Ukraine: do we need the War Game? by Sackerson

I don’t know whether the Stop The War Coalition are or contain fifth columnists, as Iain Dale asserts https://www.iaindale.com/articles/why-i-accuse-the-stop-the-war-coalition-of-containing-fifth-columnists , though when he says he has ‘lost patience’ he reminds me of a certain testy old US President. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7chQfQ67SM I like Mr Dale’s output generally but I suppose that blogpost is another sign that we are entering Stage Three of ‘groupthink’ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Groupthink-Study-Delusion-Christopher-Booker/dp/1472959051 , where alternative voices are to be bullied and shut down.

In this context the Daily Mail is to be commended for going ahead and publishing Peter Hitchens’ article https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10540829/PETER-HITCHENS-blame-arrogant-foolish-West-Ukraine-crisis.html castigating the West for its arrogance and folly in continuing to treat Russia as an enemy after the fall of Communism; though even the mighty Mail feels compelled to push it back into page 13 of the print edition and label it ‘A personal viewpoint.’ Somehow one senses masks and disposable gloves.

If you rely on the mass media you could be forgiven for thinking that Russia’s tanks and troops are already rolling into the Donbass; not so, according to a well-connected blogger https://therealslog.com/2022/02/23/exclusive-no-putin-invasion-of-ukraine/ who quotes a French diplomat as saying to him (Tuesday 22 Feb):

‘It is now clear that there have been Russian peacekeeping troops in the Donbass for at least five years. Their presence there has been maintained. Putin has signed a decree allowing for further troops to go there, but there is no NATO evidence as yet that any new troops have arrived.’

On the other hand, as The Independent reported back in December https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-ukraine-army-donbass-troops-b1967532.html , Ukraine by then had already positioned half its army on the other side of the conflict zone – some 125,000 troops. One wonders how one of the poorest countries in Europe https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/gdp-per-capita-ppp?continent=europe can afford to maintain a standing army a quarter-million strong and bombard its eastern populace for seven years rather than implement the Minsk Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements#Minsk_Protocol to split the country into autonomous regions. We could do with some quality mainstream journalism.

Speaking of the latter, as tensions mount it is disappointing to hear from the recently-freed Craig Murray https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/02/ukraine-where-to-find-the-truth-in-enormous-detail/ (appeal against alleged miscarriage of Scottish justice ongoing) that the independent team of observers known as OSCE, specified in the same Protocol, has just been abandoned by the USA, UK and Canada, three Western members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes , at the time when they are most needed. OSCE was not allowed to access the site of the kindergarten shelled last week, allegedly a false flag attack by the eastern Ukrainians themselves, though according to another independent journalist, the intrepid Eve Bartlett, the munition was fired from an ‘American M141 bunker-type grenade launcher’ from the west. https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2022/02/18/ukraine-appears-to-have-staged-a-kindergarden-attack-to-cover-its-crimes-fuel-anti-donbass-propaganda/  

Doubtless there are several drivers behind these murky goings-on. One will be Russian politics post the Soviet collapse, which will have left many Russians suddenly finding themselves effectively stranded in countries no longer part of the communist empire. President Putin’s rewritten Constitution in 2020 empowers Russia to defend its citizens abroad https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/belarusalert/putins-new-constitution-spells-out-modern-russias-imperial-ambitions/ ; at the risk of attracting Mr Dale’s ire I might cite Britain’s similar approach in the past – the War of Jenkins' Ear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins%27_Ear , the robust defence of the Falkland Islanders ( who were technically not even British citizens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Nationality_(Falkland_Islands)_Act_1983 ) and so on. We remain to be convinced that Putin simply has a plan for European domination; past history shows the traffic has sometimes been the other way.

Another factor is the longstanding US/NATO policy of Russian containment, first urged by George Kennan in 1946. https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116178.pdf This made sense when the USSR was indeed what Reagan called an ‘evil empire’; the pity is that even when the battle had been won by the West – in 1989 Yeltsin was ‘sick with despair for the Soviet people’ and knew the end was near when he saw the cornucopia of a Texan supermarket https://www.nhregister.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php - the policy continued. Five years after the collapse, President Carter’s former adviser Zbigniew Brzeziński wrote a book on American geostrategy  https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/36/36669B7894E857AC4F3445EA646BFFE1_Zbigniew_Brzezinski_-_The_Grand_ChessBoard.doc.pdf in which he worried that

‘… any ejection of America by its Western partners from its perch on the western periphery would automatically spell the end of America's participation in the game on the Eurasian chessboard, even though that would probably also mean the eventual subordination of the western extremity to a revived player occupying the middle space.’

25 years on, after President Trump had told European NATO allies to shoulder more of the burden of their defence https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/11/donald-trump-tells-nato-allies-to-spend-4-of-gdp-on-defence , we face that possibility. Now, it seems to be about containing, not lethally expansionary Communism, but a nascent power bloc in eastern Europe, a sort of Eurasian EU https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/feb/18/brief-primer-vladimir-putin-eurasian-union-trade  . Is it our business to prevent that, at much expense of blood and treasure? Should we have outgrown Great Game-playing in the new era of potential nuclear global destruction?

Ukraine is an awkwardly complex corner of Brzeziński’s chessboard: the Washington Post illustrated its long history in 2015 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/03/09/maps-how-ukraine-became-ukraine/   and here is a simplified overview (reproduced on MoA https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/02/some-bits-on-ukraine.html) :

The sudden changes brought about by the defeat of the Red Menace has presented challenges for everyone and we should proceed with caution. The area around the Black Sea has changed radically: in 1988 it was practically a Red lake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comecon#/media/File:Europe_1988.svg , except for the shores of eastern Greece and northern Turkey; in recent years, NATO allies have started to encircle it and if Ukraine joins up the lake will be largely Blue. NATO members have permitted the siting of weapons closer and closer to Russia’s western borders; the Great Game here is almost like the children’s game of ‘What’s The Time, Mister Wolf?’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_the_time,_Mr_Wolf%3F Is it necessary?

Is it affordable? Perhaps when we bemoan the state of our economy, of the NHS and the meanness of our State pension system compared with those in the EU, we should remember how WWI impoverished the UK – the Twenties did not roar in Britain - and WWII very nearly bankrupted us completely. We’ve been struggling against headwinds ever since 1914.

Sixty years ago, Dean Acheson told West Point that ‘Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.’ https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191843730.001.0001/q-oro-ed5-00000015 It’s time to grow up and not be anybody’s playground sidekick, unless it is in our national interest.