With obvious comparisons being drawn between China’s facilitating a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and the Americans underwriting a submarine deal amongst Australia, the UK, and themselves, this seems as good a time as any to recall another grand geopolitical gesture that found itself on the front pages.
It was called the Multilateral Force, or MLF. This was a NATO nuclear force that would have ‘integrated’ ships and crews so that all the right people felt they had a stake in the common defence. The Soviets couldn’t possibly beat it.
And the jokes came fast. What else could one do with nuclear submarines manned by Italian engineers, German armourers, French navigators, and British cooks? The humourist Tom Lehrer put the concept to music:
MLF Lullaby
Sleep, baby, sleep, in peace may you slumber,
No danger lurks, your sleep to encumber.
We’ve got the missiles, peace to determine,
And one of the fingers on the button will be German.
Why shouldn’t they have nuclear warheads?
England says no, but they all are soreheads.
I say a bygone should be a bygone,
Let’s make peace the way we did in Stanleyville and Saigon.
Once all the Germans were warlike and mean,
But that couldn’t happen again.
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they’ve hardly bothered us since then.
So, sleep well, my darling, the sandman can linger.
We know our buddies won’t give us the finger.
Heil – hail – the Wehrmacht, I mean the Bundeswehr,
Hail to our loyal ally!
M.L.F.
Will scare Brezhnev.
I hope he is half as scared as I!
Maybe the Chinese will take a submarine (a Saudi-Jordanian-Israeli-Moroccan-Egyptian-Emirati-Bahraini submarine?) a bit more seriously…