Comment: 'The crazies' as Mr. Hitchen's has called them, are flooding the MSM raising the call for out-and-out war with Russia. An excellent deconstruction of one piece of hysteric propaganda.

  • Will we repeat the idealistic follies which led to disaster in Iraq, Syria and Libya?
  • How can it be a 'defeat' to have conquered millions of square miles of central and eastern Europe, and destroyed Communism? Why do we need yet more territory?
  • What is the moral imperative that says the 'West' must possess Ukraine?
A reply to Ben Judah's call to 'Arm Ukraine or Surrender' in the New York Times.

I have been much struck by an article in the ๏ปฟNew York Times by Ben Judah, published beneath the headline: 'Arm Ukraine or Surrender'. It really ought to have an exclamation mark on it, so frantic is its tone. Given its prominent publication in that important forum of opinion, it may be influential. It ought not to be. I explain why below. You can read it here.

It seems to me to have been written in the hope that its readers, especially its readers in Washington DC, will heed the call to arms (or rather to arms shipments), rather than the call to 'surrender' (or, as some might say, make a sensible compromise with Russia).

The same people who have turned much of Syria into a smoking, gore-encrusted rubble-heap, and Libya into a cauldron of blood and fire, are hard at work here, making a very similar mistake to the ones they made in Damascus and Tripoli. First, they think that because the Russian government is bad (beyond dispute), whatever replaces it will be better (very questionable).

The author presents the dilemma thus: 'Either we arm Ukraine, or we force Kiev to surrender and let Mr. Putin carve whatever territories he wants into a Russian-occupied zone of "frozen conflict."'

Let's go through the article. Mr Judah says :
'Russia and Ukraine are now at war.'
No they are not. No state of war yet exists, despite the best efforts of a legion of pot-stirrers who openly wish for a war with Russia. The two neighbours still have diplomatic relations and their governments are in communication with each other, probably rather more than either is letting on. Ukraine's leaders are much given to exaggerated public claims against Russia, which a generally gullible and unquestioning Western media reproduce as proven fact. Ukrainian forces have allegedly destroyed a Russian armoured column, an event for which no evidence has ever been produced. More recently Russian forces were said to have annihilated an entire Ukrainian village. I have yet to see evidence of this. There are plenty more such claims. I have seen them reproduced as fact, without qualification in headlines, in respectable western newspapers which ought to know better.

Russia meanwhile tells its own lies, not of exaggeration but of what might politely be called understatement. Russia maintains, quite incredibly, that none of its soldiers are in Ukraine and that it is not arming the rebels. Of course Russian soldiers are in Ukraine, and of course Russia is helping with supplies and training. To the extent that all its operations are technically deniable, this may well be true. But it is obvious that the GRU is giving powerful aid to the rebels. Quite rightly, the western media recover their proper scepticism when confronted by these claims, and sneer at them.

What they do not do is ask how it was that the pathetic Ukrainian armed forces suddenly, a couple of months ago, began to fight effectively. Could it be that they, too, have been receiving help from elsewhere? Anybody remotely interested in the serious truth about this crisis would surely at least wonder about this. But nobody does.

Mr Judah says :
'At least 2,200 people have died in the conflict; thousands more may die yet.'
This is so. But Mr Judah does not say that, so far as observers have been able to make out, a large number of these casualties are non-combatant civilians who have died in indiscriminate Ukrainian bombardments of Kramatorsk, Lugansk and Donetsk. Reports from a brave OSCE team in the area have made it plain that this is happening. Reliable figures in such circumstances are impossible to get, and nobody claims to have any. But it seems to me that the Kiev government's forces are doing the thing known as 'killing their own people', an action which invariably de-legitimizes any government which world liberal opinion dislikes. Why then, in this instance, does it not affect the standing of the Kiev government among right-think persons in the civilized capitals of the world? Such deaths are not directly intended (at least one hopes not) but they are predictably inevitable if artillery or rocket fire is used on crowded urban areas, and I believe such warfare is frowned on by international law.

Mr Judah continues:
'The Western powers - America, Europe, NATO - now have no good options, but they cannot do nothing.'
Who says they have no good options? Compromise is seldom a bad option, especially when the choice is war, in which any victory will be Pyrrhic? Where is it written down in the rules of International Diplomacy that Ukraine must be part either of a Russian bloc or of the German-dominated bloc which is the EU? Germany, we know, has long desired Ukraine. But so has Russia. When Russia, out of weakness, allowed Ukraine to achieve formal independence in 1991, it was not disavowing any future interest in that country. By contrast, it was disavowing future interest in many lands which it had dominated after Yalta, from eastern Germany to Bulgaria. Wasn't that enough? Why does world liberal opinion think that the USSR's defeat in the Cold War should trigger the realization of an ancient, troublesome and controversial, German foreign policy goal. Is the reactivation of this long-dead conflict likely to make Europe more peaceful, free, settled and prosperous, or the opposite?

This crisis did not grow out of nothing. Its origins lie in German foreign policy of a century ago, the use of 'national liberation' to break up the old Russian empire and turn it into a 'liberal' German empire (See The Deluge, by Adam Tooze, for a superb account of this and its effects on the Peace of Brest-Litovsk of 1918) . It re-emerged in the Polish-Russian war of 1919-21, and again in the Russo German war of 1941-45, and the Yalta settlement which ended it. It then re-emerged yet again in the events following the collapse of the USSR in 1991, a collapse so total that Moscow lost control of territory it had held continuously (when not being invaded by Germany) since the 18th century.

Just think, if the United States underwent such a total reverse in its economic and political fortunes that it was compelled to live by an ideology it regarded as alien, and driven back to the borders of 1848? It might perhaps endure such a reverse, but not, I think, if a pro-Russian government was established in Mexico City, and Russian ships based at San Diego.

The current crisis was planted, fertilized and watered by decades of hard work by the USA, the EU and NATO, who have long ignored repeated warnings from Moscow that its patience is limited. It is interesting to recall that Vladimir Putin made this speech more than seven years ago (in Munich in February 2007) .

The language is extraordinarily strong. Any diplomat would be able to see that it is at the outer limits of exasperation. Yet the response of the EU, of the USA and of NATO was to carry on exactly as before.

It reminds me of a cartoon I recall from long ago, of a middle-aged married couple perched on top of a large cupboard in their living room, as a furious dog crouches, snarling and hot-eyed, beneath them, hackles bristling, coiled to spring, a piece of trouser dangling from its bared teeth.

The wife is saying mildly to the husband (who seems puzzled by the scene below) 'Well dear, you have been rubbing him up the wrong way all evening'.

Of course, it may be that everyone involved has always actually wanted another European war. It may be that they are all ignorant of the Versailles disaster, in which France and Britain - having gone too far in their 1918 demands, failed to make timely and reasonable compromises with Germany's constitutional, lawful ruler, Gustav Stresemann. And so they encouraged the belief in Germany that another sort of ruler might get those concessions and perhaps more. Those who constantly and childishly compare Vladimir Putin with Hitler (which he so obviously is not) might consider that Mr Putin might in retrospect turn out to have been modern Russia's Stresemann, and that by treating him as we now treat him we are aiding the creation of a monster, as yet unknown to us, who will be truly as bad as we pretend Mr Putin to be.

Having by our previous policies dismembered Iraq, created both ISIS and the howling chaos that was once Libya, and cheered on the vents which imprisoned Egypt in the shackles of military rule, we can hardly claim our judgement on such things has been good. Why should it be good this time?

I am in general tired of attempts to turn every major crisis into a re-run of Munich in 1938. But there is a parallel between the humiliation of Germany in 1918 and the humiliation of Russia in 1991, which bears some study.

We long ago drove the Red Army irreversibly out of central Europe. Why would it now be a defeat, and for whom, if we allowed a non-Communist Russia to continue to exert some influence (not total influence, but some) in Ukraine? That strikes me as a perfectly good option, and I cannot see why Mr Judah would want us to ignore it.

Thus when Mr Judah says:
'President Vladimir V. Putin has left us with two dire choices, both fraught with risk: Either we arm Ukraine, or we force Kiev to surrender and let Mr. Putin carve whatever territories he wants into a Russian-occupied zone of "frozen conflict."'
He is wrong. If we act like wise and experienced human beings. Rather than like frantic ideologues for whom there is no proper end but the unconditional surrender of our opponent, there is a way out.

Kiev need not be 'forced to surrender'. The Kiev government, installed after a violent mob putsch backed by the West, has no doubt come under pressure from various quarters to pursue a policy of confrontation with Russia which it has duly done, to the great loss of millions in the east of the country. But Ukraine, being virtually bankrupt and lacking serious armed forces, could not possibly have pursued such a policy without promises, explicit or more likely implicit, of foreign aid, both guns and money.

Supporters of this policy always pretend that they are acting against corruption and in favour of democracy. But this is just foolish boasting. The substantive difference between the pre-Maidan Ukraine and the post-Maidan Ukraine is purely one of foreign policy orientation. The rest continues pretty much as before . Claims of improved democracy are self-evidently ludicrous. The existing Kiev government (which has sought to ban at least one legitimate political party) came to power through extra-constitutional means and cannot possibly claim to speak for democracy. A for corruption, do we see any evidence that it has ceased? Is Ukraine's government, or indeed any part of that country, currently in the hands of poor men, of practitioners of the career open to all the talents who have worked their way to the top purely on merit? It doesn't look that way to me.

Mr Judah writes:
'It is a stark choice, and Mr. Putin is not rational.'
That is quite an assertion. Mr Judah might pause to wonder if Mr Putin's rationality is based upon different considerations from Mr Judah's. This is often a better guide to action than assuming your opponent is unhinged, and saying so from the carved-oak pulpit of the New York Times.
" Any rational leader would have reeled from the cost of Western sanctions."
Would he? One of the many arguments against sanctions is that political leaders are generally immune from them. Another is that they tend to be ineffective against the resourceful and self-reliant. Mr Putin is selling his gas and oil to China. If he ceases to import food from the EU, Russia can grow its own or buy it from Latin America. Famously, sanctions against South Africa created a prosperous and profitable arms industry in that country, where there had been none before. Who knows what they might do to Russia's currently rather ill-balanced economy?

In any case, Mr Putin has raised the genie of Russian patriotism, and he cannot cram it back in the jar. If he gives way, and so falls, he might well be replaced by others who would go further. It is not to be ruled out. It would be quite rational of him to continue to seek an agreement which leaves him in agreed possession of Crimea ( whose ownership by Ukraine was in any case an anomaly) and allows Russia a lasting veto on Ukrainian membership of the EU or NATO.

Mr Judah says:
'Russia's economy is being hit hard by a credit crunch, capital flight, spiraling inflation and incipient recession. This will hurt Mr. Putin's surging popularity at home. But none of this has deterred the smirking enigma.'
I have not yet seen any evidence that has hurt him significantly at home, whether he smirks or not. Personally, I love phrases such as 'smirking enigma', and I like a bit of sparkle and fire in public argument. But we're talking about war or peace here. Is this the right register for that?

Mr Judah says:
'Ukraine cannot win this war. Mr. Putin has made it clear that the Russian Army will annihilate Ukrainian forces if they attempt to liberate Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukraine's ramshackle army cannot rout the crack troops and conscript forces of an oil-fueled giant.'
Has Mr Putin said that? I missed it. As for the word 'liberate', it's usually dishonest and it seems so on this occasion. Any honest person has to concede that quite a lot of people in eastern Ukraine don't regard the Ukrainian forces as liberators, and are even less keen on the semi-official militias which accompany them and which are much feared. I completely accept that many of the fighters on the pro-Moscow side are also fearsome, cruel, undisciplined, drunk disreputable and lawless. I would be grateful if any of those who romanticize Kiev's struggle against Mr Putin would accept that 'their' side are not fighting entirely as Pollyanna might wish them to.

Actually the Ukrainian forces were doing pretty well until the new 'NovoRossiya' offensive was launched along the Sea of Azov a few days ago. Russia is very unwilling to make an open, acknowledged move across the Ukrainian border, despite the incessant cries of 'Wolf!' from people in NATO who ought to know better. Given more Western aid, equipment, 'advisers' and training (no doubt swiftly matched by the GRU from the other direction) , I suspect both sides could turn the whole of eastern Ukraine into a miserable hellhole of rubble, refugee camps and shallow graves for years to come. A swift victory for either side is pretty unlikely. Why would it be worth risking this? Once again, why should civilized people of the world be condemning Ukraine to this fate, when a modest climbdown, in which we lose nothing important, would avoid it?

If Ukraine were some paradise of law and freedom, menaced by the dark and sneering slovens of Evil Russia, then you might see the point. But Ukraine is a corrupt economic basket-case, decades from prosperity or good government whatever happens. Russia isn't Mordor. Mr Putin isn't Sauron, and Ukraine certainly isn't the Shire. It isn't even Gondor.

Mr Judah continues:
'The West needs to be honest with Ukraine.'
Well, there I agree with him completely. Modern western politicians have a habit of giving the impression to troubled countries that a huge treasure chest of aid and bounty will be opened unto them if they can just adopt certain outward forms of government. It isn't true. We haven't the power or the money, and Anglosphere forms of government can't just be transplanted into rusting deserts like Ukraine, or into the Arab world for that matter. and these half-formed promises cause repeated woe and disappointment. Ukraine, in the end, must rescue herself from corruption and lawlessness. The EU flag will no magically bring these things about (anything but)

Meanwhile the NATO promise looks thinner the more widely it is spread. Who really believes we'd sacrifice Chicago for Lviv, or even Vilnius?

Then Mr Judah veers back towards his warpath:
'We talk as though this country were one of us - as if, one day, it will become a member of the European Union and the NATO alliance. That is Kiev's wish, but the West is not giving Ukraine the means to fight this war.'
As if we ever could. All we could do would be to do as I have suggested and warned against above, turn Ukraine into a miserable warzone as a means to another end. We would have to sacrifice Ukraine in0rder to save it, devastate the very place we claim to care so much about. If we turn this into a real war, in which NATO formed units fight Russian formed units in a declared or undeclared conflict, the horror of it will shock the world. The power of modern conventional munitions is appalling, vastly greater than it was in the last great European war. Many Arabs know this already. Europe has yet to experience it . If we behave in this way we will be proving that what we want is not goodness, freedom and prosperity, but land and power.

Mr Judah then says:
'Ukraine is being destroyed. The economy is in tatters. The military will not survive a Russian offensive. Ukrainians are taking refuge in romantic nationalism and preparing for partisan warfare. The costs are mounting - continuing to fight will cost thousands of lives - and the liberal dreams of the revolution are drowning in the jingoistic fury and hysteria of war.'
In this I once again very much agree with him. It is very frightening.

Mr Judah says next:
' A few more months without meaningful Western help and Ukraine will have lost the fighting core of its army - and its infatuation with the West. This will be replaced by a sense of betrayal, and there will be no way for Ukraine's pro-European liberals to survive the backlash. The far-right extremists now on the fringe will ride into Kiev's parliament on the lids of the caskets being shipped back from the front. Ukraine will become a ravaged conflict zone: a European Syria, or a hideously enlarged Bosnia.'
This is, again, a warning with some force to it. Mr Judah is wise to be worried about such people. They are not a figment of Kremlin propaganda, but a real force. Except that, *with* 'meaningful Western help' the same thing will happen, only worse. Fanatics prosper in war. The same forces which placed the Syrian opposition in the hands of Islamist fanatics will place the Ukrainian war in the hands of unlovely ultra-nationalists. The idea that Western aid will curb this tendency is as wrong in Ukraine as it was in Syria. The western aid will go to the fanatics because they will fight most effectively for it. Peace and compromise, and the rapid disarming of militias, are the best hopes for Kiev's gentle and civilized pro-European liberals.

Now Mr Judah reaches his peroration:
'We cannot let this happen. If we believe that Ukraine will one day become a member of the European Union and NATO, then we should be ready to arm it.'
If this is truly the case, then, for the sake of the people of Ukraine and indeed of Europe, surely we should abandon this objective. Why is it necessary? For whose benefit, exactly? Once again, what rule book says that the borders of NATO and the EU should extend this far east?

Mr Judah says:
'We must face the fact that the costs of unlimited European Union and NATO expansion have meant war with Russia by proxy - and then fight the war.'
This is very honest. Mr Judah's policies mean war,. He has said it. This, to me, having seen a little war, would be reason to reject his policies out of hand anyway. Others, less squeamish about body parts, screaming women and whole families turned into blots of blood, might be happy to proceed . But if so, can they please tell me why it's so important? What moral imperative justifies it?

'Must' we, Mr Judah? Why? What is this imperative? Whence does it derive? Or, as I might more crudely put it 'Who says so?.

Again and again I feel it necessary, even urgent, to ask, what precisely is the moral basis on which we are required to advance NATO and the EU into this particular territory? This raises the fascinating question of why it is that Russia itself is plainly *not* to be invited to join either organization. If expanding the alleged joys of the EU and NATO to their furthest possible extent were the motive, then surely this would be the obvious solution. Yet we all know it isn't even seriously considered. So there must be some other motive. And for this, I think we need to go back and search history, especially 1918 and 1941.

Mr Judah now argues:
'Having reignited the hottest moments of the Cold War, we must deal with the consequences of encouraging democratization in Eastern Europe.'
Hotter, surely? The Cold War never got this hot. That was the point of it. People understood the risks, and so did not take them. And what does he mean by 'democratization'? The forms of democracy are observed even in Russia. They are certainly observed in NATO Turkey, though it is less free year by year. Surely we should call a power struggle a power struggle, not dress it up as a children's crusade for 'democracy'. When we know that in reality no such thing exists in Ukraine, or is likely to' for many years to come.

Mr Judah now asserts:
'This logic demands that we send Western military advisers to Kiev,'
Well, excuse me, but haven't we already done that? Has Mr Judah checked?

Mr Judah:
'...and give the Ukrainians full intelligence and satellite support. And we must ship them guns, tanks, drones and medical kits by the ton.'
The logic which demands the insertion of 'tons of guns' into Eastern Ukraine is a logic which ignores the dangers of war, that it spreads, that it ruins us, that it poisons our civilization as it has done so many times already in the last 100 years. This is our offensive, our attempt to push our power into an area where we were previously not, and where another 's power is exercised, begun with our interference, our putsch, our money, our politicians encouraging the Kiev mob. If there is now war, its disasters and horrors will be on our conscience. We have pushed too far and met serious resistance which we (foolishly) did not expect. Why not compromise?

Mr Judah:
We must even be ready to deploy NATO troops if Russian tanks roll toward Crimea, as many fear they will, to build a land bridge to the mainland of southern Russia.'
This is indeed the terrifying destination of this logic.

Mr Judah then concludes:
'No question, this path involves enormous risks. Russia will throw its might into Ukraine. American and British special forces should be dispatched to plant the flag and protect the airports of Kiev and Odessa. But Mr. Putin may call our bluff: Russian forces might - in an echo of the 1999 Kosovo war - encircle them.

'But if we are not prepared to take these risks, then we must force the Ukrainians to abandon their deadly delusion. It would be up to us to prevent Russia from slaughtering Ukrainian conscripts in vain.

The only way to achieve this is for the West to oblige Ukraine to surrender. Ukraine is completely dependent on the International Monetary Fund, which is Western money. We must tell Kiev to accept as a fait accompli that Russia has carved out a South Ossetia in the east - or we turn the money off. We can console them: Being another Georgia is not the worst thing in the world.

We could save thousands of lives this way, but it would be a crushing defeat for the West. Russia would have restored itself as an empire - the former Soviet Union once more under the sway of the Kremlin. The West would thus concede, in effect, that Russia may invade or annex any of these territories as it pleases. And in these lands, the appeasers would flourish, and democracy wilt.'
This is frenzied exaggeration. The Soviet Union is dead - I watched it die. The Warsaw Pact, likewise, is gone. The extent of the territorial gains of the 'West' in Europe since 1989 is colossal. There is no urgent need to push them further, and good reason for leaving it at that. It is a funny sort of surrender that leaves the 'West' in possession of : The former GDR, Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romanian, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia and Estoni.

As defeats and retreats go, the bloodless conquest and takeover of millions of square miles of your former enemy's territory, plus the irreversible collapse of his ideology and the dissolution of most of his conventional forces, seems to me to be not much of a defeat. Quite how failing to extend this triumph into yet another segment of our former enemy's former territory can be called a shameful defeat, I do not know. Quite why it should be a surrender, or a blow to democracy, to give up a failed attack because we have, after a quarter of a century of getting our own way, met a little resistance, I am not sure. I can only say that if this is a defeat and a surrender, what would an advance and a victory look like? Do we need a victory parade through Red Square, with Mr Putin's head on a pole outside St Basil's, before Mr Judah is content? Silly isn't the word for this, because it is so dangerous. And yet it is, even so, profoundly silly. In reply I can only paraphrase Gladstone to say that the resources of sarcasm are not yet exhausted.

He then plunges into a frothing, purple sea of rhetoric which I think largely condemns itself
'Russia would have triumphed over the world order imposed by the West after the Soviet Union lost the Cold War. This would mean the destruction of American geopolitical deterrence. America's enemies, from China to Iran, would see this as an invitation to establish their own spheres of influence amid the wreckage.

'Russia would not stop there. Mr. Putin wants to undermine NATO, and the smell of weakness would tempt him further. It would be merely a matter of time before Moscow exploited the Russians in the Baltic States to manufacture new "frozen conflicts." Poland would feel compelled to act as though NATO did not exist, creating a defensive military alliance of its own with the Baltics; it might even establish a buffer zone in western Ukraine.

'There is no easy way out now. But we must not let thousands of Ukrainians die because we dithered. We must be honest with them if we are not willing to fight a new Cold War with Russia over Ukrainians' independence. But if we force Ukraine to surrender, rather than sacrifice lives in a fight for which we have no stomach, then we must accept that it is a surrender, too, for NATO, for Europe and liberal democracy, and for American global leadership. That is the choice before us.'
No it isn't. A sensible, reasonable compromise is available at any time, if only we decide to seek it. Can it be that some people actually want war?