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By HE. Mr Stephen Wordsword, British Ambasador to Serbia It works like this. Someone in government launches a policy which is, in fact, a mistake. Maybe he got his facts wrong. Maybe he underestimated the resistance he would encounter. That mistake is challenged – by a rival, or maybe by ‘life itself’. Logically, our politician should re-think. But his pride is engaged, and his ambition; he doesn’t want to admit to a mistake, which might cost him his reputation, or even his job. Emotion takes over from reason – he no longer thinks he is right, he knows he is.So, instead, he reinforces his initial failure. He invests more and more in the policy that isn’t working. His mental world view shrinks. His position becomes more and more rigid. His colleagues are forced to support him; any hint of private reservations becomes treachery. As the costs rise, and as outsiders look on aghast, he insists he will ‘never’ change, whatever the consequences. He genuinely believes that it is all a matter of will-power – that if he is only strong enough, he will be able to prove everyone wrong, and win through. The result, inevitably, is disaster – for him, for his party, his government, maybe even his whole country.‘He’, of course, can be ‘she’. Many people would see the paragraphs above as a fair description of Mrs Thatcher’s end, as she tried, against every warning, to force through a deeply unpopular new tax, until inally her own party forced her from oice. Closer to home here in Serbia, one recent example is the fall of former Prime Minister Kostunica as, obsessed with the issue of Kosovo, and ignoring everything else, he single-handedly led his party from a position of national importance into the political wilderness. The hardest words for any politician, anywhere, are: ‘I got that wrong. Sorry. Let’s start again.’ It’s so much easier to blame someone else – ‘They made the irst move. We had no choice but to re spond.’ No choice? No, not when Pride is making the decisions. And below the level of high politics, other factors creep in. An instinct for protectionism. Cronyism. Economic self-interest, blending so easily into corruption. And so decision-making is distorted. Investment opportunities are missed. Trade is stiled. Everybody ends up poorer. How diferent it can be when people behave rationally. We can see how that works from the example of organised crime in the region. Criminals are not immune from emotions, of course; they have their fair share of pride and ambition. But their over-riding goal is a rational one – to make as much money as possible. In the history of organised crime around the world, even after the bitterest of turf wars, that principle has reestablished itself. It explains why in the Balkans, even in the 1990s, crime gangs were collaborating across all the national and ethnic divides, traicking their goods, making their proits. As they still do today. Of course, at a rational level, everyone recognises the need for political and economic cooperation across the region – and cooperation in other areas too, such as law enforcement. And a lot is going on, some of it of real importance, some of it high level. All credit to those involved. But too much still goes on unremarked, obscured by grandiloquent gestures and provocative declarations. What the region needs is a new type of leadership – not the sort that is arbitrarily asserted by one side (if you are the leader, where are your followers?), but a leadership which inspires, because it is clearly in the interests of all. A leadership which says – ‘I am not just thinking of myself, or my own country, but of the welfare of the whole region, and all its peoples.’ A leadership that is prepared to admit past mistakes and so make it easier for others to overcome theirs. A leadership that puts regional economic well-being – the legal version of the criminals’ proit motive – at the heart of its agenda, above all narrower national interests. The sort of leadership that the founders of the modern EU showed, many years ago, to overcome the deepest divisions and consign them to history. Perhaps then – probably only then – will this region see real progress.
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But then I thought back to Barbara Tuchman’s ‘The March of Folly ’– an examination of why governments throughout history have doggedly pursued policies which were clearly contrary to their own self-interest. On the face of it, this sounds absurd. But there are countless examples, from every continent and period. And the reason it happens is that, time and again, the voice of reason is drowned out by other voices – ambition, fear, pride, prejudice, self-deception.