UK militarism is the last gasp of a failed state
This letter was published in The National, 14th January, 2024. The last paragraph, about the BRICS nations charting a different path forward, was edited out, perhaps because we’ve been told that Russia is completely to blame for the war.
I’d like to provide some context. The Ukraine war was entirely avoidable. The US was determined to make Ukraine and then Georgia members of the NATO military alliance, effectively encircling Russia. The US was well aware that this was the ultimate provocation. Since the early 1990s, Russia had warned that it would not tolerate it, just as the US would not tolerate Russia making Canada and Mexico members of a Russian-backed military alliance. (Russia unilaterally dissolved the Warsaw Pact in 1991.) In this case, all the US had to do was guarantee that Ukraine would be neutral and not join NATO. It didn’t.
In December 2021, Russian President Putin asked US President Biden to negotiate on a plan to end NATO expansion and guarantee Ukraine’s security. Biden refused to even discuss it. Then in March 2022, a month after the invasion, President Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed a draft peace agreement based on Ukrainian neutrality, international guarantees of sovereignty and security for Ukraine, and the issues of Crimea and the Donbas to be resolved peacefully down the road. The agreement was brokered by Turkish diplomats. But it was sabotaged by the US/UK when Boris Johnson flew to Kyiv and told Zelensky to reject the plan, that the US and NATO would back Ukraine to the hilt with money and arms until Russia was driven out. We know the rest of the story.
The US and its UK acolyte are plunging the Middle East into a regional war. They’ve bombed Yemen for the Houthis’ attacks on Red Sea shipping. The Houthis, who know about American bombs, were responding to the US-funded Israelis destruction of Gaza where the killing of civilians has reached historic levels of horror. For years the US and UK helped Saudi Arabia bomb the Yemeni Houthis into smithereens and now risk reigniting that conflict.
It’s fair to ask whether it’s in the UK’s interests to involve itself in a foreign war when its own citizens are struggling. It’s certainly in the interests of the arms industry, whose stock prices have exploded as a result of the Ukraine and Gaza wars. BAE Systems, the UK’s largest defence company, reported a 30% jump in its share price in 2023 and 2024 looks to be another bumper year.
Rishi Sunak is in Kyiv announcing another £2.5 billion for a war that most people acknowledge Ukraine has lost. 500,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or seriously wounded – 30,000 per month. The country has been destroyed and the western corporate vultures are circling and plotting, with Zelensky’s encouragement, to turn a rump Ukrainian state into a weapons production hub for the west.[3]
Sunak’s militarism is an attempt to divert attention from failing public services, falling life expectancy, rising poverty and inequality. The UK is failing before our eyes along with its partner in conflict, the US.
The BRICS nations [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE] are pursuing a different approach to global relations, one based on consensus and cooperation. It’s one an independent Scotland should welcome.
Thank you for such an excellent clear & concise summary of the roots of these wars. Equally clear is the inhumanity of callously destroying the lives of the people of Ukraine & Gaza as expendable pawns in the killing games of the American, British & European governments.
It is also galling that the U.K. government has found millions of pounds (billions?) for weapons of destruction against countries who have done us no harm, while it cannot find money to adequately fund the NHS or reduce the numbers of people here struggling to live below the poverty line.
Putin sees himself as the new Tzar. He yearns for the old USSR but this time there's a difference. He's a born again Christian who has resurrected the Romanovs to cult status with a National Day of Commemoration and the Russian Orthodox Church is remodelled to suit.
The Wagner Group invaded Eastern Ukraine in 2014 and the West didn't bother. Indeed Conservative Friends of Russia and The Bruges Group were calling Ukraine a "failed state" at the time.
To suggest that Putin is defending Russia is far from the truth. It can be said with clarity that the rest of Europe is frightened of what he may do next hence the bolstering of NATO with the joining of Sweden and Finland.