With a riposte almost too good to be true, a Chinese emperor derided fumbling British attempts to curry favour with Beijing by insisting that “I set no value on objects strange and mysterious, and have no need for your country’s manufactures”.
The Qianlong Emperor may have scorned a gilded carriage, a model steam engine and a planetarium. Who, though, could resist offers of a palatial aircraft, a flattering portrait or a promised State visit? With the White House now, as in 1793 at the imperial court, the dividing lines between tribute and gifts, respect and kow-tows, servility and deference, start to blur.
Who would be an ally these days? For those allied in different ways with the United States, the simple answer is, any country that cannot on its own defend itself, sustain an independent deterrent, or make the world to suit its national interests. In Donald Trump’s second term, however, the more complicated answer may be, any country prepared to pay the increasingly disproportionate costs of partnership, to accept the risks entailed in dealing with an unstable and unpredictable ally, and to swallow hard when fawning becomes obligatory.
As for “objects strange and mysterious”, leaders travelling to Washington should bring along something glittering, ostentatious and easily monetised. Who needs a planetarium these days? Leaders could also study the divergences in Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s and Mark Carney’s comportment in the Oval Office. While the vulgar dressing down of Zelenskyy was meant as a lesson for all American allies, Carney’s wry mixture of teasing, irony and deft wit should serve as a lesson to us all.
The threshold requirement for any ally, no matter how humble, is not to appear weak. Every politician everywhere recognises that acquiring a reputation for weakness is synonymous with being handed the black spot or the kiss of death. Emmanuel Macron, for instance, is well into a second term but still saddled with an image as a vain, wilful president, unable to follow through on initiatives.
Few politicians can hope to emulate the images of strength projected by Winston Churchill, who had killed enemies of the Crown with his own hands, or Ehud Barak, whose election campaign distributed a poster of the would-be prime minister on a secret mission, with adversaries dead at his feet. “Barak: Weak?”, the caption asked rhetorically. Nonetheless, all those who have led quiet, civil lives need to learn how to identify themselves with firm, decisive commitments. Take Zelenskyy as a role model; after all, his repertoire used to be confined to silly comedy.
Self-evidently, loyalty needs to be reciprocated. We have plenty of words to hand to describe alliances that benefit one side alone, whether those be empire, occupation, feudal fealty or subordination. The cost of avoiding such fates may sometimes be ruinously high.
Acknowledging reality, doing a bit of mental fight, rarely hurt anyone.
Everyone already knows the gold standard for loyalty. That would be 300 Spartans defending the pass of Thermopylae in 480 BCE, suicidally brave, homicidally skilled, faithful unto death to their values and standards. After being betrayed, before being massacred by a huge army of invading Persians, their leader asked one of his soldiers to “go tell the Spartans that we lie here, obedient to their laws”.
Does such a pure, platonic form of loyalty have any place in international affairs? Admittedly, those Spartans were obedient to their own laws, not to any community of interests embodied in an alliance. (None of their allies turned up to Thermopylae.) Nor were King Leonidas and his men beholden to any great and powerful friends; rather, they selflessly fought alone against a disconcertingly vast horde of enemies.
Any show of subservience would debase and degrade the currency of loyalty, now as in 480 BCE. No Spartan would have offered allegiance to another sovereign. None would have fawned nor flattered tyrants. When warned of the variety of Persian weapons, one hoplite wryly noted that anyone who knew anything about freedom would fight for it with his bare hands.
The Qianlong Emperor did not bother to tell the British that “you don’t have the cards right now”, that “your country is in big trouble” or that “you’re not winning this”. Those put-downs, from Trump to Zelenskyy, could persuade any ally that adjectives like “special”, “personal”, “reliable” or “permanent” no longer go with the noun, “relationship”.
Acknowledging reality, doing a bit of mental fight, rarely hurt anyone. Thinking about diversifying relationships may be easier if we borrowed terms from elsewhere, global hedging from the domain of finance or polyamory from the realm of sex. Holding your nerve remains critical; again, Carney from Canada has set the bar (and set it quite high).
To borrow another expression, this time from tea towels and fridge magnets, we need to “keep calm and carry on”. In their neighbourhoods, China has no allies and India no friends. They get by.
