We can of course do that every day. But we often choose not to. We delegate such actions to politicians. And we have to accept that sometimes our views are represented by a majority and sometimes are not. Be the representatives in Westminster or in Holyrood. (Indeed, in this context there are perhaps grounds for assuming that if there had been a strong Labour government in Westminster, driven by John Smith, may he rest in peace on Iona, the SNP would not be pushing quite so hard to sever its links with Westminster.) Whereas at present, Holyrood is waging a war-by-proxy against the upper class toffs ruling under Big Ben and is prepared to split a local populace in the process. To return to literature, the SNP may wish to de-Cameronize Scotland, but do they wish to do so at the price of a real De-Camerone, telling tales to recreate a lost and glorious past, when men were men and always wore kilts, and the present offers little cause for joy, something that has been the case in Glasgow for far too long already.

EU as the goal

Salmond, and sometimes I think he added the “d” to his name to make himself seem less slippery, is hungry for real power, whereby for power read: the ability to decide how all the cash is spent and the ability to decide how to spent it, all by and for himself. In the process he wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants independence from Westminster, but he doesn’t want to spend the North Sea oil revenues, for example on repaying the sovereign debt used to bail out RBS, let alone the infrastructure built using it. He wants to rejoin the EU, to continue to rely on all the subsidies the EU grants Scotland, without paying into the EU. He wants to keep the pound but not keep the bank policies that govern it. He wants defence cover from NATO but he doesn’t want ‘their’ tactical nuclear weapons in his lochs. He wants the money from North Sea oil and he wants it to flow forever. He wants Scottish, but he campaigns in English.

In my league table of philanthropic terms, “evolutionist” and “Social Darwinist” both come pretty close to the bottom. Because my gut feeling tells me that human society, if it is to be sustainable, hinges on the stronger helping the weaker, the richer helping the poorer. One of the reasons I have often found Cameronist Tories so distasteful is that they seem to think they live in a world where such a social contract is not necessary, where the rich can gladly get richer, and beggar or bugger the poor. In this respect, Salmond is deeply Cameronist and is a social Darwinist. He wants the money from the oil. But he doesn’t want to share it with those not fortunate enough to have such a source of wealth. Because he says it is ‘his’. Maybe if massive gold deposits had been found just south of Hadrian’s Wall he would now be arguing that the Wall be moved slightly south, as the line had not been drawn correctly.

Separate or stay?

For let us be honest, separatism in Europe today, and New Russia is a prime example, is all about laying claim to the cherries (or the wheat and the mines) and leaving everyone else with the rotting vegetables. Separatism, dressed up as national identity, is a bland excuse for egotism. Vaguely Germanic Northern Italians don’t want ‘their’ tax money spent on ‘lazy’ Southerners, hard-working (or was that hard-partying?) catty Catalans don’t want ‘their’ tax money spent on ‘lazy’ (read: unemployed) Spaniards, decidedly unphlegmatic Flems don’t want ‘their’ tax money spent on ‘lazy’ (read: unemployed) Walloons. And Alex Salmond certainly does not want to spend the oil revenue on the NHS south of the border. Wave the flags, roll out the bunting, decorate the idea in whichever colours apply, blue-and-white, red-and-yellow, red-and-black, the idea remains the same: I want it only for myself.

Oil for all

Alex Salmond has no notion of society as something where you create balances. His is a deeply unsustainable business model that he must have known for a long time would exclude a large part of the people he claims to represent. He evidently does not understand how Euroland works, although he ostensibly wants to join it – there a few carry the can for a many, they complain now and again, but they continue to do the heavy lifting. He does not understand how the EU works, where the richer countries pay to help the poorer ones develop. And he certainly does not understand the rationale of a peaceful country that has evolved from a deeply problematic feudal past such as Germany, where some federal states happily pay for their less wealthy fellow states. In those structures, the equivalent of the oil revenues automatically get shared, as the insight is that this way society and peace prevail, and you don’t divide society into two camps.

Nor does Alex Salmond have a sense of history, although all he does is band about history as a source of identity. Georg Lukacs suggested that history only served as a source of identity if it told you things changed, meaning identities evolve in line with decisions taken, that we could create a better society. Sadly, Salmond does not seem to know this, He certainly does not know what it means for a colonial Lord Lugard to bundle you together with others with whom you have little in common and for that colonial master, a few generations later, to leave you to get on with it. Alex Salmond should have read up on where his forbear Mungo Park first ended up, far up the Benue River, in the shit, and without a paddle, having mistaken the Benue for the Niger, and by extension Nigeria for Mali.

Nigerian federalism

n Nigeria the Northerners, the Hausas and the Fulanis, their feudal kingdoms thrashed in the battlefield by mercenaries’ Enfields, found themselves in a nation in 1960 that they shared with Southerners, who not only did not share their language, they did not share their religion either. And no this was not a Protestant v. Catholic affair, like Rangers v. Celtic, this was a Muslims v. Christians. Ahmadu Bello and Tafewa Balewa, the pre-eminent Northern leaders of the young Nigerian Republic, understood that history had to be put aside if this new country was to succeed. They realized, as commercial oil started to bubble up out of the Southeastern wells on a scale that would turn the North Sea black, that a balance had to be struck. Not much later Nigerians fought a Civil War over the oil/identity/ownership issue. The Republicans won, insisting that the oil be used for everyone’s benefit. In the late-Noughties it was a Northerner called Umaru Yar’Adua as President who insisted the “boys” in the Delta, where the oil still bubbled up so copiously, be given a greater share of the proceeds in order to recognize the fact that there was where the oil was. And he was succeeded by a man from the Delta who has done his best to make certain the oil proceeds are spent throughout the country – albeit ignoring the Northeast.

Nigerian society, for all its factions and fractions, for all the oil violence in the Southeast and for all the zealot thug violence in the Northeast, has nevertheless remained united. Sure, the oil revenue has spawned oligarchs and a fast-growing middle class. Sure, there are millions still living below the poverty line. But the country’s politicians, however they lambast one another in public, however they try to yell one another down in private, have still kept their country together, have still shared. Despite all being brilliant negotiators who know every trick of the trade of persuasion, thrust and counter-thrust. And despite some being Muslim and others being Christians, their arguments don’t get conducted in dualities, in yes/no, right/wrong, you/us. They do their utmost not to divide their nation.

Alex Salmond could easily know all of this. In fact, he has no excuse for not knowing it all. After all, it was in 2005 in the hotel at Gleneagles which Salmond enjoys frequenting that President Obasanjo pushed through the “aid deal” at the G8 that gave countries like Nigeria a new lease of life, not throttled by debts no one could repay. And the G8, chaired by Tony Blair, graciously realized that social stability depended on their agreeing to reschedule or cancel the debt. History is not made by choosing egoism and dressing it up in separatist, nationalist adjectives, but by knowing that generosity, sharing, is the key to the future. The former is an own goal. Moving the score up a notch: Nigeria 2, Scotland 0.

Bipolar uniforms

In the bipolar world of the Cold War, uniforms still counted for something, Red Army officers wore peaked caps so wide you could land a sputnik on them back then or a modern drone now; lines of medals and ribbons attested to military prowess and confirmed membership. The rows of soldiers in the Chinese Army parades were as endlessly uniform and uniformed as the country is vast. Even members of the NVA, the Viet Cong army, past masters at guerilla warfare, all wore ‘uniform’ jungle fatigues and wide-brimmed hats – and thus set themselves off from their compatriots in the South who opted for a sartorial look based on the French colonial army rather than any Asian traditions.

In an age increasingly characterized by a fundamental bipolar opposition between 1 and 0, presence or absence, strangely the structure of warfare has changed fundamentally and is anything but as straightforward. In the post-1989 world, the notion of sides itself starts to change. The unipolar world in which the United States is the clear hegemon and (however much the Russian or Chinese military hierarchy may wish it were not the case) will continue to be so for some time to come thanks to its technological edge logically does not have sides in the ‘us’ and ‘them’ sense, as between the black and the white there are now any number of shades of grey.

Difference, no difference

This is a truly novel state of affairs, as even back in the Middle Ages friend could be distinguished visually from foe, the Crusaders who arrived by boat from Saladin’s defending warriors. You could tell the difference not just by the physiological or physiognomic differences between a red-bearded Frank and a black-bearded Egyptian. For there was the red Cross of St. George on many a white robe donned over the armor to keep the knight’s temperature (not temper) below boiling point, while the other side dispensed with heavy armor and just wore cool robes over thin linked armor. You could also tell the two sides apart by the weapons, and the type of horse – those huge Crusader chargers, heavy and hard to stop once they got moving vs. the dexterous Arab ponies that have since become the preferred stock for racehorses on all continents. The double-handed broadswords that required a giant to swing them and a lot of room in which to do so vs. the subtly worked scimitars with their bone breaking properties.

If you fly into the same stretch of beaches and mountains today, or fly over them filming, you will find a complete absence of such clarity. In all the local conflicts it is now by no means apparent who is killing whom? All that is clear is that civilians are constantly the victim. In the days of the self-proclaimed ‘Islamic State’ (or in Subsaharan Africa of Boko Haram) the real question is: Do the sides joined in fatal battle know each other and if they do, how exactly do they keep each other apart? After all, the days of uniforms as defining features have vanished, leaving would-be warriors whose insignia are a Kalashnikov and possibly a turban or headscarf. These anonymous killers are the new-millennium equivalent for the anonymous structural deaths of the 20^th century, the gas attacks of World War I and the blanket bombing of World War II, both of which marked new heights to anonymity.

Fragemented confusion

Indeed, in the unipolar world, conflict has become so fragmented that it is nigh impossible to structure it in uniform terms, or, to put it differently, ensure a clear-cut, tailor-made antagonism. Who, after all, are the real Jihadists? Is it wrong to suspect the one or other is simply out to settle an old score? And who is simply creating a new one? If there are no uniforms then we must assume at least some of the one side knows some of the other, which would suggest that here we may have to do with erstwhile next-door neighbors warring over village spoils? If uniforms are not needed then we must be witnessing some latter-day tribal conflict. Take Northeast Nigeria’s Boko Haram: The members go riding round on armored cars looted from Libya and which can be recognized as such. But from a distance it is hard to guess that the Kalashnikovs they have were bought in a market in Darfur. After all, their faded desert camouflage fatigues are identical to those worn by the Nigerian Army regulars, who likewise love to brandish their Kalashnikovs, assuming that is they haven’t sold them in a market place in southwest Nigeria to boost their pathetic pay rates.

Take, for that matter, the TV images we see of Syria, men at random holding machine guns up above their heads and shooting over walls. Who are they and how do we know who they are (is the media misleading us) and how do their opponents know who they are? Now and again I have a sneaking suspicion when viewing such images that actually no one really knows who is what and that this is possibly the existential core to all the killing. The members of the “Islamic State” organization possess a flag, a new-age battle standard like the Jihad banner of yore. Yet when marauding they have any number of different sets of battle fatigues, and boast scarves wrapped round their heads to keep out the dust and, one must assume, keep in the heat. According to the list on Wikipedia in August 2014, they were fighting at least 20 different other groups and armies, which certainly brings a new meaning to waging war on more than one front. In fact, basic training for each member must surely first involve recognizing all the uniforms he (no she’s allowed) might encounter that belong to his opponents. There is a surreal level at work here somewhere, because I find myself imagining these guys having to have little picture flick-through books in their fatigue knee-side pockets: Manuals they can flick through quickly with one hand while holding binoculars to their eyes with the other in an effort to decide whether the man down the road in similar attire is a ‘friend’ or ‘foe’.

Or take the TV images we see of Ukraine, once again men at random holding machine guns up above their heads and shooting over walls. Since the separatists and the members of the regular army wear the same battle fatigues one assumes the only distinction is the black balaclava helmets that all the members of the one side presumably suffer desperately under in the summer heat. Running round proudly in a woolen face mask at the height of summer, when the thermometer peaks 35°C in the shade, brings a new meaning to the idea of separatists being hot-headed. But what happens if the infidelity of the government loyalists runs to them also donning black balaclavas…

Who’s who

In our unipolar world, the militarization of some societies has evidently run so deep that all of society is seized by the syndrome in one homogeneous mass of weapon-brandishing men. And what remains as a mark of distinction? The playing fields: The neatly structured world is, as we all recently saw on TV, now reserved for football, where the players don a national uniform before taking to the pitch at the World Cup. Sport is the residue of the past when you knew whom you were out to beat. And the losers, they all wear the same uniform: A trawl through TV stock footage of refugee crises soon sadly reveals that the clothing of the poor and displaced is invariably branded; be it the polo player or the crocodile head on shirts, or the Nike swoosh on a pullover. Nowadays it is not a sergeant who has three stripes, but a refugee in an Adidas sweatshirt.