....He said Nato expansion was folly, and correctly predicted it would create nationalist backlash in Moscow. Did the neo-conservatives who created this policy really think Russia, with its huge intelligence services and vast, sophisticated foreign policy establishment, would not notice that it was being targeted?
Russia guards its interests, as do all nations, just as rain falls downwards and water is wet. Out of this realisation came Vladimir Putin, the direct consequence of the Wolfowitz doctrine. We created him.
In fact, Wolfowitz and Clinton were simply wrong. China was the real danger. Think about this. In 1989, the Soviet Empire gave way to mass demonstrations in Prague and East Germany. It could have massacred protesters in Leipzig, Dresden and Berlin, but it did not. After a few nasty but feeble attempts to fight demands for independence in the Baltic states and Georgia, Russia gave up its enormous empire in Europe and Asia. In return, Russia was treated like a pariah by the EU and Nato when it sought a civilised relationship with them.
That same year, China’s Communists answered their people’s demands for freedom by murdering them on the streets of Peking.
In the years since, they have created an ever-fiercer police state regime, tightened their dictatorial grip on Tibet, and menaced Taiwan by hugely increasing their military and naval power. They have also blatantly broken their promises to maintain freedom in Hong Kong, and engaged in a shameful and racialist repression of the Uighurs.
This is a real threat, and a regime which makes Putin look relaxed. Yet we stay on friendly terms with them. When their despots come to London, and dine at Buckingham Palace, British police cravenly crush peaceful demonstrations of protest lest our tyrannical guests are offended.
We continue to pretend Taiwan is not independent. We cravenly shun the Dalai Lama for the sake of trade. Is it precisely because we are so feeble in this real struggle that we pretend to toughness in the supposed New Cold War with Russia? I often think so.
And now here we are again, in a moralising frenzy. The BBC, which insisted on strict neutrality between Britain and Argentina in its coverage of the Falklands War, flings itself into an ignorant and one-sided coverage of the Ukraine crisis..............
It would also be more convincing if our political and media establishment had not supported the Nato bombing of Belgrade in 1999 (with major civilian casualties); the crazy invasion of Iraq in 2003; and the forgotten Nato bombing of Libya, also with its toll of dismembered children killed in supposed ‘surgical strikes’.
That intervention destroyed Libya. Mr Putin, and the Chinese police state, know that we did these things, and see them as precedents for any crimes of the same kind they may commit later.
I’m told I am supporting the invasion by saying we provoked it. But if I warn a child that, if he annoys a wasp, it will sting him, am I supporting the wasp?
I am accused of treachery, or of being an apologist for Russia, for urging a different view on this crisis. Surely this is how dissent is treated in dictatorships.
I write this as a British patriot. How was it in our interests to provoke a war we cannot win, and cannot even fight, against a country which is not, in fact, our enemy?
I am accused of treachery, or of being an apologist for Russia, for urging a different view on this crisis. Surely this is how dissent is treated in dictatorships.
!). I do believe Russia could have been handled differently in 1989 and early 1990's but when Putin took over (KGB guy) kind of ended that. Still, I have also said China is the greatest political threat economically, politically and militarily .