neo-conservative dreams at conservative home?

There is a piece by Andrew Mitchell at Conservative home about how we must intervene in Somalia - in order to stop the scourge of pirates on the high-seas. The keywords are "intervention", "free world", "renegade", "state failure", "state building", "export terrorism", "humanitarian crisis". So it looks like they have another war or foreign adventure in the pipeline.

Like so much from the Conservative party these days, the article seems to be coded, packed with euphemism, so that the position of the writer/speaker is difficult to pinpoint, the intention being presumably to mean different things to different people, and to provide as narrow a target as possible to opponents in relation to the amount of information given about the writer's real views.

As for "over-fishing and toxic dumping have contributed to the economic collapse" being the reason for the pirates's activities, this may be true to an extent; but some of us with use of a memory, when looking for why there is a breakdown in political order (and there won't be much economic activity in a war zone), might just blame the Bush administration's help to Ethiopia in overthrowing the what look like now relatively moderate Islamic courts; all in the name of the War on Terror of course, fighting rogue states renegades.

The key paragraph is:

"The piracy we are seeing is a direct consequence of prolonged state failure and instability in Somalia, which has the potential to destabilise the whole region and export terrorism and disease to our own shores – as well as deepening the already appalling humanitarian crisis."

It looks like the usual tactic: lots of bad things will happen unless we get involved, and getting involved is the best, if not only, way to stop bad things happening; and if that sounds too self-interested let's also talk "humanitarianism" so as to create a moral duty to intervene. Interesting that one of the comments mentioned "bleeding-heart liberal" - this person no doubt heard a liberal interventionist talking; I heard a neo-conservative using liberal rhetoric as an afterthought. This is the dog-whistle rhetoric people talk about, except with people reactign negatively.

I suppose you could say the damage is done: Somalia is in a state of near-anarchy - so what better place for western intervention? The only thing is, I don't know of a western intervention that has created a stable political or social structure since the War on Terror began. The comments are pretty skeptical too.

There are more jaundiced views about intervention from the US-based anti-war.com site, where the pro-interventionists are recorded as speaking somewhat more directly. Military intervention is being mooted seriously. US foreign policy website, The National Interest advises caution, partly for economic reasons. Cameron's new-found fiscal conservatism, if nothing else, might also favour non-intervention, I would like to think.

Ron Paul suggests allowing merchant vessels to arm themselves. Sensible, proportionate, and the taxpayer doesn't pay (for once). But Andrew Mitchell won't get his heroic intervention.

If it's on Conservative home, does that mean it is favoured by the Conservative top brass? Cameron is a neo-conservative, we hear; Michael Gove is a self-confessed neo-con; the fact that the Cheney-McCain-following Liam Fox is Defence Secretary probably signals that Cameron is as interventionist as Blair and Bush. Mitchell is shadow international development secretary, so he must be speaking with authority.