Despite increasingly frantic warnings from Washington about an “imminent” attack, all-out war in Ukraine is not inevitable. Far from it. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s military pressure tactics are working. The west has been forced to listen to his grievances. Fighting could start soon. But US intelligence is not exact, and Moscow is adept at spreading disinformation and fear. Just as likely, this standoff could last months. Meanwhile, diplomacy still has a chance.
The best hope remains the path to peace outlined last week by French president Emmanuel Macron during talks with Putin in Moscow. How shaming, and dangerous, that Boris Johnson’s government is so unsupportive. Brexit Britain, detached by choice from the EU and in thrall to US policy, is undermining European diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis.
The UK used to act as a transatlantic bridge and interlocutor. Now it’s become a barrier to understanding, doomed to irrelevance.
Last week’s spectacle of Britain’s prime minister and foreign and defence secretaries, representing a once influential, respected nation, traipsing around Europe issuing vacuous threats was embarrassing. In Moscow, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov mocked the “slogans” spouted by Liz Truss, his UK counterpart. In Brussels, Johnson was grimly portentous – and clueless about what to do.
Johnson’s choice of awayday destinations is instructive. So far he has served Christmas turkey to British troops in Tallinn, nabbed a substance-free photo op in Kyiv, and visited fellow EU-hating populists in Warsaw. Not exactly mainstream diplomacy. Gaffe-prone Truss, heir to Castlereagh, Balfour and Bevin, did not drive her Margaret Thatcher tank to the Kremlin, but she might as well have done for all the good her visit
did. British policy on Ukraine remains clumsily focused on “deterrence”, not solutions. This basically means shouting at Russian president Vladimir Putin to back off – or else. Yet Britain has no “or else”. Through no fault of their own, its depleted, underfunded, poorly equipped armed forces make little difference to Kremlin calculations.
The most potent unilateral UK weapon – effective measures to curb the laundering of stolen Russian money – has yet to be fully deployed, the result, perhaps, of the Conservative party’s avidity for red gold. When this government talks deterrence, it’s relying on others, principally the US, to do what it cannot or will not do itself.
For all its posturing and fist-waving, Britain is barely in the diplomatic hunt. Few people other than worried leaders of the all but indefensible Baltic republics – who will take any help they can get – listen to London any more. Johnson and his cronies are reduced to snarky sniping from the sidelines as headline-grabbing French diplomacy leaves them trailing in the snow.
Emmanuel Macron, Johnson’s bete noir and chief Brexit adversary, made important advances last week in face-to-face talks with Putin, sketching the outlines of a possible deal. Judging by Downing Street’s reaction, Johnson would prefer war to success for the French president.
Anonymous officials and government sources variously accused Macron of betraying Nato, rewarding aggression, electioneering, and “waving a white flag” – Savile-style slurs happily amplified by Tory-backing, Francophobe commentators prating about appeasement and “Macron’s Munich moment”.
When such a low is reached, it’s clear that post-Brexit failings, personal grudges and snide blame-games, coupled with isolated Britain’s chronic lack of ideas, clout, and responsible leadership, wax dangerous in the extreme.
British attacks are not solely aimed at Paris. Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, loth to blow up gas supply lines from Russia, is criticised, as is the EU. Yet sour grapes aside, much of this cross-Channel barracking is calculated. It’s deliberately intended for American consumption.
By confusing spite with independent thinking, such bilge supposedly demonstrates to a panicking US president, Joe Biden, that whatever those cowardly, sneaky Europeans may be up to, Britain remains Washington’s stalwart friend – even when Washington, blowing noisy trumpets, is drowning in its own hype.
This, in short, is Johnson’s made-in-Brexitland foreign policy: hug America, screw Europe. It’s a distasteful appeal to a shared though vanishing Anglo-Saxon heritage. It’s cynical, self-harming, dishonest, divisive and, most dangerous of all, it’s a gift to Putin. It’s not Macron who threatens western unity. It’s Big Dog.
What’s so terrible, for example, about neutrality for Ukraine? It’s obvious, despite rhetoric about open doors and sovereign rights, that US-led Nato does not want Kyiv to join the club. So say so candidly.
It’s true the Minsk ceasefire deal after the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, championed by Macron, is a fudge that means different things to different people. But it’s also a crucial product of the only peace process in town. So fudge some more. Buy some time. De-escalate.
Are the Russians justified in complaining that Nato broke pledges to steer clear of Moscow’s post-Soviet borders? Yes, suggests Macron, inching towards Putin’s demand for “indivisible security” – meaning one state’s security does not undermine another’s.
There is plainly scope for compromises here, especially if Putin keeps his reported promise to freeze the military buildup and pull troops out of Belarus.
Trouble is, the US, egged on by Johnson’s tatty Churchill tribute act, rejects outright changes to Europe’s “security architecture”. It also favours Kyiv’s interpretation of what the Minsk agreements say should happen in the disputed Donbas region.
And although the US promises to discuss limiting its deployment in Europe of new nuclear-capable, medium-range missiles – an alarming, largely undiscussed reprise of Washington’s 1980s cruise and Pershing missile cold war escalation – it insists that Putin back down first. That’s unrealistic.
To sum up. Pariah Putin, an international hooligan, triggered the Ukraine crisis and is now exploiting it. Macron, representing France and the EU, is trying hard to resolve it. And ill-judged, hardline and hostile American and British attitudes may yet cause him to fail.
Is this because Washington and London know what’s best for Europe? No. It’s because the US, projecting its national interests through Nato, and the feckless, lying windbag in Downing Street, cannot bear the thought of an empowered, strategically autonomous Europe successfully managing its own security.
This is England. This is Brexit. This is dismal.
