Imposing sanctions in baby steps

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The UK and EU are seriously discussing further packages of sanctions against Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, and trying to pressurise Trump into implementing further US sanctions as well. There does seem to be a feeling that the US Congress might be willing to impose further sanctions, although there is considerable doubt as to whether Trump will support it. Sir Starmer is doing his best to sound tough as he talks about ‘ramping up’ (one of his favourite phrases) economic sanctions against Putin and Russia. But hold on a minute. Over three years into a disastrous war in which hundreds of thousands have died, and there are still more sanctions which haven’t been applied yet? When he says ‘we will apply more sanctions unless you…’, what I hear is ‘we haven’t yet done everything we could’.

How effective sanctions have been – indeed, how effective they can ever be – is a question which people who can’t think of anything else to do don’t really want to discuss. The reasons for that are entirely understandable: if countries are unwilling to move to direct military aid of Ukraine, and if sanctions don’t force Russia to back down, then all that is left is a negotiation which will inevitably make concessions to Russia. It represents neither fairness nor justice, but if all that we can think of are sanctions, then we should seriously have been applying them to the maximum already. Tough talk without tough action simply condemns more Ukrainians to fight and die.

But here is the truth that they can’t or won’t admit: sanctions aren’t forcing Russia into backing down and probably never will. Telling members of the Russian regime that they can’t come to London (one form of sanctions which has been applied) isn’t actually the sort of punishment which makes them quake in their boots, and they are still obtaining most of the goods they require by other routes. There are three main reasons why sanctions are probably doomed to failure.

The first is that Russia is big. It has an abundance of natural resources, and is able to produce much of what it needs; maybe not in the cheapest or most efficient way, maybe not always to the same standards, but a big country will always be more resilient in the face of sanctions than a smaller one.

The second is that they are not being universally applied. There are still plenty of countries (including, of course, China) willing and able to supply Russia with the goods it needs. That actually reflects a deeper problem, which remains unaddressed: not all countries see the Russia-Ukraine conflict in the same simple terms as the EU / UK, namely an unprovoked invasion of one country by another. That’s not to say that they’re right in coming to a different interpretation, but whether they’re right or wrong is irrelevant to the ground fact that they are continuing to both buy and supply goods which are subject to sanctions by others. Many of us might regret that the world does not have an effective means of disciplining a rogue state, but regret doesn’t change the facts.

The third reason is that sanctions hurt the economies of those applying them, so companies are finding ways around sanctions. As trade with Russia has dropped, demand from countries aligned with Russia for the same goods has miraculously increased. Some of those countries are landlocked and the goods can only reach them by traversing Russia. The idea that they all get to their planned destination, or even that they all stay there when they arrive, is for the birds. Western companies are supplying sanctioned goods to Russia and pretending not to know, and their governments are pretending not to notice. And the capitalists make their sales and take their profits.

That sanctions will not, and probably cannot, achieve their aim is a dismal conclusion to draw, but if it’s what we are going to depend on, then implementing them in packages over a period of years and turning a blind eye to alternative supply routes doesn’t cut it. Sir Starmer’s projected strength is actually a cover for weakness.

What does Putin really want?

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The Secretary General of NATO has warned Europeans that the alternative to spending more on defence is to learn Russian or migrate to New Zealand. The assumption behind it is that, without a huge increase in spending on armaments, Russia will simply over-run the whole of Europe and turn us all into subjects of its empire. There are a number of problems with that as an idea, not the least of which is revealed by a little simple mathematics.

I’m not sure how practical it is to arrange a mass migration to New Zealand, but I can’t see the New Zealanders (population around 5.25 million) being ecstatic about welcoming around 560 million Europeans to their shores, which throws most of us back on the alternative of learning Russian. It is immediately obvious that the pool of available Russian teachers is never going to be up to the task. A country of 143 million is never going to be able to impose its language on another 560 million in the twenty first century. The English government, with a population of almost twenty times that of Wales has taken 500 years to partially impose its language on us, and there is still resistance. And the numbers aren’t only problematic in terms of language teaching. I don’t know how many occupation troops would be necessary to control an additional population of 560 million, but the chances that a country of only 143 million could find enough are vanishingly small.

It would, of course, be a simple enough task for a Russian Trump; just invent some new numbers for the respective populations and claim that the problem has been solved. But if we assume that Putin might just possibly be a little more numerate than Trump (a not wholly unreasonable proposition), it follows that he would realise that military domination of the whole continent is not an achievable outcome, even if we believe that he really desires it. It is dangerous to assume that he is entirely rational, but probably less so than assuming the complete opposite, which is where most European politicians seem to be at present. Perhaps the safest assumption is that he is mostly rational most of the time, which leads naturally to the question ‘what does he really want?’.

Personal kudos and recognition – very probably. There’s no reason to assume that narcissism should be restricted to the US. He knows that he won’t be around forever, and he’d probably like to be remembered favourably by Russian historians. Personal wealth – possibly. But he already has a great deal of that, and statistics suggest he won’t be around for long enough to enjoy what he has, let alone much more. On the other hand, that is not a consideration which has ever prevented others from accumulating ever greater wealth. Land and resources – maybe, maybe not. His distorted view of history and Russia’s place in it suggests a desire to emulate the Russian empire at its height, but his experience so far in Ukraine will have taught even only a partially rational person something about the cost of that. Security – almost certainly. It is far from irrational for him to suppose that ‘the west’ really might be out to do Russia (and Putin) down. It’s not a fear which requires its sufferer to be diagnosably paranoid. The desire for security guarantees isn’t limited to Ukraine.

The bigger question is about what ‘the west’ is doing to ascertain what he truly wants and whether actions taken are likely to reduce or increase the insecurity he feels. It really doesn’t matter whether his insecurity is based on an accurate assessment of others’ intentions or not – the effect on his actions is the same either way. I cannot believe that an accommodation cannot be reached which involves reassurance and disarmament rather than threat and rearmament. Unless, that is, it’s not something which ‘the west’ actually desires.

Time to replace NATO?

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The Trump administration has been roundly criticized for the approach which it is adopting to ending the war in Ukraine. But there are two things which Trump says which are surely uncontroversial in themselves. The first is that the war needs to end, on which most will surely agree. The second is that some boundary adjustments will need to be a part of that, which is much more contentious, but nevertheless a statement of an obvious truth.

Those boundary adjustments, whether permanent or temporary, will inevitably involve Ukraine ceding territory to Russia because, realistically, the only way of returning to 2014 borders is for other countries to commit large numbers of troops and resources to the war alongside Ukraine. A third Europe-wide war doesn’t necessarily have to involve nuclear oblivion, but that’s an obvious risk. And there's surely some doubt about whether the youth of Europe in the twenty-first century are willing to be conscripted and sent to Ukraine to die. Asking, let alone instructing, Ukraine to concede territory is neither fair nor just, and Trump’s rationale – which appears to be that Putin has lost a lot of soldiers to gain the territory so deserves to keep what he’s paid for in blood – is an appalling basis for making a concession to aggression. It’s also very one-sided, ignoring the cost that Ukraine has paid to resist the aggression as though Ukrainian lives don’t matter. It is, though, hardly surprising coming from a man who sees everything in terms of transactions, who believes that the strong should dominate the weak, and who has already made it very clear that he rather likes the idea of emulating Putin’s land grab himself.

Even so, for a man whose self-image is that of a master dealmaker to concede much of what the other party wants in advance of any detailed talks is incongruous, to say the least. He surely realises that any process of negotiation will only involve further concessions, and that far from being a mutual process he has to date extracted precisely nothing from Putin in return. He’s also agreed that Ukraine will not be joining NATO for the foreseeable future. At least that one is within his authority. Since new members can only be accepted by unanimous decision, he can block membership although, again, conceding that publicly in advance of any serious talks doesn’t look like a masterstroke of bargaining. Nor does it suggest that he has thought further ahead than the next news cycle.

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of NATO anyway; the idea that dividing the world into hostile military blocks armed to the teeth is a rational long-term way of preventing war has always struck me as being a curious one. Trump has exposed the essential weakness of the alliance: if the most powerful member goes rogue, the alliance becomes meaningless. By declaring in advance that any peacekeeping forces deployed to Ukraine will not be acting on behalf of NATO, and that no attack on them by Russia will trigger the clause decreeing that an attack on one is an attack on all, he has rendered the alliance in its current form largely pointless and toothless, giving Putin the green light to attack the peacekeepers whenever he wishes. However, in the long term, if we can navigate our way through the period of danger which he has created, he might even be doing us a favour, albeit unintentionally.

The question is about how to respond. Whilst it would have been better to have approached the question in calmer times and with more time to work things through, challenging the whole basis of the alliance is not in itself a bad thing. European nations – including Ukraine – need to think about how best to bring about a secure and peaceful Europe which can co-exist with Russia to the east as well as with the US to the west, rather than simply depending on the military power of the US for the first and subservience to the US for the second. It’s potentially an opportunity to negotiate a mutual downsizing of military forces and to remove actual or perceived threats on both sides by re-establishing a degree of trust and co-operation, alongside a commitment to resolve disputes by negotiation within the framework of international law. It’s unclear whether Russia under Putin (or his successors – he won’t be around for ever, and we’re talking about long term solutions here) is ready to even begin such a process. Maybe it’s naïve to expect it to happen rapidly, but European states are hardly sending positive signals about their own willingness to engage in such a process either. The default position increasingly looks like some sort of attempt to build a replacement for NATO which excludes the US, and continue the armed stand-off, with Starmer's Labour in the vanguard, determined to look tough. That would be a huge missed opportunity to seek to find a long term positive in the short term chaos being unleashed by the madman in the White House.

Threats and deterrence

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If a householder builds a tall wall around his garden, and tops it with an electrified razor wire fence, some might think him to be quite mad, but it might reasonably be considered to be a deterrent against anyone trying to enter his land. It’s still a deterrent if he lurks behind the wall with a loaded shotgun and puts stickers on the outside of the wall warning potential trespassers of the fact. If he then builds a tower just inside the wall and stands on top of it waving his shotgun in the direction of anyone passing by, he would remove all question as to his sanity, but has he also crossed the line between deterrent and threat? The difference between a deterrent and a threat is sometimes, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder.

Relationships between states are more complex than that, but the basic point – that whether an action is considered to be a deterrent or a threat depends on one’s point of view – is substantially the same. If Russia moves troops closer to the borders of NATO countries, is that a threat to invade those countries or a deterrent to a perceived threat to invade Russia? If the US moves nuclear weapons to the UK so that it can strike Russia sooner and with less warning than by using ICBMs based in the US, I don’t doubt that the US would intend it to be a deterrent. But I couldn’t blame Russia for seeing it as a threat. To the extent that people contemplating fighting a nuclear war haven’t already, like the guy with the shotgun on top of his tower, removed all doubt as to their rationality, there is a point in the game of deterrent/counter-deterrent (or threat/counter-threat) where it becomes almost rational to strike first, on the principle of ‘use it or lose it’. The question we ought to be asking ourselves is whether those taking decisions, allegedly on our behalf, are bringing that point closer or pushing it further away. Claiming that ‘he started it’ is a kindergarten level argument; the issue is not about who started the spiral towards war, but about how we stop it. There is nothing unpatriotic, and it isn’t being a stooge for Putin, to try and understand that he might just possibly interpret things in a different way. And whether that interpretation is right or wrong is irrelevant – understanding it is a part of the key to any attempt at mutual de-escalation.

There does seem to be a marked increase recently in the number of people telling us that we must prepare for war, although their motives may be mixed. I suspect some merely want to reintroduce conscription in the belief that it will restore ‘traditional’ values, including imposing a sense of ‘British’ patriotism which they think has got lost. Others probably think that ramping up armament production will be good for jobs, and that a wartime economy would be good for capitalism in general. Some, though, are entirely sincere – they really do want to fight an all-out war against Russia, and all pretence that a war between two capitalist economies would somehow be about ideology has long since been shattered. Paranoia even leads some to think about the Republic of Ireland as a potential enemy (almost a case of ‘if they’re not with us, they’re against us’), and even to talk about the need for England to bomb an independent Scotland to prevent the Russians from using its airbases. That wasn’t only about trying to head off independence – some people really do think that way.

I can’t immediately recall any time in human history where huge armies have been built, possessing enormous quantities of the latest and most potent methods of destruction, without them subsequently being used. And I’m not currently particularly confident that we’re on the verge of achieving that for the first time.

Seizing the opportunity?

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One of the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been increasing speculation about the possible break-up of the Russian Federation. From the Washington Post, through Bloomberg, to the i, columnists have been analysing the situation and wondering aloud whether the war could provide the spur needed for some of the 22 autonomous republics currently part of the Federation to seize the opportunity to break free. It comes against a background of increasing centralisation as Moscow accretes power from the far-flung parts of its empire, and increasing Russification, as the centre tries to impose a common identity and language on a very disparate group of nationalities, and the theory is that weakening a large colonial power by breaking it up into smaller states would generally be a good thing for the world at large. But only in the case of Russia, of course. Brave patriots seeking to escape the clutch of Russia are an entirely different thing from the dangerous separatists seeking to break up other established states, such as the ‘most successful political union in history’, as unionists like to refer to the UK, without a shred of hard evidence to back up the claim. It’s worth noting in passing that some of Russia’s possessions have, in one form or another, been part of ‘Russia’ since before the UK came into existence – historical longevity is clearly not the factor which accounts for the difference in perception.

Attempted Russification is nothing new – and nor is the concept unfamiliar to us here in Wales. It’s happening in the occupied parts of Ukraine right now (and for balance, it’s worth noting that the Ukrainian government is also attempting a process of Ukrainification as well). The remaining residents are issued with Russian passports, school curriculums are being aligned with those in Russia, and the rouble replaces the Ukrainian currency. It’s something that many states have attempted to do at many times in history, usually under autocratic rulers (who tend to be rather more effective, due to their innate ruthlessness, in enforcing the rules, using as much violence as is required). And despite all the lessons of history, such rulers always tend to believe that they can succeed in rapidly eliminating any sense of national feeling which does not align with the ‘official’ state view.

History has almost invariably proved them wrong. In Spain under Franco, the Catalan and Basque nationalities and languages were viciously suppressed for a generation; it didn’t work. Whilst the personality – and ruthlessness – of Marshall Tito kept the different nationalities of the former Yugoslavia together for decades, the country rapidly imploded after his death. Closer to home, despite the Welsh language being effectively outlawed for all official purposes for centuries, a fifth of the population stubbornly persist in using it, and we now have a government committed to expanding its use. Eliminating national identity by force takes consistent effort over a long period. Conversely, gaining independence and elevating the status of the Irish language seems to have been something of a disaster for the language. Perhaps the lesson is that, in many circumstances, the oppression itself provokes a reaction, meaning that oppression may not be the best means of achieving the unity of identity that the state demands of its citizens.

It’s a lesson that it’s unreasonable to expect Putin to learn any time soon. Dictators are far too easily convinced that they can simply will things to be as they wish and impose them if necessary; by the time they realise that they’ve got it wrong, it’s already too late. A similar rule applies to world kings – imposing their will on their distant possessions in the teeth of local opposition is usually counter-productive in the end, but their misplaced sense of self-belief makes it impossible for them to realise that fact until it's too late.

Will Russia fall apart as a result of the war in Ukraine? In truth, nobody knows. It wouldn’t be the first time a movement for national independence saw the imperial power’s difficulty as their own opportunity. On the other hand – as we also know only too well – killing an empire and all the exceptionalism which goes with it is no short term project either.

More guns and bombs is no route to peace

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The war in Ukraine is highly challenging for those of us with a long-standing commitment to the belief that disputes between states should always be resolved peacefully; that the phrase ‘war crime’ is tautologous; and that dividing the world into opposing armed blocs is a denial of the essential truth that this planet is all we have and we need to learn to share it effectively. Seeing two countries which have pursued a path of studied and long-term neutrality – albeit not quite as absolute as some might think, given their long-standing joint exercises with NATO – seeking membership of one of those armed blocs has been a particularly depressing development.

Whether Putin was right to claim that the eastward expansion of NATO threatened the security of Russia, and that the stated intention of Ukraine to seek membership of NATO intensified that threat, is something over which historians will argue for generations to come. One of the problems with understanding and interpreting history is that we don’t get to change a parameter or two and then re-run events to see what changes. The result is that there is always scope for alternative narratives, not about events themselves, but about their causes and significance. Perhaps in a century or so historians will have access to classified Russian archives and be able to assess whether this was actually the way Putin saw things, or whether it was a convenient excuse for doing what he always intended to do anyway. Had the Eastern European states formerly part of the Soviet bloc not joined NATO and the EU, would Russia have left them in peace, preferring some form of economic domination, or would it have attacked them all, possibly even sooner, in an attempt to rebuild the Soviet Empire to which Putin seems to be very attached? Put another way, has NATO acted as a deterrent which has delayed war, or a provocation? It's not as easy a question to answer as many seem to think.

There seems to be no justification for Putin’s claim that Ukraine was conducting some sort of genocide in Donbas, although there has been some reluctance in Ukraine to recognise the fact that the majority of the population there were Russian speakers. That doesn’t automatically make them Russians, although we know that there were at least some who considered themselves such and wanted to be part of Russia rather than Ukraine. Whether they were a majority or not is another question. It certainly wasn’t obviously so at the time of the vote for Ukrainian independence, but opinions can change. The only way to find out whether the people of that area would prefer to be in Russia or Ukraine is to ask them, but that’s now a task made impossible by a combination of killing people, driving others out of their homes and deporting others to Russia. A simple majority of those remaining, conducted under the rule of an occupying power, is hardly a basis for any sort of democratic decision.

The first question is how the war can be brought to an end. The demand for complete ‘territorial integrity’ being made by the Ukrainian Government is a recipe for a long, grinding war of attrition during which many more will die. The alternative suggestion of negotiating the cession of some territory to Russia in exchange for peace involves allowing the aggressor to ‘win’ (although what, exactly, they will have won looking at the destruction they have caused is another question), and can provide no certainty that, after a suitable breathing space, Russia won’t simply try again. It’s too easy to tell Ukrainians, as the UK seems to be doing, that they should fight to the last Ukrainian to recover all the lands within what is, like all other boundaries in the world, an arbitrary line on a map. It’s also too easy to tell them that they must give up part of their territory in exchange for a negotiated settlement. Neither response is satisfactory. But if we accept the unlikelihood that Ukraine can defeat Russia comprehensively without massive further casualties and a huge increase in the scale and nature of its weaponry, then there will have to be a negotiation eventually. And lines on maps will inevitably be part of that, as they have been in just about all past peace treaties.

The second – and ultimately bigger – question is how we build a world order which prevents the biggest and best-armed countries from simply imposing their will on others, an issue which applies to other countries, including the US, as well as Russia. Recruiting more countries to NATO and increasing expenditure on armaments isn’t the only possible answer, despite what UK and other politicians would have us believe. Challenging that approach is not doing Putin’s work for him, as those – such as the leader of the Labour Party – demanding absolute loyalty to NATO have suggested; indeed if the current so-called ‘security structure’ in Europe has been shown not to work, blindly doubling down on it is never going to be the best response. A United Nations in which those with the biggest clout can simply veto international action against those transgressing its rules has been shown to be a failure. Many had thought that increasing trade was the answer – in this case, that plugging Russia into an interdependent world economy would prevent aggression. In practice, it just made it harder to impose immediate crippling sanctions on the transgressor. It’s not a simple question, but continuing with a world order based on the idea that ‘might is right’ is not a sustainable future for humanity. There’s nothing cowardly or unpatriotic about seeking a better alternative than more guns and bombs.

The right to vote doesn't determine honesty

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It seems like only days ago (probably because it was only days ago) that Boris Johnson was warning people against being Russophobic. Hardly surprising, in a way, for a man who just a few years ago declared himself to be a committed Russophile. (To say nothing of his being a fervent Sinophile, which is also not a spectacularly good look at present.) In his view, there are good Russians (who donate large sums of money to the Conservative Party) and bad Russians (who owe their wealth, mostly crooked in origin, to the active intervention, or at least passive tolerance, of the Kremlin). The alert may notice that there is no necessary contradiction between the two categories, leaving us with a significant number of Schrodinger’s Russians (those who are simultaneously both good and bad). This week, the Prime minister has warned that allowing foreigners who have made their homes here to vote in local and Senedd elections would open up the UK’s political system to donations from foreign governments, singling out Russians for his attention, in what would look strangely like a Russophobic statement if it hadn’t come from a man who told us that we must not be Russophobic.

Some may struggle to reconcile these two statements – after all, given the extent to which the PM’s party has benefited from generous donations from Russians who qualify to donate by virtue of being on the electoral register, it’s reasonable to wonder why he is now so strongly against it. There is, though, a key difference. The extremely large donations which have been made to his party have come from wealthy Russians who have been allowed to buy UK citizenship, using the money which they’ve effectively stolen from the Russian state and its citizens, aided and abetted by the kleptocracy in the Kremlin. Allowing ordinary, common or garden foreigners – teachers, lecturers, doctors and the like – to vote (and thus donate money from their legitimate earnings) might aid parties other than his own, whereas any sensible billionaire (and especially the crooked variety) looking to protect his own interests doesn’t require a huge degree of intelligence to work out which party is most likely to be of assistance to him. (And with luck, he might even get a peerage as well.)

In reality, the problem here is nothing to do with either nationality or voting rights; it is to do with the rules around political donations and their enforcement. Whether a billionaire donor is Russian or British is irrelevant – the questions should be about the provenance of the money being donated and the extent to which any quid pro quo is involved. Assuming that a donation is legal and clean just because the donor is registered as a UK voter (thereby allowing the receiving party to claim ‘no rules were broken’) is an enormous weakness in the UK’s system. It is, though, not a devolved issue. The Welsh government can decide who may vote in its elections but it can’t change the rules on donations; only the UK government can do that. Instead of criticising the Welsh government for opening up the franchise to all those who’ve decided to make their homes here and contribute to our communities, the UK government should be looking to clean up the rules over political donations rather than using them as an excuse for limiting the franchise. When we look at who benefits from the current lax rules, it doesn’t exactly take a lot of effort to work out why they’re not doing that.

Pots and kettles

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The Guardian quotes Sajid Javid as having said on BBC’s Today programme this morning:

"The Russians just don’t seem that they can be trusted, and especially President Putin, who we know is a compulsive liar. We know that he has difficulty in separating fiction from fact."

Who would ever have imagined that a government led by a compulsive liar who struggles to separate fiction from fact would find that others might not entirely trust anything it says? And are we supposed to laugh or despair at the imbecility of any minister in Johnson’s government who could be so utterly lacking in self-awareness as to say such a thing about a government leader somewhere else?

Ignorance as a qualification?

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Last week, the Welsh Secretary, Simon Hart, told us that he wished Wales hadn’t been able to set its own rules for handling Covid. In itself, the idea that an Anglo-British nationalist wants Wales and Scotland to do as they’re told rather than follow their own paths is about as newsworthy as the revelation that the Pope is a Catholic. In support of his position, he argued that “if you look at all of the measurements of success or failure, … actually there was precious little difference between England and Wales”. It’s one of those statements which has the veneer of truth, but where the situation is actually rather more complicated.

Leaving aside the fact that no-one could have known in advance whether different approaches would lead to different outcomes (which makes his statement a rationalisation after the event, rather than a reason for not allowing differences in the first place), one of the reasons for the differences in outcomes being small was that the English government constrained the ability of Wales to be more different, by, for example, only making furlough available when England needed it. There is also a danger in his use of headline figures, because – as the Welsh health minister has pointed out – a country with an older and often sicker population and higher levels of poverty would expect to lose a higher proportion of its vulnerable people to a pandemic where the death rate amongst those groups is higher. The very fact that the outcome was similar could itself be taken as at least a partial vindication of the Welsh approach. Statistics need to be interpreted with caution, rather than just looking at the headline figure, although, in fairness, Hart is probably just following the cavalier attitude of his boss. But leaving the numbers to one side, one thing which has stood out throughout the pandemic – and I suspect that this is what really irks Hart and his colleagues – is that the approach of Mark Drakeford and the Welsh government has been overwhelmingly supported by people in Wales, who are well able to tell the difference between a government trying its best (even if it didn’t always succeed) to keep people safe, and one more concerned for the profits of its friends and donors.

More shocking to me was the claim by Hart that, despite having been an MP for a Welsh constituency for 9 years before being appointed to the Cabinet, he had never heard of the Barnett formula. That really is an astounding admission to make, although it was probably part of what qualified him – in Johnson’s mind at least – to take on the job. Looking around the cabinet table, it is easy to conclude that ignorance is a qualification under the current regime rather than an impediment. On the other hand it could just be that whatever some of those providing him with cash were after, it wasn’t a detailed knowledge of Wales or its finances.

How sanctions work. Apparently.

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According to a ‘diplomatic source’ quoted in this story, one aspect of the UK’s sanctions against Russian oligarchs is to attack their lifestyle:

"They come to Harrods to shop, they stay in our best hotels when they like, they send their children to our best public schools, and that is what's being stopped.

"So that these people are essentially persona non grata in every major western European capital in the world. That really bites."

Leaving aside the distinct possibility that being prevented from undergoing the ‘education’ provided by certain public schools might be doing the children a favour, let’s picture the scene in the Kremlin, as Putin sits at one end of his legendary table and one of his favourite oligarchs enters to sit at the other end.

Oligarch: Zdrastvuytie, Vladimir Vladimirovich

Putin: Zdrastvuytie, Mikhail Sergeyovitch. How can I help you today?

O: It’s these British sanctions – they’re causing me a lot of problems. My wife, Ludmilla, had set her heart on some new soft furnishings from Harrods, and we were going to send Ilya Mikhailovitch to Eton. Even worse, my girlfriend, Natalya, is giving me a lot of grief about not being able to meet up with her friends for tea at the Savoy, and the restrictions on how much money she’s allowed to keep in her account mean she’s down to her last few thousand. We need to do something, Vlad.

P: You want me to nuke Londongrad?

O: No, I don’t want that. Apart from anything else, Natalya is there at the moment, even if I can’t visit her.

P: Just as well – no point nuking the capital which is doing most to help us with our finances. So what do you want me to do?

O: Well, if you could just see your way to calling off the invasion and returning the tanks to their bases, I’m sure that my life could return to normal.

P: Are things really that bad?

O: Oh, yes they are. Trust me on this, Vlad.

P: OK, I’ll get on to it right away. Anything else?

O: No, that’s all. Spasibo. I owe you one.

It seems that there are people who really think this is the way Russia works.

War shouldn't be a diversion from parties

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An understanding of history is always useful in considering current events, but there can be a problem when people look at that history through a very narrow filter. The current UK government seems unable to see anything except through the filter of ‘the war’, which is colouring their judgement more than a little. For Ukraine, see Czechoslovakia; for the Donbas, see the Sudetenland; for Putin, see Hitler (minus the moustache and with cropped hair). The comparison breaks down completely when they get to ‘for Johnson, see Churchill’, of course. Whilst there are some obvious parallels, assuming that the outcome will therefore be the same is a dangerous and simplistic place to start – yet all the UK’s statements suggest that is exactly what they are doing.

Whilst the EU, and especially the French, are at least trying to engage in rational discussion, sending the UK’s, shall we say ‘geographically challenged’, Foreign Secretary to shout slogans at the Russians in an attempt to boost her leadership credentials to dictate where, on Russian soil, Russian forces are allowed to be stationed looks particularly counter-productive. Fortunately, the Russians understand that the current UK government is an international joke as well as a domestic one, and are treating the Foreign Secretary accordingly. Johnson’s bluster about the UK leading Europe in responding to the situation is just that, bluster; and his government’s clumsy comparisons with the events of 1939 even managed to upset the people they claim to be trying to help.

Nobody knows whether Putin will decide to mount a full-scale invasion (or even a more limited incursion in 'support' of what he sees as ‘Russians’ in the eastern part of Ukraine). The ‘intelligence’ which leads some politicians to claim that they do know is of the same dubious quality as that which told us that Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction which could be turned on us in 45 minutes. What we do know – to misquote Churchill – is that “jaw, jaw is better than war, war”; one of the lessons of the past which the current government seems to have difficulty understanding in its desperate search for a diversion from parties and police investigations. The best contribution the UK government could make to peace in Eastern Europe at the moment is to lock Liz Truss and Ben Wallace away and get Boris Johnson back to the much safer (for everyone else at least) ground of parties and prosecco, allowing the serious European leaders to try and negotiate a way forward, building on existing unimplemented accords. If they had any sense of self-awareness at all, Johnson and co wouldn’t even need to look back as far as the 1940s to understand that making international agreements and then failing to implement them merely stores up trouble for the future.

Secrecy isn't always in our best interests

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Later today we will finally get to see the much-delayed report on Russian interference in UK elections. That there was such interference and that it was designed to promote Russian interests, including weakening the EU by promoting Brexit, is beyond doubt. That the Conservative Party received significant sums of money from people with strong Russian connections and interests is also not open to question. I’m less convinced that there will be any sort of ‘smoking gun’ proving incontrovertibly that the Tory Party acted on Russian bidding as a result of such funding or that hacking was enough to swing an election – or a referendum. I don’t doubt for a moment that the Russian state uses all means at its disposal to influence events in its favour, including cyber warfare and hacking. But neither do I doubt that the UK state does exactly the same thing; they’re just not keen on telling us about that, preferring to provoke outrage at the actions of others rather than admit that it’s simply the way in which competing states behave. I could be wrong, of course, but the fact that the committee contained four Johnson loyalists and voted unanimously to release the report suggests that it might not be quite as damning as it could be. Perhaps the juiciest bits will be in the unpublished annex.

In any event, the UK government has been busy over recent days, in what looks like a diversionary tactic, expressing its outrage at the way Russia has been trying to hack into and steal the data on potential vaccines for the coronavirus. But instead of meekly reporting the outrage at this attempt to steal data, perhaps the media should be asking why the data is secret in the first place. It isn’t government data, of course, it’s data belonging to researchers and private companies, but it’s data which would be useful to anyone trying to deal with the worst pandemic to hit the world for a century. We should be asking ourselves why that data would be so secret and why, in fighting a common disease affecting every country in the world, countries and companies are keeping data to themselves rather than sharing it openly in a common and united effort.

The standard answer would be that the pharma companies want to protect their investment in research so that they can recover it in subsequent sales, but that just provokes a further question – why is this research and development work so heavily in the private domain rather than the public domain? Why is the effort to find a vaccine to respond to a global problem causing hundreds of thousands of deaths a competitive one rather than a co-operative one? There is no obvious or necessary reason why research into fighting disease should be conducted primarily by private companies in secret for profit rather than by public bodies in the open for the good of all. The Government’s attacks on Russia for hacking in this case owe more to the protection of capitalist enterprises than to promotion of public health.

Mirror, mirror...

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…on the wall, who’s the stupidest of them all?

The Foreign Secretary seems to be spending much of his time and effort criticising the leader of the Labour Party for not immediately condemning unequivocally those whom Johnson holds responsible for both the Salisbury poisoning and the use of chemical weapons in Syria.  Johnson claims that Corbyn is the ‘Kremlin’s useful idiot’ in response to which Labour have in turn called Johnson an idiot for undermining the UK Government’s position by lying about what the man from Porton Down did or did not tell him.  If Johnson is right, than at least being useful to someone puts Corbyn a step ahead of Johnson, who has never been demonstrably useful to anyone.

We can all swap insults, but it isn’t the most helpful or enlightening approach to grown-up politics, and given Johnson’s reputation for lying, time and again (having been sacked from jobs twice for doing so, without even starting on the £350 million a week for the NHS), he’s not in a good position in the credibility stakes.  Bluster and diversion are his standard recourse when challenged, but surely people are seeing through that by now.

As I’ve posted before, it may well be that he and the government are party to some secret intelligence not shared with the leader of the opposition, let alone with the rest of us, which enables him to be as certain as he is.  But given his record, his demand that people fall into line and agree with him is unrealistic and unreasonable.  It’s true that there is something very British about supporting ‘my country, right or wrong’, but it’s an approach which hasn’t always exactly worked out well.   Not for nothing is patriotism regarded as the last refuge of a scoundrel, although scoundrel seems a bit mild as an epithet to apply to Johnson. 

There’s something very un-British, however, about demanding that people be found guilty and punished without due process and proper examination of all the evidence.  I always thought that the adage that ‘justice must not only be done, it must also be seen to be done’ was one of the core values that we’re all supposed to share.  It isn’t the first time, though, that I’ve discovered that my understanding of ‘British’ values is different from that of those demanding that we all sign up to them.

Responding to the threat of redundancy?

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At long last, I understand why the Foreign Secretary is so angry with the Russians.  When he said, “Russia has had one goal in mind since the attempted murders on UK soil through the use of a military-grade chemical weapon – to obscure the truth and confuse the public”, all became clear to me – he’s really worried about his own future.  After all, if the Russians should succeed in obscuring the truth and confusing the public, what role is left for Boris?

Retaliation is futile. Apparently.

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It’s not quite what the daleks say, although the image of Boris Johnson speaking through a dalek voice synthesizer is an interesting one.  I doubt that he’d make much more sense, but he probably couldn’t make much less sense either.  In Borisland, it seems that when the UK government takes action against Russia, this is a way of punishing Russia.  And when Russia responds, the only people hit by its actions are Russians.  It all sounds like a very cunning plan to me, albeit more Baldrick than Doctor Who.  All we have to do is punish the Russians a bit more, and they’ll end up doing even more damage to themselves.  I’m sure that there’s a flaw there somewhere, though.

There was also (yet another) echo of the UK’s colonial past in the reasoning of the Foreign Secretary in saying that the closure of the British Council’s offices in Russia would remove Russian access to opportunities to learn English.  It harks back to the days when the colonial masters set about inculcating knowledge of the English language and culture in the natives in place of their own, and completely failed to understand why the natives weren’t eternally grateful.  It’s only a very colonial mind-set which believes that promoting the UK’s language and culture abroad is done primarily for the benefit of the foreigners rather than the UK.

As I noted a few days ago, I really don’t know whether the Russian state did or did not have a hand in the Salisbury attack, although they must remain major suspects.  As a response to that post stated, it’s entirely possible that the government have access to information that was gathered either clandestinely or illegally and which is more definitive than anything so far made public.  The Foreign Secretary suggested as much yesterday, when he claimed that “We actually have evidence within the last 10 years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination, but has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok”, although he didn’t go so far as to tell us the nature of that evidence, or explain how even that information ‘proves’ that Russia was responsible in the specific case.  On the basis of past claims about ‘evidence’ from intelligence sources – dodgy dossiers and 45 minutes to launch weapons of mass destruction – and in the absence of any immediately obvious benefit to Putin or Russia, I remain at least a little sceptical, and reluctant to trust anything the government says without seeing more hard evidence.  From that perspective, I saw nothing wrong with Corbyn’s response in saying that we should exercise caution before jumping to possibly unwarranted conclusions.

The way in which Corbyn has been pilloried for taking an entirely reasonable position – not just by the Tories and the media, but even by prominent members of his own party – left me wondering, not for the first time, what exactly are those great British values in which we are all supposed to believe?  Sometimes I think I know, and at other times I’m left baffled.  I don’t remember how and when those values included the idea that people were guilty until proved innocent, or that punishment should be meted out before guilt had been formally established.  I thought that the approach of the Queen of Hearts to such matters in Alice in Wonderland was that it was a fantasy, not a documentary.  And I certainly didn’t think that failing to support the implementation of the sentence before due process had been completed constituted some sort of treason, which seems to be the position of Corbyn’s opponents in his own party.

The rush by Labour members of parliament to uphold the ‘tradition’ that the opposition should always support the government on foreign affairs has been a pretty dismal spectacle.  It exposes yet again (as if it needed further exposure) the deep-rooted jingoistic nationalism of many of that party’s elected members.  Yet still far too many people cling to the idea that Labour is somehow ‘progressive’ and deserving of support.  What does it take before they realise the truth that, when push comes to shove, they're little different from the Tories?

Do as I say, or I'll stamp my feet

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I don’t know whether the Russian state was or was not behind the poisoning in Salisbury.  And unless the UK government has information which it has yet to release, then it does not know either, despite having rushed to point the finger.  Russia isn’t the only possible culprit either; as Craig Murray points out, there are other credible potential villains.  I tend to suspect that Russia is the likeliest, but am struggling to see a strong enough motive for carrying out the attack, let alone doing so in such a way that they would obviously be the top suspects.

But even if we give the UK government the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they know what they’re talking about, how wise is it really for a middle-sized offshore state to start issuing ‘ultimatums’ to a state like Russia?  I understand and agree that no state can idly stand by and allow another state to target and kill civilians at will (although the UK position on that would be a great deal stronger if they hadn’t been actively engaged in doing the same thing elsewhere), and that, if the evidence is strong enough there has to be a protest, backed up by some sort of diplomatic action.  But an ultimatum?

There’s something very old-fashioned about the idea of one state issuing an ultimatum to another.  Hitler issued more than one before invading countries, and Chamberlain issued one to Hitler before declaring war on Germany.  But normally, they’re issued either by opponents who are roughly equal as a prelude to stepping outside to settle the issue, or else by the playground bully as a pretext for the thrashing which is to follow.  Even in the times in which they were more commonplace, my memory of history doesn’t bring to mind an instance of one being issued to the bully by the child receiving, or about to receive, the thrashing.  The reason for that should be obvious.

It strikes me as yet another example of the delusion suffered by those who govern us that the UK (or Great Britain as they’d probably prefer to call it despite its inaccuracy as a description) is still a global power in the face of which others should be quaking in their boots: a great power which can throw its weight around and force others into line.  Whilst they certainly need to be disabused of that notion, I’d prefer, on the whole, to find a better way to bring that about than picking a fight with Russia.

Ready for what?

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During the campaign for the Scottish Independence referendum two years ago, one of the arguments used by opponents of independence was that Scotland would be ‘too small’ to defend itself against any aggressor intent on seizing its territory.  The way it was presented, there were enemies out there (usually assumed to be Russia) who were just waiting for such a sign of weakness in order to invade.  One of the problems with that argument is that almost exactly the same could be said for the UK. 

As a retired general told us at the weekend, the UK’s armed forces “are ill-prepared to defend the UK against a serious military attack”.  But if the test of any defence capability is the ability to withstand an all-out attack from Russia, then the chances of the UK ever being able to afford an adequate level of armed forces are close to, if not actually, zero.  The logic of the general’s argument is surely that the countries of the EU would need to combine their armed forces in to a single organisation (as indeed, some in the EU seem to want).  I somehow doubt, however, that that was what the general had in mind.

The underlying question is about how realistic it is to assume that there are enemies out there just waiting for an opportunity to invade and occupy the UK.  It seems to be axiomatic for the military that such is the case, but is it really?  The point is that any government has to decide on the probability of a particular scenario before deciding how much to invest in preparing for it. 

The old saying that “Generals are always preparing to fight the last war” seems relevant here; although in this case, the general’s view seems to overlook the last half dozen or so military adventures which have been of an altogether different type.  Perhaps they just don’t count as ‘real’ wars between proper armies, of the sort that the military mind can more easily comprehend.  But it’s a strange world indeed where stating that “Counter-terrorism is the limit of up-to-date plans and preparations to secure our airspace, waters and territory" is seen as a criticism that the government is unprepared, when for most of us it might look as though there is actually a degree of refocussing on what are the greater current threats.

Insofar as there is a logic to the demand that we should always be prepared for another major European war, it is based on an assumption that some or all other states are inherently aggressive and seeking to expand their territories, and an assumption that the best way to avoid such a war is to be always prepared to fight it.  That’s one reading of history; but there is an alternative reading which is that when enough states prepare for war against each other for long enough, such a war is ultimately more likely to happen.

My bigger concern is not that the UK is not ready to engage in a defensive conventional war against largely imagined enemies; it is that the UK is far too ready to engage in offensive wars, and too unwilling to engage in sensible disarmament processes.  

Messages, big sticks, and accidents

Tweet In an ideal world – for me at least – no single state would be too big or powerful to be pulled back into line when it violates international law (just like banks shouldn’t be too big to fail).  But the world in which we live isn’t ideal, and there are some states which can, as a result, get away with a great deal.

The most obvious is the US, whose willingness – often aided and abetted by the UK – to ignore any international agreements or institutions which stand in its way makes it very much harder to insist that other countries should obey the rules which it rejects.  Another is Russia, and having watched what the US has done in recent decades, it shouldn’t really be any surprise that Putin thinks it appropriate to behave in similar fashion.

This week, a former head of the army called for the deployment of more UK troops than currently planned on the European mainland to “send a message” – one of my least favourite political clichés – to Putin that he “should think twice before he considers any further expeditions and expansion”.  And perhaps we should send a gunboat or two as well, because this sounds like something from the imperial era.

Using the presence of troops to warn another state not to take a certain action is credible only to the extent that that other state believes that those troops will be sent into battle against them.  And given the difficulty that the UK Government has had in identifying even a few minor little sanctions which make it look tough without actually achieving very much, waving a big stick in the air doesn’t look terribly credible to me.  And I have more than a sneaking suspicion that it won’t look very credible to Putin either.

History should teach us that threatening military action is a course of action which can develop a momentum and a ‘logic’ of its own.  “Messages” can get misunderstood all too easily (particularly if the quality of intelligence available to those making the decisions is as poor as the example I referred to yesterday).  The challenge is to de-escalate the tension which is building, not escalate it further in response.  The idea that negotiation isn’t possible unless backed up by big sticks and threats of military action belongs to the past, but still seems rife in military circles.

International security depends on creating and strengthening international institutions and agreements, not on flouting them.

Far away places

Tweet Seventy years ago, Chamberlain could talk meaningfully of Czechoslovakia as a "far away place of which we know little". It is hard to say that about any part of the world these days, given the immediacy of telecommunications. However, even if places seem a lot less far away, that doesn't necessarily mean that we know much more about them; and it doesn't help when the news media 'simplify' the story for us, let alone when coverage is slanted.

Georgia is a classic example. The story seems to be about plucky little Georgia subjected to attack from a brutal Russian neighbour. But the situation is a good deal more complicated than that - and it was, after all, Georgia which started the war, even if it wasn't Russia itself that they attacked.

Politics and ethnicity in the Caucasus are extremely complex, with a long history of rivalries and conflict, and it's not at all easy to decide which side are the 'goodies' and which are the 'baddies'. Unlike the old cowboy films, it's not as easy as looking at the colour of their hats.

It certainly isn't as easy as simply supporting the rights of Georgia against Russian intervention. Georgia has a history of insisting on what it calls its 'territorial integrity', meaning that it regards boundaries which have been set on a pretty arbitrary basis over the centuries – largely as a result of previous conflicts - as being sacrosanct. It has shown itself remarkably unwilling to recognise the rights of small nations contained wholly or partly within its borders – nations with their own languages and history – to exercise their right to self-determination. Georgia has even decreed that Georgian is the official language throughout the whole of what it considers to be its territory.

Nor is it as easy as supporting the rights of the 'secessionist' movements within Georgia (although whether they actually want secession or simply transfer to Russia isn't entirely clear either). And surely no-one can support the ethnic cleansing which has been happening in those areas.

Clearly, the reaction of Russia, in invading Georgia, was contrary to international law, but the US and UK are hardly in a position to start spouting the law books after the illegal adventure in Iraq. The bellicose nature of some Western responses is of enormous concern. David Cameron jumping on a plane to go off and support Georgia might play well in the domestic newspapers, but his solution - getting Georgia into NATO asap – is downright dangerous. Giving a pledge of mutual military support ("an attack on one is an attack on all") to a man who starts an invasion of a client of Moscow seems more than a little reckless to me.

As with all human conflicts, what we need in the Caucasus is dialogue and discussion, not sabre-rattling and invasions. And it would be nice to think that at least some of those trotting off to support Preisdent Saakashvili might, at the same time, drop a few words in his shell-like about the folly of attacking Russia's clients.