Britain, EU: sleepwalking towards war with Russia

We are all doomsday preppers now! Britain and Europe are sleepwalking into a war with Russia over Ukraine in a state of rigid groupthink from which not even the withdrawal of the US protective umbrella has been able to shift. Sad to say, but only the election of far-right governments in France and Germany can stop the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. This is likely in France where Marine Le Pen is poised to win the presidency in May 2027, and she has historically been more sympathetic to Russia’s policy in Ukraine. The normally phlegmatic British are more gung-ho in their support of Ukraine whatever it takes, and it is not just the government; retired army generals are more belligerent than they normally are about the futility of war. And communication between British prime minister and Russian president is nonexistent. The last such contact was almost five years ago when Boris Johnson spoke to Putin in early February 2022 in an attempt to avert Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is also significant that the Russian ambassador in London who left in July 2026 at the end of his term has not been replaced, so if Russia were to declare war, there would be no ambassador to deliver its ultimatum. Both the UK and Russia are parties to a treaty of 1907 that requires them to warn one another by reasoned declaration of war or ultimatum with a conditional declaration of war. The way World War II began for Britain was by conditional declaration. Germany had attacked Poland, and Britain sent the German government an ultimatum demanding an undertaking to withdraw by 11 o’clock on September 3, 1939, which was delivered by the British ambassador in Berlin. When no such undertaking was given British prime minister Neville Chamberlain made his famous broadcast that Britain was at war with Germany, in which he also expressed his bitter personal disappointment that he had failed to stop Hitler by peaceful persuasion and that force was now necessary. Perhaps wars no longer start with ultimatums and the fact that the correct process is followed does not make a war lawful or justified. All that having been said, ambassadors and direct and easy access between leaders are essential for diplomacy, and the absence of a Russian ambassador is a dangerous vacuum in relations between Britain and Russia. The more so because the British defence establishment is now convinced that Britain is already in a state of non-kinetic war with Russia that may turn kinetic soon if the proxy war in Ukraine does not end soon – kinetic war is fancy but convenient jargon for active shooting war. In the meantime the public in Britain was asked in a boy scout-type ‘be prepared’ campaign launched by the government last Thursday to stock up on food and water, radio batteries, cash and other essentials to prepare for war and other emergencies. During the BBC’s programme Question Time in which the nation gathers for a family powwow, members of the audience were asked by the chair how many were going to go out and stock up as a result of the government’s campaign and to her surprise only a couple of hands went up. Then a clever panelist – Tom Tugendhat – asked how many had already stocked up and virtually the whole audience raised their hands – so we are all doomsday preppers now! Given that Russia is a nuclear giant it was surprising no one asked about the availability of nuclear shelters – there aren’t any! In any case as the late Tom Lehrer put it in his song, we will all go together when we go: “when the air becomes uranious we will all go simultaneous.” Preparing for war to preserve peace has been a misleading aphorism since Roman times when a military writer advised: “he who desires peace should prepare for war; he who wishes victory should carefully train his soldiers; he who desires a favourable outcome should fight by means of skill, not chance.” The flaw in the Roman’s advice is that he implicitly assumed peace to be the absence of war, when it is a lot more than that and includes having a peaceful foreign policy and an aversion to the use of force except in self defence. The odd thing about the war in Ukraine is that the Europeans left it to US President Trump to champion the cause of peace and turned on him when he became friendly with President Putin. At least Trump is talking to Putin when the Europeans have committed two cardinal errors in foreign policy: not engaging with Russia and failing to put themselves in Putin’s shoes and see Ukraine from his strategic security perspective rather than from their own legalistic vantage point. Western leaders underestimated how deeply Nato expansion eastwards and European security arrangements after 1991 affected Russian perceptions of status and security. While there is evidence the Americans now regret this, the Europeans regret nothing; to them assimilating Ukraine into Nato and the EU was solely a question of Ukraine’s sovereign right when realpolitik suggested otherwise. Russia and Ukraine had not just recently been part of the Soviet Union, they were inextricably bound-up psychologically – at least from Russia’s point of view – and needed time to disengage psychologically. How Russians and Ukrainians ended up firing rockets and drones at each other and killing and maiming so many of their young men is beyond belief. Trump is right: the war in Ukraine is a stupid war. Time was when Russian Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev loved Ukraine so much he gifted it the Crimean peninsula. Britain and Europe have no doubt that Ukraine is on the right side of history in the sense that their stance is morally justified and will be vindicated by history. Russia believes the right side of history is one in which it cannot be invaded from the west again. The US can see they both have a point.