REALPOLITIK, INTELLIGENT FORETHOUGHT OR AMORAL PUSUIT OF POLITICAL POWER

The 2^nd September reveals some interesting political attitudes and coincidences.

On the 2^nd September 1807, the British Royal Navy bombarded Copenhagen with firebombs and phosphorus rockets to prevent Denmark from surrendering its fleet to Napoleon. The British repeated this type of exercise during the second World War when on the 3^rd July 1940 as part of Operation Catapult and known as the Battle of Mers-el-Kebir, the British bombarded the French Navy at Mers-el-Kebir on the Alegrian coast. the French fleet was at anchor and not expecting an assault from Britain. The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,297 French servicemen, the sinking of a battleship and the damaging of five other ships. France and the United Kingdom were not at war but, after the armistice with Germany, Britain feared the French fleet would end up as a part of the German Navy. Although French Admiral François Darlan had assured Winston Churchill the fleet would not fall into German possession, the British acted upon the assumption that Darlan's promises were insufficient guarantees. This was not without reason as Darlan later served in the Vichy government as prime minister.

T. Roosevelt

The U.S. President, Theodore Roosevelt, clearly learned much from the history lesson of the British Navy’s action at Copenhagen. In a speech he made whilst Vice-President of the United States at the Minnesota State Fair on the 2^nd September 1901, he first used the term “speak softly and carry a big stick”. This big stick ideology (the idea of negotiating peacefully, simultaneously threatening with the "big stick", or the military) ties in heavily with the idea of Realpolitik, which implies an amoral pursuit of political power that resembles Machiavellian ideals; however Roosevelt described his style of foreign policy as "the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis". This was of course very much part of the Monroe Doctrine. Roosevelt’s speech was given twelve days before the assassination of President William McKinley, which subsequently thrust him into the presidency.

Ho Chi Minh

Another Roosevelt, Franklyn, also a President of the United States, made comment about the French colonisation of Indo-China. In 1940-1945, French Indochina was occupied by Japan, which used the colony as a base from which to conduct military operations further south. Soon after the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II, the Vietminh entered Hanoi and Hồ Chi Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on the 2nd September 1945. Franklin Roosevelt had spoken against French rule in Indochina and America was supportive of the Viet Minh at this time. From support in 1945 to ten years later and the beginning of a war that would last for nearly 20 years.

Herewith a video of the ceremony of the Declaration of Independence on the 2^nd September 1945. Ho Chi Minh died exactly 24 years later on the 2^nd September 1969, at the height of the war.