This lady of Princeton, this former Director of Policy Planning for the Department of State at the Obama White House, writes blithely of how the traditions of a thousand year monarchy in Britain as manifested in the Queen’s recent Jubilee enables the people of Britain to form a vision of the future and to, as she puts it, “fix eyes and hearts on a narrative of hope and purpose – to uplift, rather than distract.” Without belaboring the point that, from where I sit, parties like the Queen’s Jubilee are very much intended to distract every bit as much as they are meant to uplift, Professor Slaughter gives the illustration to reinforce the point that to lack such a positive narrative, makes “winning” impossible. She doesn’t say what kind of winning she’s talking about, although I find her choice of operative verb to be intriguing. She chooses “winning” instead of, say, “advancing” “developing” “becoming” “building” or “succeeding”. More on the curious word choice later.



The upshot on her characterization of the Queen’s party as inspirational is that not only does she choose not to call it the obvious propaganda that it is, she writes as if oblivious of the fact that she is invoking a symbol of empire. It never apparently occurs to her that the august monarchy she sees as providing that “uplifting…positive narrative” was—particularly during the years of empire from the late 15th through the mid 20th centuries—wont to beat untold wealth out of its colonial possessions like a brute master beating work out of a listless slave, while on the home front, the people wearing those very crown jewels and riding in those very carriages Professor Slaughter extols colluded with their captains of industry to ruthlessly exploit the labor of the lower classes throughout the dark and smoke palled industrial revolution. By pointing this out I don’t mean to contend that the British people didn’t wind up loving their monarchy. They did and do, the damn fools. So yes, I appear to be one of those cynics Professor Slaughter anticipated might call the Queen’s Jubilee the “old bread-and-circuses routine.”



I don’t think she’s so naïve as to think the Queen’s party wasn’t propaganda. But I do understand why she doesn’t want to seem so cynical herself. She’s held an important office in the U.S. empire and so she must not mention such things if she wishes to retain her privileged position.



Still, she says something that it seems might get her into hot water with her official connections at State. She asks, “are Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese, and other Europeans really supposed to embrace an austerity program imposed on them because prevailing wisdom in Germany and other northern countries considers them profligate and lazy?” This is a radical thought because, as the Germans are quick to point out, the Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese and others borrowed the money and they need to pay it back and the interest too. Hence, Professor Slaughter’s statement seems a little rad for two reasons: First, she thinks the obligation to pay arises from how the Germans see the southerners as profligate and lazy; second, she thinks the debt ought to be forgiven for that reason. If you’ll pardon me, her take on this seems a little naïve, maybe even a little disingenuous. The German cultural impressions of the debtor countries is irrelevant to what the German's see as the duty of those countries to pay and the debt ought to be forgiven because to enforce its payment would press the debtor countries into too much misery.



Next Professor Slaughter gets to the point of her article: the Greeks, Turks and Cypriots could all get a mojo going for the future if they got together and developed their common offshore natural gas reserves. The upshot is that these countries could all profit if they’d find some way, through good faith and diplomacy, to work together in their common interest, and who can disagree with that? Not me.



Still, the essay bugs me. From its tortured imagery through its obliviousness to presence of EMPIRE in everything it discusses to the choice of the word “winning” to describe what the article assumes in the opening paragraph we all want to do. The type of international cooperation the article suggests is essentially the process of working together toward a common good, which I like, and yet Professor Slaughter chooses to characterize that process by applying the word “winning” to it.



What is being won? A positive outcome. If such an outcome were to happen, wouldn’t the process really be more one of a building, a creating, a crafting? While the word “win” now is often used as a kind of synonym for things like creating, building or crafting something in the sense that the thing created was won from alternative outcomes that were not so positive, it nonetheless has its roots in contests where entities compete and some win while others lose. Professor Slaughter paints a scenario of Greek-Turkish-Cypriot gas development as a win-win situation, although she ignores the obvious environmental costs of extracting and consuming any fossil fuel.



I can’t help but be made uncomfortable by our culture’s overweening worship of the idea of “winning” and of Professor Slaughter’s use of it in this essay when there were other better words available. It says something about what the deeper problem is in our society, that we compete too much, that we preserve the perquisites of the winner and, to greater or lesser degrees, ignore the difficulties that result to the loser. As a result of that, we get wealth flowing like rivers to the top of our hierarchical society while the lower levels grow pale and anemic.



Professor Slaughter occupies a position high in the hierarchy, close to the headwaters of power. And yet, she would forgive the Greek and Spanish debt. She probably wouldn't be making statements like that if she were still at State. But maybe so. It’s enough to suggest some hope.

