The road to Hell

I have been reading Professor Ian Kershaw’s magnificent history of Europe between 1914 and 1949, To Hell and Back. The book details the two devastating wars that between them killed around 100 million people in Europe and throughout the world. The reality of the slaughter and destruction is almost unimaginable to us today, until we look at our TV screens and see what is going on in Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere…
 
There is terrifying déjà vu in the account of how Britain and France allowed Hitler to carve up Czechoslovakia by annexing the Sudetenland—with its ethnic Germans—and his promise that that would satisfy him. Within months he had invaded the whole country, and not many months after that most of Europe was at war. The parallels with Putin and his so-called ‘ethnic Russians’ in Eastern Ukraine, and the suggestion of giving up land for peace all too terrifyingly obvious. And there are plenty of ethnic Russians in several other NATO countries...
 
Now, as then, we—the so-called Western European democracies—do not want war, we have far, far too much to lose. World War Three is, in any case, unthinkable; we must believe that Putin and Trump et al are not stupid enough to think that it could ever be winnable. But limited war, as is happening in Ukraine, would be enormously expensive and damaging not to mention the lives lost.
 
I am reminded of Orwell’s 1984. It describes a state of permanent war between two of three great powers, Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia—rotating between the three—as a method for those in control to stay in power. I suspect that it is only the mythical threat of ‘The West’ against Russia, that keeps Putin and his cronies in The Kremlin. His invasion of Ukraine to remove the ‘Nazi’ regime is necessary to validate the on-going ‘threat’ against Russia and his valiant defence of the fatherland. If he is successful in Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states will be next on his list. The fact that Ukraine is armed and assisted by the Western Democracies, serves to confirm the analysis Putin wishes to portray to his public that The West has military ambitions towards Russia.
 
Sadly, there is very little that can be done other than to counter the threat by spending whatever is necessary to defend the NATO borders, and continuing to support Ukraine. This is money that could far better be spent on the NHS, social care, and public services in general. And if Trump, Vance, and the Tommy Robinson crowd think that democracy and free speech in Britain is under threat, they should spend some time in Russia, try articulating their ideas there, and see how far it gets them.