Neil Clark writes:
At the ISS (the International Space Station), Britain and Russia
cooperate. But here, down on Earth, there's not much, if any, cooperation on
fighting ISIS - despite Russia's repeated calls for the two countries to work
together.
It's been a strange week.
On Tuesday, the first “official” British astronaut Tim Peake was fired into space in a Russian Soyuz rocket along with Russian Yuri Malenchenko and American Tim Kopra.
Just one day after Russian technology helped take Tim Peake to the ISS, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond was at it again, ludicrously accusing Russia - which has inflicted more damage on ISIS in just a few weeks than the US and its allies have done in over a year of bombing - of actually helping the Islamic State in its Syrian operations.
The good news is that Hammond the Hawk - the man who charmingly called the downing of Metrojet Flight 9268 over Sinai a “warning shot” for Moscow, is now looking quite isolated.
It’s a mistake to think that the entire British establishment shares his 1950s Cold War attitude toward Moscow.
There's been quite a shift in recent weeks, with a number of politicians, eminent military figures and establishment-friendly journalists coming out and openly saying the UK should be allying with Russia to fight ISIL/ISIS.
On Tuesday, the first “official” British astronaut Tim Peake was fired into space in a Russian Soyuz rocket along with Russian Yuri Malenchenko and American Tim Kopra.
Just one day after Russian technology helped take Tim Peake to the ISS, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond was at it again, ludicrously accusing Russia - which has inflicted more damage on ISIS in just a few weeks than the US and its allies have done in over a year of bombing - of actually helping the Islamic State in its Syrian operations.
The good news is that Hammond the Hawk - the man who charmingly called the downing of Metrojet Flight 9268 over Sinai a “warning shot” for Moscow, is now looking quite isolated.
It’s a mistake to think that the entire British establishment shares his 1950s Cold War attitude toward Moscow.
There's been quite a shift in recent weeks, with a number of politicians, eminent military figures and establishment-friendly journalists coming out and openly saying the UK should be allying with Russia to fight ISIL/ISIS.
“The most important thing is
that we’ve got to defeat and destroy ISIL – they are the most dangerous thing
to all of the nations in the world. I describe them as ‘the wolf closest to the
shed.’
“We must destroy them and then think about getting security and peace to
Syria. But the first thing is to destroy ISIL.
“And we can only do that, I
believe, if the whole coalition is involved with Russia and also Iran, and, I
am afraid, also with Assad.”
West was echoing the words of Lord Richards, the former
head of the British armed forces, who called for a change in UK strategy in
countering ISIS in September 2014.
“My judgment is that you
do have to come to some accommodation with them [the Syrian government].
Russia, ironically could play a very important role in that and Iran.
“There are
the bones for a grand strategic solution to the Middle East here, if we can get
together with people who we viewed as rather hostile.”
One of the most high-profile
political figures to call for a change in policy toward Russia is London Mayor
Boris Johnson, a leading candidate to succeed David Cameron as Conservative
Party leader.
“This is the time to set aside our Cold War mindset. It is
just not true that whatever is good for Putin must automatically be bad for the
West. We both have a clear and concrete objective – to remove the threat from
ISIL. Everything else is secondary,” he wrote in his Daily Telegraph column two
weeks ago.
By calling for an anti-ISIS
alliance with Moscow, Johnson is taking a very different position from his
great rival for the Tory leadership, the uber-hawk Chancellor of the Exchequer
George Osborne, who has strong neocon connections.
Prominent journalists and media figures who have praised
Russia’s anti-ISIS fight include Piers Morgan.
When Russia intervened in Syria
in September, Morgan penned a piece for the Daily Mail, entitled: “Thank God
there’s a strong leader willing to stand up for America’s interests in the
Middle East - shame it’s not Obama.”
“ISIS thus threatens every one
of us,” Morgan wrote. “But Obama seems utterly neutered on how to
arrest their charge, muttering meaningless platitudes and putting on his best
‘We have to do something, folks’ face.
“Putin is no such shrinking violet. He
understands the very real menace ISIS poses and he knows how best to deal with
it.”
Of course these articles calling for closer London-Moscow
cooperation on fighting ISIS contain the obligatory attacks on President Putin.
It’s one of the unwritten rules of the game in the western media that if you
do want better relations with an “official enemy” state you still need to tell
readers how awful the other side is, otherwise you’ll be condemned as an
“apologist” or ”appeaser,” by the new McCarthyites who patrol the media and
internet in their hunt for foreign policy heretics.
Even so, we shouldn’t underplay what is happening.
We are
witnessing an establishment split in Britain - with the neocons and hard-core
Russophobes now being challenged by foreign policy “realists” from within the
political and media elite and not just from without.
Any objective commentator or military expert can see the
logic of the UK working with Russia and the Syrian government to defeat ISIS.
In fact we can say that anyone who seriously wants to defeat ISIS militarily
knows that a tie-up between London, Moscow and Damascus is a jolly good idea.
The general public in Britain understand this too - just take a look at the
letters pages of newspapers and the BTL comments which appear in response to
articles on this topic.
Brits know it wasn’t President Putin - or indeed President
Assad - who ordered the brutal killing of British tourists while they were
sunbathing on the beach in Tunisia last summer.
And they know that neither
Russia nor the Syrian government poses a threat to British civilians anywhere
in the world.
The British public wants to see ISIS defeated and they are
questioning why our government doesn’t take the one step – i.e. an alliance
with Russia and the secular Syrian government - which would greatly enhance
that prospect.
The answer, of course, is the continuing presence of
neocons and Russophobes in the high echelons of British Establishment and in
the media.
For these groups, the number one priority remains regime
change in Syria and the continued sanctioning of Russia.
Defeating ISIS is not
as important as keeping Russia in the cold and trying to get Assad and his
secular government ousted.
Last year was a good one for these people.
They exploited
the terrible MH17 air disaster to maximum effect, pinning the blame firmly on
Moscow - before any evidence emerged - and used the events in Ukraine,
triggered off by an illegal western-sponsored “regime change,” to portray
Russia as a dangerous aggressor hell-bent on westward expansion.
But in 2015,
things haven’t gone as well for the neocon faction.
By intervening against ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates in
Syria in September, Putin effectively called the bluff of the US and their
allies and showed to the world how phony the west’s fight against radical
terrorist groups in Syria had been.
Those who genuinely wanted to see fanatical
head-choppers knocked back in Syria lauded the Russian actions - to the horror
of neocon and paid-up anti-Kremlin propagandists who responded with the line
that Russia wasn’t really targeting the Islamic State at all - a classic
example of what psychologists call “projection” i.e. accusing your enemies of
your own faults.
One leading British journalist who
did see through the phony war on ISIS and the western double standards towards
Russia’s Syrian intervention was Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens.
“I
don’t think the British or American governments really want to fight the
Islamic State. They just want to look as if they are doing so. I judge these
people by what they do, not by what they say….
“The White House and Downing
Street both seethe with genuine outrage about Russia’s bombing raids on Syria.
“Yet the people Vladimir Putin bombed have views and aims that would get them
rounded up as dangerous Islamist extremists if they turned up in Manchester. So
why do British politicians call them ‘moderates’ when Russia bombs them?”
Hitchens wrote in October.
In early December, after the horrors of Paris, Prime
Minister David Cameron took the case for bombing ISIS to the House of Commons,
but significantly did not say the UK would be cooperating with Russia.
Although
he won the vote, he most certainly did not win the argument. And it wasn’t just
Labour supporters of Jeremy Corbyn who weren‘t impressed.
Labour MP John Mann,
one of Corbyn’s most vociferous opponents, also voted against the government’s
motion and called instead for an alliance with Russia to “sort out the New
Nazis.”
“It is very obvious to me that
we cannot stop ISIS if we, the French and the Americans do one thing in Syria
whilst the Russians and Iran do another.
“There has to be one united effort to
remove these murderers and a peace settlement for the rest of Syria alongside
it,” Mann wrote on his website.
The anti-Russian line taken by Cameron and Co. is clearly
not in the British national interest - which is why genuinely patriotic
conservatives, experienced military figures and independently-minded
politicians and journalists from across the spectrum are now openly challenging
it.
But can we realistically hope for a change in the UK’s official stance?
As the UK always follows the US, any shift in British policy towards
Russia will only come if there's a change in Washington.
Perhaps we’ve seen
signs of that in recent days with John Kerry’s recent visit to Moscow and a
softening of the rhetoric deployed against Russia.
But even if nothing much
changes in Washington in the next few months - and we certainly shouldn’t build
our hopes up - it’s likely that in 2016 the anti-Russian faction in the British
establishment will find it harder than ever to justify its Cold War position.
If the UK allied with the Soviet Union and Stalin in WWII to defeat the Nazis,
why can’t we do the same to defeat ISIS, is what more and more people from
within the establishment - as well as the general public, are asking.
And if
the UK and Russia can get along very well in space, why not on land, too?
These
are two very reasonable questions which no British neocon or obsessive Putin-basher
can adequately answer.
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