Defending Ukraine, defending ourselves
Russia's invasion of its peaceable neighbour forces us to reassess our priorities.
Events in Ukraine are heartbreaking.
Residential areas and hospitals under shelling. Children cowering in bomb shelters. Mothers learning how to shoot guns because it might well come to that. Vladimir Putin's unprovoked and unjustified invasion of a peaceable nation is an act of nationalist thuggery.
Nevertheless, we have to set aside emotional responses. For alongside the emotion that makes us rage at the bombing of children is the emotion that makes us fear getting involved. We can't be ruled by emotions either way and must face these events with clear heads and sound judgement.
Some may wish to go in all guns blazing, to drive out the forces of a dictator content to spill as much Ukrainian blood as his revanchist ambitions require. Past quagmires should have taught us where that leads. Others would prefer to pretend events in Europe have nothing to do with us, a stance roughly debunked by over a millennium or so of British history. Others still put their faith in a network of international forums to uphold law and order across borders, a continuing triumph of hope over grisly, grim experience.
Acting rashly would be foolhardy and deadly but confronting Putin can neither be avoided nor handled by dysfunctional global organisations. Britain has no option but to be at the heart of these efforts. In addition to the murder of Alexander Litvinenko and the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal, investigative journalist Heidi Blake has identified 14 suspicious deaths in the UK since 2003 which might implicate the Putin regime or its associates. A man who orders murder on the streets of Britain is not a far-off tyrant whose villainy poses no threat to us.
No less wishful than isolationism is idealism and the conviction that bodies like the United Nations can uphold international laws and norms. Less than an hour after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, the Ukrainian ambassador addressed the Security Council, pleading with the UN to save his country from the Moscow war machine. His entreaties were heard by the President of the Security Council, Vasily Nebenzya — better known as Russia's ambassador to the UN.
There could be no starker testament to the ineffectuality of global institutions than a country presiding over the UN Security Council while invading a neighbouring nation which is not only a fellow UN member and a democracy but one which has provided not the slightest provocation for the incursion.
Countries like the UK cannot dodge this moral reckoning, nor can they leave it in the overwrung hands of international bureaucracy. We will have to stand up to Putin and prepare for the costs that will come with it, including potential cyber attacks, further outrages like Litvinenko and Salisbury and higher-than-expected spikes in the prices of consumer goods and raw materials.
The sanctions so far levelled against Moscow may have been slow in appearing, largely thanks to heel-dragging by Russia-dependent nations like Germany and Italy, but the ground is beginning to shift. Germany’s decisions to suspend the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and reverse its position on arming Ukraine are welcome, as are agreements reached to freeze certain Russian banks out of the SWIFT payments system.
However, the punitive measures now being imposed do not go far enough. Despite plucky resistance early on from the Ukrainians, Russia has the military capability to flatten the country overnight and even the brave Russians risking their lives to speak out against the invasion will not bring a halt to Putin’s actions. Nor will more rhetoric from the West. Indeed, he has now placed Russia's Strategic Missile Forces — which maintain the country’s nuclear arsenal — on ‘special alert’ in a blatant attempt at intimidation.
The primary goal must be to restore peace and Ukrainian sovereignty and every effort should be made to do so. But while Russia may make feints in this direction, conscious that Western leaders and their populations habitually underestimate Moscow's strategic objectives, only strength will force Putin's hand.
Among those sanctions that might turn the screw decisively are: extending the SWIFT ban; large-scale arming of Kyiv; a concerted and comprehensive shift from reliance on Russian energy; seizing the assets of more Western-based oligarchs and regime collaborators; and imposing a global travel ban on Russian government officials and their allies and associates.
There is also the matter of defence procurement, with one in every five arms sold internationally coming from Russia. The global weapons market isn't exactly an obvious place for moral stands to be taken but a determined move away from purchasing Russian military hardware would have severe economic consequences for Putin's regime.
There is only so much we in Britain can do alone and where sanctions cannot be enhanced or where their enhancement fails to make Putin blink, it would be foolish to posture as a serious military match for Russia. Putin oversees the second-largest armed forces on the planet. Any unilateral British intervention would be suicidal.
So, for now, we should limit our military involvement to further arming the Ukrainians, but behind the scenes we ought to be lobbying the only global power that is capable of instituting a no-fly zone over Ukraine to do so. That power is, of course, the United States.
Among the many lessons of this moment is the contrast between the strategic manoeuvrability of Russia, which has played along at international institution-building while bulking up its unilateral capabilities, and that of Western nations, many of which have put all their eggs in the global rules-based order basket. Putin took an each-way bet and is quids in as a result. We need to become similarly canny.
The United Nations has failed Ukraine, just as it failed Syria, Rwanda and the Kosovar Albanians. The institutions of the international order may be weak, corrupt and hamstrung by politics but that doesn’t mean the ideals that underpin them are wrong. Peace, security, justice, economic progress and human rights are noble objectives and should be upheld but international deliberative bodies and supranational courts, treaties and charters, charities and NGOs — these are simply not enough.
Maintaining the liberal order means maintaining the necessary hard power to defend that order. Rules and norms are meaningless if they are only binding on liberal nations and can be flouted without consequence by rogue states. It is not always possible to live our values but nor is it wholly sufficient. The West and like-minded countries must retain a clear military advantage over Russia, China and other exporters of authoritarianism. The alternative is to lose our collective ability to define the rules and to be cowed into accepting rules laid down by others.
Strengthening Western defences inevitably means spending money. Since the fall of communism, Europe has preferred to direct its treasure to social welfare spending while sheltering under US taxpayer-funded firepower. Those days are over. Even Berlin's leftist (and hitherto pro-Russian) chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced in the wake of Putin's invasion that Germany will finally raise defence spending to meet Nato's two per cent of GDP guideline. Modern Europe is coming to realise that you can't defend yourself on some else's dime.
The UK already meets the two per cent GDP standard but the return of conventional warfare to Europe, the sheer scale of Russia's military hardware and the threat that China could repeat Russia's gambit in Taiwan mean our own priorities will have to be reassessed for a suddenly more dangerous world. The Ministry of Defence has just been through a protracted and painful Integrated Review and even Defence Secretary Ben Wallace might be reluctant to reopen it, although doing so could mean more cash for his department.
If a full-scale reassessment is out of the question, an addendum review should be carried out in the wake of Ukraine to acknowledge the seismic impact of Russia's actions on the defence and security needs of European nations. Part of that — the part Rishi Sunak won't like — must be a recognition that Britain does not outlay enough on defence and that annual spending will have to rise substantially. I hesitate to offer a figure but I would note that last year Russia dedicated 4.3 per cent of its GDP to these matters.
In an ideal world, we wouldn't have to think about any of this and could go about our lives untroubled by geopolitics. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world. We live in a world more interconnected than at any time in human history. Nowadays, what happens in Kyiv is domestic as much as foreign affairs in the UK.
This is the price we pay for the advances we treasure so much. The technology that makes it possible to video-chat with relatives on the other side of the world also makes that world so much smaller and highly interdependent. There is very little that happens half way around the globe that doesn't impact us in some way, even if we don't realise it.
However much we try to look away, the world and its threats are still going to be there. We have no choice but to face them, united with our friends and allies, and fortified by the knowledge that peace, security and prosperity do not come naturally. They must be won by every generation.
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on February 28, 2022.
I know where you are coming from Stephen. I know those against WM, Boris and anything English wont even allow themselves the value of reading and listening and then making an informed choice. No, they cannot get passed separation and Indy as if it’s like an auditory hallucination. It all starts with Indy. Even in the face of death in another country crying out for help, they still hear their auditory tormenter INDY. Isn’t it ironic Stephen when Parliament stood up and clapped and deservedly so for the members from Ukraine Gov. I couldn’t help thinking it was nice to be applauded, meanwhile it wasn’t reaching those who were dying for their country on the streets as they clapped. A bit ironic. Of course, the SNP are looking for sympathy for their plight. No bombs no tanks no soldiers no having to flee for life. Allowed billions to look after Scotland and still want to more. The still fail.
You say, quite rightly, that in an ideal world we would not have to worry about any of this. Instead, an ideal world would allow us to worry about Sturgeon's "recollectons", Yousoff's "intelligence", the ferries building themselves in Port Glasgow and the bottle recycling scheme the Greens say will help expel Putin from the Kremlin.
We might even have the luxury of wondering what length Scottish classroom doors should be. That'd be fun!
Here is a film about the idiocy of this sort of "luxury": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b0KFD9BM_4