Letters

Mark Leonard (March) is not quite right in dating the invention of "soft power" to America in the 1990s. In fact, the idea of soft power is older by at least two millennia. Confucius is recorded as saying, "if people of far lands do not submit, then the ruler must attract them by enhancing the prestige of his culture." It was the practice in China during the 2nd century BC for warring factions to try to win over neutrals by displays of culture, such as sending theatrical companies. Leonard's interviewee Yan Xuetong concludes that ancient Chinese scholars were smart—he is quite right.

Peter Howarth
Canberra, Australia

Questioning Grayling 1
26th March 2008

AC Grayling's argument that God does not exist (March) is unconvincing. Sometimes lack of evidence in support of a proposition is itself evidence that the proposition is false. But we do not know from experience that, if God exists, there would be evidence of this on earth; and we do not know what, if there were such evidence, it would be. Hence we cannot claim that God does not exist on the grounds that there is no evidence of it. Perhaps there is evidence, and we fail to recognise it; perhaps God is such that his existence leaves no trace.

Hugh McLachlan
Glasgow Caledonian University

Questioning Grayling 2
10th April 2008

Was AC Grayling having an off day last month? He writes, "bad people do bad things for lots of different reasons, some meriting concern, some meriting a robust kicking. In war, the folk on the other side are this latter kind of bad by definition—they are trying to kill you—and what they do accordingly invites kicking first and discussion, if any, afterwards."

This is just wrong—bad people do bad things because they're bad people. It's the rest of us who do bad things for lots of different reasons. In war, the majority of "folk on the other side" are non-participants—they are most emphatically not "trying to kill you." Even those actively engaged in fighting aren't trying to kill you; the killing is incidental, hence the reason that most "casualties" are wounded or captured, not dead.

The context in which Prince Harry's cap should be seen is one in which young men are sent to fight other young men that they "do not even know well enough to hate," as Lyndon Johnson put it, for reasons that are usually never explained. Soldiers do bad things to others and then convince themselves (or are convinced) that they are doing it for good and essential reasons. By Grayling's logic, all soldiers engaged in battle are "bad people."

Bob Wilson
Brighton

Jacobson on prostitutes
27th March 2008

Howard Jacobson's article (April) on the need for a grown-up debate about sexuality is an excellent example of wryness in the service of insight. Indeed, the author succeeds in tapping the source of a debate about men and sexuality without harming it. Too often, discussion about men and their sexual rights (yes, a strong word) ends up overly argumentative or just full of self-pity. Not so with Jacobson. He sees the tarnish on both sides of the male-female coin and, without doing injustice to women, makes headway into the murky waters of male desire. He doesn't solve anything, of course, since nothing like this can be easily sorted out in prose. Still, Jacobson recognises the strangeness that sexual desire may have as its source and its outlet. One can only hope this piece triggers discussion at bars, coffee shops and dinner tables about what exactly it is that excites our baser side, and that drives many men into the (sometimes welcoming) arms of prostitutes.

Brian Carr
via the Prospect blog

Bazalgette's newspeak
14th April 2008

My hackles rose as I read Peter Bazalgette's shameless and obsequious defence (April) of his mates at the BBC and his specious valorisation of Channel 5's revamped news.

Since when has putting a news presenter on a sofa been "enterprising"? This is one of the handful of Newspeak adjectives which "imaginative" television executives use to disguise the scramble to improve ratings using sex, glamour, money and celebrity. Nothing inherently wrong with that—any more than there is anything inherently wrong with pornography. But it's not clever and it's not virtuous.

As for Baz's criticism of "plurality," this was a poor effort to obscure an urgently needed debate about the use of the billions of pounds raised in the BBC tax known as the licence fee—which funds not only the world's greatest news service but also game shows such as Ready Steady Cook, produced by Baz's ex-company Endemol.
The real issue with the licence fee is not whether it is here to stay or not (it is), but whether it should be used to fund daytime quiz shows and pay Jonathan Ross, or whether—as has been recently mooted by Ofcom—it should be top-sliced, and part of it distributed by a kind of Arts Council for good television programmes to any channel doing original and demanding work.

I understand why Prospect wishes to avoid always looking back to the good old days of the 1970s. But a voice that celebrates contemporary television marketing as if it was an intellectually demanding exercise is no alternative.

Ben Lewis
London N7

In search of lost WMD
12th April 2008

Tom Chatfield's discerning report on the search for WMD (April) brings one up to date with the continuing questions about WMD in Iraq, but is also notable for setting out the context of the global search for such weapons. This search has just begun and has no end in sight. All the powers feeling threatened by the possibility of such weapons existing in irresponsible hands—a count which already includes China, Russia and India as well as the US and western Europe—need not only "a rigorous global intelligence strategy able to command both national and international support" but also a common understanding of what to expect from intelligence. It needs to be understood that the most that intelligence can deliver is an estimate of the likelihood—the odds—that something is or is not the case. Good intelligence is like good science. Science can provide ample grounds for decision and action. So can intelligence. But neither can ever deliver certainty.

As for Iraq, the odds are more than 999 to 1 that no WMD are there now; but we still have a surprisingly poor idea of what Saddam's government was up to. I have a hunch that anyone interested in that bit of history would do well to analyse the accounts to see what money Saddam thought he was paying to whom for what. The documents of the oil-for-food scandal inquiries showed that the Baath party kept surprisingly good records of potentially very embarrassing transactions.

David Heigham
Madrid

Britain's living literature
1st April 2008

Philip Hensher (April) argues that Britain lacks a national text. But if any country has ever written itself, Britain has. Not in the auto-mythological, swampy and unenlightened way of most others, but by lively self-description. I have lived in Britain for some years and have never come across another country where characters from literature are so much part of a wider family. Men, women and children in the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Brontë, Austen, Trollope and others are well known to many, even from the working classes, if not via novels then through film and other media. Funny that Britain, for Hensher, should rank among those countries lacking collectively known narratives. My own country, Germany, is one of these, and it has always struck me how vast the difference is.

Caroline Fetscher
Berlin

Up with Asquith
16th April 2008

Andrew Adonis's critique of Asquith's premiership (April) does little more than update George Dangerfield's long discredited account of the death of Liberal England. Asquith may not have triumphed as a prime minister, but this was down to failure at the Somme in 1916, not the controversies Adonis cites.

The House of Lords was indeed not reformed in 1911, as there was no support for going beyond removing the Lords' legislative veto. Edward Grey inserted into the parliament bill a clause calling for a reformed composition, but neither Asquith's reforming government nor that of Attlee a generation later implemented it. There was simply no support.

Adonis is on shaky ground in arguing Asquith did not "frame a viable settlement" of the Irish question. What settlement was this, exactly? In 1914, the choices were either home rule for Ireland—which the third home rule bill enacted and which was backed by the Liberals and Irish Nationalists—or partition, backed by the Conservatives and Ulster Unionists. Asquith, by imposing the latter against his parliamentary mandate, would have split his party.

Bizarrely, Adonis believes Britain could have avoided British involvement in the war, trotting out the hoary notion that Britain would "have done best to stay out" on 4th August. Britain could not stay out. Under treaties made in 1839, and reaffirmed by Gladstone in 1870, if Belgium was invaded, Britain had to fight to defend its neutrality. But without such an invasion, Britain could not threaten to fight, as Britain had no treaties involving war on the continent. Grey and Asquith were entirely consistent in their behaviour.

Asquith was unchallenged as prime minister till May 1915, and even then was able to survive to form a coalition, despite criticism of his performance as a war leader. Not until the guns fell silent on the Somme in November 1916 was the groundswell of opinion sufficient to remove him. Within a month, he was out of office. Had the British army broken through, he would now be hailed as a great prime minister. Asquith failed not because of his policies, but because Haig's armies could not smash through the German trenches.

Trevor Fisher
Stafford