The Ukraine War is Our Second Suez Crisis
This second British Suez crisis of diminished historical credibility and a shattered reputation reveals a more pervasive set of "virtualities".
When Boris Johnson flew to Kiev in May 2022, it was the culmination of a series of relentless diplomatic telephone calls that started even before Russia invaded Ukraine on the 24th of February. Johnson had pledged the U.K.'s support for President Zelensky's March negotiations with Moscow that were nearing a satisfactory peace settlement.
Then during April and into May, Johnson changed track and opposed the negotiations claiming that Russia could not be trusted and either way could be pressurised economically, militarily, and diplomatically into making concessions and even withdrawing troops.
Johnson was speaking as much for the Americans as any illusive British self-interest. Zelensky broke off the nearly completed peace talks. Few questioned the outcome, Johnson's repositioning, or proposed further efforts for a peace deal as the jingoistic Putin-Hitler propaganda flooded the airwaves. The U.K. and western media stifled any objective sober assessment or desire to reverse hostilities or sue for peace. The Neo-Cons were back in the ascendency in the State Department, and the E.U. followed suit.
In the wake of unprecedented sanctions, Russia was on the verge of economic and military collapse, and Putin-Hitler would be toppled by a democratic movement or die of varied forms of cancer. His troops would run out of ammunition, and the invading tanks would run out of oil, parts, or tracks. The Russian military had insufficient missiles or microchip components to direct them.
Russian battlefield leaders were being picked off by satellite surveillance and pinpoint attacks; one aircraft pilot, code-named the Ghost of Kiev, had already shot down a host of Russian aircraft on the way to Ukrainian air superiority. Then, as later, we would be told the Russians had no drone capability - as they deployed them effectively in wave after wave of attack. Russia was isolated and a world pariah. Putin's tumour-filled body would soon be swinging from a lamppost.
The only debate in England, and even then somewhat muted, was whether Johnson's Churchillian military posturing in Kiev was an attempt to distract attention from his Winegate problems. In 2020 and 2021, the British people were not even allowed to visit their dying relatives in hospital due to Covid social restrictions. Leaked photos allegedly showing Johnson breaking lockdown rules and drinking at boozy number ten parties contradicted his claims in Parliament that nothing of the sort had taken place and that all regulations had been followed in Number Ten and Whitehall.
With his then Foreign Secretary Liz Truss joining in with the Pro-Ukraine anti-Russia posturing, what looked like a transatlantic alliance with the E.U. to end Russian "totalitarian expansion" was not open to question. No one asked if this was prudent geopolitically or whether the military briefings, force assessments, in-the-field battle information and alleged vulnerability of the Russian economy were dependable. Let alone whether the West and its military were prepared for the blowback from such a conflict.
Or if the British Government should position itself more cautiously and seek the role of an honest broker between the West, Ukraine and Russia - as Turkey and Saudi Arabia were doing. But instead, commentators asked if Truss was preparing herself for an eventual push for the prime minister's position should Johnson's domestic problems lead to his fall.
Ukraine-mania struck the U.K. in the spring of 2022 with blue and yellow flags in shop windows and on social media. No one could answer any plausible challenge to the viability of the West's war aims. The massive dependence of the E.U. on Russian gas and, to a lesser extent, its oil did get an airing. Still, yet again, this took place within the context of delusional European-wide energy policies, catastrophic zero carbon timetables and the inevitable wilful deindustrialisation and economicide that the key industrial nations seemed set upon.
From the moment Johnson touched down in May, it was clear that a historic blunder was playing out, with the accurate comparison being the Suez debacle. There is no reason to doubt that initial judgement. And every premise of Johnson's, the EU, and the American State Departments' analysis of the Russian position in the conflict proved to be falsified by events. The real goal was regime change, and it was thinly disguised.
Russia will end 2022 with a minor recession and projected growth in 2023. While there have been military setbacks and stalls, they are close to accomplishing their publicly explained goals in the Donbas region. They had hoped for sensible negotiations, some autonomy in eastern provinces, an end to the Nazi battalions and the demilitarisation of Ukraine, with the preference being a Swiss-like neutrality and no nuclear weapons positioned on its borders.
Most of these goals are still alive, and the demilitarisation is being accomplished by one dead Ukrainian soldier after another. This utterly avoidable war will be an absolute tragedy for Ukraine. There has been no Russian military collapse or economic implosion, no Putin bedridden with multiple 4th stage cancers, no coup to oust him, and no democratic uprising in Russia. If anything, the Russian people are more pro-Putin than before because they believe the expansionism was on the western side.
Russia has not run out of munitions and has pounded the Ukraine forces with a relentless bombardment. Rather than limited autonomy within Ukraine, Russia decided to organise referendums in the east resulting in votes for succession and the admittance of the territories and their overwhelming ethnic Russian populations into the Russian Federation.
Well into September, Russia had sufficient missiles to launch a series of attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure. When Putin paused ground operations to undertake a successful call-up of 300,000 reserve troops, drones were used successfully to pinpoint and obliterate Ukrainian forces. And the Ghost of Kiev was, in fact, non-existent. After the early weeks of the conflict, neither side risked using its aircraft in close combat. Still, the Russians have dominated with long-range hypersonic missiles that the western supplied Ukrainian forces have failed to cope with.
Far from being isolated, Russia has developed close relationships with China, India, Middle Eastern and some African nations. The BRICs nations, Brazil, Russia, India and China, were rapidly gathering the support of many non-aligned countries, all concerned about losing vital food imports from the Ukraine. The incompetence and incoherence of the Biden White House alienated Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, and with Turkey's skyrocketing inflation, Erdogan saw a pivotal opportunity to rebadge future Russian gas exports at a substantial profit.
The countries that would typically rally behind the British and Americans kept a low profile. Even when voting in the U.N. for the American-backed position, there has been no enthusiasm and many defections. In short, were the West to defy all odds and be successful in Ukraine, hobbling Russia, many other nations are wondering, after Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, whether they would be next.
The West's claims that it is fighting for a nation's sovereignty and to extend democracy seems rather hollow to international onlookers in the wake of the 2020 U.S. election steal and the smouldering landscapes of previous NeoCon military adventures. African, middle eastern, Latin American, and far eastern nations look at the American foreign policy positions only to see lucrative military procurement and delusional decarbonisation claims on the one hand and massive economic and diplomatic overreach on the other. And above all, hypocrisy. All end-of-empire stuff.
When Rishi Sunak started the cabinet resignations that toppled Johnson, petrol prices across the West were rising, and the Saudis were listening to Russian voices rather than a direct appeal from President Biden – a here today, soon to be gone tomorrow, demented president. But now, European-wide recession seemed inevitable, and E.U. leaders who had been told the Russian economy would collapse watched as the rouble recovered and exceeded its pre-war value, whilst European and American shock-and-awe sanctions backfired.
With winter ahead and Russia closing the Nord Stream pipeline for various repairs, routine or otherwise, the sobering reality of insufficient gas supplies for the winter was brought even closer to home by the sabotaging of the pipeline, a military operation almost definitely undertaken by the Americans with the support of British special forces. From then on, Germany was heading for economic recession and an energy crisis that would drag down northern Europe, the U.K. and potentially the world economy.
Pick up any formerly decent newspaper or watch or listen to mainstream news reporting and you will be subjected to a diet of overwhelming pro-Zelensky anti-Russian reporting that has long since crossed the border into blatant propaganda. Implausible and unverifiable Russian human rights violations are periodically splashed across our front pages.
Amidst bizarre claims of military turnarounds, Ukrainian recovery, and Russian military failures, above all else, there is the relentless Russian artillery and missile bombardment that continues to degrade the Ukrainian armed forces and vital infrastructure. Even films of fabricated real-time war crimes are available for a cursory examination on independent media sources and dissident social media traffic. It is increasingly apparent that much of what we are told about this war are lies.
But more than that is the virtuality of events. The images on television and the storytelling news coverage frequently clash. The origins of the war are to be found in the destabilisation of Ukraine by the West, not the east, and expansion to the east, not the west, and Zelensky's provocative announcement, days before the Russian invasion, that he was looking to host American nuclear missiles reminds us of the Cuban missile crisis in reverse.
But the virtuality is much more widespread. For those with a working short or long-term memory, the Nazi problems in Ukraine were openly covered on the BBC as early as 2012, long before the 2014's Maidan "uprising" or coup that deposed democratically elected Viktor Yanukovych and led to the far-right Right Sector Party being placed in power, before the kleptocratic oligarch Poroshenko was elected.
And after five years typified by failed promises and widespread corruption, the comedian and actor Zelensky was elected on a manifesto that included disarming the nazi paramilitaries, peace in the Donbas and better relations with Russia. But Ukraine was already the money laundering capital of Eastern Europe and a CIA and MI6 centre of operations. It is now destined for the same fate as Syria, Libya or worse.
When the Ukrainian heroic virtual war collapses into a sea of frozen mud-filled trenches, freezing cities and towns, and a bankrupt economy, after all the weapon systems provided by the West prove to be ineffective, out of date, inoperable or simply of insufficient quality to deter the Russian army at half mobilisation, who will recall that this was all so predictable. Yet further still, this second British Suez crisis of diminished historical credibility and a shattered reputation reveals a more pervasive set of virtualities.
A British broadsheet press that neither debates nor interrogates government military strategy but merely repeats Ministry of Defence press releases. Or a parliamentary opposition, in the birthplace of democracy, that fails to oppose or challenge the executive; and supposedly independent-minded backbench M.P.s that fail to organise fact-finding visits or engage in independent dialogue with representatives of either set of combatants. There will be no Tony Benn-like visits to Baghdad.
Our politicians neither point out that we have no treaty obligations towards the Ukraine, nor are we technically at war. There is no pressure from the virtually silent Stop the War campaign. And the national church – with its virtual Christianity – is more concerned about gender fluidity than peace-making – so do not expect the Archbishop of Canterbury to send envoys to encourage peaceful dialogue.
This is a war fought without any allied soldiers with skin in the game, whilst military analysts take to media studios to propose a limited exchange of tactical nuclear weapons. Our military is too small and, after two decades of NeoCon conflicts, quite depleted, with barely enough munitions to protect ourselves, let alone project or supply another nation's battlefield readiness. But we might consider fixing solar panels to the top of our out-of-date tanks. Take away the SAS divers that probably planted plastic explosives on the energy pipelines of our allies, and the rest of our military offer is virtual, along with our posturing.
This war and the economic and human carnage it has brought about will subject the European Union to even greater military dependency and economic subservience to the United States, an utterly unreliable partner. We are proceeding to the cliff edge of zero carbon lunacy, but it is not the environment that is facing an unavoidable extinction.
Britain's international reputation is crumbling, and the tectonic plates of real politique are moving eastward. Yet still, we prattle on about Ukrainian sham democracy and Putin-Hitler. Once our nation could debate geopolitics and the clash of civilisations, our Parliament could even vote down British support for Obama's bombing of Syria. But now, we can barely rise above infantile sloganeering.
This will not end well.