Putin’s game in Syria
Referring to Natalie Nougayrède’s article (25 September), the west is not in a position to resist Vladimir Putin’s game in Syria. The interests of the US and the EU differ.
The US has nothing to gain from interference other than to help eradicate Islamic State in order to feel good. The EU’s prime interest is to stabilise Syria to stop the flow of refugees while doing its part to destroy Isis. It is absolutely necessary that the EU and Russia get along: they have common interests in combating terrorism, and their commercial interests are mutually beneficial.
Russia has direct interests in Syria – retaining its bases in the Mediterranean and eliminating the hundreds of jihadists from the north Caucasus who are fighting on the side of Isis. For the time being, Putin has no alternative to working with President Bashar al-Assad. In the long run, he will have to gain the support of the Syrian people, most of whom despise Assad: Assad will have to go. Putin may achieve more by providing the secular anti-Assad militias safe passage out of Syria.
Undoubtedly Putin has been learning from the situation in Syria and from Russia’s experience in Afghanistan: that stability requires more than a military solution. Whatever way Russia chooses to go, the US and Europeans would be wise to help; they could offer to take more refugees and be ready to help rebuild the nation.
Cy Chadley
Escondido, California, US
• It was good to read that the Russian and US presidents have achieved some measure of cooperation in the fight against Islamic State (2 October). Such is the enormity of the Syrian tragedy that it is imperative they put aside residual cold war differences and join more strongly in a strategy to defeat these extremists.
In so doing, some realpolitik will be needed in settling the issue of whether Bashar al-Assad should go or stay. On this the Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, is correct: the west must be prepared to conditionally give ground.
Sure, Assad is a bad guy. But so what? We in the west have been in bed with some very bad guys around the world for some time now. It’s not as if it would be such a departure from past practice.
To paraphrase Franklin D Roosevelt’s observation on a ruthless Nicaraguan dictator then allied with America: He might be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.
Terry Hewton
Adelaide, South Australia
Religion’s comforting rituals
Jonathan Freedland (2 October), claiming to “take religion more seriously than Dawkins-ite atheists”, says that while observing a recent religious event – the basis of which he admits to be wholly irrational – he had fasted for a day with phone and email off, before starting to see the world in a new light.
Well, good for him! I don’t observe such rituals, but often walk in the woods of northern Sweden, in the slanting light of autumn, among yellowing birch and aspen leaves, and birds singing and foraging for rowanberries. I don’t fast like Freedland, but I venture out with an open mind and an appreciation of science. I doubt if the world I see in my walks, and the meditations that arise from them, are any less inspiring than the “ancient faiths” Freedland glosses over, which often are divisive and politically charged, with trappings so costly to maintain.
Ivor Tittawella
Umeå, Sweden
• If Jonathan Freedland is correct, and for most people religious observance is just a comfortable and comforting ritual, then Karl Marx was correct: religion really is the opiate of the people in a heartless world. An alternative is to not unthinkingly hand responsibility to any supernatural power, but to think, therefore be, and to take responsibility, both for ourselves and the little planet over which we exercise mastery.
Evan Gray
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Catalan independence
Ashifa Kassam (2 October) points out that the Catalans turned out in record-breaking numbers to vote in the recent regional elections, which the canny Catalan president, Artur Mas, managed to turn into an official plebiscite on independence.
Still, only 77% of the electorate turned out, and of them less than half voted for independence. The situation in Catalonia is far from clear and nobody has a mandate to do anything, let alone speak in the name of all Catalans. It is probable that the 23% that stayed at home were not pro-independence and more worried about Mas’s achievement in running up one of the worst debts in Spain, in a region that has above average unemployment and that introduced stringent austerity measures even before the central government. “We ask that the world recognise the victory of Catalonia,” says Mas, presumably referring to his bit of Catalonia. What he doesn’t realise is that the world doesn’t know what Catalonia is and doesn’t really care.
What the elections may have achieved is to make the stubborn, ostrich-headed Madrid government recognise that it is time to give the Catalans a proper referendum on independence: in which only they vote, and not the whole of Spain, as the present constitution demands. If only so that the rest of us can get on with our lives as usual.
Ian Alexander
Madrid, Spain
New Zealand’s flag fiasco
Thank you for covering New Zealand’s flag referendum process (2 October). As you say, this has first produced “a long-list of 40 designs that was met with apathy” and then a shortlist of four that was “met with disappointment”. Widespread protest caused the adding of a fifth, contentious choice – which had added confusion, and some anger, to the already toxic mix.
The plan to change the flag was driven by prime minister John Key, but sadly he has badly corrupted it by loudly stating “his preference for a silver fern design”. The debate would have been much simpler, and more fair, had Key not influenced the outcome by making his preference so clear: he is, after all, just one voter in the referendum.
As a fourth-generation New Zealander, I have longed for a flag that felt home-grown (rather than a colonial legacy), but now that the process has been so badly managed I will most likely vote to keep the old one. That way a more wisely run vote in the future may deliver us our own flag – rather than the sports, or commercial, logo Key is pressing for.
Adrian Faulkner
Nelson, New Zealand
Failure is good for us
I truly admired Tom Hodgkinson’s article (2 October). Who but a philosopher would dare assert that our failures are good for us? This assertion is brilliantly buttressed by an impressive array of writers and philosophers.
Envy is the first in a collection of essays entitled The Seven Deadly Sins. Angus Wilson’s last words about envy are: “It has the ugliness of a trapped rat that has gnawed its own foot in its effort to escape.”
In The Conquest of Happiness, Bertrand Russell affirms: “Our doings are not so important as we naturally suppose; our successes and failures do not after all matter very much.”
I’m sure the editor of The Idler magazine has enjoyed reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s An Apology for Idlers. I especially treasure and learned by heart what Stevenson wrote in Aes Triplex: “A frank and somewhat headlong carriage, not looking too anxiously before, not dallying in maudlin regret over the past, stamps the man who is well armoured for this world”.
Armand Goulipian
Joinville-le-Pont, France
Briefly
• In your leader (25 September) you describe the $100bn IMF/World Bank Group fund as “an unfathomably large amount”. Yet in the same issue, in “Fossil fuels ‘are still heavily subsidised’”, Larry Elliott quotes an OECD estimate that leading developed and developing countries subsidise fossil fuels to the tune of “up to $200bn a year”. So only one-half of current carbon fuel subsidies for only one year would fill the IMF/World Bank coffers needed to “grease the wheels of the deal”. All we have to do is convince the politicians receiving campaign contributions from the fossil fuels industries to bite the hands that feed them.
Keith Stotyn
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
• I have been following your reports on climate issues in the lead-up to the Paris summit. In the German press I read that work has started on Frankfurt Airport’s third terminal. This comes alongside ongoing deliberation to decide where London’s new runway or airport will be built. How, in these circumstances, can anyone take either Britain’s or Germany’s commitment to combat climate change seriously? Surely, with such CO2-intensive projects running, neither of these countries should be attending the summit. Their intentions are crystal clear: “business” comes before “planet”.
Alan Mitcham
Cologne, Germany
• The article NHS faces collapse (25 September) refers to A&E. To North Americans this sounds confusing, as A&E is the abbreviation for the Arts and Entertainment cable TV channel. In Canada, ER (Emergency Room) or Emergency Department are common usages. When did the 1950s Casualty Department become A&E?
Anthony Walter
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
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