When you are small and weak, you don’t mix it up with global bullies

Suppose the international ecosystem is not the benign, kind, well-intentioned, aid-giving, aid-forgiving, rights-respecting, nature-loving, peace-seeking thing that the press is reporting and the foreign diplomats are selling on television?

Suppose the international system was like an American prison yard where right is might, where extreme brutality and murderous insanity coexist comfortably with racism and brutal exploitation? What then?

If it a was prison yard, there would be the Anglo Saxon gang led by a big bully called America. Around it would be clustered the usual suspects: Britain, tattooed, strappy, with a history of violence, France, proud, cunning with the dark past of turning tail at critical moments, Germany, a bulging hulk whose inscrutable calm may hide something a lot more troubling, and Israel, a trouble-making knife-man who is quick to anger.

Hanging around on the fringes and tolerated because they work in the kitchen would be a whole load of beaky vultures, calculating and coldly ambiguous, watching, waiting.

Attracting a growing crowd of urchins, broken and brutalised fans would be a muscular China.

Though without street cred, this would be an influential kitchen operative with access to copious amounts of leftovers for a gang of weak misfits in various stages of starvation, competing for affection with the Anglo Saxon gang.

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Around the kitchen worker would congregate the largest collection of inmates, the Asian gang. From without, it looks like a coherent group. Up close, there are interesting, but concealed cleavages.

Pumping iron in a corner would be a short guy with a strangely expressionless face in cabbage complexion, surrounded by a huge gang of particularly nasty bullies. Other gangs are very careful not to mess with this Siberian lot.

The Anglo Saxon gang would be the undisputed boss of the yard. It eats what it wants and knifes whom it pleases. There could be minor resistance and fights postponed because, as is common with bullies, the weaker you are the more likely you are to be brutalised. The stronger you are, the less likely you are to be troubled.

WARRING PROTO-STATES

In this metaphor, which is quickly running out of control, Kenya would be a scruffy teen, surly, rebellious, showing some kind of promise, but dangerously exposed because it is not under the protection of any of the big gangs. It would orbit the Anglo Saxon constellation and snack on leftovers and cast-offs, but increasingly the abundance at the Chinese table would have caught its keen nose.

This is, of course, fantasy, but there are minor parallels, which should cause us sleepless nights.

First, countries which oppose the West likely end in grief. Muammar Gaddafi was violated with a stick and his country bombed by Nato (to protect civilians, mind). It is now always on the verge of civil war.

Syria, which had been very gung-ho, supporting Hezbollah and all manner of other nasty business, is in the midst of one of the most brutal civil wars on the planet. So far, as many as 160,000 people have lost their lives and the war seems to be just warming up.

Iraq is gone, likely to be replaced by three warring proto-states.

International terrorism mainly used to be about Islamic militants and what that bad man, Osama bin Laden, described as the “far enemy” and the “Zionist entity”, in other words America and Israel.

Today Muslims have turned on one another and are slaughtering each other with the most saddening hatred. Islamic fundamentalists in Africa have turned their guns, machetes and pipe bombs against ordinary Africans of all religions.

I think Kenya should stop behaving like an old man who has been “sat on chapati” for those of you who are familiar with that process which creates foggy brains and indecision.

A country can’t just be left alone. There are thugs and ruthless gangs in suits with their powerful governments behind them who want to profit off your resources.

By all means we should continue engaging, not just with China, but also with India, Brazil, Russia and as many Brics as we can lay our hands on.

However, we must also find ways of repairing relations with the West, reassure our traditional allies, allow them access to our resources and markets, such as they are, renew military agreements and buy a bit of their hardware.

When you are small and weak, you don’t go for a slugfest.

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