The Order of the British Empire was established by George V originally to honor Britons who contributed to the country’s victory in World War Two. The awards come in five grades, from the highest (Knight or Dame Grand Cross) down to the lowest rank of Member.  The top two tiers offer knighthoods or their female equivalent; Americans and other non-Brits are eligible for honorary memberships but don’t get to call themselves “Sir”.  (Becoming an actual knight involves swearing allegiance to the current king or queen, something we Americans swore off a long time ago.)

The awards are made by the monarch on the recommendation of the government of the day. Lewis was offered the highest non-knightly grade; had he accepted he would have been known as CS Lewis, CBE.

The documents don’t give reasons for the turn down, but a number of other literary and cultural figures over the years also declined: John Lennon accepted, but returned his to protest Britain’s pro-Nigeria stance during the Biafran war.

In keeping with custom, Lewis never revealed that he had rejected the honor, and presumably would not want this known even now. [UPDATE: As reader Will Vaus points out (see comment below), after Lewis' death, his brother included in a collection of Lewis' correspondence the letter Lewis wrote graciously declining the honor because he thought it would be misunderstood. VM does not know whether CS Lewis would have wanted the letter published.] It is receiving attention now because somebody with nothing better to do pursued a freedom of information lawsuit to get the names of everyone who ever turned a royal honor down. A good constitutional royalist, Lewis would have agreed with Walter Bagehot:

…secrecy is, however, essential to the utility of English royalty as it now is. Above all things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it. When there is a select committee on the Queen, the charm of royalty will be gone. Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic. We must not bring the Queen into the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all combatants; she will become one combatant among many.

Bagehot wrote in a time when there was no freedom of information act, and royal secrets could be kept without offense.  How the British monarchy will survive in an age without secrets, in an age when laws require that all magic be bathed in full daylight remains to be seen.

Whatever challenges we face in the UK, the British Government’s commitment to the security and prosperity of the overseas territories, including the Falklands, remains undiminished.

”So let me be absolutely clear. We will always maintain our commitment to you on any question of sovereignty. Your right to self-determination is the cornerstone of our policy.

We will never negotiate on the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands unless you, the Falkland Islanders, so wish. No democracy could ever do otherwise.

At the same time, Britain has joined the United States and other European and Arab countries in rattling sabers in the general direction of Iran.  These are some large commitments from a country that ranks toward the bottom of the top tier of European economies, and which faces stringent military spending cuts in a series of austerity budgets expected to last through the life of Cameron’s government.  With a secessionist party in power in the Scottish parliament promoting a referendum of Scottish independence, Britain could face yet another jolting moment of national decline.  Would England be willing or able to honor the promises Britain made?  (And would England alone be able to hold onto its permanent seat on the Security Council for long?)

Fortunately for Britain, Argentina is not a rising military power and in any case President Fernandez seems more interested in distracting the voters’ attention from a faltering economic program than in starting a shooting war she would be very unlikely to win.

Nevertheless, Britain must make some hard choices moving forward.  It remains a trading nation with global interests, and the re-emergence of the City as a global financial center has brought the UK back into the center of world affairs.  Russian oligarchs, Arab sheiks, Chinese and Thai businessmen, American investment bankers and African political and economic magnates continue to flock to London, bringing plenty of money with them.  More than the memories of a long vanished empire, it is the global range of the interests concentrated in Britain that drives British prime ministers towards ambitious foreign policy goals despite the limits of British power.

It can be an uncomfortable role, both for the country and for the politicians.  Tony Blair’s high profile support of the invasion of Iraq cut short his time in office.  Gordon Brown’s effort to orchestrate a global economic response to the financial crisis through the G-20 exposed the limits of his and Britain’s influence. Britain’s failure to carve out the kind of role that it seeks in the European Union has weakened a series of British governments, including Mr. Cameron’s.

Although it is passing through a rough patch, Britain seems to have brighter prospects in the 21st century than some of its EU partners.  Its population is growing; it has reinvented itself as a global investment hub; and it avoided the euro.  Despite tensions, it manages to integrate immigrants with considerably more success than some of its neighbors. If it plays its cards well it may yet emerge from the current European turmoil in good shape.

One of the central dynamics that made Britain great for so long still seems to be working.  Financial and economic crises recur in healthy capitalist economies.  When these crises come, some countries that have only reluctantly embraced a capitalist system (and usually done so poorly and half heartedly), see the crisis as proof that capitalism is a flop, and lurch toward “alternative models” that generally lead to stagnation and the capture of the state by rent-seeking elites spouting empty populist slogans.  Think Argentina.  Think Greece.

Britain is one of the countries that historically responds to crises of capitalism by doubling down: seeking reforms that make capitalism work more effectively rather than trying to hobble and block it.  Between World War Two and Maggie Thatcher Britain lost its way, bumbling through decades of decline and well intentioned but hopeless efforts to find some other way to grow.

Whatever ones views of specific steps the Cameron-Clegg coalition has taken along the way, the overall thrust of this government is clearly to facilitate rather than hobble capitalist development.  History suggests that some of the government’s policies will work, some won’t, and some won’t make a difference either way.  The specific outcomes are important, but they matter less in the long run than the continued commitment of the British to the core values of a liberal, capitalist society.  If the government can hold onto the Union, manage the relationship with Europe, and create the conditions for a new era of growth as this crisis like all previous crises is overcome, then Britain will continue to recover and, among other things, the kelpies in the Falklands can sleep soundly at night.

In fact, according this Bloomberg report, China currently has 60 percent of its global sovereign investment portfolio in US assets.

Interesting, to say the least, that a country widely believed to be in terminal decline, its best days behind it, paralyzed by dysfunction and generally ready for the glue factory remains the obvious investment choice for the country that supposedly will bury it.

This fact also points to something that many commentators forget.  For all the tension and rivalry in the relationship, the US and China have a great many interests in common.  We are joined at the hip.

Building and deepening these mutual dependencies is an important element of American foreign policy.  We want China so bonded to us and to the international system that it will never do what Stalin, Hitler and Tojo tried and seek its destruction.

America’s goal is not to defeat or frustrate China but to entice, inveigle and charm it into becoming a pillar of an international system that supports peace, prosperity and ultimately liberty for all.  That goal may not be reached, but we are doing much better at this than most people realize, and these investment figures underscore the degree to which the smart money in China understands that the brightest possible future is one that the US and China build together.

Now comes word that Stanford University is throwing its weight behind a national virtual educational program aimed at gifted and talented students.  Beginning this year, students will be getting high school diplomas from Stanford Online High.  Middlebury College and the University of Nebraska are among other well known schools jumping into the business.  Streaming video allows students all over the country and presumably ultimately the world to interact directly with teachers and classmates while accessing enrichment materials that many regular classrooms can’t match.  The cost of a Stanford Online High diploma is high, but much cheaper than the tuition at a conventional top private high school.

Via Meadia has no idea where all this is headed, but amid all the gloom and doom about the United States, the blistering and still accelerating pace of change in our educational system reminds us that change is America’s forte.  This is what we do — and the ability to make changes peacefully and quickly is likely to be the single most important factor in managing the stresses and taking advantage of the twenty-first century.  Good luck to the students at Stanford Online High; please let Via Meadia know whether you are planning a digital prom.

President Barack Obama will announce an accord for a new and permanent U.S. military presence in Australia when he visits next week, a step aimed at countering China’s influence and reasserting U.S. interest in the region, said people familiar with his plans.

The agreement will lead to an increase in U.S. naval operations off the coast of Australia and give American troops and ships “permanent and constant” access to Australian facilities, the people said. While no new American bases will be built under the plan, the arrangement will allow U.S. forces to place equipment in Australia and set up more joint exercises, they said.

The consequences of the move are more symbolic than substantive.  The US and Australia already cooperate closely.  But it’s worth noting that both countries have center-left governments.  That President Obama and Prime Minister Julia Gillard and their parties support closer cooperation sends a powerful signal.  The Australia-US relationship is one for all seasons, and the center left in both countries is committed to a serious (though not provocative or aggressive) policy of promoting stability and multipolarity in East and South Asia.

As Americans spend more time learning about Asia, we should not forget Australia.  More Americans should visit one of the world’s friendliest and most beautiful places, and American foreign policy thinkers should spend more time listening to their Australian counterparts and benefiting from Australia’s close contacts with and deep knowledge of important Asian countries like Indonesia. US high schools and universities should explore opportunities to build exchange programs with their Australian counterparts, and US companies should not overlook Australian talent and expertise when staffing their global operations.

Oh: and don’t forget to go there and bring the kids.  The kids won’t forget it and neither will you.

Japanese High Speed Train (Wikimedia)

With Vice President visiting Japan and the NATO assisted Libyan rebels consolidating (one hopes) their control of Tripoli, this is an odd and impolitic moment to say so, but the decline of the trilateral alliance is picking up speed.

Trilateralism was the response of the US and its closest allies to the perceived decline in American power during the 1970s.  (For younger readers, predictions of American decline have been one of the pundit industry’s major offerings since the Great Depression, with a new spike in prophecies of American decline every ten to fifteen years.)  The idea was that the rise of West Germany and Japan would eclipse American power and so the unilateral American leadership of the post World War Two years would yield to a three legged stool: Europe, Japan and the US would run the Free World together.  The Trilateral Commission was the dreaded hate object of the tin hat brigades of that era and organizations like the G-7 (expanded to the G-8 as a sop to Russia’s wounded pride) were established to embody the trilateral approach.

Japan and western Europe in those faraway days were the places that the fashionable pundits used as sticks to beat America with; we had to get over the illusion of American exceptionalism and realize that in the brave new world the state guided approaches of the Europeans and Japanese would beat the pants off our more individualistic and laissez-faire capitalist model.  Japan and Europe were building high speed rail; stuck in the mud American was falling behind in this critical technology that would generate the jobs of the future. (In those days the “population bomb” was the Malthusian menace that would destroy us all without massive government action and expensive international programs; these days we have climate change.)

One reason intellectual scams like this can be repeated is that each new generation of young people comes on the scene without memories of the last time these vapid arguments dominated the world of policy chat.  These days the same arguments are trotted out about China, the same methods of projecting statistical trends out to infinity are used to make confident but utterly wrongheaded statements about where the world is headed, and, as always, used to argue for more power and more resources to the planning and administrative elites for the sake of the common good.  America’s inevitable decline and high speed rail: to proclaim the first and advocate the second is a great way to tell young people that you can be safely ignored.

It was George Orwell who said that the dark night of fascism is always falling on America but landing on Europe; substitute the word ‘decline’ for ‘fascism’ and add Japan to Europe, and you get a pretty good picture of world affairs.  Europe’s financial crisis is leading to further cutbacks in military spending; NATO is becoming a hollow alliance as even Britain and France accelerate their military decline.  Moody’s has just downgraded Japan’s debt — a far more consequential and meaningful exercise than the S&P downgrade of the US.

One of the most important secrets of American power over the decades is the way our interests complement those of so many other countries.  The world of geopolitical balance and shared prosperity through trade that the US seeks to build is close enough to the world that others want so that we have always been able to count on the cooperation of allies.  Our key allies in Europe and Japan are no longer enough — not because of US decline but because of European and Japanese problems.  We need now to reach out and find new allies interested in helping us propel this system forward into the 21st century; India, Turkey and Brazil are three of the countries who spring to the minds of American policy planners.  They are not alone.

Our trilateral friends are not going to vanish; Europe and Japan still have roles to play, and it is quite possible that one or both will recover the dynamism to play a growing not a shrinking role in world affairs.  From the US point of view that would be a plus, but for now the basic American calculation must look at our traditional trilateral partners as allies committed to decline.

But there’s a bit of good news this morning that in the long run may be more important than all the gloom and doom.  From a piece by the estimable Chrystia Freedland in the New York Times comes the news that one of the most essential items on the post-blue model world’s to do list is moving right along: the total reinvention of the state.

You could call it the Government 2.0 approach, and its fundamental thesis is that the biggest question is not how much to spend and how much to tax, it is how to adapt the state to the information age.One of the first thinkers to articulate this view was the best-selling author Don Tapscott. Mr. Tapscott, who has been arguing for decades that the knowledge economy requires a new style of government, thinks the time for his idea may have finally come.

“If you look at the current crisis, we have the irresistible force for reducing the cost of government meeting up with the immovable rock of public expectation that government should be better, not worse,” Mr. Tapscott told me. “Tinkering with this will not work. When you are talking about cutting trillions of dollars, that’s not trimming fat, that is tearing out organs, and we don’t need to do that, and we don’t want to do that.”

“We need to fundamentally rethink how we orchestrate and create government value,” he said. “And now we have a burning platform, which could help us do it.”

Tapscott has a book on the subject: Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World (co-authored with Anthony D. Williams).  He argues that we have not yet begun to tap the potential to make government cheaper and more responsive by rethinking the core paradigms of the progressive state.  Instead of government as something that a cadre of lifetime career bureaucrats do to the rest of us, government can facilitate society’s capacity to think and organize on its own.

As an example, Mr. Tapscott cited a recent conversation with the chief executive of Melbourne. He suggested to her that one way to apply his open-government approach would be to make public all of the city’s information on bicycle accidents and where they happen.

“I said to her, ‘If you release all that data, within 24 hours someone will do a mash-up and you will be saving lives within weeks, and it won’t cost you a penny,”’ Mr. Tapscott said.

Society wants fewer bike accidents; the progressive state assumed that for various reasons the only way to avoid them was to have bureaucrats collect the data, draw conclusions and then issue and enforce appropriate regulations.  Tapscott argues that if society at large has the information, in many cases the people themselves can and will figure out what to do — and then do it with the smallest possible reliance on government power and funds.  Instead of a bureaucratic state developing and enforcing edicts (and jealously assembling and guarding both information and power as the only way to get the job done), there is a spontaneously self-organizing society.

This is not the solution for every policy problem.  But nor is it the only way that better and more creative use of IT and the networks it creates can revolutionize the very nature of the modern state so that it employs many fewer people and facilitates rather than supersedes human freedom.

Our economic troubles today and many of our political problems arise fundamentally from the mismatch between our institutions and our ruling ideas and paradigms on the one hand, and the social consequences of the new technologies pouring into our world at an unprecedented rate on the other.  The bad news is that the mismatch is very great, its consequences grave and complex, and that multiple, interlocking castastrophes await if we do not adjust.

But the good news is that the same technology, cleverly and effectively deployed, can solve many of these problems, and the unhappier we are with the status quo, the faster as a species we are going to set about making needed changes.  The jangling and discordance we hear from the financial markets and see all around us is an alarm clock, not the Last Trumpet; it is telling us to wake up and get a move on, not to lie down and die.

The day ahead is bright, its possibilities immense.

Another great read that will make you a significantly sharper and better informed student of the contemporary world is Amanda Foreman’s compulsively readable World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War.  American historians are consistently bad at integrating American political and historical events with events, movements and ideas in other countries.  In 1861 Britain was the world’s greatest power and it was incomparably America’s most important export market and our most important source of investment capital.  The South believed that the British ruling elite’s hatred of democracy would combine with its manufacturers’ need for cotton to bring Britain in on the South’s side.  There were times when this almost happened; Foreman’s book illuminates key events and fascinating personalities on both sides of the Atlantic.  Well worth the time.

To some degree, the Chinese leader is no doubt trying to make a political point — he is careful to contrast his interest in Western culture with his counterparts’ relative ignorance of Chinese history and civilization. Still, Wen comments belie a genuine interest in and engagement with these landmarks of British cultural history.

The popularity of Western and specifically Anglophone culture within the Chinese elite is not a new development — Shanghai was known for its cosmopolitanism in the 1920s and Deng Xiaoping was an avid and apparently skillful bridge player — but its persistence makes an important point about the nature and direction of contemporary geopolitics.

Many American academics seem to want to bury the dead white men responsible for much (though by no means all) of the western and specifically Anglophone cultural canon; that, apparently, is not what the world’s rising powers want to do.  Somebody should write a book about this — oh wait, somebody already has.

At that time Britain ruled one fourth of the earth’s surface and one quarter of the world’s population. A few people are nostalgic for those good old days; a poll by The Gleaner newspaper in Jamaica last month found that after 50 years of independence, 60 percent of Jamaicans think their country would be better off under British rule.

The Scots are ambivalent; no polls from Zimbabwe could be found.