Here Is The Harsh Truth

Like Peter Hitchens, I have never understood why people thought that Belgium, Switzerland or Canada was either boring or superfluous, but Belgium no longer has its own free-floating, fiat currency, so this is the risk that it runs:

What you do to others will in the end be done to you. It is true of all life and very true of world affairs. The creditor becomes the debtor. The invader is invaded, the empire falls and its mighty capital echoes to the tread of the troops of a new ruler.

Britain by being an island and by sheltering behind the US, has managed to avoid some of these fates – so far. But strong, cold, hard winds are about to blow across the world we once knew. And I gape in amazement at Sir Keir Starmer’s enthusiasm for stealing Russian money to keep the Ukraine war going a little longer. There is so much wrong with it.

Why, in any case, do the nations of Europe want to buy a used war from Donald Trump? Trump has lost interest in fighting in Ukraine, at least partly because he cannot win, and may actually lose. America once wanted this war. Now, with a new leadership and after years of failure, it no longer does.

Russia, though far from being a superpower, has turned out to care about Ukraine more than Washington thought it did, and to be better at fighting than they expected it to be. As with Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, the US will always quit when it decides it is wasting its time and money on any foreign intervention.

Yet the Starmer government, we are assured through leaks, is ready to hand over £8billion of Russian assets frozen in Britain to support Ukraine. Sir Keir seeks to stitch together a deal with the European Union and other countries that could ‘release’ as much as £100billion for Ukraine’s war effort.

For ‘release’ read ‘steal’. This money does not belong to the countries where it was placed by Russia for safekeeping, under the normal rules of law and civilisation. We may claim a ‘moral’ justification for this action, but there is no certainty that the courts will not rule it unlawful. They could even, many years hence, force the countries involved to pay it back.

This would devastate Belgium, where most of the cash is held, and which would almost go bankrupt if compelled to make good on the money. The Euro would suffer greatly as a currency if things went wrong. And behind all this also lies the danger that other countries, especially China, will see and take note – and one day do the same to us at a time when it will hurt greatly.

Challenged, they will smile and say sweetly that they are only following our example. This is how what remains of international law can easily rot away if we choose to let it. And for what?

Advocates of the raid say the money would cover more than two-thirds of Ukraine’s cash needs over the next two years. They cannot seem to make up their minds about what it would be used for. Some think it should be spent to carry on the war. Others say it should be used to rebuild Ukraine’s demolished cities, factories and power grid if a peace deal is agreed.

But what would be the point of that? Even if Russian claims of major advances in the key city of Pokrovsk are false or exaggerated (and they may be), Ukraine’s basic military problems are manpower and weapons. Its casualty figures are secret but appallingly high. Desertion is a major problem, also kept secret. Recruitment is faltering as men of military age hide from press gangs.

Ukraine’s Army, put simply, will carry on shrinking however much money the country has. And the West’s capacity to make the sort of weapons Ukraine needs is still poor. Money will not save it. And how much will just go astray, never to be seen again?

War means chaos, and war mixed with chaos is the ideal condition for corruption, as Ukraine already knows. After Britain and the US invaded Iraq, the distinguished foreign correspondent Patrick Cockburn reported that US authorities were investigating senior military officers - he did not specify from which side - over the misuse of up to $125billion (£94billion) in reconstruction efforts.

A lot of this crisis is caused by emotion. The major European countries are embarrassed that they have so little power and can be treated with contempt by Donald Trump. They shrink from admitting there is in fact nothing they can do to change the course of the war – apart from escalating it into a dangerous and possibly nuclear conflict.

They rage a lot against Russia but very few of them could explain how Europe will benefit from them buying this war from Uncle Sam and trying to keep it going. Why can’t they grasp that the Americans have dumped it by the roadside because its big end has gone? The entire purpose of the war, the defeat and removal of Vladimir Putin, has failed. President Trump didn’t even agree with that aim, and he won’t help anyone else pursue it.

Similar folly can be seen in the reaction to the White House’s mischievous new ‘National Security Strategy’, published last week. This peculiar squib seems to have been designed to annoy idealistic Left-wing warmongers, a type now common in the capitals of the EU.

Sandwiched between slices of tripe about the brilliance of Mr Trump, it states some ancient truths about foreign policy – especially these words: ‘The affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests’.

The document asserts that there is nothing inconsistent or hypocritical in refusing to impose ‘democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories’. Righteous voices cry out in wrath at this. But it is, quite simply, true. The US doesn’t actually care about repression in Turkey or Saudi Arabia or China. It invades countries illegally when it feels like it.

Its position is remarkably similar to the policy which, for much of the Victorian age, kept Britain free, prosperous and at peace. Lord Derby, Britain’s then foreign secretary, told the House of Lords in July 1866: ‘It is the duty of the Government of this country, placed as it is with regard to geographical position, to keep itself upon terms of goodwill with all surrounding nations, but not to entangle itself with any single or monopolising alliance with any one of them; above all to endeavour not to interfere needlessly and vexatiously with the internal affairs of any foreign country.’

It was only when we began moralising on the world stage in the years before 1914 that we blundered into the stupid war which swiftly impoverished us, created some of the most beautiful and extensive war cemeteries and memorials ever seen in the history of the planet and reduced our once-unmatched power to a memory in a few decades.

Here is the harsh truth. Ukraine is losing the war into which it was manoeuvred and shoved by others - both from the West and in Moscow - for their own cynical ends. One of those others has lost interest. The other will fight on indefinitely and mercilessly if the conflict goes on.

Much of it is in ruins. Multitudes of its best people have gone for ever, killed in battle or fled abroad. Most of us could not bear to see the legions of maimed and disfigured people which grow daily amid the wreckage.

Yet we lightly support dangerous, tricky, actions which will extend this hell for long years to come. Have we utterly taken leave of our senses?