In anticipation of the White House meeting between Biden and Starmer, Putin pulled his air bases back, beyond the 200-mile reach of Storm Shadow and ATACMS missiles.
He needn’t have bothered. Our criminally chicken-hearted leaders failed to reach an agreement to let the Ukrainians use those missiles on targets deep into Russian territory. Yet again the West has succumbed to blackmailing threats.
Judging by his whole life, Joe Biden isn’t afraid of indulging in corrupt practices besmirching his reputation. He isn’t afraid of millions of illegal migrants streaming into the US. Biden, his protestations of piety notwithstanding, isn’t even afraid of God’s judgement.
The only thing that scares him out of his wits is the dread E-word: escalation. Or, to be more exact, Putin’s threats thereof. Vlad keeps drawing red lines and promises to unleash Armageddon should any of them be overstepped.
Nevertheless, Biden has succumbed to domestic and international pressures by timidly putting his toe over one line after another. No Armageddon ensued, and yet that in no way diminished the credibility of Putin’s new threats in Joe’s eyes.
NATO, specifically American, armaments have even been used to occupy hundreds of square miles of Russian territory, with Abrams and Challenger tanks, supported by F-16 fighters and US satellite intelligence, rolling towards Kursk. Moreover, even the infantry weapons used by the invading Ukrainian force were of NATO manufacture.
How many red lines were crossed there? More than you’ll find in a Mondrian painting. Yet nothing came from the Kremlin other than more empty threats. Characteristically, the threats even lacked the cataclysmic specificity of the earlier vintages.
Then the threat was to turn America into radioactive ash and drown Britain in a tsunami caused by nuclear blasts. What followed the invasion of the Kursk province related to such threats the way a hangover relates to brain cancer. The Kremlin sources did reiterate that they were at war with NATO, not just the Ukraine, but they’ve been saying the same thing for ten years – and screaming it for the past two.
Even the Kremlin’s threat of action should the US and Britain unshackle the Ukrainian rocket forces was rather nebulous. Putin said that, should that happen, the Russians would have to assess the situation and decide on the appropriate course of action. He added that Russia would consider herself at war with NATO, but then what else is new?
Putin’s permamently drunk alter ego Medvedev and a few other mouthpieces did utter vague threats of a nuclear response, but that wasn’t exactly a novelty either. Nor is it a credible threat.
By now everyone knows that Americans have promised to wipe out Putin’s entire invasion force should a nuclear device go off anywhere near the Ukraine. Granted, Putin may use his KGB expertise to analyse Biden and conclude he’d chicken out again. However, Xi also forbade Putin to use nukes, and China is indeed in a position to issue such injunctions.
Starmer has played his customary weasel role by describing his meeting with Biden as “long and productive”, but he was only half-truthful: it was indeed long. He also added that “we’ve come to a strong position”. For Russia, by the looks of it.
Much as it pains me to say this, the Russian gangster is right, and our leaders are wrong. Putin has indeed been at war with the West, and the West has indeed been at war with Putin.
But it has been a phony war on our part, even more so than the first conflict that rated that description. The West has been systematically arming the Ukraine, providing every manner of training and logistic support. Yet at the same time NATO has been doing just enough to keep the Ukraine in the fight while making sure the country had no chance of winning it.
That’s cowardly, this much goes without saying. But it’s also monumentally idiotic, as anyone cursorily familiar with history will confirm. War isn’t chess, you can’t play it for a draw. A draw may ensue anyway, but that outcome can only ever be achieved by resolute efforts to win. Entering a fight with the intention of not losing guarantees just that, defeat.
Any war, from those described by Herodotus and Thucydides to the one described by Beevor and Keegan (or, better still, Suvorov, Hoffmann and Solonin), provides ample proof of that observation. And the original Phony War, fought or rather not fought in the hope that Hitler would come to his senses and stop his juggernaut in its tracks, is proof not just ample but conclusive.
All this is terrible news for the Ukraine, NATO, Europe and the West in general. There is nothing to deter Putin from attacking a NATO country, such as Estonia or Latvia, and keeping the alliance at bay with another threat of nuclear annihilation. Should that happen, NATO would in effect disband, letting every former member fend for itself. The consequences of such a disaster would be unpredictable, or rather predictably awful.
Nor is the news likely to get better. Kamala Harris has already reiterated her commitment to Biden’s craven policy, packaging that intention with the usual waffle about loving the Ukraine and her sovereignty.
And J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, has finally explained what the latter meant by boasting he would end the war in three days (or three minutes, can’t remember which). Essentially, that’s for Putin to be able to say with full justification that what’s currently his is his for ever, and what’s not currently his is negotiable.
Russia would be allowed to keep all her stolen Ukrainian territory, with some mythical DMZ in place to make sure no new invasion could ever occur. Good luck with that: we all know how reliable demilitarised zones have been in the past.
Moreover, the Ukraine should undertake to abandon her attempts to join NATO or any “allied organisation”, presumably meaning the EU. All that would mean delivering an interim victory to Russia, giving her time to rebuild, rearm and then launch another, more devastating, assault on the West.
As far as the Ukraine is concerned, the forthcoming US election will feature two Manchurian candidates, not just one pitted against a legitimate rival. The outlook is bleak.
The Ukrainians and their friends shouldn’t be ingrates. They should thank the West wholeheartedly for its support, for without it a sovereign Ukraine would have ceased to exist long ago.
Yet without this support taking the shape of a full-blown commitment, the victory of Russian fascism will be only deferred, not prevented in perpetuity. That’s why those who understand what’s at stake are appalled at the sight of two chickens, Biden and Starmer, strutting their stuff.
Both were hatched a long time ago, and yet they are as yellow as ever.
We can pile analysis upon analysis, and either take fright or take comfort, but unless we have access to the actual recommendations of those whose business it is, all is but speculation.