A bang and a whimper

On the day that Russia invaded Ukraine, it seems important to put down some contemporaneous thoughts. I am no expert and my opinions deserve no more attention than they merit. I am entirely prepared to listen to and even concede to other people's opinions, particulary when they are more informed than mine.

I am deeply saddened and not at all optimistic about how this will play out. To mangle a metaphor, these are chickens coming home to roost, whose antecedents stretch back many years in many directions. Yet we seem to have little regard for how we got here. The internet is full of people screaming certainties at each other with little regard for nuance or the contradictory and multiple truths. The first casualty of war is the truth but we’ve been killing the truth for some time now.

Before you assume that, given my time spent in Russia in the 1990s, this is an apology for Putin, it is not. Putin is a grubbly little narcissist [1]. But he is significantly more intelligent than Johnson or Macron. Like all narcissists, rather than confront his own shortcomings, he attempts to reshape the entire world to fit his view of himself. Unfortunately, he may be clever enough, his opponents naive and fickle enough, and his timing fortuitous enough to benefit significantly. I suspect much will depend on how far China sees this as an opportunity to advance its own position.

First to the idiots like UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who yesterday said, "we'll kick Putin's backside", like the Scots Guards did in the Crimea in 1853. It's charming that Ben was literate enough to read his regimental history when he served in the Scots Guards. But I suspect he struggles with any real history or his own departmental papers. The relative strengths of the British and Russian armed forces in 1853 bear no relation to today. You probably only need primary education to understand the differences. This is the empty bluster of English exceptionalism. We are not a first rank world military power anymore, we are barely a first rank economic power. Although it is an established principle of international law that might is not right, we should have had that argument when Russia invaded the Crimea much more recently in 2014. 

Second to those on the left including the Corbyn and the Stop The War Coalition, who blame NATO and Western aggression for provoking Putin. If you oppose imperialism you need to be consistent in your opposition because Putin seeks nothing more or less than the restoration of a lost empire, as George Monbiot commendably pointed out earlier today.

Third to those on the right screaming 'imperialist aggression' at Putin, check your own recent history before proceding. The second Iraq war was almost certainly imperialist and economically, opportunistically aggressive. Likewise Putin has at least as much, if not more, claim to sovereignty over Ukraine as the UK has to the Falkland Islands or Gibraltar. Unless you want to stand on the principle of self-determination.

Fourth, to the libertarian little Englanders on twitter who claim we have no role in this crisis and that Putin is entitled to invade Ukraine; equating its relationship with Russia as being that of the Isle of Wight to the UK.  If the Isle of Wight or the Falkland Islands or Scotland, Wales or Northern Island for that matter wished to secede from the United Kingdon as independent states, then they can. 

It would appear that the majority of the 44 million Ukranians do not wish to be reattached to the Russian yoke. The Ukranian identity reaches back to the 9th century at least and its relationship with Russia and the Rus is fractious, complex and equally long. If you do not know what the Holodomor is, look it up. Surely there is a moral obligation to defend another sovereign country's right to self-determination? That is after all what most of the people holding this view used as their justification for supporting Brexit.

Fifth, to those who cry moral outrage, nothing can justify this aggression. What did you say when the World Bank and IMF made Russia grovel at the end of the Cold War? Russia was humiliated by the West. Instead of taking the farsighted nation building of the post WWII Marshall Plan (arguably one of America's greatest contributions to world peace) we effectively bankrupted Russia and destroyed its burgeoning and outward looking middle class twice. The parallels between the vindictiveness at the Paris Peace Conference and the subsequent rise of National Socialism are alarming. And I use the term National Socialism deliberately as Hitler's appeal was to nationalism, unreasonable poverty and unjustified shame.

Sixth, we have no place making moral arguments when we have been money launderers in chief to the Russian kleptocracy for the last 25 years. We have no place making moral arguments when our own Prime Minister is a moral vacuum.

But where does that leave us. If we are not strong enough to challenge the idea that might is right on behalf of the vulnerable. If we have no right to cast a stone against imperialist aggression when we are amonst the most aggresive imperialists of all. If we have no moral place to stand because we have no morals...

The only path is a multilateral one. However difficult or slow or painful. And to take it we must accept our share of blame for letting this happen. We must allow multiple conflicting and contradictory views to co-exist rather than rushing to oversimplify or blame.

As has been said many times in the Northern Ireland peace process, there is no hierarchy of suffering, there is no difference in a mother's tears.

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[1] Johnson and Macron are probably the ranking narcissists of the current UN Security Council after Putin but I breathe a huge sigh of relief that Trump is a former rather than current President of the USA. This relief is immediately tempered by the dread realisation that Johnson is perhaps the least suited or capable of British Prime Minsters of the last hundred years to deal with this crisis, with the possible exception of Anthony Eden.