Ukraine and Russia, it Isn’t Our Fight

Are we all going to be blown to kingdom come over Ukraine? That’s what it could lead to, with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s meddling in that country’s war with Russia. Not content with entrenching social and racial division within his own country, Starmer, whose dull gaze looks as though it were hewn from stone like the Sphinx, but without the intelligence, is trying to drum up support in NATO to deepen the chasm between the West and Russia by supplying British missiles to equip the Ukrainians to strike further into their enemy’s territory.

How big do the letters have to be? Putin has made it clear that such a strike will be considered an act of war between Russia and, no longer just Ukraine, but the whole of NATO. The Russians will hit back with nuclear weapons, presumably at countries on NATO’s eastern fringe. And it won’t stop there. Perhaps Starmer and Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, think Putin is joking, though he never seems to exhibit much of a sense of humour. Someone should give them a copy of Nevil Shute’s chilling novel On the Beach. Every political leader tempted to go to arms in this nuclear age should have one.

American consent is needed for Starmer’s missiles to be launched, and so far that has been withheld. But with a gaga President in Washington with a history of hawkism behind him, how long will that be the case?  After November, Trump would probably continue the ban – he says he wants to end the war, not stoke it up – but if his braying harpy of an opponent is in the White House, who can tell what her puppet-masters in the Democrat hierarchy will have her do?

There is an abiding question beyond this which has not been answered since 1939. Will the West never learn to stay out of other people’s wars? Britain thought it had to go to war against Hitler over Poland. That was the start of the Second World War and was as near suicidal a decision as it is possible for a nation to take and survive. Hitler in 1939 was no threat to Britain; if and when he had subsequently become one, that was the moment to go to war, when Britain’s security was at stake. Nations should never take up arms for any reason other than to defend their own interests, not those of other people. It may sound cruel and cynical and “uncaring”, but war is too horrifying for a country to commit itself to fighting for anything other than its own survival. Only if its survival depends on the survival of another country should it fight in defence of somewhere else. Despite the illegitimacy of the Russian invasion that is not the case with Ukraine.

You might think that after various quagmires of military disaster – Vietnam, Iraq and, the greatest embarrassment of them all, Afghanistan, where the world’s two most powerful nations in succession could not only not defeat an army of illiterate goatherds but one of them had no choice but to leave behind many billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment – the powers that rule the West would have learned their lesson. No matter how heart-rending the plight of another country unjustly attacked, you don’t go riding to its rescue like a mediaeval knight saving a damsel from a dragon unless your own interests dictate that you should – if, for example, the knight wanted to marry the damsel, or if Ukraine was a valued ally or trading partner. Its war with Russia is an internecine war, ostensibly to stop Ukraine joining NATO, and we should not get dragged further into it.

If people like Sir Keir were more visionary they would question the wisdom of continuing to alienate Russia by so uncompromisingly supporting Ukraine. Long after this war is over the West will have to confront the threat that China is building itself up to be. An alliance with Russia, which also sooner or later will have to face the challenge of China – a Marxist power, be it remembered, which Russia no longer is – makes more geopolitical sense than provoking Russian hostility. The diplomatic efforts of the West ought to be devoted to, first, encouraging negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to cease fighting, ideally with some face-saving formula for salvaging the pride of both countries, and second, patching up and expanding a working relationship with Russia. The West and Russia would be a formidable barrier to Chinese expansionism.

And talking of lessons to be learned, has no one in Washington heard of the Cuban missile crisis? The teaching of history may not be what it was but surely a nation’s collective memory is not that short. In 1962 the United States refused to tolerate the installation of a battery of Soviet missiles aimed at it from just across the sea in communist Cuba. The world held its breath until Russia gave in and removed them. Does not the same principle apply to Ukraine and NATO? Is it all that unreasonable that Moscow should object to Ukraine entering formally into a European defensive alliance?

In On the Beach, filmed in Melbourne in 1959 with a cast of Hollywood stars, among them Ava Gardner who, it was reported by a journalist who simply made up he quote, was said to have cattily described that city as exactly the place to make a film about the end of the world, the northern hemisphere having destroyed itself with a nuclear war. Australia survives, with a poisonous nuclear cloud drifting south. People have a choice of dying from nuclear sickness or taking a suicide pill handed out as a last act of government. We must hope that Western support of Ukraine does not reach the point of making that imaginary end of the world come true.