Portrait of the Victorious Holy Roman Emperor In the portrait by Titian, the picture encapsulates a moment in the turbulent reign of the Holy Roman Emperor (and King of Catalan, Aragon, Duke of Burgundy, etc.) Charles the Fifth. The moment was in 1547. - The moment that saw Charles defeat the Schmalkaldic League Protestants of Germany, and appear to triumph over Heresy and rebellion. It was also the year when both his rival monarchs, Henry VIII of Britain and Francis I of France, died. He was master of Europe, and this portrait of the all-conquering crusader warrior was meant to convey that triumph. No matter that the emperor had such bad gout that he could hardly sit on a horse, let alone lead a charge, nor that the victory over heresy was short lived, and resolved nothing. The image still stands of a monarch, surrounded by the agents of war, at the height of his powers, an image that other rulers ought to look on with fear and awe. It was a figure to encapsulate modern (early and late) power, and so in a real sense, codified the ways in which modern states communicate their prestige one to the other. Critical in this codification were deep principles of modern statecraft: The right to bear weapons, the right to master one’s own population, and its heresies. In the modern rendition of this portrait, paints have given way to speeches and the iconography that surrounds them of the totemic and stylized status symbols which they are all too often caught up with. In this regard the recent speech by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a paradigm case. Clearly the most important boast of modern times is caught up with the issue of ‘going nuclear’. Since the Second World War there has been a deep fetishization of nuclear power. It is treated as the great secret, which only certain countries have a right to. If one then gains rights to this secret power, one ought, the rubric runs, to sit at the topmost table of them all. Initially no doubt this made some kind of sense, as the early nuclear powers were the same countries that triumphed in the Second World War, and who were re-organizing Europe. Moreover there was a certain ‘stable horse’ thing going on. These powers no doubt linked their status to the bomb, and their arguments that they alone should have it, to the relatively recent rise of Hitler. The argument of course being that only ‘reasonable’ countries could or should have the bomb – for that recent war would have been so different if Hitler or the Japanese had had it first. So far so good. And yet very soon the rough and ready principles governing this division of the world into real (nuclear) powers and all the rest, became more problematic. The two real superpowers Russia and America pulled ahead of the other two nuclear powers (Britain and France), while at the same time the economic powers of the old Axis powers outstripped the latter two. What is more, both Britain and France (in differing ways) lost their empires, and became once again merely small powers perched on the edge of Europe. And yet for all this, they kept their position on the top table. A position that was very clearly linked to their being nuclear states. So much so, that it was (and indeed is) politically unthinkable for these two states ever to disarm. At times of great hardship we are not doing the sensible thing and saying let us not both re-arm, and we are not for the clearest of reasons. If we do then we lose our position of influence at the top table. No matter that this position in a very real sense is borrowed from the Americans. We cannot even fire our missile systems without their go ahead (and cannot maintain our deterrent without them). As a weapon our Bomb in the UK is useless, but that was never the point - it was about status. It plays then very much the same role as Charles the Fifth’s fine charger and suit of armour. A suit in which he sits resplendent in the Titian painting, a suit that would have cost thousands of silver pieces, and yet would be totally ineffective in war. That was not the point. By wearing it Charles was asserting his rights to be a dominant warrior. To wear the armour was enough, to be King (as only the richest nobles could afford such plate mail). The Bomb has then become France and Britain’s main excuse for influence. It is therefore no wonder that other nations looking on and seeing this fact, aspire to this weapon. Of course they do. We have fetishized it. Moreover we then of course behave as states always do when other’s aspire to their status symbols. We attempt to regulate the currency. That is, we would dearly like to dictate which countries could or could not have the Bomb. Certain countries (India and Pakistan) we have to allow. They are after all great regional players. But we will draw the line well before countries we do not like (such as Iran), and do so even though we have apparently accepted Korea as a nuclear power. To have a Bomb, is then to compete in the Warrior Caste of modern nationhood, a right which we want to restrict. Here of course our modern liberal values draw upon the hypocrisy of difference that serves them so very well. We claim that we are right about restricting the Bomb. The bomb after all is not a suit of armour. One bomb really could kill very many people. Which is of course true, and yet terribly convenient for ourselves, and insulting for everyone else. It is convenient in that it creates a viable, a reasonable argument why we (and those we like) alone should have access to this weapon. It is our status symbol we shout, because it is so powerful (hardly an argument which would appeal to other nations). What is more there is a clear insult here. We argue repeatedly that we alone should have the bomb as we alone are the responsible countries, and others might behave irresponsibly with them, and make the world dangerous. There is a racist slur here; in the idea that other countries are more likely to want to use these weapons, and so imperil their existence, more than we are. This raises the question - why do they like life less than we? Surely they understand that using the weapons would bring down massive response from the countries that still have the greater number of such weapons…? The result of course is that whole conflicts are codified in this fetishism. We (in Britain and France), assert our power, codify it in owning and building or commissioning bombs. We start the process of ordering new ones years in advance. We talk endlessly about it, just so everyone knows in our country and beyond, that we are still a nuclear power, that we still matter. At the same time we attempt to stop other nations having bombs, and create endless obstacles or even potential wars, about whether or not certain nations can have the bomb. Here of course it is actually rather tricky. We are always more bellicose in certain regions, and against certain countries (notably in the Middle East), while other nations (Koreas but also India and Pakistan) we merely shake our heads at. On the other side, all aspirant regional superpowers understand they need their bombs to really play their part. Or perhaps they do not really need the bomb, so much as to be in the process of building one. This is enough (As Hussein thought that having a reputation for owning chemical weapons was enough), to be a power. To announce then that one has enriched uranium to 20% is enough to say ‘we are getting there, we are nearly a superpower’, and to set those neurotic and status-obsessed warring bells of the West a-jangling. Bombs then codify what suits of armour used to. They codify who was had the right to call themselves our enemy or equal, who had the right to compete at the top table, and wave their swords about with the rest of us. We might pretend that we are making the world safer, by restricting nuclear power to ourselves and our friends (and maybe we are, although Charles would have claimed as much, and would have argued that statecraft and war ought only to be the preserve of monarchs). But anyway this argument rings as hollow hypocrisy by the excluded nations, who see the way the nations with weapons pose for modern Titian paintings (in the media etc.), and envy it. The first principle then of the Titian portrait is the implied triumph over foreign adversaries. Here is a King worth his mettle, the painting says, - here is a monarch who is the sole elder statesman of Europe. The Bomb is likewise the way in which nations communicate or confirm or impress their power one upon another: To have a bomb is to demand influence over others – an influence that must be listened to. That is, where in times gone by, the position of being master of Europe, the Holy Roman Emperor, was a power which one had to be born into, in this modern age, the same prestige is found through science and technology. To become a nuclear power, is to have knowledge, and so is something which any nation (could) theoretically aspire to. And yet we in the West at least never treat it like this. We behave as if it were a birthright (or not), and so only certain countries can or should have it. In effect, we then end up behaving in a way that Charles the Fifth would have approved of: We treat the possession of the bomb as a matter of honour, and as if our birthright would be besmirched if other uncouth nations owned it too. The second element in that portrait of Charles, was his clear domestic triumph. It was painted after his great victory over Protestantism and the battle of Muhlberg: The moment in his reign when it appeared that he was going to be able to suppress heresy in Germany, and force it to once again conform to (an albeit reformed) Rome. The painting was designed then to serve both as a paean of triumph and yet as a warning to other heretical nations. Here is the end of the problem it says - and a traditional end at that - an end in war. The ‘King' using the traditional methods of kingship had triumphed, and here was the proof. As such it was also a song of praise to the traditional methods of the medieval monarch, when faced with sedition. Methods of repression, war and violence. And yet of course this methodology itself floundered in the face of the Reformation. Protestantism could not be destroyed by war, and Charles proceeded to lose the battle of ideas that followed his military victory, and so eventually lose the war (even though he had won the main battle). The portrait for all its triumph is then poised at a real moment in the history of Europe, the moment that the traditional powers of the monarch lost out to popular belief (and literacy). It is a lesson that modern nations rather need to learn. It is all too easy for any modern nation to appear or engineer a success, using all the engines of its traditional state powers to do so. This is certainly the case in Iran, which managed using the traditional methods of bussing parts of the population in (and suppressing dissent) to conjure up a million strong crowd to celebrate revolution (as it is currently expressed in the government). Here then was a clear triumph. A clear portrait to conjure with – a million people on the street. The lesson was of course clear. This was the triumph of the government over the opposition, and a triumph of its ability to organize folk, and a very real expression of its power. Well maybe. And yet of course it is only an expression of its (the state’s) conventional power. That is its ability to mobilize an assembly of people in the most traditional of manners. The problem however that it faces, is that its enemy (the opposition) is rather more subtle than that. The opposition is not really defined by the powers of the state but rather is composed of the rejection of one (very single minded) interpretation of the Revolution, and a technology in which this rejection is expressed (on the internet, and through appeals to the world beyond). The result of course is, that the triumph of a state to create a mass protest in its support (and so claim to be the true inheritor of the 1979 Revolution), might well be a cheap triumph. Modern revolution’s crucible is likely not to be mass crowds, so much as the cloud-protest potentialities of the internet, which allows many different voices, and protests to emerge across time and in numerous places. Or to put it slightly differently, in arranging the crowd, the Iranian leaders are showing that they are living in the past. That is in the great days of thirty years ago, and the kind of revolutions that could happen then. It says nothing about the potentialities of today. The painting might then look good (or the crowd scenes impressive), and yet this is not enough to actually win a war (even a painting by Titian cannot do that!). This criticism is more generally applicable. There appears an all- -too-evident anachronism about the very rules of rulership which compromises modern states. We set rules, so that potential leaders can compete for power and yet of course this competition takes time. The result is then that the leaders we get are those who are good at competing within the rules which we set, rules that will almost always draw upon the past (recent and more distant). Such rulers are then almost by definition interested mostly in the world of yesterday (it was after all through these rules that they gained their power). This is all fine as long as the rules do not change quickly. The trouble is of course, that if they do, then the kind of rulers who one ends up with are Gordon Brown or Tony Blair, men who clearly do not really grasp modern technology, and the change in powers which it brings (or if they do, want to police it or strip it of its freedoms). To be a legitimate ruler is then to claim a right based upon a history (and an ability to use that history). It is then always to be open to the fate of Charles the Fifth: one wins by the old rules, the rules of the state, and yet endlessly loses by the new rules. Or even worse, the only way that one can stop losing in the face of such rules, is by acts of oppressions and heavy-handed policing (the anti-terror laws are as much about stopping a government being embarrassed in the face of technology as they are about anything). The modern ruler is then very much still caught in that Titian painting. To rule is to triumph at home and abroad, it is to claim the rights to be a warrior king, and always to effectively control a population. The problem always is that the first of these criteria is rather easy to master. In every age there are clear rules for ‘becoming a great king’. But the second, the mastery of the population is altogether harder to ensure. The result always is in this world of ours and Charles’, that the temptation which the state has, in the fact of the failure of this internal mastery, is to use the agencies of repression against the second, and carry war home to its people. A modern logic that sees states police their people, and treat them as if they were all (potential) terrorists. A violent and all too futile endeavour: a fact that Charles learnt to his cost, and that we, in the West, clearly have yet to learn!