Thanks for your interesting and informative writing.
As a former diplomat, do you think that there is nobody left in the Foreign Office who is providing Starmer with honest, candid and truthful information and advice about this?
He's a man of little substance and no honour, grasping at straws to retain power, however fleetingly. I don't imagine it matters that much what advice he's given. I don't believe for one minute that he doesn't know that what Israel is doing is wholly illegal, never mind abhorrent, yet he's firmly behind them. A human rights lawyer... I think that tells us that facts don't get in his way if they are inconvenient. Let's face it, the Falklands worked for Thatcher and war is lucrative for many. If he can drag us into something that gives excuses for tub thumping, it might help him in the polls is probably all that he cares about.
It’s certainly not only the Foreign Office that has failed—this is a pattern across most Western (i.e., NATO) nations. Just look at the U.S. CIA since 1948. Rarely has a U.S. president ever received an accurate assessment of what the "enemy" was actually doing from America's so-called intelligence services. Worse still, some presidents have outright ignored the few accurate reports they did get. Nowhere was this more obvious than during the Cold War and the Soviet Bloc. The CIA has been wrong in nearly every prediction it’s made, all while torching trillions in "black budget" dollars on what passes for espionage.
I’d go further: like Starmer, the intelligence community feeds their White House bosses only what those bosses want to hear. And since the U.S. effectively calls the shots for Europe, the EU obediently tags along, parroting American policy and performative "diplomacy." With the CIA advising the president, it’s a textbook case of garbage in, garbage out. Crude, yes—but it perfectly explains how hundreds of international disasters have dragged on for decades, and why the war in Ukraine shows no sign of ending.
Read Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. As an American, this book pisses me off to the core.
It was only ever a matter of time before Europe’s empty bravado hit the brick wall of military reality. Announcing grand strategies with no manpower to back them up isn’t leadership; it’s political theatre. A credible state aligns ambition with capability. Right now, Britain and its allies are doing neither.
Instead of posturing with fantasy deployments and slogans like “coalition of the willing,” policymakers would do better to face the facts on the ground and start negotiating from a position of interest, not illusion. Peace isn’t weakness. It’s what strength looks like when it knows its limits.
Re the "Coalition of the Willing", it was quite startling to hear these words from Starmer, knowing that he was openly kedging them from George W Bush. Of course the phrase has a longer and even more sordid history dating back to the 70's, but the impression of "plus ca change, etc", aka "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" was both emphatic and depressing.
On another note, reading earlier today a journalist opined that Spain was facing the "harsh realities" of mothballing your baseload generation capacity, in her recent power outage.
A friend inquired of me, what's harsh about people wanting to maintain their living standards?
A good question, I thought. My answer, in addition to the thinking causing both sets of problems, has some applicability to your article here, too:
Reality is harsh on them because they are (trying to) fight it.
Reality is not harsh to us because we respect and cooperate with it.
Starmer is a Blairite and Sir Tony was, back then, pleased and flattered to accept an honorary leadership position in Bush/Cheney's Coalition of the Willing and he never acknowledged this decision as the ghastly failure it is. So while it was startling to hear that brand name, associated by most of us with a fiasco built on lies, recycled for a British proposal for war with Russia, it does rather make sense if you try to adopt the perspective of New Labour leadership.
They've got to keep whipping up the war talk and the "our ally Ukraine" BS because the alternative is the public realizing that neoliberal austerity combined with shutting off cheap Russian energy have gutted their standard of living.
The Western ruling class, including Britain, with highly propagandized and tightly controlled populations, has lately started to BELIEVE its own Propaganda. Russia and China do not have this problem and assert REALITY, if necessary militarily, making Western "leaders" increasingly look cartoonish and divorced from reality, which they are. This political crisis has deep psychological components.
1. Acknowledge the role of vile neocons in Western governments, and their plan for the past 30+ years to encircle, isolate, and ultimately destroy Russia.
2. Purge these people from our governments. Have a very public conversation about their impacts, their schemes, and come clean on all their lies. Make it clear this will not happen again.
3. Withdraw as a belligerent from the conflict. Bring back all Americans from Ukraine. Stop all funding for Ukraine. Stop trying to "end the war", and just withdraw.
4. Remove all sanctions and diplomatic pressure on Russia, make it publicly clear that the neocons are gone, that we want good relations. Travel to Moscow without bodyguards and address the Russian people directly, face to face, in the Red Square.
5. Bring back the red telephone. Have annual meetings with the HoS of RF to discuss matters of mutual importance. Consider inviting RF back into G20 (perhaps as an honorary member?) and request the same from BRICS. Roll back the worldwide sanctions regime. Stop using the reserve currency status to bully countries.
The UK political establishment is one giant grooming gang. How else do they convince people that what they’re doing is good for us? The media is their enabler. They’ve been getting their way with our lives and livelihoods for decades.. I presume (hope) they won’t have much influence with the younger generations and will be seen as nothing but old dirty perverts..
I'm certain the USA could not muster an army either. Our military fighting personal (the grunts)are fat and stupid. We depend on high tech that does not work (F35), our navy is a rust bucket, our aircraft carriers are ineffective and a primer target in the world of hyper sonic weapons and I'm not confident we have a functioning nuclear deterrent. You know, "our ace in the hole." Now called a bluff! Have you noticed we don't fight our own wars?
Our military has been hollowed out by the bankers, the financiers and our overlords...just like the bridges, highways and our industrial capabilities of our country. The world is starting to understand the United States doesn't have the "cards" which means we are in extreme danger. And the US citizen will unfortunately pay the price.
And they’re so lazy they’re even recycling the same PR from previous failed wars (coalition of the willing..). And the media is as complicit as ever, not doing its job and exposing their lies, incompetence and gross (criminal) negligence.. it’s like we live in Groundhog Day!
It is now possible to imagine that Ukraine will become Europe's version if ISIS, armed and directed (justnot by Russia) to enfeeble or destroy the non-compliant.
In addition to Ian's excellent points above, it's also worth remembering that it's politically expedient for Starmer to keep the focus on Ukraine because his position is popular with the British media and public and it keeps the focus off domestic issues. It also helps him to wedge Farage and Reform as pro-Putin, but that won't help him when the Ukraine war ends.
I love this line: "A quick reminder here that Winston Churchill oversaw the mobilisation of almost six million British troops to fight in World War II. Starmer is struggling to muster five thousand for Ukraine."
When will Britain, just like the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch have already done, realize that its days of being a major power are over and just focus on building a better Britain, rather than trying to run the world?
Thanks for your interesting and informative writing.
As a former diplomat, do you think that there is nobody left in the Foreign Office who is providing Starmer with honest, candid and truthful information and advice about this?
If not, then things are looking bleak indeed.
Thank you Ludwig. I do worry that is the case, yes.
He's a man of little substance and no honour, grasping at straws to retain power, however fleetingly. I don't imagine it matters that much what advice he's given. I don't believe for one minute that he doesn't know that what Israel is doing is wholly illegal, never mind abhorrent, yet he's firmly behind them. A human rights lawyer... I think that tells us that facts don't get in his way if they are inconvenient. Let's face it, the Falklands worked for Thatcher and war is lucrative for many. If he can drag us into something that gives excuses for tub thumping, it might help him in the polls is probably all that he cares about.
It’s certainly not only the Foreign Office that has failed—this is a pattern across most Western (i.e., NATO) nations. Just look at the U.S. CIA since 1948. Rarely has a U.S. president ever received an accurate assessment of what the "enemy" was actually doing from America's so-called intelligence services. Worse still, some presidents have outright ignored the few accurate reports they did get. Nowhere was this more obvious than during the Cold War and the Soviet Bloc. The CIA has been wrong in nearly every prediction it’s made, all while torching trillions in "black budget" dollars on what passes for espionage.
I’d go further: like Starmer, the intelligence community feeds their White House bosses only what those bosses want to hear. And since the U.S. effectively calls the shots for Europe, the EU obediently tags along, parroting American policy and performative "diplomacy." With the CIA advising the president, it’s a textbook case of garbage in, garbage out. Crude, yes—but it perfectly explains how hundreds of international disasters have dragged on for decades, and why the war in Ukraine shows no sign of ending.
Read Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. As an American, this book pisses me off to the core.
No. Anyone not hewing to the neocon/Atlanticist line would be quickly sidelined.
Here's a good essay "NATO's Phantom Armies." definately worth a read.
https://substack.com/@aurelien2022/p-144846499
Thank you.
It was only ever a matter of time before Europe’s empty bravado hit the brick wall of military reality. Announcing grand strategies with no manpower to back them up isn’t leadership; it’s political theatre. A credible state aligns ambition with capability. Right now, Britain and its allies are doing neither.
Instead of posturing with fantasy deployments and slogans like “coalition of the willing,” policymakers would do better to face the facts on the ground and start negotiating from a position of interest, not illusion. Peace isn’t weakness. It’s what strength looks like when it knows its limits.
Re the "Coalition of the Willing", it was quite startling to hear these words from Starmer, knowing that he was openly kedging them from George W Bush. Of course the phrase has a longer and even more sordid history dating back to the 70's, but the impression of "plus ca change, etc", aka "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" was both emphatic and depressing.
On another note, reading earlier today a journalist opined that Spain was facing the "harsh realities" of mothballing your baseload generation capacity, in her recent power outage.
A friend inquired of me, what's harsh about people wanting to maintain their living standards?
A good question, I thought. My answer, in addition to the thinking causing both sets of problems, has some applicability to your article here, too:
Reality is harsh on them because they are (trying to) fight it.
Reality is not harsh to us because we respect and cooperate with it.
Always appreciate your work.
Starmer is a Blairite and Sir Tony was, back then, pleased and flattered to accept an honorary leadership position in Bush/Cheney's Coalition of the Willing and he never acknowledged this decision as the ghastly failure it is. So while it was startling to hear that brand name, associated by most of us with a fiasco built on lies, recycled for a British proposal for war with Russia, it does rather make sense if you try to adopt the perspective of New Labour leadership.
The plan ever always only was to use UK/Euro troops as bait, then run screaming "Article 5!" to the United States once they come under fire.
They've got to keep whipping up the war talk and the "our ally Ukraine" BS because the alternative is the public realizing that neoliberal austerity combined with shutting off cheap Russian energy have gutted their standard of living.
The Western ruling class, including Britain, with highly propagandized and tightly controlled populations, has lately started to BELIEVE its own Propaganda. Russia and China do not have this problem and assert REALITY, if necessary militarily, making Western "leaders" increasingly look cartoonish and divorced from reality, which they are. This political crisis has deep psychological components.
1. Acknowledge the role of vile neocons in Western governments, and their plan for the past 30+ years to encircle, isolate, and ultimately destroy Russia.
2. Purge these people from our governments. Have a very public conversation about their impacts, their schemes, and come clean on all their lies. Make it clear this will not happen again.
3. Withdraw as a belligerent from the conflict. Bring back all Americans from Ukraine. Stop all funding for Ukraine. Stop trying to "end the war", and just withdraw.
4. Remove all sanctions and diplomatic pressure on Russia, make it publicly clear that the neocons are gone, that we want good relations. Travel to Moscow without bodyguards and address the Russian people directly, face to face, in the Red Square.
5. Bring back the red telephone. Have annual meetings with the HoS of RF to discuss matters of mutual importance. Consider inviting RF back into G20 (perhaps as an honorary member?) and request the same from BRICS. Roll back the worldwide sanctions regime. Stop using the reserve currency status to bully countries.
Can't the UK recruit a few grooming gangs? It has plenty of those. Imagine how intimdating that would be for the enemies of freedom and democracy.
The UK political establishment is one giant grooming gang. How else do they convince people that what they’re doing is good for us? The media is their enabler. They’ve been getting their way with our lives and livelihoods for decades.. I presume (hope) they won’t have much influence with the younger generations and will be seen as nothing but old dirty perverts..
Thank God these demons will be stopped.
I'm certain the USA could not muster an army either. Our military fighting personal (the grunts)are fat and stupid. We depend on high tech that does not work (F35), our navy is a rust bucket, our aircraft carriers are ineffective and a primer target in the world of hyper sonic weapons and I'm not confident we have a functioning nuclear deterrent. You know, "our ace in the hole." Now called a bluff! Have you noticed we don't fight our own wars?
Our military has been hollowed out by the bankers, the financiers and our overlords...just like the bridges, highways and our industrial capabilities of our country. The world is starting to understand the United States doesn't have the "cards" which means we are in extreme danger. And the US citizen will unfortunately pay the price.
And they’re so lazy they’re even recycling the same PR from previous failed wars (coalition of the willing..). And the media is as complicit as ever, not doing its job and exposing their lies, incompetence and gross (criminal) negligence.. it’s like we live in Groundhog Day!
It is now possible to imagine that Ukraine will become Europe's version if ISIS, armed and directed (justnot by Russia) to enfeeble or destroy the non-compliant.
The 3 stooges😄
In addition to Ian's excellent points above, it's also worth remembering that it's politically expedient for Starmer to keep the focus on Ukraine because his position is popular with the British media and public and it keeps the focus off domestic issues. It also helps him to wedge Farage and Reform as pro-Putin, but that won't help him when the Ukraine war ends.
I love this line: "A quick reminder here that Winston Churchill oversaw the mobilisation of almost six million British troops to fight in World War II. Starmer is struggling to muster five thousand for Ukraine."
When will Britain, just like the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch have already done, realize that its days of being a major power are over and just focus on building a better Britain, rather than trying to run the world?