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A Worst Case Scenario

Let’s lay out some facts.

Russia has exercised hundreds of thousands of troops in the region near the Baltic states in the last few years. The Russian President is on record as saying the Baltic states, are “not real countries,” and Russian-speaking populations have been used several times recently as a causus belli by Russia in its invasions or annexations of Transnitria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea, and the Donbass. The Russian President is a Russian imperialist, who regards the breakup of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th Century”, and regards NATO as “aggressively” surrounding Russia by extending the Security Guarantee to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 2004. Russia has been very quiet in that part of the world of late. Perhaps they are distracted by Ukraine, the most recent country to have been invaded by Russia in the last decade. Or is ‘Ivan’ planning something?

Let’s assume that Putin is serious when he talks like this about NATO and his aims. It’s also increasingly safe to assume that Russia put enormous effort behind  Scots independence, Brexit, the election of Trump and Le Pen. Why now? Let’s also assume that Trump is indeed what he appears, a Russian asset who has been bankrolled by Putin for a decade. It’s probable Putin has some serious dirt on the American President, and could easily procure Trump’s impeachment, at will.

So, Next spring with the decision-making apparatus of the USA crippled by impeachment, and that of the UK crippled by Brexit, if you were minded to take back the Baltic states, and thereby break NATO’s ‘article V’ guarantee, when would you go?

The NATO deployment to the Baltic states numbers in the 1000’s. The UK has 800 men in theatre at the moment, the core of a battle-group in Estonia, with similar sized formations from many NATO countries. Moscow, by way of comparison could send a quarter of a million men, and overrun all three countries in a matter of days, and present the world with a fait accompli. NATO then faces a dilemma. Do you go to war with a nuclear-armed bear to get these small nations back? Does America have the stomach for the fight? Europe probably has the stomach, but not yet the arms for it.

Do I think war in the Baltic is likely? No. I think the presence of Core NATO “tripwire” troops in theatre will mean Russians will be shooting at, and killing Yanks, Limeys, Krauts, Poles, Cloggies, Cannucks and Danes from day one, making it much more likely the USA and its allies will respond with overwhelming force, against which there’s not a lot Russia could do (apart from going nuclear, but I don’t think Putin is mad: NATO enjoys overwhelming superiority in this regard too). I suspect Putin’s motives are about mainly reaching 2024, and standing down to enjoy his loot, without being dragged through the streets of Moscow and hanged from a lamppost with cheese wire. Invading Ukraine is one thing. But taking on an Article V NATO country is quite another. This is why Georgia and Ukraine want NATO membership so badly. However, intelligence agencies in the west have no eyes in the Kremlin, and we don’t, unlike during the cold war, know.

Something to think about. Merry Christmas.

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Internal Party Democracy is Undemocratic.

The Labour left have had a peculiar mental tic since at least the days of Tony Benn (Man of the people and 2nd Viscount Stansgate, 1925-2014). They do not see Members of Parliament as representatives, who use their own judgement when legislating. They see the MP as a delegate of a party, to be selected or deselected according to the whims of the local party and beholden to vote according to their instructions. The problem is that the electorate, people who mostly pay little attention to politics, only get a say once every four years or so, and they aren’t keeping an eye on the local party’s committees. And the hard left LOVE committees. They’re worse than golfers. Other bits of the Labour party mostly can’t be bothered to attend, and so the hard left are able to pack committees, and then attempt to deselect MPs who disagree with them. This is justified by “democratic votes” of party members, which are far easier to gerrymander than an election. This means, in safe seats, the Party committees become more important than the electorate in deciding who’s in Parliament. (Proportional representation is little better – who controls where people are on the Party Lists…?)

A painting of an evil old man.

Neil Kinnock’s triumph was seeing off this threat, then called ‘Militant’. Tony Blair was alive to this, and resisted change to Labour’s rules, as was Brown. But Ed Miliband, soft and useless that he was, was either a Bennite himself, or was naive when he changed the leadership voting rules, removing time rules for new members, and allowing people to join and immediately vote for £2. All these things sound nice and kind and “democratic”, widening the mandate, and letting anyone vote. And no doubt, Miliband was swayed by siren voices from the hard left mouthing just this sort of guff. What harm could ‘more democracy’ do? However, ordinary people didn’t get excited about Andy Burnham or Liz Kendall. The hard left and not a few ‘Tories for Corbyn’, on the other hand, flooded into the Labour party at the first opportunity to vote for whichever obstinate madman of the ‘Campaign group‘ whose turn it was to stand. Corbyn, whose turn it was to “widen the debate” this time, won the election on the backs of this wave of new members, and almost immediately the calls for deselection of “red Tories” (ie anyone who wasn’t on the extreme left) began.

The Tories are not immune, UKIP is haemorrhaging members, some of whom are joining the Tory party with similar aims Labour’s hard left – to pack the party and select their leader, Mogg or Johnson, to deliver the “real brexit” they crave. The difference is the Tory right and UKIP have obsessed about EU, not the internal mechanisms of the Tory party, and frankly, they’re mostly a bit dim and lazy. Also, the Tories rules preclude an equivalent outcome, for now. Labour’s extremists have been thinking about “the Bennite project” for longer than the Tory nutters have been thinking about Europe. The hard left knows exactly what it is doing. The Brexiters don’t.

By packing committees in local labour parties, they aim to control their MPs. The party, not the MP’s consience, then becomes the sole arbiter, and the only route to power is through the party’s structures. Independent-minded MPs are not wanted. The party becomes the key to everything. Once, having thoroughly infected the party, they wait. Eventually the wheels of democracy turn, and the Tories lose power. The left will then have 5 years to do what they want, with pliant MPs doing their bidding. Democracy, the voices of people who didn’t vote for the party in power, or dissenting voices within it, are silenced.

There is a model for this. Comrade Stalin wasn’t Premier of the Soviet Union, Lenin’s old job, until 1941. He was General Secretary of the Communist party. He understood that if you controlled the party machine, you controlled the state. Thus when Lenin died in 1924, he was replaced by Alexi Rykov (me neither), but it was Stalin who held all the power. Obviously this is a simplification of an enormously long and complicated process. And equally obviously, the British constitution retains a multi-party democracy, so there’s a limit to how much damage a party thus packed can do, because if they do enough damage, the other lot will get in. But with both main parties engaged in a battle for their souls with nutty extremists within, there is a risk. Imagine if Blair or Thatcher with their landslides, had seen fit to attempt control of their parties in this way.

This is how democracy ends. With the spurious legitimacy conferred by a Potemkin election of Party members.

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On Populism: What do we do? vs Who do we blame?

If you ask the wrong question, the answers will not work.

“Populism” is, like pornography, hard to define, but you know it when you see it. Wikipedia defines it thus

“a political ideology that holds that virtuous citizens are mistreated by a small circle of elites, who can be overthrown if the people recognize the danger and work together. Populism depicts elites as trampling on the rights, values, and voice of the legitimate people”

It’s clear Farage’s lauding of a victory for “mediocre ordinary, decent scum people” he was speaking in this vein. But I don’t think this captures the essence of populism. Mainstream politicians “Managerialists” in the Populists’ vernacular ask “how do we solve this problem”. You can be a capitalist, or a socialist, believing in different answers, but at least you agree on the question. Populists aren’t asking this question, but instead “who do we blame?”. The answer given by Momentum and UKIP may differ: Bosses vs Immigrants, Capitalists vs the EU but the question is the same.

There’s also the populists view that MPs rather than being representatives paid to exercise judgement, are delegates paid to vote on someone else’s behalf. In this, Paul Mason and Douglas Carswell are in agreement. But this is simply mob rule and behind it is a fear that legislators may Go Native, if they’re allowed thanks to the corrosive influence of “[insert boogeyman]” in their long-running campaign to keep the “real” people down. But perhaps legislators know best; they have exposure and access to what passes for facts in this field, and are paid to study it, maybe there’s something in the idea of representative democracy after all.

It’s always easier to imagine you’re the victim of an elite conspiracy, subject to “discrimination” on the grounds of class or race, or at risk from being “flooded” by immigrants, than it is to answer the question “what to I do?”. Whether you’re running your own life, or that of a nation, what to do is hard, and one of the stresses of modern life is the extent to which people are free, which means they have to make choices. No longer can you just follow dad into the Factory. Because many suffer from crippling loss aversion, these choices are scary, which is why stupid people yearn to be led. They look for leaders who offer answers which fit their prior prejudices and make sense of a complicated world. Corbyn and Farage have made careers finding and stroking a tribe’s prejudices, soothing their people’s indignation against a world they feel is against them.

The reason populism is so toxic to political discourse is that in apportioning blame, they create a slipway for the launching of vastly damaging ideas. “It’s all the EU’s fault” leads to Brexit*. “It’s all the Fat Cats’ fault” and you have a country that looks like Venezuela. If you start blaming immigrants or minorities, well we saw where that went in the last century. It’s also why the Brexiteers ran from office at the moment of victory. Delivery isn’t in the populists’ skillset. The permanent masturbatory pleasures of opposition are what they crave, always losing so they can keep telling their people the game’s rigged against them. If they win, then all those inadequate people will have to start making choices and they feel completely lost again. Much easier to simmer in resentment against an immovable object which allows you to blame it, rather than yourself for your failings.

*This isn’t a place for a debate on the merits or otherwise of Brexit. Any comments on that subject will be deleted.

One of the reasons for the Populist’s success (please note the “one of” at the start of this sentence) is Russia on the internet. The internet allows people to form much denser ideological defences against reality. And into the internet, there is a wounded superpower, pouring poison, poison which people use as ammunition in the defence of their ideological redoubt. Putin’s toxic little propaganda swamps like RT and Sputnik are manufacturing and promoting stories which appeal to the populist mindset. Notice how Racists will share RT stories about Immigrants raping white women while members of the Green party will share horror stories about fracking from the same source. Some of these stories will be true. But many are manufactured, exaggerated and twisted specifically to support any party or idea that causes problems to the democratic governments of the west. This is not a random process. It is directed and controlled by the intelligence agency which has captured Russia. Maskirovka raised to a governing principle.

One of the reasons for the UK’s relative success as a nation is that up until now, we have been mostly immune from the allure of the populist demagogue. We simply don’t have it in us to put too much belief in one man, whether as protagonist or antagonist. Let’s hope Brexit is a flash in the pan, and not part of a widespread descent of mature democracies into populist demagoguery. We’ll know in 12 months whether democracy can survive or whether, thanks to Trump, Farage and Le Pen, we’re going back to pogroms and a summer “campaigning season”.

Please let’s stop listening to Putin’ useful idiots pedalling fallacious simplicity, and start listening to fallible and all-too-human experts again. At least the experts are asking the right question.

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On the “Brexit and War” Question: Not as Silly as it Sounds

Russia conducted an exercise of 80,000 troops in 2014 simulating an invasion of the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. It isn’t unreasonable that our Article IV NATO allies and EU partners feel a mite worried about the bellicose behaviour of their nuclear-armed Neighbour, who has 800,000 men under arms. Russia could bring forces to bear, invade, and mop up all resistance in the Baltic states within a week. The only thing stopping him taking back what Putin has described as “not real countries”, is the security guarantee they enjoy from NATO, and especially the USA.

Far from being “provocative”, the Western alliance has bent over backwards to accommodate Russia’s paranoia. No troops have been permanently stationed in the Baltic until recently. There is constant communication (from NATO) in order to prevent misunderstandings. (Much less is forthcoming from Russia). NATO exercises in the region have been no more than a few hundred troops. There is certainly no massing of forces that could possibly threaten Russian territory, and the west has no interest in provoking Russia. The idea that the Association Agreement the EU was to sign with Ukraine was in any way “provocative” to Russia should be met with a snort of contempt and derision, let alone the idea the Euromaidan protests were “anti-russian” or orchestrated by “fascists”. (So please don’t say so in the comments, I’ll simply delete such Putin-toadying).

But the Russian state’s default position is Paranoia. In the Siloviki, you have, in effect, a state captured by its spooks. They are in thrall to Alexandr Dugin‘s doctine of Eurasianism, and feel encircled by enemies, chief amongst which in the Kremlin’s demonology are NATO and the European Union. NATO is the shield, but the EU is the means by which we will defeat Putin’s eurasianism. By bringing countries like the Baltic states and Ukraine into the European system, we demonstrate the profound failure of Russia as an alternative. Ultimately the Russian people would be better off embracing western values, and without Putin’s toxic and paranoid statecraft.

While the world watches Syria, Russia is busy pouring poison into western discourse with the explicit aim of breaking the world order in place since the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. So Putin supports “anti-systemic” parties of left and right. He bankrolls the French Front National and Hungarian Jobbik. Alec Salmond and Nigel Farage were regulars, and well paid, on Russia Today, Putin’s toxic little propaganda swamp. Aaron Banks, UKIP and Leave.EU’s biggest donor is married to a Russian, and has form for repeating Putinist lies. Jeremy Corbyn regularly used to spout Russian Propaganda, before he was forced by circumstance to converse with grown-ups for a change. Green parties have money siphoned to them (anti-fracking, to support Russian energy interests). Putin is absolutely delighted at the Rise of Donald Trump. It has been alleged Russian Bombing of Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria was undertaken deliberately to create refugees, to further destabilize and undermine the European Union. I suspect, though this was not more than a secondary benefit, to the ultimate goal of making Mr. Putin look good on Russian state TV.

We’ve never had an enemy like this before. Russia is a spy agency, which has captured a Nuclear-armed state, but it’s not clear Putin is in complete control. The entire apparatus of the state is about creating an alternate reality, in which fact and fiction merge. Maskirovka, raised to a governing philosophy. but with no real end-game in sight. There is something of the Thomas a Beckett about the chaos in Donbass: Putin says “will no-one rid me of this Turbulent Priest” and before you know it, two provinces of Ukraine have declared independence backed by significant invasions of Russian regular soldiers. Putin cannot back down without losing face, but cannot escalate for fear of provoking NATO. The shooting down of MH17 was the moment the Ukrainian donbass separatists over-stepped their mark, but there’s no way out for either party. Ukraine faces an existential threat, and the Russian regime is based on never showing weakness.

With a frozen conflict in Ukraine, things can escalate rapidly. It is the Nature of Putin’s cult of personality, he needs constant action to keep the narrative of strength going. This was the ultimate reason for the Deployment of Russian Forces to Syria – to get a limited war onto Russian TV that can be used to demonstrate the Greatness of Mother Russia, which makes the sacrifices the long-suffering Russian people worthwhile. But Russian forces have pulled out of Syria, and there’s little glory in the stalemate outside Mariupol. What next?

Sweden and Finland, neutral during the cold war, are inches away from Joining NATO, so threatened do they feel. Swedish subs are continuously dealing with Russian incursions. The Russians are actively buzzing US warships in the region. The RAF having to scramble to intercept Russian Nuclear bombers is a weekly occurrence. It’s constant provocation. A Russian flotilla sailed through British waters last week.

Putin may be a master tactician, but he fails as a strategist. This is, to my mind the single biggest risk of the UK leaving the EU. Brexit would send a message (whether or not this is true) that NATO’s number two power is no longer serious about its commitments to its allies. He’ll have split off Europe’s most potent military power from the EU. This will embolden Putin to try to further split the west, because it suggests our Nations’ commitments to each other isn’t as strong as it was in 1989. This is especially true if there’s further success for “anti-establishment” politicians like Donald Trump. If Putin has an opportunity, and he’s an expert opportunist, he is likely to take it to try to break NATO, having already broken the EU. We do not want to tempt the Kremlin to gamble on the UK’s willingness to spend blood and treasure to defend Narva. Because if the UK won’t, the USA won’t. And if the USA won’t, NATO is finished. And if NATO is finished, the whole of Eastern Europe could well come under Russian suzerainty again. And that, we think (as well as the Survival of one Mr. V.V. Putin) is the ultimate aim of the Russian state.

Finally, EU sanctions matter. With German “ostpolitik” and much of continental politics actively in Putin’s pocket, it is the UK who drove sanctions on the Russian regime when they invaded another soverign European nation. And make no mistake, the EU matters, and the sanctions are hurting the regime. The UK is influential in EU foreign policy, perhaps the most influential power. Without the UK in the EU, the EU would not have taken as robust a stance on Crimea as they did.

Now is NOT the time to be upsetting the international institutions which have been so crucial to delivering peace and prosperity to so much of the former soviet empire. “Brexit risks war” isn’t as silly as it sounds.

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Trump and Corbyn, Le Pen and Farage; Putin and the Crisis of Democracy

Vladimir Putin runs a managed democracy. He controls the media, he ensures that any opposition figures that make it to telly, are risible tosspots. Credible ones are killed, unless they’re too famous, like Gary Kasparov, then they’re just ignored. The country Putin governs responded to the collapse of its empire and subsequent “humiliation” by electing, and then submitting to someone who trades in a simple narrative; that of Russian greatness. We’ve been here before.

Those homo-erotic pictures of a bare-chested Putin hunting, much mocked in the west, are part of a pretty scary cult of personality centred on someone who is by some measures the richest person in the world. He oversees a kleptocracy where wealth flows from power, and power flows from the Kremlin. Why did the Sochi winter olympics cost $51bn? Because grand construction projects are a good way to distribute state funds to chosen cronies.

Much is made of Russia’s “humiliation”. In reality, the former satellites of Russia’s brutal empire are seeking protection against their former master. The Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians and Poles who escaped Moscow’s grip have absolutely no desire to go back. Georgians sent troops to work with Americans in Afghanistan in a desperate bid to secure NATO membership, and the protection that offers from Russian aggression. Ukrainian’s government are desperate for western support against Russia in their frozen conflict in the East.

Meanwhile Russia is pumping out their Narrative: that Ukraine is “not a real country”, that Russia is responding to NATO “aggression”, and that its neighbours do not warrant full autonomy as independent nations. And useful idiots from left and right lap up this toxic, stupid narrative. Otherwise intelligent people claim there’s moral equivalence between Estonia’s enthusiastic and voluntary membership of NATO with the aggressive annexation of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea and the ambiguous warfare in the Donbass. Putin’s lie that the people who stood on the Maidan in Kiev were “fascists” and that the protests were “western-backed” stands no scrutiny. Fascists made up 3% of the parliament post-Yanukovych. The Maidan protests were not western backed, and any agents provocateurs there may have been on the Maidan were most likely (though no proof as yet) to have been Regime-backing Russians.

Recently, in a grand and theatrical gesture, Russia deployed a few squadrons of bombers to Syria to prop up the ailing Assad regime. This wasn’t done to “fight ISIL” as many would have you believe. They’re mostly bombing the people the west want to win. It was to secure a say in post-Assad Syria, place Russia (and by extension, Mr. Putin) at the centre of world affairs; ultimately to buy bargaining chips for Putin to negotiate away the sanctions that are crippling his country’s economy. Further benefits: destabilising the middle east may raise the oil price, and the ongoing refugee crisis (made worse by Russian bombing) destabilizes the EU, an organisation second only to NATO in the Kremlin’s demonology.

Social media discourse on politics in general and Russia in particular has become prone to what is known as the “Pish gallop” in Scottish politics. Putin was one of the Few world leaders to endorse Scottish independence, and Russian observers were the source of the rumours of stuffed ballot boxes: the “Pish Gallop” describes the tactic of overwhelming an opponent with multiple lies, each of them egregious but without sufficient time to refute them all, you end up leaving the central idea unchallenged: the grand lie that Russia is responding to NATO “provocation”.

What has this to do with the west?

The lunatic fringes, left and right buy into the narrative of a corrupt and decadent western “elite” which is somehow to blame for everything bad. Syria? the west’s fault for invading Iraq. Libya: the west’s fault for bombing an armoured column in a country that’s already at war. No Arab; not Mohammed Bouazizi, nor the people from Benghazi to Cairo who rose up to overthrow dictators are credited with any agency in all of this. Everything is somehow a grand (and often “zionist”) conspiracy. This is comforting to people who want to see themselves as courageous crusaders against a decadent establishment. But this is self-serving and childish disatisfaction with the messy compromises of electoral politics. Morons have always yearned for Fuhrerprinzip of the charismatic dictator.

Putin is busy corrupting discourse on social media, with professional trolls who go around commenting on everything from the Daily Mail, to this blog. These trolls support all opponents of the status quo, from Anti-fracking activists (Putin has no interest in Western Europe being self-sufficient in oil), to UKIP (an EU without the UK would be much weaker) and “Peace” activists (who mostly share the Kremlin’s belief that NATO is always the problem) and political extremists of all stripes in a general policy of throwing sand in the faces of the entire decision-making apparatus of a free democracy.

Even if these Fringe politicians steer clear of outright support for Putin, the Trumps and Farages, the Corbyns and Le Pens all share some or all of the Kremlin’s assumptions. While Putin’s Russia is far, far weaker than the old USSR, the moral certainty the west once enjoyed has gone. The Kremlin may be weaker, but its “Useful Idiots” are stronger.

The problem is without an enemy – and we’ve been schooled to see Russia as a friend for most of the last 25 years – freedom becomes complacency. The success of western economies means people way down the income distribution no longer have a significant struggle to find enough calories or shelter, and thanks to social media, their voice is now being heard. Those who once struggled for survival are now looking for self-actualisation and respect. Putin is pouring poison into the discourse and seeking to crow-bar open the cracks in our society, even as its success becomes manifest.

Take a step back. The UK spends 2.2% of GDP on its military, lower than at any point in our history. NATO is an association of free democracies (though Turkey is at the moment stretching that definition). Russia is an aggressive kleptocracy, who spends disproportionately on a new and highly mobile military; a nation with an appalling human rights record which has repeatedly annexed territory from its weaker neighbours, and is bent on overturning the post-war security architecture of the world. NATO’s “aggression” is, in reality holding at arms length Russia’s former clients, who’re clamouring to join us in the west with our freedom and market economies. The west faces no significant challenge, but we’re blind to the poison being poured in.

The aim of all this disinformation and posturing is that when the little green men pop up in Narva to “defend” the “Rights” of “Russians” living in Estonia (defence they’ve not asked for, of rights they’re not denied), and Estonia asks for help, the populations of the west will not support NATO kicking the Russians out. The result of which is the Baltic states must once again fall under the sway of Moscow, slice by slice. And this means their proud nations, this time, will die. Is this the best we can we offer the two million brave people (about 1/3rd of the population) who joined hands in 1989, determined to look west? And where will an emboldened Russia stop? Donetsk (Twinned, ironically, with Narva)? Kiev? The Vistula? We’ve seen a dictator play this salami-slicing game before. Stopped early, war can be prevented.

Putin is feeding the “anti-establishment” lines, which get far more traction than they deserve. Our “elite” is not “corrupt”, NATO is not “an aggressor”, our democracy isn’t a sham, Russia isn’t being “provoked”, Fracking doesn’t “poison the water supply”. The ballot boxes were not stuffed in the Scots independence referendum, we are not being lied to by “the mainstream media”. Please stop repeating Putin’s lies, however much you want to agree with them. Please be sceptical of Russia Today. Please don’t say “Putin stands up for his people” because he doesn’t. He is prepared and able, unlike our leaders, to sacrifice the Russian people at will, to the greater aim of Greater Glory of Vladimir Vladimirovic Putin. Do not be his useful idiot.

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What is Putin up to in Syria?

First let’s get one thing clear, Putin is not making a principled, humanitarian intervention against Islamic State.

Assad is Russia’s ally in the region. The major disagreement between Russia and the West is Assad’s place in the post-civil war Syria. Putin thinks it’s Damascus, the west thinks Assad belongs in The Hague. Failure by the west to intervene left a power Vacuum into which Putin waded with his military. This served a number of purposes.

  1. It put Vladimir Putin centre stage in negotiations which allows him to present himself as someone who’s made Russia a force once more in world affairs. Those handshakes with the American president are extremely important in the Russian Media.
  2. By deploying credible forces to the region Putin gains a seat at the table and earns a bargaining chip, potentially in return for the easing of Sanctions. This should be resisted.
  3. Helps secure Russia’s southern flank, itself vulnerable to Jihadists 
  4. It’s a show of military strength – a rapid expeditionary deployment of forces at short notice. In doing so he’s made a virtue of necessity: you cannot hide such a deployment 70 miles from the British listening station on Cyprus, so use it to distract from the ongoing destabilisation of Ukraine and demonstrate capability.
  5. Finally, most refugees aren’t fleeing the theatrical murderers of Islamic State, but the desperate Assad regime, which is killing seven times as many Syrians as the “Caliphate”. The refugees are therefore fleeing a war which Assad is at present losing, and probably would have already lost by now were it not for Russian support. The resultant refugee crisis weakens the EU, another Putin bugbear, so he’s perfectly happy to prolong the Syrian slaughter.

The fact is Assad isn’t fighting IS all that much, but is instead losing ground to moderate rebel groups in the south, Jabat al Nusra (the official Al Qaeda franchise in the region)  and many others in the west. He’s even ceded some ground to Hezbollah, in return for their military support. The Kurds, Hezbollah and JAN Islamists are the main opposition to IS. Most Russian actions appear to be against non-IS rebels too. The main purpose is to support Assad.

The main function of bombing IS is for Putin to further play to his supporters in the west’s belief that “here is a man of action and a man of principle”. Assad’s regime is propped up. The refugees continue to split Europe, and western inaction exposed as weakness.

For the west’s part, there’s nothing that would solve many of our Foreign policy problems more than Russia getting sucked into an unwinnable war in the Middle East. By taking the best kit south, it would take pressure off Central Europe and Ukraine. It would cost Russia money it doesn’t have, weakening them in the long run.

It’s all breathtakingly cynical. We should not be persuaded by any of it. The Western powers had an opportunity to intervene in 2013 and earlier. Now it’s too late. The Russians have made their play, and we (and above all the Syrians) must live with the consequences. If you take “Iraq” as a cautionary tale of going to action, Syria is a cautionary tale against inaction. Of the two, Iraq was basically a draw, and Syria is a catastrophic cluster-fuck that’s strengthened one of the worst people in the world. Inaction appears to be worse.

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On the UK, Russia and the EU

The Centrepiece of this parliament will be the in/out referendum on British Membership of the European Union. It will probably define the UK’s very survival as a nation, and define the UK’s place in the world over the next few years. I am sceptical about the EU project, I regard the parliament as a risible cargo-cult democracy. It lacks a ‘demos’ so any attempt to give someone like JC Juncker ‘legitimacy’ are a fig-leaf. It’s bureaucratic, pumping out regulation and diktat, pouring glue into the economies of Europe. It’s a costly vanity project for politicians who’ve either come from very small countries and need supra-national bodies to contain their egos, or for Politicians who’ve been rejected by their domestic electorates. But none of this really matters.

Because the EU has been a stunning success. Several countries, Spain, Portugal, and the former communist East were dictatorships in my living memory. And while it’s the Atlantic alliance which beat communism, it’s the EU which ensured Poland is a country where a return to autocracy is as unthinkable as it is in Spain by entrenching free-market liberal democracy and building institutions. Money, too was poured into the post Fascist south and again into the post Communist east. Nothing says “we’re friends now” like building roads and hospitals. The world east of the Iron Curtain, and south of the Pyrenees, is immeasurably better, freer and safer thanks to the EU.

 

YES, because the EU is bigger than a Cost Benefit Analysis for the UK

Of course the stupid, hubristic, economically illiterate, clumsy vanity project, the single European Currency has undone much of the good work in Spain and Portugal. But this isn’t a post about the Euro, which the UK will never join, but about the EU.

The UK is not a small country, unable to survive outside a big trading block. So any argument from Europhiles which suggests the UK will be a great deal poorer outside simply won’t wash. The EU would be forced to treat with the UK, a nuclear-armed UNSC permanent member with the 5th largest economy on earth, (and rising we will probably overtake Germany some time this century) with slightly more respect than they show Norway (which is, as an aside, the country with the world’s highest living standards) or Switzerland (not known as an economic basket-case). What this means is ‘Brexit’ is unlikely to be as disruptive as many imagine.

The flip-side of this, is there simply aren’t many benefits from leaving. Much EU regulation comes from world bodies, and the EU, as the World’s largest market has enormous influence in the WTO and the like, and the UK working with likes of Germany and Poland in favour of Free Trade against the French, mean the EU is more likely to deliver the world trade Environment made in the UK’s image.

The EU is a bulwark, alongside NATO against autocracy. Putin is creating an odious personality cult. He’s spent his oil revenues building a highly effective military with which he threatens his neighbours. He’s tearing up the rule-book, annexing territories under a doctrine not dissimilar to Hitler’s  ‘Heim ins Reich‘ by which he justifies aggression with the rights of Ethnic Russians in neighbouring countries. And it should be remembered that ‘neighbouring countries’ include EU and NATO article 5 members.

At present, the Baltic states are indefensible against the forces Russia can bring to bear right now. NATO is enervated, divided and indecisive. And Putin’s philosophy sees NATO and the EU as organisations that threaten his regime. And he’s right, but not in the way he thinks. When Yanukovych suspended laws necessary to implement the EU-Ukraine association agreement, thereby giving in to Russian threats of trade sanctions, and outright bribery, the people of Ukraine stormed Maidan square in Kiev. The people of the Putinist world want a better world, even as oligarchs and governments try to crack down on dissent. And it is the duty of the Free world to stand up for the vast majority of people who rather like democracy and freedom. They vote with their feet in vast numbers, as soon as they get the money and leave the hell holes their countries have become for bolt-holes in London, Spain and Cyprus.

At about the time of the Maidan protests, Russia started planning the annexation of Crimea. Putin’s military is dependent upon Ukrainian uranium, and several strategic resources – the gears for his armoured forces, and avionics for his aircraft for example are made in Ukraine. So the EU association agreement heralded a Ukraine looking west. And made Russia even more vulnerable to EU sanctions than they are now.

Worse, from Putin’s point of view is the threat posed to Russia’s oligarchic kleptocracy by a stable, uncorrupt, westernising Ukraine on Russia’s border. Eastern Poland and western Ukraine were mostly part of the same country almost in living memory. Those regions which formed the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland are the rich, western-looking bits of Ukraine (they are the poor bits of Poland – the rich bits used to be Prussia – History runs deep). And they had the same living standards as their cousins in Poland in 1990. Now the poles are three times richer, and Ukrainians are looking at Poland and saying “I want some of that”. The fact is, unless there is a stunning military success, Putin has already lost. Kiev will probably be an EU city within a decade; The people of Ukraine, West of Donetsk and Mariopol at least, certainly want that. Putin cannot sustain the unrest in Ukraine indefinitely as it costs vast money which in a years’ time, he simply won’t have.

None of this makes Putin’s gamble in Ukraine valid or reasonable, and those who argue that it does are despicable quislings.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes. Russia is in the same place as Germany was in the 1930s. A once-great power, humiliated by defeat, who elected a demagogue promising to restore Russia’s Glory, who rebuilt a mighty military, and who sees the world in zero-sum, ethnic terms. That demagogue enjoys total control of the media, and near total public support. Like Germany (and Japan) in the 1930s Russia faces enemies awakening to the threat, and who are slowly reacting and re-arming. (Yes we are: an Army can be built in a year or two, Notice how the Navy is getting the Lion’s share of defence spending right now – Carriers, world class destroyers and frigates, and in the Astute class, the finest Nuclear subs asink?). And Like the axis powers, there is a calculation that can be made that they possess the power to sweep all aside RIGHT NOW, but know they will inevitably lose any protracted war. Russia will run out of Foreign exchange reserves this year, absent a rise in the oil price above $80. The demography means they cannot fill their establishment of conscripts, and the health of recruits is not good. Russians have long been breeding below replacement rate, and this is reflected in future cohorts being smaller than Putin deems necessary. Russia’s economy is broken. They export oil, money and people. The population is falling. Male life-expectancy at 55 is worse than much of Sub-Saharan Africa, worse even than eastern Glasgow. Putin has created a hellish society, capable only of suffering for mother Russia, despite the talents and education of her people. If Russia is to defeat NATO, he must go NOW or be slowly squeezed by sanctions and demography, and see the EU and western democracy advance to his Border with Ukraine. There will be no “buffer” protecting Muscovy from Europe.

For there is only one possible result of a protracted war between NATO and Russia, and that is Russia’s total and complete defeat. But what Putin (and his quisling cheerleaders in the west) might calculate is that the Article 5 defence of Estonia for example is a paper promise. If Putin can annex a chunk of Lithuania or Estonia, and it doesn’t trigger a massive response from NATO, then NATO’ s broken. And Putin is busy making the mistake of Dictators through history: mistaking the slowness of decision-making in democracy for weakness. But Britain Germany and France together spend more than Russia does on Weapons. The USA is still mighty beyond compare. And the People of the EU will simply not accept Russian aggression. Would I as a (still, just, semi-detached) soldier die in a ditch for Estonia. Yes. I would. Indeed this is the one issue keeping me in the reserve forces. When Yamato launched the assault on Pearl Harbour, he said “all I fear I have done is roused a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible desire for vengeance“. The Sleeping giants are in this instance, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Germany, France, Poland, Finland, Norway, Italy, Spain. The world’s 2nd Largest economy, the World’s largest economic bloc. Anyone think the Australians wouldn’t help? And China would not tolerate an aggressively expansionist Russia, with whom they have territorial disputes. A total Russian defeat would suit China quite nicely. I would make the same warning to Putin. You think you’re surrounded by enemies? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Ukraine is not an Article 5 NATO country. Ethnic Russians in the Donbass, long dependent on Russian Putin-toadying media, will believe the lies about Nazis in Kiev. And Putin’s aim is to ensure there is sufficient unrest in the East that it exists below the NATO threshold of action, but above which the EU will be comfortable taking Kiev on Board. I don’t think Putin desires war with NATO, but we’re in a situation where miscalculations like MH-17 when (probably) separatist rebels used Russian-supplied kit to shoot down a Malaysian Airliner. Would NATO have been so phlegmatic had a British Airways airliner been shot down?

Given the geopolitical risk, now is not the time to break up the institution which offers millions of Ukrainians hope there’s a better way than Putinist Kleptocratic oligarchy to which they’re condemned, and the instability it threatens for the world. Ultimately, a victory of the West, Kiev, Minsk, and Moscow one day becoming EU cities, will be a victory for the Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian people over the oligarchs and governments which blight their lives and keep them poor.

The same is true of the UK. A broken UK will effectively remove one power with potential to make a meaningful contribution to stopping Putin and Putinism, leaving a greatly diminished rump UK. And ‘Brexit’ will trigger another Scottish referendum, and probably destroy the country I most care about. Mine.

The world stands on the cusp of war, in reality closer to global thermonuclear war than at any time since the 1960s. Now is not the time to start breaking up our alliances. Rather than break up the EU, I want to see it expand further. Free movement from Vladivostok to Lisbon, from Helsinki to Gibraltar, maybe, hopefully including Istanbul one day. That is a libertarian view. Imagine all those Russian engineers, capable of putting men into space using slide-rules and duct-tape working for the general good in a liberal free-market democracy. The EU has its faults, and those faults are mostly French. But it is overwhelmingly a force for good, with a better track record of entrenching democracy than any institution on earth (with the possible exception of the British Empire). Even if the narrow cost-benefit analysis of EU membership is marginal for the UK, Think big. British European Policy has been consistent on ‘Europe’ for 500 years: if the Hegemonic power in the Continent cannot be England, then we will ensure no-one is. Let’s reform, and thereby strengthen the EU, thereby defend the UK, and vote to stay in the European Union, not wholly for our sake, but for theirs.

Should the UK remain in the European Union? I will be voting Yes.

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The Iron Curtain

For my generation, growing up, the Cold war was a fact. There was “us”: the Americans, and the Atlantic Alliance, and there were the Soviets. And there was a line through Europe that was called the Iron Curtain.

I was born in 1977. I remember the Gerontocrats of the Soviet Union dying off. Breznhev, Andropov and Chernenko. I mainly remember it in the form of a Spitting Image skit, in which a queue of elderly men on gurneys with drips in, waiting their turn to be soviet leader. I remember my Father’s plan for WW3, which given we lived close to the Radio masts used to control Britain’s Polaris, later, Trident fleet, was to grab the best brandy and whatever wine we thought suitable from the Cellar, go to the top of Honey Hill, and watch the fireworks.

Then, As a young teenager, I remember the Berlin Wall coming down, and feeling optimistic about the world. We, the free west, had defeated tyranny. Again. This was a time of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history”, in which a liberal, free-market democracy became the universal form of Government.

Buoyed by confidence of the times, I remember devouring the news of the first Gulf war. Having seen even their top-flight kit swept aside with contemptuous ease in the desert by the United States, UK, France and others, the Soviet Union had a crisis of will. Or rather the Crisis of will that was the logic of Gorbachev’s Perestroika and Glasnost came to a head with the realisation that they no longer had conventional superiority in the European theatre. They’d long lost nuclear supremacy. It was over, the Soviet Empire crumbled, and their enslaved peoples of Central and Eastern Europe clamoured to be free. They joined NATO, and they Joined the EU. Thanks to the former they were safe from the Russians, and thanks to the latter they got rich and comfortable, From Estonia to the Black sea.

Finland shares an Iron Curtain Border with Russia, as do Lithuania and Poland (with Kaliningrad), but the rest of the Iron Curtain consists of undefended and unpoliced borders. Some people think the EU is useless, but it has entrenched and enforced democratic norms in central Europe, and set people free to move about Europe for trade and cultural exchange at will. While we need NATO to provide a credible defence against a wounded Russian Bear, it will be the EU’s soft power that finally brings the conflict to a close.

Kiev will be an EU city within a decade. Putin will not last much longer as Russian leader, so completely has he flown the plane into the god-damn mountain. And whoever succeeds him will need to deliver prosperity to the Russian people. And the best way for a Russian leader to deliver prosperity will be closer economic co-operation with the rich countries to the West. Perhaps Francis Fukuyama was right, but just a bit early.

Some people think the world isn’t getting better. What was the Iron Curtain, is now a cycle path.

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“I hope Putin wins”

I know it’s cheap and tawdry to base an essay on a comment on the Daily Mail website but bear with me OK?

The Mail pointed out that the Ukraine crisis might just be the start of WW3. Personally, I think this unlikely. I doubt Russia will even Annex Kiev, but will take eastern Ukraine back into its fold. Next up is Moldova, with Russian bases in Transnitria, already swirling down the plughole of Russian annexation. Further conflict with Georgia beckons as does closer ties with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Belarus. None of this will be fought over by anyone in the West. Meanwhile the damage this will do to the Russian economy, will be immense.

By far the most entertaining comment to this story, and there are many such on the Daily Mail website, reads

I hope you are RIGHT! the west has started this, with its Liberal ways, forcing our ways on to the rest of the world whilst our own communities suffer and fail… I hope Putin wins.

By someone calling themselves TheTruthHurts. However lumpen and stupid wishing a war over our “liberal ways” or thinking “our communities”, which are amongst the richest and most free on earth, will “suffer and fail” might be, he has stumbled onto a Truth. Putin’s Russia IS seeking leadership of socially conservative countries that reject gay rights, women’s equality and all that messy democracy stuff. And there will always be a market for people like our friend above who admire a dictator’s “strength” over what he perceives as a democrat’s weakness.

It is precisely this Fuhrerprinzip that led Farage to suggest he admired Putin “as an operator”. And there are no shortage of CyberKIPpers ranting about how the Ukrainian crisis isn’t a failing former superpower meddling in its former empire, but actually the EU’s fault for daring to enter trade deals with sovereign countries on its borders. Of course UKIPpers blame the EU for the rain, but Putin knows free market, liberal democracy works. He, as a former KGB operative, just doesn’t know why.

the world’s queer-basher in-chief.

But for now, Putin, and his pathetic little Lord Haw Haw, Nigel Farage, have a ready audience of people whom the world has passed by. People who reject Gay rights, ethnic diversity, immigration, women’s equality and who yearn for strong rulers from an imagined past. In Britain’s case, Churchill and Thatcher, and in Russia’s case Peter the Great and Stalin, who’re associated with the pomp and power of empire.

Of course democracies aren’t weak. We are quite capable of expending enormous amounts of blood and treasure, if we can persuade the people our cause is just. Which is why free men from around the world stormed ashore in Normandy, to defeat the most odious tyranny, and why we maintain expeditionary forces round the world to this day. Indeed, we’re stronger now than then and can win wars without making the Guns/butter trade-off. The US defence budget is just 4% of GDP, yet it dwarfs the next dozen or so. All but 2 of the 10 largest defence budgets on earth are NATO democracies.

It’s economies that win wars. Putin’s isolation from the rich, free and extremely powerful west will eventually cost the people (and more importantly, the oligarchs) money. In the short term, the Russian regime will absorb more economic pain than can the administrations in the west, but in the longer run, Putin needs German money, even more than Germany needs Russian gas. Already the isolation is hurting Russian growth, which far from the days of the BRIC boom, is forecast to grow a measly 1.3% this year. And if the Oil price falls, Putin will struggle to pay his over-manned and decrepit army.

The Annexation of Eastern Ukraine will isolate Russia, and even potential allies like China are keeping their distance, fearful over their own shared and disputed borders. This is not the Beginning of WW3. Putin’s isolation and Russia’s economic weakness will see to that. The friends Putin can reliably call on, fellow gay-bashers like Iran, have no power or pull. There’s no alliance of powers capable of posing a threat to NATO, so long as our political will remains. The risk to the west comes with Estonia, an article 5 NATO country and member of the EU. Will we fight for a few Eastern Counties of Estonia? If we do not, NATO which has guaranteed security in Europe for so long will be finished. But there is a lot of water to cross before we get there, and I’m not sure Russia has the appetite, or even the economic and military capacity for the journey.

The Borders of Europe will be redrawn, and not for the last time. If you want historical parallels, this is probably the Galtieri Gambit, not the march into the Sudetenland. Like the Argentine general, Putin’s military adventures were popular. For a while, until the cost of taking on a democracy, and rousing it to anger became apparent.

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The Western Playbook in Ukraine.

Consensus appears to be that Russia has “won” and “the West”, meaning the EU and USA is weak.

Russian Troops in Ukraine (source)

Strong countries do not have trouble keeping their satellites in orbit. The need of Russia to intervene in its near abroad, like the annexation of South Ossetia from Georgia in 2008 is a signal of weakness, not strength.

The Georgians are angling for NATO membership, which is why they’re the top non-NATO contributor to the War in Afghanistan. Unlike many nations, they’re keen to put their soldiers in harms way to the extent that, with the grim humour of soldiers everywhere, the lights of a casevac helicopter into ISAF bases have become known as “Georgian disco lights”. Georgians are dying to get into NATO, quite literally.

Russia for obvious reasons feels threatened by the idea of NATO on its borders, and feels this especially strongly in Ukraine. Do you really need to be reminded that the Eastern Front accounted for 95% of German casualties between 1941 and 1944 and 65% of all allied casualties were soviets, mostly fighting on Soviet territory? Some of the Blame for the appalling casualties suffered by the Soviets in the Great Patriotic war lies at the door of the Kremlin but the Russians still fear invasion from Europe. They fear it rightly, more than we fear invasion from the East, and so Russia likes to have buffer states between it and hostile forces. NATO remains the pre-eminent military power on the planet which was (is?) conceived with Russia as the main enemy. This is why Russia sees the control of its near abroad as key to its security.

So Ukraine will not (or at least should not) get NATO membership, however much NATO or indeed the Ukrainians want it. The potential for miscalculation when NATO and Russia stare at each other directly over a border is just too great. The EU is a different matter.

The EU has a good track record (second only to the British Empire…) in sowing the seeds of democracy in thin soils. The carrot of EU membership, and the prosperity  it brings, has kept many states which would otherwise have descended, like Russia and Ukraine into kleptocratic oligarchy retaining only the pretence of democratic accountability, fully functioning democracies. And in having a prosperous Poland and Czech republic within the single market benefits the UK too. The EU needs to be able to hold the hope of Ukrainian membership without Russia feeling threatened. Indeed it may one day fall to the EU to finally tame the Russian bear itself.

So, in the short-term, Russia has annexed Crimea. Ukraine will probably have to accept that there’s little more the west can do to prevent Russia reclaiming a territory which is home to the Black-sea Fleet, and was only transferred by to Ukraine in 1954. It’s the most pro-Russian (about 60%, following some Soviet ethnic cleansing..) province. If that’s the limit of Putin’s ambitions, then the West will bluster, but probably let it go. But the rest of Ukraine will look firmly west, if a little grumpily in some of the Eastern provinces as a result of Putin’s invasion.

What will most discomfit Russia will be an economically successful Ukraine, firmly tied into the western democratic sphere by trade and friendship. Just as the principle complaint of the citizens of Lviv is the speed at which Poland, a country they were part of in living memory, has got richer within the EU. Russians will look at their friends and relatives in Ukraine getting richer once they pull away from Russia’s toxic orbit, and ask themselves “why?”.

Putin gets his “win” and will gloat about the annexation of Crimea. The price: it gets a little harder for Russian oligarchs to hang onto their loot as economic sanctions bite. The value of their Russian businesses falls sharply, and especially in hard-currency terms, and the relative cost of Mayfair town houses becomes that bit greater. Putin therefore hurts his most influential supporters where it matters most. The west, already nervous of the reliance on Russian energy, looks elsewhere for Gas. Funnily enough, the USA has a glut of the stuff. Europe may even start fracking its own gas one day. It takes time to build the infrastructure, but without Gas revenues from Europe, Russia would be utterly bankrupt, as they produce almost nothing anyone else wants. The Russians will not be able to afford all the new toys they’ve ordered for their over-manned and ill-disciplined military. Like the first cold war, the second one will be won by the system which delivers wealth. And yes, lefties, financial crisis notwithstanding, the West is a stronger economy than Russia.

The West’s inability and unwillingness to throw enormous military forces into the region is not weakness but a symptom of our  greatest strength. Western policy in Ukraine will be driven by our merchants to the benefit of our people, not our soldiers to the benefit of national willy-waving. This is because, unlike Russia, the interests of Western European Governments are (with exceptions, mostly) aligned with those of the people. There is simply no need to go to war over the Crimea. Ukrainians, especially in the west, have seen representative government at work in Poland. Russians, still subject to Russian regime-friendly media, are fearful of “Fascists and Nationalists” because their history has taught them to be so. Doing anything military to stop the annexation of Crimea will play into Putin’s hands.

Killing people and breaking things is sometimes necessary, but is not often the best the way to make people stop fearing you. Give Putin his Pyrrhic victory, and welcome the rest of Ukraine into the Western fold. We win, Ukrainians win. One day even Russians might win, at the expense of their nasty little regime.

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