Powder kegs and matches

Putin probably doesn’t want to set off a world war. Neither does Lukashenko. Neither does anyone else, really.

By the same token, a chap starting a little campfire next to a powder keg doesn’t want to die in an explosion either. He only wants to keep warm. Yet in spite of his intention he may well be blown to kingdom come.

Extending the metaphor to history, wars have been known to start as if by themselves, with no manifest intention on either part. When the powder kegs of armed forces are primed, a few shots fired at some archduke can well strike a match.

Hence I don’t know if Putin is planning to invade the Ukraine again, and no one else does either, possibly not even the good colonel himself. Yet the White House’s intelligence sources warn that’s a distinct possibility.

But even if Putin is moving in 90,000 troops supported by tanks and artillery only as a scare tactic, a war may start anyway. A twitchy finger on some trigger or button may well explode the powder keg.

We know from both the theory and practice of war that mobilisations often reach a point of no return. When the juggernaut starts to roll in earnest, it acquires a life of its own. Sometimes even the best possible intentions can’t stop it.

That’s why Clausewitz, who knew a thing or two about such things, was unequivocal on this subject: mobilisation is war. So are systematic violations of a country’s territorial integrity, he’d add today, looking at the events on Russia’s western border.

In Belarus, Iraqis and Syrians are being flown, or rather trafficked, in their thousands. Most of them move to the border with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, with some dying of hypothermia in the woods.

Many others act on Peter the Great’s directive to “hack a window on Europe”, taking it literally. They are felling the ancient trees all along the border, with the immediate purpose of getting a steady supply of firewood. The less immediate but more sinister goal may be to clear the path for Putin’s armour in its Drang nach Westen.

Lukashenko is acting not only as Putin’s proxy but also his mouthpiece. His patron’s KGB training taught him to watch his words carefully. Hence, when Putin wants to issue a direct threat, he lets Lukashenko act as the dummy to his ventriloquist.

The latter obliges by pointing out, correctly as it happens, that Europe depends on Russia’s gas, which it gets through the pipeline traversing Belarus. Lukashenko thus has his hand on the control valve, and he is threatening to shut it if Europe gets ideas above its station.

This yet again emphasises the suicidal irresponsibility of letting hostile powers control our vital strategic resources, of which energy is the prime one. While Western governments play their anti-human and anti-scientific zero sum games, their enemies turn fossil fuels into guns aimed at our heart.

Lukashenko is also hinting at the possibility of arming those Arab lumberjacks not only with saws and axes but also with rifles. Since those lads aren’t normally given to concerns about the long-term consequences of their actions, they may well open a season on Polish frontier guards, again evoking that image of powder kegs and matches.

As it is, Belarusian troops are already firing blank shots at their Polish counterparts. They should ask Alec Baldwin about the possibility of live rounds mysteriously ending up among the blanks.

Another threat issued by Messrs Lukashenko and Putin is that those thousands of Iraqis and Syrians seeping into the EU are only a harbinger of things to come. Those things may come in the shape of not thousands but millions of lumberjacks from Afghanistan and possibly Middle Asia.

In case Europe contemplates taking a more active approach to the situation, Putin sent over two supersonic Tu-22M3 nuclear bombers to perform “tasks of combat alert for air defence” in the parlance of the Russian Defence Ministry. You get no prizes for guessing which targets those bombers have programmed into their onboard computers.

There’s no doubt that NATO air forces are ready to intercept and counter, but are the Western leaders? They tend to be long on expressions of “grave concerns” and short on resolute shows of strength. And concerns, no matter how grave, are unlikely to stop TU-22M3 sorties.

New sanctions doubtless planned by the EU will prove no more effective than the old ones. A total economic boycott of both Russia and Belarus may be a good lesson in manners, but as a result Europeans may have to shiver through the winter.

And whom do you think European voters will blame for their running noses? Politicians know the answer to that question, which is why they are unlikely to act until the powder keg goes kaboom. Their jobs come first, second and tenth, with the demos in whose name they supposedly govern following way down the list.

I could draw any number of historical parallels, but they are too obvious to mention. You know what they are, and so does everyone else who wishes to think along these lines. Which category doesn’t include our ‘leaders’.