28

‘MacArthur’s plan to reconstruct Japan with vertical rather than horizontal ambitions was, most historians agree, a resounding success. The energy once poured into militarism and aggression was channelled into industry and inventiveness. The same can be said of Germany – from a broken, bombed-out nation to one of the most stable and successful in the world. But this was no accident. It happened by dint of huge effort. America poured money, food and resources into both countries. The British public endured food rationing well into the 1950s to ensure that Germans, the very people who had been killing them only a few years before, didn’t starve.

‘Now compare the success of this approach with our abject failures in the post-conflict zones of the twenty-first century. Think about it. No plan, little investment and certainly no question that in victory we might make painful sacrifices at home for the benefit of the defeated …’

Black had expected his nine o’clock lecture the following Monday morning to have attracted only a handful of the keenest students, especially given that it was the final week of term, but to his astonishment nearly every seat in the hall was taken. The presence of such a large crowd was both flattering and disconcerting. He could see young minds being opened to new ideas in front of his eyes but after his experience of the previous week he felt like a fraud. He was preaching peace, but in the knowledge that the only thing that stood between peace and conflict were people like him. People whose humanity could be switched off and on at will.

His inward struggle seemed only to spur him on. The forty minutes of his presentation seemed to pass in moments. He concluded with a flourish: ‘If you truly are fighting in the interests of peace, you must know that peace is not secure until every building is rebuilt and every crater filled; until every life lost is compensated for and until hope exceeds despair. These are huge and costly obligations, and unless a leader can convince his or her people that they are worth meeting, he or she can hope for nothing more than chaos and ultimate defeat.’

He had borrowed these closing lines from a section of his partially written paper and was gratified to be met with a burst of applause. He could only hope that he would receive a similar reception at West Point. He took a sip of water from the glass on the lectern and invited questions.

Helen Mount was first to put her hand in the air. ‘How much of this Western generosity to the Japanese and Germans do you put down to guilt, Dr Black?’

‘None. Of course, the Allied soldiers were horrified by what they saw on the ground – Dresden, Berlin, Hiroshima, all of which we’ve discussed – but there’s no doubting where they felt responsibility lay.’

‘There were plenty who didn’t see the need to carpet-bomb Dresden,’ Helen countered. ‘Freeman Dyson, the physicist who was working in Bomber Command, said there was no moral justification for it whatsoever.’

‘Don’t forget that this was a war for survival,’ Black said, ‘like nothing you’ve ever experienced, and only twenty years after the last. Part of the thinking was, We are going to destroy you so absolutely and emphatically, using the very weapons with which you tried to destroy us, that you will never even think of repeating this horror again. The corollary was: We will also rebuild you and enable you to live in peace and prosperity. You may have forced us to descend to the level of animals, but we refuse to remain there and we will also give you every opportunity to elevate yourselves to where you belong.’

‘OK, but isn’t your argument a way of justifying more colonial wars? Aren’t you saying it would be fine to invade and kill hundreds of thousands of people as long as we’re prepared to pay for the clean-up? How about taking far greater risks for peace? I mean, talking and talking and talking and locating the new potential leaders and doing everything humanly possible to enable the change to come from within a hostile country.’

‘So you find the idea of destabilizing a country more acceptable than invading it? Sometimes the results can be worse.’

‘I’m talking about a fundamental change of attitude – projecting peace, not threats of violence.’

‘And against enemies who refuse to talk?’

‘The more peaceful we are, the less threat we pose and the less violence will be directed at us. That has to be right.’

Black felt the sympathy in the room shift away from him. Helen had found a position her fellow students found more attractive than his model of carefully modulated aggression. They were young. It was only right that they gravitated to ideals rather than practical reality.

Then a lone dissenting voice spoke up. It belonged to Sam Wright, the young man with the fringe who had collared Black after his Hiroshima lecture. ‘How much more peaceful could we have been towards Germany in 1939?’

‘That was different. I’m talking about now,’ Helen responded.

‘Fine. Let’s talk about now,’ Sam said. ‘Bottom line, we’re still human beings, still biological organisms programmed to preserve our gene pool, at the expense of others if necessary. The laws of nature dictate that we’ll develop strategies to ensure our survival. At the end of the Second World War it was cash-bombing the Germans and Japanese into swapping imperial ambitions for capitalism. It worked. Success. The last thing the communists wanted was capitalism, so to deal with them we armed ourselves with nukes. Great. That did the trick for fifty-six years. Then, suddenly, up pops a new enemy that takes us down from the inside with hijacked planes, rented trucks and ideology that spreads through the veins of society like a virus. They have no leaders to negotiate with and no demands with which we can possibly contemplate compromise. Faced with that, all your peaceful instincts are useless. We’re back to the elementals again: we’ve got to start killing people to save ourselves, only they’re much harder to find and even harder to predict. And who, exactly, are you asking us to be generous to when this particular war is over? Saudi Arabia? Qatar – the richest per capita country on the planet? Would a few extra dollars persuade them to turn off the funding pipe? Would it hell.’

There was an astonished silence. It was as if Sam had uttered an unspeakable heresy but at the same time hit on an unavoidable truth.

He hadn’t finished. ‘You know what? Sometimes I’m almost grateful to the jihadis for giving us the chance to remind ourselves what’s required. We all want to live in a society where you can have seminars on the appropriate gender-neutral pronouns, but that doesn’t free us from the need to have to kill the people who threaten it. And there is no way to sugar that pill. My only worry is that we’re being so slow to act, so reluctant to stoop to their level, that we’ll have lost this war before we even accept that it’s started.’

Black found himself momentarily unsettled by Sam’s blunt and stark analysis. The words of a young student were easy to imagine as those of a politician of the future. In this case a bleaker future than he cared to contemplate.

‘Helen?’

Black could see her make a conscious effort to contain her indignation. It was a good sign. She was maturing fast. She delivered her answer calmly. ‘I think we should always act from the highest moral principles. And I think we should work much harder to articulate precisely what they are. MacArthur’s plan was needed to repair a lot of damage that shouldn’t have been done in the first place. In the Second World War, in Vietnam, in Iraq and Afghanistan, we allowed ourselves to sink too low. We should act with as little violence as possible. And we need a world forum on Islamic terrorism. Them and us isn’t good enough any more. On one level we’re all us. We just have to work harder to find that level.’

There it was: the voice of hope. Her answer prompted nods and murmurs of approval.

Sam graciously declined to come back at her.

Equilibrium was restored.

Another hand went up. It belonged to Sadiq Nizamani, a second year at Christ Church College and a nephew of Pakistan’s foreign minister. ‘I think both speakers are in part correct. The civilized conscience and the instinct for survival will always be in tension. You have said many times this year, Dr Black, that the progress of mankind must be towards non-violent resolution of differences, but while we strive for this ideal we have to cope with those who do not share it. Regrettably, peace is maintained through a measure of violence. But to enlarge on my friend’s point –’ he nodded to Helen seated two rows in front of him – ‘as little violence as possible – I consider that an insufficient principle. A sufficient principle might be as little violence as possible to secure the triumph of my ideals. If your ideal is to secure the future of a free society, then significant violence may be required. If it is merely to secure the future of a democratic society, which may in due course choose to abandon its freedoms, less violence may be required. These are fine distinctions but in reality may prove the difference between winning and losing.’

As Black listened, he felt the superior force of Sadiq’s intellect. Minds like his that coolly got straight to the nub were rare. Black looked to Helen, ‘Do you agree? Or do you think that exercising the greatest degree of restraint might set an example that others will inevitably follow?’

‘I believe that people in power should never stop saying how determined they are that violence is the very last resort.’

‘So, ultimately, I suppose we can all agree that the answer lies in the power of argument,’ Black said, drawing proceedings to a close. ‘Discussions like this one are taking place around the cabinet tables of the world. Probably, the very best we can hope to do is to examine every option as carefully as we are able, informed but not handcuffed by history.’ He glanced at the clock. Time was nearly up. ‘OK, I think we’ll call it a day. And thank you all for your contributions. It’s been illuminating. Genuinely.’

He reached down to gather up his notes and students began to rise from their seats.

A voice called out above the rising babble of conversation. ‘Is it true you were involved with renditions to Guantánamo, Dr Black? Were they the result of careful discussion around the cabinet table?’

Black glanced up and saw that the speaker was a slightly built young man in the second row. The chatter in the hall died away. Black sensed the anticipation as all eyes turned in his direction. It dawned on him that the impertinent question must have been asked as an end-of-term stunt. The students had been gossiping about him. But who or what had started it? Had someone been digging into his past?

‘I’m curious to know why you ask that,’ Black answered, stalling for time.

‘You were a major in the SAS, weren’t you? And all throughout the period during which the SAS were busy capturing and illegally rendering people.’

‘No, I wasn’t,’ Black lied. He had no choice. ‘And even if I were, I would hardly be able to admit it. As you probably know, all members of the Special Forces are bound by the Official Secrets Act. Discussing any past operations would be a crime.’

‘So what was your regiment?’

Black saw students bringing out their phones ready to Google his answer.

‘I understand your curiosity, but I’m here to teach history, not to answer questions about my past career. Enjoy your summer. See you next term, I hope.’

The young man exchanged a look with his neighbour, who gave him a nudge, urging him not to push it any further. ‘Fair enough.’

The tension broke, leaving a deflated atmosphere of anti-climax. Black turned his back to the room and pretended to busy himself while he waited for the hall to clear. He could hear the gossip continuing as the last of them made their way out and filed away along the corridor.

Only when he was sure that he was alone did Black turn to face the empty room. The question had rattled him. He realized that somehow he had managed to convince himself that he could draw a veil over the details of his past. Suddenly, the very idea seemed preposterous. Another product of his compartmentalized mind. And if his students had started making assumptions about him, his colleagues would naturally be doing the same. He was probably already an object of their morbid fascination. How many have you killed? What does it feel like? Can you sleep at night or are you haunted by their ghosts? Those were the questions everybody wanted to ask but didn’t dare to. He could live with their curiosity but he would never be constrained by it. He would show them. He would study and write until his eyes bled if that’s what it took.

He refused to be dismissed as nothing more than an old soldier who had stooped to the depths because someone had to. He was a man with ideas. And ideas had the power to change the world.