Edward R. Murrow (1957) Narrator of 'Alliance for Peace'.
President Trump’s recent bawling at NATO was not the summit of his imbecility. No sir.
To twist a phrase, he’s just an old bull who carries his own china shop. Now, I’m not suggesting we ignore these off stage noises entirely you see, the bovine invectives actually serve a purpose, casting a light upon the value of always asking obvious questions.
Newspapers responded in his destructive wake by posing the obvious question for us:
‘Does the North Atlantic Alliance have a future?’
https://www.economist.com/international/2017/03/25/could-donald-trumps-attack-on-the-un-destabilise-the-world
Well please, of course it does.
But we just can’t just leave it there. Giving an obvious answer to an obvious question just won’t do. Apart from anything else, another Trump might be coming around the corner and we still have our hands full with this one. So let’s reply and enjoy the reply as we settle the point in full - long before the next Trump baby is born somewhere in the world and tries to knock everything down again.
First off, thank you Mr. President for your venality because now, we get an opportunity to review history and the reasons why we ever bother to do anything constructive, let alone form international bodies like NATO. Now my manner might come across as being slightly terse but actually, we’re talking about the rigorous application of a method here. Let’s call it our ‘antidote to Trump’.
Primo Levi deplored people’s lethargy about Fascism, raising his guard at every opportunity as well as coaching others on how to raise their own. He went to great lengths to stress that Fascism was a generational event, not a 'once in a blue moon' type thing.
https://fascistitaly.wordpress.com/primo-levi/
Primo was our Ur-writer who had suffered through a particular nightmare and then had something eternal to impart to us all. He understood, despite his deep mental and physical wounding, that Fascism would rear its head again. And again. It was just a matter of time.
'It’s a pattern that you need to prepare for!’, he seemed to be saying. And of course he was right. Not that his statement was pitched to make you feel comfortable. Primo was not in the armchair business and we can all be grateful for that. Primo’s predictions clock the eerie prescience of our latest cycle of Fascism, ignited by Trump’s tirades attacking several well-established International bookshops, excuse me. I mean bodies.
His latest NATO barrage did have me running to my shelf to review a particular 1954 documentary as I searched for the answer to that nagging simple question: ‘Does the North Atlantic Alliance have a future?’
In that year, William P. Templeton wrote a documentary called ‘The Alliance for Peace’, narrated by Edward R. Murrow and produced by Sam Goldwyn Jnr. This was no commercial adventure, despite the Hollywood overtones, but one of a set of documentaries produced by NATIS, NATO’s Information Services. A newly minted international body that sought to communicate to anyone who would listen about the emerging spirit of détente that filled the hearts of the Western World after the Second World War.
The documentary was non-commercial, initially released to journalists, politicians, educational institutions and finally to broadcasters. It was as good a place as any to shape my answer to the simple question. It was no coincidence that 'Alliance for Peace' was released a year after the death of Stalin and at the end of the Korean war. A confluence of events that represented an ‘historical blip’, a temporary relaxation in East-West relations.
Tension gaps in history are rare and this one offered NATIS its first opportunity to communicate the new spirit of economic and political co-operation that now possessed all the survivors in the West. A nexus point. One can only imagine the feeling. The personal swelling of the breast, the fast beating of the heart at being given a unique opportunity to build human life again – at the same time placing as much distance between the terror lived and an imagined future without it.
People are undoubtedly at their best during these epochs, quickly multiplying good ideas to match every new building block cast. And Europe and America were casting in their billions.
Oh! To be a survivor!
NATIS carried out a range of activities to relay the active message of détente, with publications, conferences, travelling exhibitions, radio and TV broadcasts and of course, documentaries. With Templeton’s emerging script in hand matched to the voice of Edward R. Murrow to turn its message of hope, this newly refined spirit of détente had found its eloquence and ésprit.
To properly interpret the guiding tenets of NATO and to render the idea of transnational economic and cultural ties, Templeton had to hitch a ride with General Eisenhower. He travelled with the great man throughout Europe, interpreting explicitly what was going on, committing in real time the hard text and rhetoric for what was about to happen.
He was acting prima facie, in the role that all writers aspire to most, witnessing change and history in the making. To see through the General’s eyes and to capture the heightened ideas of the emerging ‘International Alliance’. Probably the most comprehensive and unifying peace time construct engineered by any combination of human societies in the history of the planet.
This was not Empire building. Nor was a gun raised to secure the desired result (we’d certainly had had enough of the bang-bangs by then). This was the unification of many hearts and many minds, gravitating towards a single purifying principle. It might be quickly added, a principle that was shared with some hearts that had been dark to us and once our enemy.
Templeton witnessed conciliatory approaches at every stop with the plane parking in several West European capitals - carried along the way by the hopes of millions yearning for universal co-existence.
In the emerging script, scribbled in the lap of a bouncing plane, Military themes gave way to the ideals of total economic and social integration, with a language that was positive, constructive and at times, Miltonian.
In the ascending rhythms of the final script, Murrow catches the moment of hope:
"It is not the job of NATO to either threaten or to intimidate. For the aims of this alliance of the North Atlantic are the reverse. Its very existence is an assurance that as each new dawn breaks over a Western world at peace, light falls over the countryside, villages and towns filled with a community of peace loving people. A bond welding the old world and the new. An assurance that a family of 430 million people will remain free. Free to live their lives as they wish to live them and to protect and preserve them, with vigilance and readiness. These are the aims of the Atlantic Alliance, the ‘alliance for peace’.
Primo would have smiled at the line: ‘with vigilance and readiness’. Then again, no! See now how he takes a wrench and sounds the gut-bell as he realizes that these tenets, binding all NATO members since 1949 are the antithesis of those held by the current President of the United States!
Primo and I will tug the shroud and reveal the truth of it.
Flip Murrow’s statement upside down, replace the word ‘NATO’ for ‘Trump’. You have here the guiding tenets for the Western world’s own immediate future, courtesy of the US President, Donald Trump:
‘The job of Donald Trump is to threaten and intimidate. His existence is an assurance that as the sun sets over the Western world, a shadow will fall over the countryside, villages and the towns filled with hate. The bond between the old peace loving world and the new will break. You can be assured that 430 million people will become enslaved, enslaved and unable to live the lives they wish to lead, unprotected and preserved by disdain and inaction. These are the aims of Donald Trump with the collapse of peace and the North Atlantic Alliance'.
The original tenets of NATO established in word and action the lasting peace we have enjoyed for the last 70 years. The President’s new tenets may in the same way, guarantee the world 70 years of conflict.
If you don’t believe me, listen to the urgent chimes of my good friend Primo.