October 5, 2011Dear Sir,This semester I find myself abroad, studying in Germany. Recently I have been in Munich, where the Oktoberfest has been going on for the past two weeks or so (Monday, the 21st Anniversary of German Reunification, was the final day of celebrations).As many foreigners come to the city to attend the festival, I was talking to two Minnesotans, who were expressing grievances at Pres. Obama’s ‘apology speeches’ to the Muslim world and other international groups who found the Bush administration’s foreign policies a little brash, shall we say. I asked them what was so terrible about these speeches. One, who had just left the US Military, said “He’s making us look soft.” In return, I asked them “But, are you soft?” At this, they fell silent, suddenly given over to the idea that President Obama’s speeches were, in fact, quite shrewd. He has not changed US military policy at all, really; he is only to less exuberant to use it when the chance of war abroad rears its head. Yet, few around the world consider him the warmonger that they considered GW Bush, Jr. Their patriotic pride had made them blind, or at least, short-sighted.In the same vein, I now wish to draw attention to an article written by former Senator-cum-commentator Walton Brown. With reference to the UK government’s new White Paper, he states: “While the UK will consult and have leaders of the colonies sit around a table in the hope of arriving at a consensus on the future relation between the two, the absolute power to decide rests with the UK government.” This is absolutely true. What is certainly wrong is what he then writes: “On this issue alone, the best any territory can hope for is an unequal partnership where the UK bestows some concessions on the people. For those who would argue precisely the same types of relationships would exist if a sovereign Bermuda was in negotiations with a more powerful country, there is a qualitative difference to note: a sovereign Bermuda has the capacity to leave the table, colonial Bermuda is required to sit at the table or face unilateral action by the UK.”Firstly, the UK takes no concessions from us. Do they levy taxes on anything we produce? No, they do not. Do they change our laws, when they are outdated and we cannot indict our politicians for what counts in most other nations as graft? They do not. Indeed, the mood of the past few UK governments has been nothing but apologetic towards Overseas Territories (emphatically not colonies) and minorities. And, when an Overseas Territory has a government which is as experienced at playing the race card as ours, it is nigh untouchable. This is particularly true of the current UK government, whose Prime Minister has to constantly be sorry towards poor whites, let alone poor blacks, for his upbringing (which he had literally no hand in choosing).Secondly, when has our Government, in any serious international negotiation, really ‘sat at the table’? Not once. If, in a hypothetical situation, we were, as a sovereign nation, to be offered a pity seat at some negotiating table, we would be little more than a fly that buzzes irritatingly around much larger heads, distracting them from real diplomacy. Our leaving the table would simply be akin to the insect flying out of the window: a relief, not a statement.Not so long ago, the Government of the Maldives, a sovereign nation, held a session of Parliament underwater (yes, really look it up) to highlight to larger, more powerful nations that global warming caused by their carbon emissions would soon drown those islands. That, if you will excuse the pun, was not even a drop in the diplomatic ocean. It shocks me that such intelligent men as Senator Brown, and the former Premier Dr Brown, would be so recklessly naive as to believe that sovereignty on our part would help us. Without the much, much larger influence of the United Kingdom on our side, we are at best hopelessly ambitious and at worst delusionally grandiose on the international stage. Under the UK’s wing, we have access to the Security Council if we need it (not to mention, for free). Anyone with diplomatic experience will tell you that this is the highest place you can be on the diplomatic scene without transcending it altogether (see the US/Russia/China/any nation with ‘the Bomb’).The short, dim glow of pride that some of us would experience from shrugging off a ‘colonial yoke’ that exists only in name would be little consolation when compared to the new irrelevance we would ‘enjoy’. And we are already so pathetically, sub-atomically irrelevant. Most of the world’s population does not know that we exist. More famous is our eponymous Triangle, which, unlike our Islands, is an unsubstantiated myth.The only thing that irks me more than the above is that no one in Government would dare consider that a University student could possibly know more than them, or even be right more than partly. Pride, you see. It blinds them.JOHN GIBBONSLately of Munich, Germany