisations. Whatever the merits of Samuel Huntington’s thesis of contemporary world affairs, such hyperbolic reactions to events in the Red Sea overestimate their significance.
If America did not exist, it would be in India or China’s interest to assert freedom of navigation in the region due to its foundational importance to the global economy. Readers should bear in mind that the principle has only a tangential relationship to a nation’s trade policy. Although freedom of navigation is a precondition of free trade, it does not determine the extent to which a ship’s goods are impeded from accessing markets at port, only that the international movement of goods can occur without undue harassment. Perhaps a handful of countries at most could be expected to subsist today to a reasonable standard without substantial trade, an interesting notion in itself but beyond the scope of this article. Likewise, most, if not all, nations lack the naval strength to forcibly guarantee the security of their commercial shipping worldwide, given the sheer volume and frequency of post-containerisation international trade. This means freedom of navigation ought not only to be remembered by readers, but as a matter of historical preference and present necessity defended into the future.
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In Conversation with Curtis Yarvin (The Return of Don Quixote and Anglo-Meiji Restoration)
Curtis Yarvin, known by his pen name ‘Mencius Moldbug’, is one of the most prominent social critics and reactionary writers of the contemporary era. Yarvin’s blogs, ‘Gray Mirror’ and ‘Imperial Melodies’, can be found on Substack.
Yarvin’s words are in light.
There’s a little-known Chesterton work called The Return of Don Quixote. Don’t know it at all?
I don’t. I mean, I’m familiar with the original Don Quixote by Cervantes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, The Return of Don Quixote, and it’s about the victory of a joyous reactionary movement, written as an Edwardian novel, set in the future. It’s very interesting and it sort of catches the sort of joyousness right, which is an absolutely essential part of, like, any kind of restoration of this type.
And yet, you know, kind of Russian Hide And Seek, which is of course a much later work, is more…black-pilled, you might say, and perhaps a little more convincing. And I would say, sort of read them both. You’ll get kind of some of both of these ideas, but just breaking out of this incredible, I mean, it’s like, when you look in the rear-view mirror at Brexit. It’s like 0.1% of a British Meiji, right? And it’s a completely failed venture, and a completely failed thing, you know, I was reading Richard North’s blog EU Referendum, back in the earlier ‘00s, you know, I think he was associated to some extent with, like, early UKIP, and, um you know, the idea of having a referendum on Britain leaving the EU in 2005, let alone that referendum winning, it seemed like such, what we call here, a stretch goal.
It seemed so unimaginable and it happens. This incredible revolution happens and of course it happens and it doesn’t amount to shit. It just has no momentum. As soon as it wins it begins to lose. And, actually, the main effect of Brexit was to destroy the Brexit movement.
Pretty much.
You can’t help but feel that when you do something and people put that much effort and that much hope into something, and in retrospect you can look at it and just say “Well duh, obviously that was gonna…there was no way that could have worked in any way, shape, or form and done anything useful or relevant, or whatever,” and, the, you know…the definition of insanity is making the same mistake twice, and, right, and here, is just the form of government that has been how England rose to greatness and has been governed for pretty much all of the last two millennia, you know, before the invitation to William, right? You know, I guess, you know, William, it’s hard to know to what extent William of Orange was really interested in British domestic affairs. I don’t know how great it was.
Queen Anne was certainly pretty feeble and um, you did know that the um, the king has the right to veto legislation in parliament, right?
Yes.
And do you know who the last person, the last king, who actually used that power was?
It’s not going to be James I is it? Someone distant. Charles I?
Here’s a hint. It wasn’t a king at all.
Really? OK, so was it Queen Anne then? Was it in fact Queen Anne?
It was in fact Queen Anne. Uh, she did it once, and I forget over what. Probably some completely symbolic bullshit.
I see. They went “No, no, this is no good, we’ll get this Dutch fellow”.
Yeah, yeah, it was sort of their ‘lordships die in the dark’ moment. I think, like you know, the People’s Budget of 1911 or whatever. Yeah, Queen Anne was like the legitimate daughter of James II, right? And there was some hope that – and she was basically a Jacobite heir – it’s sort of like this woman Georgia Meloni who gets elected in Italy spouting all this rhetoric and then she’s like “We must fight for the Ukraine, the cause of Ukraine is the cause of all of us”, right?
You know, when I was in Portugal, I was in a small town in this summer and, you know, all of the…you would swear the whole population of Setúbal, Portugal, had come out and, like, popular enthusiasm for the cause of the Ukraine was everywhere, spontaneous graffiti, right, you know, and it’s like, these expressions of popular enthusiasm, like ‘workers of the world, unite’ in Czechoslovakia in 1976. You know, the greengrocer does not really care about workers of the world and I’m pretty sure that if you’re a bus driver in Setúbal, Portugal, your interest in the Dnieper isn’t really – excuse me, Dnipro – is fairly limited, and the uh, just, I mean, it’s increasingly comical, and so, the idea of just like, this whole structure collapsing in one boom is so much more realistic than the idea of Brexit. It’s so much more realistic. People think it’s unrealistic, no, it may be unrealistic, but it is vastly more realistic than Brexit.
I read your piece about a Meiji Restoration. I was sat in the middle of a bunch of naval officers and I was thinking “You know what? Rishi Sunak’s not very popular, neither is Keir Starmer, nobody likes parliament, what would actually happen right now if King Charles did in fact just go ‘guys’…”
Martial law.
Yeah exactly. What would actually happen? And you know, there’s been this sort of endless slew of headline after headline after headline of “Oh, this thing isn’t working, we’ll get the army in to drive trucks” and “Oh, this isn’t working, we’ll get the navy in to sort out this hospital”, and you just sort of look at this thing and think “Why is it that the last sort of functional bit of our government is essentially military?” And “Why is it that…” what would actually happen if…would anyone stop it? Would anyone in the military?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was in Dartmouth. I was at BRNC when the Queen died.
Oh wow.
It’s full of these young, early twenties cadets, who are going through…you know, I was there the day…so I think I was one of the last people to officially join the Queen’s navy and one of the first to join the King’s, and you know, everybody, the whole, the whole college just stopped. I went out onto the Parade Ground at about 5pm in the early evening and every church bell in Dartmouth was ringing across the valley. And yes, there’s a huge amount of symbolic nothingness to it –
But that symbolism can be converted back into reality.
Right!
And everyone would be stunned at how easy it was, and how obvious it was.
I don’t think anyone would say no.
Well, would Sir Arthur Scargill bring the unions into the street? Would like, you know, would the SpADs like set up barricades outside of Nelson’s Column? What?
Right, right. I don’t see it.
I don’t see it. And so you can have your New Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land. You just have to realise that the chains that are bonding you are made of paper.
But that’s the question. The new Prince of Wales hands out copies of the Big Issue –
[*Laughs*]
And I just don’t see the king going along with this, so what do we do? Do we have some kind of new Cromwellian parliamentary lie where oh no, no, the king is held captive by these malignants and bad ideas, what is it? What on Earth are we doing?
Yeah, yeah, well, you know, um, maybe we, you know, uh, I don’t know, if Prince William did enough acid, maybe?
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All States Desire Power: The Realist Perspective
Within the West, the realm of international theory has, since 1945, been a discourse dominated almost entirely by the Liberal perspective. Near-universal amongst the foreign policy establishments of Western governments, a focus on state cooperation, free-market capitalism and more broadly, internationalism, is really the only position held by most leaders nowadays – just look at ‘Global Britain’. As Francis Fukuyama noted, the end of the Cold War (and the Soviet Union) served as political catalysts, and brought about ‘the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’.
Perhaps even more impactful however, were the immediate post-war years of the 1940s. With the Continent reeling from years of physical and economic destruction, the feeling amongst the victors was understandably a desire for greater closeness, security and stability. This resulted in numerous alliances being formed, including political (the UN in 1945), military (NATO in 1949), and also economic (with the various Bretton Woods organisations). For Europe, this focus on integration manifested itself in blocs like the EEC and ECSC, which would culminate in the Maastricht Treaty and the EU.
This worldview however, faces criticism from advocates championing another, Realism. The concerns of states shouldn’t, as Liberals claim, be on forging stronger global ties or forming more groups – instead, nations should be domestically-minded, concerned with their internal situation and safety. For Realism, this is what foreign relations are about: keeping to oneself, and furthering the interests of the nation above those of the wider global community.
To better understand Realism as an ideological school, we must first look to theories of human nature. From the perspective of Realists, the motivations and behaviour of states can be traced back to our base animalistic instincts, with the work of Thomas Hobbes being especially noteworthy. For the 17th Century thinker, before the establishment of a moral and ordered society (by the absolute Sovereign), Man is concerned only with surviving, protecting selfish interests and dominating other potential rivals. On a global scale, these are the priorities of nation-states and their leaders – Hans Morgenthau famously noted that political man was “born to seek power”, possessing a constant need to dominate others. However much influence or power a state may possess, self-preservation is always a major goal. Faced with the constant threat of rivals with opposing interests, states are always seeking a guarantee of protection – for Realists, the existence of intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) is an excellent example of this. Whilst NATO and the UN may seem the epitome of Liberal cooperation, what they truly represent is states ensuring their own safety.
One of the key pillars of Realism as a political philosophy is the concept of the Westphalian System, and how that relates to relationships between countries. Traced back to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the principle essentially asserts that all nation-states have exclusive control (absolute sovereignty) over their territory. For Realists, this has been crucial to their belief that states shouldn’t get involved in the affairs of their neighbours, whether that be in the form of economic aid, humanitarian intervention or furthering military interests. It is because of this system that states are perceived as the most important, influential and legitimate actors on the world stage: IGOs and other non-state bodies can be moulded and corrupted by various factors, including the ruthless self-interest of states.
With the unique importance of states enshrined within Realist thought, the resulting global order is one of ‘international anarchy’ – essentially a system in which state-on-state conflict is inevitable and frequent. The primary reason for this can be linked back to Hobbes’ 1651 work Leviathan: with no higher authority to enforce rules and settle disputes, people (and states) will inevitably come into conflict, and lead ‘nasty, brutish and short’ existences (an idea further expanded upon by Hedley Bull’s The Anarchical Society). Left in a lawless situation, with neither guaranteed protection nor guaranteed allies (all states are, of course, potential enemies), it’s every man for himself. At this point, Liberals will be eager to point out supposed ‘checks’ on the power of nation-states. Whilst we’ve already tackled the Realist view of IGOs, the existence of international courts must surely hold rogue states accountable, right? Well, the sanctity of state sovereignty limits the power of essentially all organisations: for the International Court of Justice, this means it’s rulings both lack enforcement, and can also be blatantly ignored (e.g., the court advised Israel against building a wall along the Palestinian border in 2004, which the Israelis took no notice of). Within the harsh world we live in, states are essentially free to do as they wish, consequences be damned.
Faced with egocentric neighbours, the inevitability of conflict and no referee, it’s no wonder states view power as the way of surviving. Whilst Realists agree that all states seek to accumulate power (and hard military power in particular), there exists debate as to the intrinsic reason – essentially, following this accumulation, what is the ultimate aim? One perspective, posited by thinkers like John Mearsheimer (and Offensive Realists), suggests that states are concerned with becoming the undisputed hegemon within a unipolar system, where they face no danger – once the most powerful, your culture can be spread, your economy strengthened, and your interests more easily defended. Indeed, whilst the United States may currently occupy the position of hegemon, Mearsheimer (as well as many others) have been cautiously watching China – the CCP leadership clearly harbour dreams of world takeover.
Looking to history, the European empires of old were fundamentally creations of hegemonic ambition. Able to access the rich resources and unique climates of various lands, nations like Britain, Spain and Portugal possessed great international influence, and at various points, dominated the global order. Indeed, when the British Empire peaked in the early 1920s, it ruled close to 500 million people, and covered a quarter of the Earth’s land surface (or history’s biggest empire). Existing during a period of history in which bloody expensive wars were commonplace, these countries did what they believed necessary, rising to the top and brutally suppressing those who threatened their positions – regional control was ensured, and idealistic rebels brought to heel.
In stark contrast is the work of Defensive Realists, such as Kenneth Waltz, who suggest that concerned more with security than global dominance, states accrue power to ensure their own safety, and, far from lofty ideas of hegemony, favour a cautious approach to foreign policy. This kind of thinking was seen amongst ‘New Left’ Revisionist historians in the aftermath of the Cold War – the narrative of Soviet continental dominance (through the takeover of Eastern Europe) was a myth. Apparently, what Stalin truly desired was to solidify the USSR’s position through the creation of a buffer wall, due to the increasingly anti-Soviet measures of President Truman (which included Marshall Aid to Europe, and the Truman Doctrine).
Considering Realism within the context of the 21st Century, the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War seems the obvious case study to examine. Within academic circles, John Mearsheimer has been the most vocal regarding Ukraine’s current predicament – a fierce critic of American foreign policy for decades now, he views NATO’s eastern expansion as having worsened relations with Russia, and only served to fuel Putin’s paranoia. From Mearsheimer’s perspective, Putin’s ‘special military operation’ is therefore understandable and arguably justifiable: the West have failed to respect Russia’s sphere of influence, failed to acknowledge them as a fellow Great Power, and consistently thwarted any pursuits of their regional interests.
Alongside this, Britain’s financial involvement in this conflict can and should be viewed as willing intervention, and one that is endangering the already-frail British economy. It is all well and good to speak of defending rights, democracy and Western liberalism, but there comes a point where our politicians and media must be reminded – the national interest is paramount, always. This needs not be our fight, and the aid money we’re providing the Ukrainians (in the hundreds of billions) should instead be going towards the police, housing, strengthening the border, and other domestic issues.
Our politicians and policymakers may want a continuance of idealistic cooperation and friendly relations, but the brutal unfriendly reality of the system is becoming unavoidable. Fundamentally, self-interested leaders and their regimes are constantly looking to gain more power, influence and territory. By and large, bodies like the UN are essentially powerless; decisions can’t be enforced and sovereignty acts an unbreachable barrier. Looking ahead to the UK’s future, we must be more selfish, focused on making British people richer and safer, and our national interests over childish notions of eternal friendship.
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