My mission to address the ‘scary & boring’.

This, the face of fear and determination. Pick out any single one and they all tell the same story. Those final moments of reckoning, contemplation and perhaps prayer. 

What would you have been thinking? I’m pretty sure I would have been terrified, petrified even to the point of paralysis. I'm certainly no hero. Like me, I expect most of you reading this have never had to actually imagine finding yourself in this situation. 

Until recently, the thought of war, real total war, that might affect you and your family probably seemed as likely as the landing of martians (although ask those who courageously volunteered to fight in the recent ‘forever wars’ in Afghanistan and Iraq and they might have different perspectives). 

At times in the last 34 years since the end of the first Cold War, there have been moments of terror. Literally. My generation will forever remember the vivid, bewildering and era defining moment of civilian passenger jets being flown deliberately into the World Trade Centre in New York, the Pentagon in Washington DC, and a field in Pennsylvania. 

Londoners like me remember the horrific 7/7 attacks and their aftermath with dread. Or Parisians, the Bataclan attack.

We also remember the fear of further attacks, and the foiled plots such as those in 2006 which intended to explode planes high above the Atlantic. This is why we still have to, annoyingly, only carry liquids of less than 100ml through security at airports. 

The point is that for most of us these events have been scary, but in terms of longer term impact, often just annoyances like some extra security procedures.

We’ve never had to consider that we or close members of our family might be called on to train, run and confront the prospect of taking a weapon into armed conflict to kill an enemy. To be in a situation where you have to kill or be killed. 

Ask Ukrainians in Kiev of Kharkiv what life felt like in January 2022 and what it feels like now. Their brethren in the Donbas will smile a wry smile at that when it then seemed a world away for those in the relatively 'normal' Ukrainian cities, even though it was just a few hundred clicks away.

Today’s dictators and authoritarian strong men (and they are all men), think the West is weak and indulgent. I sometime worry they are right. It’s not that we shouldn’t debate the rights and wrongs of issues and freedoms especially where minorities have been wronged and persecuted. It’s when these become never ending, pointless and superficial culture war conversations, and all we ever talk about. They distract from other meaningful conversations. They divide us. They’re meant to, for this is exactly what the so called 'axis of resistance', the hostile state and non-state actors want. 

They also distract from that which we take for granted; the mere fact that we have the freedom to indulge ourselves in these at all. 

As we remember those brave servicemen and women who gave their lives on this Day of Days 80 years ago, we might also remember that for them they had to risk and give up their lives so that we might be able to have these debates 80 years later. If they had not run up brutal, cold, windswept beaches, quaking with fear as those around them were literally blown to bits, none of us would be here today, living the lives we live. 

Now, having endured the longest consistent period of peace and prosperity that humanity has ever endured, we once again face the gravest of threats. Perhaps most perniciously the greatest of freedoms which we enjoy - the ability to debate, discuss and disagree openly but with civility - is being manipulated and turned against us. 

We are about to learn, perhaps to our detriment, that democracy doesn’t come for free, and that if we want it to endure, we will have to pay for it. For some that might mean higher taxes or money diverted from the things we want and sometimes even from the things we need. For others it will mean the ultimate sacrifice. 

Most NATO nations are barely spending 2% of GDP on defence. Pre 1990, this was often 4, 5, or 6%, and even higher. 

We learned in the 1930s that nations that cherish freedom must be prepared to fight wars they don’t want to fight, but which they might have to. Those that don’t face two choices; capitulation or an exponentially greater cost when they realise there is no alternative.

Dictators see the world through only one lens. Might is right. Geopolitics is the law of the jungle, and while we might wish the world to be rules-based and for all to enjoy the rights and freedoms we do, we have to understand the world as it is. 

For most, that world is not free. Two thirds of the world live in political systems which are not democratic and which are without the basic rights and freedoms we take for granted. 

Geopolitics is also what I call ‘scary and boring’. Scary because when a dictator brutally invades a sovereign democracy and threatens nuclear weapons against anyone who tries to help defend them. Boring, because when that doesn’t happen, at least not immediately, we try to understand, but our collective attention span gets stretched, overwhelmed and well, bored. We move on. Till the next scary crisis. 

My mission, without wishing to sound pompous, is to try to better understand and to better help explain. To sit between the deep and thoughtful academic and think tank community who constantly ponder these questions, and those who want to know more, but don’t have the time or perhaps always the inclination. 

I used to work for a company which sold chocolate, biscuits and candy. My job was to interpret the ‘scary and boring’ and to help stressed and busy leaders know what they needed to know in succinct terms, but without over-simplifying. 

When things got stressful for my team I would try to help get perspective and remind them that while these moments were in of themselves difficult, we were ultimately a company making tasty snacks. We weren't running a war or making life and death decisions.

Sometimes we did have to deal with scary things though, like an entire leadership team being threatened with jail as they tried their best to deal with direct threats from a hostile and corrupt state apparatus. 

Companies and organisations now find themselves dealing with many more situations like this.

For my part, I am committed to learning more, trying to explain more, trying to help more in this world of the ‘scary and boring’. I have enrolled on the Master’s course I always wanted to do, but for which the timing was never quite right, in International Relations & War at the globally renowned Department of War Studies, King’s College London. 

This will be part time, as I still need to earn a crust, and I will continue to work as a consultant, coach and leadership facilitator, perhaps with a different edge to my work with this lens. 

As you might have noticed, much of the content I post here will continue to be of a geopolitical nature, which I understand is indeed ‘scary & boring’. I take no offence if it’s not your bag, or if you just don’t like my writing, and if you wish to stop following or be connected. Really no problem at all. 

For those that stay, I hope I can offer up things of interest, and perspective, and things you might share on, if only privately. They might be scary at times, but I hope not boring. 

I’m also conscious that in a forum like LinkedIn, you might find it difficult to engage with these topics since you implicitly wear the colours of the organisations you work for, and which might be nervous to engage in these debates. That’s ok. I don’t expect likes or comments, but if you have any questions - and there are no bad questions - those are great. 

I've also started a substack, the link for which I will put in the comments. It has an odd name (The Slaughtered Lamb - there's a story there), but its intention is to try and engage in an unpretentious forum for the conversation you might have on these topics in the pub, at a cafe or the proverbial dinner party.

I'm also active in groups like the NATO Association of Canada and Royal Canadian Military Institute to engage in these topics and I hope to help in their educational missions.

In the meantime, I would just ask that you take a moment to remember what today is, perhaps to remember relatives who were involved in or fought in recent conflicts and wars, and consider your luck at enjoying the greatest of civic freedoms by dint of where you just happen to be fortunate to live. 

Democracy is not free. 

NB, the picture is of Canadian Soldiers, probably of either the Royal Winnipeg Rifles or Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada, preparing to land on Juno Beach, 6 June 1944. It was published in today’s Globe & Mail.