Nonetheless

Stephen Glover writes:

Are we drifting towards war in Ukraine, and the most deadly conflagration in Europe since 1945? Are we on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe and economic disaster? The British and American governments apparently fear so.

For weeks they have been talking about the strong possibility of war. The tragedy is that they are doing very little to prevent it. Liz Truss yesterday touched down in Moscow before talks with Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, and then posed for pictures in Red Square in a fur hat — just as her idol Mrs Thatcher did on a visit to the Soviet Union.

It seems unlikely the Foreign Secretary has any proposals that will lessen the chances of conflict, and what she will say to Mr Lavrov isn't hard to guess. Like Boris Johnson, she has previously warned President Vladimir Putin not to invade Ukraine.

The British line, barely distinguishable from that of the U.S., is that there will be terrible repercussions if Russian troops pour across the border. Sanctions are threatened which would be so severe that the Russian economy would be gravely weakened.

The Prime Minister threw a further consideration into the pot in a newspaper article on Tuesday. If Putin were reckless enough to attack Ukraine, Nato would be strengthened. In other words, the alliance would increase its military presence in Eastern Europe, which is precisely the outcome Putin doesn't want.

Neither the British nor the American government contemplates offering Putin any significant concessions aimed at forestalling an invasion. The general message is that, if Russia goes ahead, there will be hell to pay. Such an approach makes war nearly inevitable. Putin has more than 100,000 troops on the Ukraine border, and he isn't going to withdraw them unless offered something in return. To do so would be to lose face with the Russian people. He can't afford to appear weak.

Is there another way? Yes. It involves trying to get inside President Putin's mind, and attempting to understand Russian attitudes towards Ukraine and Nato with a sharper sense of historical perspective. I don't dispute that Putin is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, though there is no evidence he is mad. Nor is there any doubt his regime ruthlessly eliminates its enemies both at home and abroad, and opposes Western interests whenever and wherever it can.

Nonetheless, Russia has a case in Ukraine — not a cast-iron one, to be sure, but a case all the same. Before the 1917 Revolution, part of modern-day Ukraine was in the Russian Empire. After 1945, the entire country was incorporated into the Soviet Union. There are some 8 million ethnic Russians in Ukraine, nearly 20 per cent of the population, many of whom regard the government in capital, Kiev, as hostile.

Imagine how we would feel if there were a few million Britons marooned in a part of France being bullied by President Emmanuel Macron. Moreover, the Russian regime has regarded Nato's expansion in Eastern Europe with understandable alarm. All its former satellites have joined the alliance. Ukraine remains outside.

But, alas, Nato foolishly promised Ukraine in 2008 that it could one day join the organisation, though no date was set. The current regime in Kiev is eager to sign up since, if any Nato country is attacked, the military alliance is obliged to come to its defence. 

Imagine the feelings of policymakers in Moscow. Nato is already breathing down Russia's neck. If Ukraine joins the alliance, Russia could face the possibility of American troops, and potentially nuclear missiles, on the other side of a 1,200-mile land border.

It shouldn't be too hard to imagine how Putin feels. When the Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles in communist Cuba in 1962 — a mere 90 miles from Florida — President John F. Kennedy insisted the Soviets remove them, which they did. The world had got perilously close to nuclear war.

Why can't the present U.S. administration sympathise with Putin's fears? President Joe Biden, vague and dicky though he is, wouldn't tolerate Russian troops in Cuba, or across the Mexican border. All that can be said in Biden's defence is that he hasn't followed the egregious example of Tory MP Tobias Ellwood, Chairman of the Commons Defence Select Committee. Ellwood has suggested Nato should send a division, which is up to 20,000 soldiers, to Ukraine. Does he want all-out war?

Ukrainian membership of Nato is surely unthinkable. In 2014 Russia seized Crimea — from 1783 until 1917 part of the Russian empire, and now overwhelmingly ethnically Russian — from Ukraine. If Ukraine, as a Nato member, were to try to take Crimea back, and thereby inevitably incite a Russian invasion, Nato soldiers including our own would very likely be drawn into a war with Russia.

President Putin has recently made several outrageous demands, including what amounts to the withdrawal of Nato troops from most of Eastern Europe. This is obviously unacceptable to Nato. But his key demand, which is that Ukraine shouldn't become a Nato member, is reasonable. Whether to grant it would be enough of a concession to induce him to pull back his troops is of course not certain.

Unfortunately, the British and Americans appear uninterested in serious negotiations. Although it pains me to say it, since I regard him as an irritating popinjay who is no friend of Britain's, President Macron has shown more sense and flexibility. He visited Putin in Moscow earlier this week.

Granted, Macron has his own agenda, which is to replace Nato (described by him in 2019 as 'brain dead') with a European defence force. He's misguided on that score. But unlike British and American leaders, he does seem to understand the need to engage properly with Putin.

Meanwhile, Germany, dependent as it is on Russian gas, and hopeful that the new multibillion Nord Steam 2 pipeline from Russia will start pumping the stuff soon, is also anxious for productive talks. Why isn't Britain more so?

It seems that, not for the first time, we are too beholden to America, which has driven the expansion of Nato and the encirclement of Russia. Rather than slavishly following the United States, and seemingly accepting the inevitability of an invasion, Britain should be trying to find ways of accommodating some Russian concerns while defending Nato's interests. 

Putin probably doesn't want war. The Russian economy, smaller than Italy's, is desperately vulnerable. There may be opposition in the armed forces, if this week's broadside by the retired, hard-line General, Leonid Ivashov, is any guide. He wrote of Putin's 'criminal policy of provoking a war'.

In November, Truss donned military garb and climbed onto a British tank in Estonia in an attempt to look fearsome. Margaret Thatcher did the same thing, but more convincingly, in West Germany in 1986, when the Soviet Union posed an existential threat to the West. Russia presents no such threat.

But the weakened bear can still be enraged, if poked too often with a stick. Now that she is in Moscow, I hope the Foreign Secretary will set aside stunts and posturing, and recall the old adage that jaw-jaw is nearly always preferable to war-war.