Whatever happened to Starmer's "Coalition of the Willing?"
In today’s Scotsman, English Labour in Scotland MP Graeme Downie fear-mongered that the “High North [Arctic] is seen as a key area of Russian threat…” and that SNP failure to prioritise defence “puts Scotland at risk.”
Like a good little Scottish serf, he dutifully parrots the ludicrous line that Russia somehow threatens Scotland (or any other country in Europe), providing zero evidence for his claim.
If the Russian bear is so dangerous, why have we stopped hearing about Starmer’s Coalition of the Willing (COTW), which included the UK, France, and the yapping Baltic chihuahuas? Its purpose was to put European ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine to police a future ceasefire that didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of happening.
Just for fun, let’s look at some of the UK’s bombastic and bellicose pronouncements about the COTW.
On February 16th, the Telegraph reported Starmer as saying:
Putting Britons in harm’s way is a huge responsibility - but we must be willing to do our bit for Europe.
On February 18th, we were told that the British army was “absolutely ready” to deploy to Ukraine.
On March 2nd, Starmer committed British troops and planes for his COTW.
On March 8, the BBC reported that “UK troops may need to protect peace in Ukraine for many years.”
On March 17, Starmer said he was “ready to deploy troops in Ukraine, indefinitely.”
On April 10, Defence Minister John Healy told the Kiev Independent that UK troops deployed to Ukraine to monitor a potential ceasefire as part of the COTW wouldn’t act as traditional peacekeepers, but as a support to Ukraine's own forces. That sounds like UK soldiers would be fighting and killing Russians alongside Ukrainians on the front lines, doesn’t it?
Then, there’s an abrupt about-face. On April 24th, The Times reported that the talk about sending UK troops to Ukraine was never that serious.
That’s because Starmer’s COTW was only ever going to work if:
Russia agreed to a ceasefire before the West and Ukraine had met any of its clearly stated conditions for ending the conflict,
Russia assented to having hostile western forces on the ground in Ukraine, and
The United States agreed to provide the COTW with security guarantees.
All are non-starters.
So Starmer, strutting around as though the UK still matters, was exposed as the empty and expensive suit that he is. The British military is in such dire straits that it couldn’t fight its way out of a paper bag let alone a major hot war against the world’s largest, most battle-hardened military with the biggest nuclear arsenal. It doesn’t have the men, the ammunition, the equipment or logistical capabilities to survive longer than a week. But it’s more than happy to ‘train’ Ukrainian grunts to be slaughtered. The whole disastrous Kursk invasion was a UK-directed operation.
These pie-in-the-sky fantasies weren’t challenged by the lamestream media because it’s composed of obedient stenographers who scribble whatever nonsense the decrepit British Establishment tells them to.
Leave it to the German tabloid, Bild, to blurt out the truth - if Ukraine falls, NATO is dead.
With Ukraine’s defeat, NATO’s work in Europe is done because it was never about containing Russia. Rather, NATO was about keeping Europe weak and dependent so that it couldn’t threaten US hegemony. It also was about providing a market for extortionately expensive and unreliable American military equipment to feed the voracious Military Industrial Complex.
And it has succeeded brilliantly. Europe’s puny militaries rely on ineffective American weapons systems because they don’t have the ability to produce their own, while their feckless leaders are committing to buy even more. And because they have gone along with Russian sanctions and let the CIA blow up the Nordstream pipeline, cutting themselves off from cheap Russian gas, they’re paying a lot more for energy in the form of American LNG.
The US Empire had two goals with Project Ukraine: to destroy Russia and weaken Europe. It knows it has failed against Russia so has decided to cut its losses and move on to its next geopolitical and military disaster, by most likely going after China. That, too, will end badly for the Empire. But at least it can feel satisfied that it is leaving behind an emasculated, declining and deeply divided Europe.
I'm interested in knowing how Downie can imagine that the SNP has any role to play in UK Defence when it's clearly reserved to Westminster and therefore any failures are entirely due to his own party's incompetence in office.
It looks more like the Coalition of the Silly now,