England’s Bewildering Identity Crisis
Jewish World Review – by Suzanne Fields – Feb. 13, 2015
LONDON — England is having an identity crisis — Scotland is just getting over one — and just in time to hover over national elections.
Gone is the spirit of the poet who described “this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,” so beloved in Shakespeare’s Richard II. There’s not even a smidgen of Churchillian rhetoric to inspire the British to fight the good fight in the Middle East, where they were so firmly established for so long. Too bad there’s no English word for the French ennui.
Under the headline Decline and Fall, the Times of London bemoans that “Britain is punching appreciably below its weight as a medium-sized power in world affairs.” There’s considerable to worry about. Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine is a needed if dreary reminder of the damage done in the mid-20th century by an ambitious tyrant with a funny mustache.
The London Telegraph speaks a similar sentiment, noting the irony of a meeting of Western officials, to talk about arming Ukraine, in Munich, the very symbol of European appeasement. In 1938 the German-speaking Sudetenland was taken from Czechoslovakia and handed over to Hitler to avoid further conflict. We know how that turned out. Now the Russian-speaking separatists of Eastern Ukraine may be dispatched to the embrace of the bear to appease Vladimir Putin. What message does this send to a Machiavellian leader like Mr. Putin? With Britain on the sideline, the United States, still Britain’s most important ally, continues to lead from behind, with Barack Obama wandering somewhere on the back nine.
