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      in UK Politics

      Boris Johnson insists UK will not ‘flinch’, as Putin warns Ukraine joining Nato could draw Europe into war

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      Boris Johnson has insisted that Britain will “not flinch” and will continue to offer “unconditional and immovable” support to Nato, amid continued fears that Russia could be preparing to invade Ukraine.Moscow continues to add military might to its army amassed near the Ukrainian border, following a series of demands to Nato – which were formally rejected last month – including that Ukraine will not be allowed to join the western military alliance.Echoing comments by defence secretary Ben Wallace on Monday, as he dispatched a further 350 British troops to Poland, the prime minister warned Vladimir Putin that invading Ukraine would backfire and only serve to strengthen Nato.There could not “be a more compelling argument for the necessity of Nato than the sight of Russian tanks invading a European country once again”, Mr Johnson wrote in The Times, warning the Kremlin “its objectives would not be served by inflicting still greater destruction and bloodshed on Ukraine”.But following a five-hour dinner meeting in Moscow with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, the Russian president warned that, if Ukraine joins Nato and seeks to retake Crimea – which Russia annexed in 2014 – then European nations “will automatically be drawn into military conflict” with Russia “beyond [their] will”, adding: “There will be no winners.”As the first western leader hosted in Moscow since tensions intensified late last year, Mr Macron is due to speak to the Russian leader again after a trip to Ukraine tomorrow. “The next few days will be decisive and will require intensive discussions which we will pursue together,” the French president told reporters after his meal with Mr Putin.Mr Putin also appeared tentatively positive about the meeting, saying: “A number of his ideas, proposals, which are probably still too early to talk about, I think it is quite possible to make the basis of our further joint steps.”French media reported that, prior to the meeting, Mr Macron suggested that a “Finlandisation” of Ukraine was “one of the models on the table” – a reference to how Finland maintained its independence from the Soviet Union during the Cold War on the condition that it remained strictly neutral.Mr Putin also urged Ukraine to comply with the Minsk agreements – brokered by France and Germany in 2015 – which include an aim to end the separatist war by Russian-speakers in the Donbas region, but also contain aspects some experts believe are incompatible with Ukraine’s existence as a sovereign country.But Mr Macron said the independence of Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus – where Russia is conducting military exercises – must be preserved, saying: “Together … I’m sure we will get a result, even if it’s not easy.”Meanwhile, Mr Putin accused the US and Nato of “bypassing” its demands last month, but said: “I do not think that this is where our dialogue ends. Now we will formulate an answer, our vision, and send it to Washington and Brussels.”Their comments came shortly after a press conference held in the White House by Joe Biden and Olaf Scholz, the new German chancellor, who appeared to strengthen Berlin’s commitment to derailing the multibillion-pound Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany in the event that Russia invades Ukraine.The US president told reporters that if Russian troops cross Ukraine’s border, “then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2”, saying: “We will bring it to an end.”While Mr Scholz did not use the pipeline’s name, he stressed that US and Germany would “act together jointly” to impose severe sanctions in the event of an invasion, saying: “There won’t be any measures in which we have a different approach.”Switching to English for emphasis, he added that the US and Germany “will be united”.But questions were raised over Mr Scholz’s commitment to the Baltic Sea pipeline threat, after he once again failed to explicitly name Nord Stream 2 as among the economic deterrents on the table in a later interview with CNN, merely repeating his vow to remain aligned with the US.Mr Scholz told the broadcaster he did not know whether Ukraine’s president Volodymr Zelensky had cancelled a planned meeting on Monday with foreign minister Annalena Baerbock as a result of Germany’s stance on the pipeline, as suggested to CNN by one Kiev source – as opposed to the scheduling error blamed officially.It came after a batch of the 3,000 American forces pledged by Washington to bolster Nato’s eastern flank arrived in Poland on Sunday.At a press conference with his Polish counterpart, Mariusz Błaszczak, the UK defence secretary Ben Wallace said the 350 troops also pledged by the UK were being dispatched in the “spirit of solidarity”. Poland is also facing a crisis on its own border with Belarus, whose leader Alexander Lukashenko is an ally of Mr Putin.Writing in The Times on Monday night, Mr Johnson said Britain was also considering deploying royal air force Typhoon fighters and royal navy warships to protect southeastern Europe.“British sanctions and other measures will be ready for any renewed Russian attack,” the prime minister said.Highlighting the confusion over Mr Scholz’s pipeline stance, Mr Johnson also welcomed “Germany’s statement that Nord Stream 2 would be reconsidered in the event of an incursion”, and said his government would ask MPs for new powers to widen potential sanctions on firms linked to the Kremlin.On Sunday, Labour shadow ministers Rachel Reeves and David Lammy wrote to their opposite numbers in government, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, urging the Tories to return money from donors with links to Russia, alleged to amount to £1.93m since Mr Johnson assumed power in 2019.Additional reporting by agencies More

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      in Elections

      Germany’s ‘Invisible’ Chancellor Heads to Washington Amid Fierce Criticism

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      Olaf Scholz will try to repair Germany’s credibility in the Ukraine crisis when he meets President Biden on Monday. Next on his agenda: Kyiv and Moscow.BERLIN — One headline asked, “Where is Olaf Scholz?” A popular magazine mocked the German chancellor’s “art of disappearance.” And his ambassador in Washington wrote home that Germany was increasingly seen as an unreliable ally in a leaked memo that was all the buzz this past week and began with the words: “Berlin, we have a problem.”With the threat of war hanging over Europe and rising tensions in the standoff with Russia over Ukraine, Mr. Scholz is headed to Washington on Monday for his first meeting with President Biden since taking over as chancellor in December. Foremost on his agenda: Show the world that Berlin is committed to the Western alliance — and, well, show his face.Less than two months after taking over from Angela Merkel, his towering and long-serving predecessor, Mr. Scholz is drawing sharp criticism at home and abroad for his lack of leadership in one of the most serious security crises in Europe since the end of the Cold War.His Social Democrat-led government, an untested three-way coalition with the Greens and Free Democrats, has refused to send arms to Ukraine, most recently offering 5,000 helmets instead. And it has been cagey about the type of sanctions that could be imposed in the event of a Russian invasion.As for the chancellor, he has made himself conspicuously scarce in recent weeks — so scarce that the newsmagazine Der Spiegel described him as “nearly invisible, inaudible.”While President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy have been busy calling President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Scholz has so far neither picked up the phone to Moscow nor visited. He has not gone to Kyiv, Ukraine, yet, either, and his visit to Washington, some note, took almost two months to organize.Ukrainian soldiers on Saturday on the front line in eastern Ukraine. While the United States and other NATO countries rushed military aid to Ukraine, Germany offered 5,000 helmets.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesLast week, Emily Haber, Germany’s ambassador to the United States, sent a memo to Berlin, warning of “immense” damage to Germany’s reputation. It was not just the news media but many in the U.S. Congress who questioned Germany’s reliability, she reported. In the view of many Republicans, she wrote, Berlin is “in bed with Putin” in order to keep the gas flowing.It has not helped that since then, Gerhard Schröder, a former German chancellor from Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats, accused Ukraine of “saber rattling” and just on Friday announced that he would join the board of Gazprom, Russia’s most prominent energy company.“Scholz’s central mission for his Washington visit has to be restoring German credibility,” said Thorsten Benner, a founder and the director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin.“It’s not how Mr. Scholz envisaged his first U.S. trip as chancellor,” Mr. Benner added. “But international security was never near the top of his agenda.”Mr. Scholz, 63, has been a familiar figure in German politics for more than two decades. He was general secretary of his party and mayor of the northern port city of Hamburg before serving in two governments led by Ms. Merkel’s conservatives, most recently as her finance minister.A labor lawyer and lifelong Social Democrat, Mr. Scholz narrowly won the election last fall on a platform promising workers “respect” and a higher minimum wage, while nudging Germany on a path to a carbon-neutral future.Foreign policy barely featured in his election campaign, but it has come to dominate the first weeks of the new administration. Rarely has a German leader come into office with so many burning crises. As soon as Mr. Scholz took over from Ms. Merkel in early December, he had to deal not just with a resurgent pandemic but with a Russian president mobilizing troops on Ukraine’s borders.Russian infantry vehicles during drills in January in the Rostov region of Russia. The standoff with Russia over Ukraine has proved particularly vexing for Mr. Scholz.Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters“It wasn’t the plan,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, the vice president of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund. “This is a government that has huddled around an ambitious plan of industrial transformation, but the reality of a crisis-ridden world has interfered with their plans.”Of all of the crises, the standoff with Russia has proved particularly uncomfortable for Mr. Scholz. His Social Democrats have traditionally favored a policy of working with Moscow. During the Cold War, Chancellor Willy Brandt engineered “Ostpolitik,” a policy of rapprochement with Russia.The last Social Democratic chancellor, Mr. Schröder, is not just a close friend of Mr. Putin’s, he has also been on the payroll of various Russian energy companies since 2005, notably Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, the two gas pipelines connecting Russia directly with Germany under the Baltic Sea.It was not until last week, after Mr. Schröder’s comments about Ukraine, that Mr. Scholz felt compelled to publicly distance himself from the former chancellor.“There is only one chancellor, and that is me,” he told the public broadcaster ZDF.His party’s divisions over Russia are one way to explain why Mr. Scholz has shrunk away from taking a bolder lead in the standoff with Russia, prompting some to lament the loss of leadership of his conservative predecessor.Mr. Scholz won the election last year primarily by convincing voters that he would be very much like Ms. Merkel. Terse, well briefed and abstaining from any gesture of triumph, he not only learned to sound like the former chancellor, he even emulated her body language, holding his hands together in her signature diamond shape.But now that he is running the country, that is no longer enough. German voters are hungry for Mr. Scholz to reveal himself and increasingly impatient to learn who he is and what he actually stands for.The receiving station for the $10 billion Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which connects Russia directly with Germany. If Russia invades Ukraine, Mr. Scholz will be under enormous pressure to close it down. Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesAs the current crisis unfolds, Mr. Scholz’s imitation of Ms. Merkel is also less and less convincing. She was understated and studious, and often kept her work behind the scenes, but she was not invisible.In the spring of 2014, after Mr. Putin invaded Crimea, Ms. Merkel was on the phone to him almost every day. It was Berlin that united reluctant European neighbors behind costly sanctions and persuaded President Barack Obama, distracted by domestic affairs, to focus on a faraway conflict.At that point, of course, Ms. Merkel had already been chancellor for nine years and knew all of the protagonists well.“The crisis came very soon for Scholz,” said Christoph Heusgen, a veteran diplomat and Ms. Merkel’s foreign policy adviser during the last Ukraine crisis.Mr. Scholz’s advisers have been taken aback by the level of criticism, arguing that Mr. Scholz was merely doing what Ms. Merkel had so often done: Make yourself scarce and keep people guessing while engaging in quiet diplomacy until you have a result.When Mr. Scholz has spoken up on the current crisis — referring to the Russia-owned gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 as a “private-sector project” before pivoting to saying that “everything” was on the table — he has conspicuously recycled language that Ms. Merkel used before.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Deauville, France, in June 2014. In the spring of 2014, after Mr. Putin first invaded Ukraine, Ms. Merkel was on the phone to him almost every day.Sasha Mordovets/Getty ImagesBut given the escalation in the current crisis, that language is long outdated, analysts say.“He’s overlearned the Merkel style,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff of the German Marshall Fund said. “He’s Merkel-plus, and that doesn’t work in a crisis.”After facing mounting criticism from Kyiv and other Eastern European capitals, Mr. Scholz’s leadership is increasingly being questioned at home, too.In a recent Infratest Dimap poll, Mr. Scholz’s personal approval rating plummeted by 17 percentage points, to 43 percent from 60 percent in early January, the sharpest decline for a chancellor in postwar history, the firm says. Support for his Social Democrats fell to 22 percent, lagging the conservatives for the first time since last year’s surprise election victory.Mr. Scholz’s team announced that after returning from Washington, the chancellor will pivot to a full schedule that he hopes will shift German diplomacy into high gear. Following his meeting with Mr. Biden, he will meet with Mr. Macron; the Polish prime minister, Andrzej Duda; and the three leaders of the Baltic States. The week after, he will travel to Kyiv and Moscow, in that order.Senior diplomats say it is high time for such a pivot, starting with Monday’s visit to the White House.Mr. Scholz has a seeming center-left ally in Mr. Biden, who has so far refrained from publicly criticizing Berlin. Not since President Bill Clinton’s second term have both the White House and the German chancellery been in the hands of center-left leaders, and for all of the wavering on the German side, the two administrations have been in close contact throughout.Mr Scholz, right, listening to President Biden, left, at the start of the virtual Summit for Democracy in December. Mr. Biden has so far held off on publicly criticizing Berlin.Michele TantussiBut patience is running thin, and Mr. Scholz will have to bring something to the table.“There has to be a visible sign of commitment to the alliance,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff said. “That’s what other allies are doing: The Spanish, the Baltic countries, the Poles, the Brits — everyone has offered something to strengthen deterrence on the eastern flank.”German lawmakers have started preliminary conversations about beefing up their troop presence in Lithuania, officials say. Other options include more naval patrols in the Baltic Sea and more air patrols in Bulgaria and Romania.As important as any material commitment may be the words Mr. Scholz uses — or does not use — to publicly communicate that commitment.“Maybe for the first time he could mention Nord Stream 2 by name when talking about possible sanctions,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff said. “He needs to make a clear statement that Germany gets the situation and will stand with its allies in a language that appeals to people in the U.S. and ideally not in his usual flat language,” he added. More

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      in World Politics

      What Would Helsinki 2.0 Look Like Today?

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      The European security order has broken down. You might think that’s an overstatement. NATO is alive and well. The Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) in Europe is still functioning at a high level.

      Of course, there’s the possibility of a major war breaking out between Russia and Ukraine. But would Russian President Vladimir Putin really take such an enormous risk? Moreover, periodic conflicts in that part of the world — in Ukraine since 2014, in Georgia in 2008, in Transnistria between 1990 and 1992 — have not escalated into Europe-wide wars. Even the horrific bloodletting of Yugoslavia in the 1990s was largely contained within the borders of that benighted former country, and many of the Yugoslav successor states have joined both the European Union and NATO.

      In Ukraine, More Than European Peace Is at Stake

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      So, you might argue, the European security order is in fine shape, and it’s only Putin who’s the problem. The United States and Europe will show their resolve in the face of the Russian troops that have massed at the border with Ukraine, Putin will accept some face-saving diplomatic compromise and the status quo will be restored.

      Even if that were to happen and war is averted this time, Europe is still in a fundamental state of insecurity. The Ukraine conflict is a symptom of this much deeper problem.

      The current European security order is an overlay of three different institutional arrangements. NATO is the surprisingly healthy dinosaur of the Cold War era with 30 members, a budget of $3 billion and collective military spending of over a trillion dollars.

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      Russia has pulled together a post-Cold War military alliance of former Soviet states, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), that is anemic by comparison with a membership that includes only Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Instead of expanding, the CSTO is shrinking, having lost Azerbaijan, Georgia and Uzbekistan over the course of its existence.

      And then there’s the Helsinki framework that holds East and West together in the tenuous OSCE. Neither Russia nor its military alliance was able to prevent the march of NATO eastward to include former Soviet republics. Neither NATO nor the OSCE was able to stop Russia from seizing Crimea, supporting a separatist movement in eastern Ukraine or orchestrating “frozen conflicts” in Georgia and Moldova.

      Presently, there are no arms control negotiations between East and West. China became Russia’s leading trade partner about a decade ago, and the United States and European countries have only fallen further behind since. Human rights and civil liberties are under threat in both the former Soviet Union and parts of the European Union.

      So, now do you understand what I mean by the breakdown of the European security order? The Cold War is back, and it threatens once again to go hot, if not tomorrow then perhaps sometime soon.

      So, yes, Ukrainian sovereignty must be defended in the face of potential Russian aggression. But the problem is much bigger. If we don’t address this bigger problem, then we’ll never really safeguard Ukraine, deal with Russia’s underlying concerns of encirclement or tackle the worrying militarization of Europe. What we need is Helsinki 2.0.

      The Origins of Helsinki 1.0

      In the summer of 1985, I was in Helsinki after a stint in Moscow studying Russian. I was walking down one of the streets in the Finnish capital when I came across a number of protesters holding signs.

      “Betrayal!” said one of them. “Appeasement!” said another. Other signs depicted a Russian bear pressing its claws into the then-Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

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      I’d happened on this band of mostly elderly protesters outside a building where dignitaries from around the world had gathered to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords. At the time, I had only a vague understanding of the agreement, knowing only that it was a foundational text for East-West détente, an attempt to bridge the Iron Curtain.

      As I found out that day, not everyone was enthusiastic about the Helsinki Accords. The pact, signed in 1975 by the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union and all European countries except Albania, finally confirmed the post-war borders of Europe and the Soviet Union, which meant acknowledging that the Baltic states were not independent but instead under the Kremlin’s control. To legitimize its control over the Baltics in particular, a concession it had been trying to win for years, the Soviet Union was even willing to enter into an agreement mandating that it “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.”

      At the time, many human rights advocates were skeptical that the Soviet Union or its Eastern European satellites would do anything of the sort. After 1975, “Helsinki” groups popped up throughout the region — the Moscow Helsinki Group, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia — and promptly discovered that the Communist governments had no intention of honoring their Helsinki commitments, at least as they pertained to human rights.

      Most analysts back then saw the recognition of borders as cold realpolitik and the human rights language as impossibly idealistic. History has proved otherwise. The borders of the Soviet Union had an expiration date of 15 years. And, ultimately, it would be human rights — rather than war or economic sanctions — that spelled the end of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Change came in the late 1980s from ordinary people who exercised the freedom of thought enshrined in the Helsinki Accords to protest in the streets of Vilnius, Warsaw, Prague and Tirana. The decisions made in 1975 ensured that the transitions of 1989-91 would be largely peaceful.

      After the end of the Cold War, the Helsinki Accords became institutionalized in the OSCE, and briefly, that promised to be the future of European security. After all, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that NATO no longer had a reason for existence.

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      But institutions do not die easily. NATO devised new missions for itself, becoming involved in out-of-area operations in the Middle East, intervening in the Yugoslav wars and beginning in 1999 expanding eastward. The first Eastern European countries to join were the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, which technically brought the alliance to Russia’s very doorstep (since Poland borders the Russian territory of Kaliningrad). NATO expansion was precisely the wrong answer to the question of European security — my first contribution to Foreign Policy in Focus back in 1996 was a critique of expansion — but logic took a backseat to appetite.

      The OSCE, meanwhile, labored in the shadows. With its emphasis on non-military conflict resolution, it was ideally suited to the necessities of post-Cold War Europe. But it was an unwieldy organization, and the United States preferred the hegemonic power it wielded through NATO.

      This brings us to the current impasse. The OSCE has been at the forefront of negotiating an end to the war in eastern Ukraine and maintains a special monitoring mission to assess the ceasefire there. But NATO is mobilizing for war with Russia over Ukraine, while Moscow and Washington remain as far apart today as they were during the Cold War.

      The Helsinki Accords were the way to bridge the unbridgeable in 1975. What would Helsinki 2.0 look like today?

      Toward Helsinki 2.0

      The Helsinki Accords were built around a difficult compromise involving a trade-off on borders and human rights. A new Helsinki agreement needs a similar compromise. That compromise must be around the most important existential security threat facing Europe and indeed the world: climate change.

      As I argue in a new article in Newsweek, “In exchange for the West acknowledging Russian security concerns around its borders, Moscow could agree to engage with its OSCE partners on a new program to reduce carbon emissions and transition from fossil fuels. Helsinki 2.0 must be about cooperation, not just managing disagreements.”

      The Russian position on climate change is “evolving,” as politicians like to say. After years of ignoring the climate crisis — or simply seeing it as a good opportunity to access resources in the melting Arctic — the Putin administration change its tune last year, pledging to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

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      There’s obviously room for improvement in Russia’s climate policy — as there is in the United States and Europe. But that’s where Helsinki 2.0 can make a major contribution. The members of a newly energized OSCE can engage in technical cooperation on decarbonization, monitor country commitments to cut emissions, and apply new and stringent targets on a sector that has largely gotten a pass: the military. It can even push for the most effective decarbonization strategy around: demilitarization.

      What does Russia get out of the bargain? A version of what it got in 1975: reassurances around borders.

      Right now, everyone is focused on the question of NATO expansion as either an unnecessary irritant or a necessary provocation in American-Russian relations. That puts too much emphasis on NATO’s importance. In the long term, it’s necessary to reduce the centrality of NATO in European security calculations and to do so without bulking up all the militaries of European states and the EU. By all means, NATO should be going slow on admitting new members. More important, however, are negotiations as part of Helsinki 2.0 that reduce military exercises on both sides of Russia’s border, address both nuclear and conventional buildups, and accelerate efforts to resolve the “frozen conflicts” in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Neither NATO nor the CSTO is suited to these tasks.

      As in 1975, not everyone will be satisfied with Helsinki 2.0. But that’s what makes a good agreement: a balanced mix of mutual satisfaction and dissatisfaction. More importantly, like its predecessor, Helsinki 2.0 offers civil society an opportunity to engage — through human rights groups, arms control advocates, and scientific and educational organizations. This might be the hardest pill for the Kremlin to swallow, given its hostile attitude toward civil society. But the prospect of securing its borders and marginalizing NATO might prove simply too irresistible for Vladimir Putin.

      The current European security order is broken. It can be fixed by war. Or it can be fixed by a new institutional commitment by all sides to negotiations within an updated framework. That’s the stark choice when the status quo cannot hold.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Boris Johnson’s Convenient Bravado

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      In the prelude to World War I, Western nation-states, from North America to the Urals, found themselves involved in a strange game nobody really understood. It turned around their perception of each nation’s individual image on the world stage. Each nation imagined itself as wielding a form of geopolitical power whose hierarchy was impossible to define.

      Even the borders of nations, the ultimate criterion for defining a nation-state, had become hard to understand. The idea of each nation was built on a mix of geographical, cultural, linguistic, ethnic, religious and ideological considerations. These became infinitely complicated by shifting relationships of dependency spawned by the dominant colonial model they all accepted as normal. And not just normal. Colonialism appeared to both Europeans and Americans as an ideal to aspire to.

      Coming to Terms With the Game Being Played on the Russia-Ukraine Border

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      Two world wars in the first half of the 20th century had the effect of seriously calming the obsession of Western nations with their individual images. For most of the nation-states emerging from the Second World War, an air of humility became the dominant mood. Two hegemons emerged: the United States and the Soviet Union. But even those powerhouses accepted to work within the framework of an idealized system, the United Nations. That forced them to respect, at least superficially, a veneer of outward humility. The Cold War’s focus on ideologies — capitalism vs. communism — served to hide the fact that the new hegemons were the last two political entities authorized to assert the geopolitical power associated with the previous century’s colonial nation-states.

      The current showdown between the US and Russia over events at the Ukrainian border shows signs of a return to the ambience that preceded the First World War. The Soviet Union disappeared 30 years ago, leaving a weak Russian state in its stead. The US has been on a steep decline for two decades since the confusion created on 9/11.

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      That should signify the existence of an opportunity for non-hegemonic nation-states to reemerge and potentially vie for influence on the world stage, as they did before World War I. After a century of adaptation to the consumer society on a global scale, however, the similarities may only be an illusion. 

      Still, some people appear to believe in an idea definitively discarded by history. The New York Times’ take on the latest posturing of Great Britain proves that the illusion is still alive in some people’s heads. In recent days, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been diligently seeking to drag his isolated, Brexited nation into the fray of Eastern European border disputes, conjuring up reminiscences of pre-1914 Europe.  

      Over the weekend, British intelligence spread the “intelligence” that President Vladimir Putin is seeking to install a pro-Russian leader in Kyiv. Times reporter Mark Lander cites unnamed “British officials” who “cast it as part of a concerted strategy to be a muscular player in Europe’s showdown with Russia — a role it has played since Winston Churchill warned of an ‘Iron Curtain’ after World War II.”

      Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Muscular player:

      An actor or performer whose wardrobe and makeup teams have the ability to turn the player into an image of Atlas or Hercules during a performance on a stage

      Contextual Note

      In the games that precede a major military conflagration, nations feel compelled to adopt attitudes that go well beyond their ability to perform. Lander quotes Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director-general of a think tank in London, who explains that Johnson’s Britain “is differentiating itself from Germany and France, and to some extent, even the U.S.” He adds this pertinent observation: “That comes out of Brexit, and the sense that we have to define ourselves as an independent middle power.”

      There’s much that is pathetic in this observation. In a totally globalized economy, it is reasonable to doubt the idea of a “middle power” has any meaning, at least not the meaning it once had. Outside of the US and China, Russia may be the only remaining middle power, because of two things. First, its geography, its sheer landmass and its future capacity to dominate the Arctic. Second, its military capacity carried over from the Soviet era. The rest of the world’s nations, whether middle or small, should not even be called powers, but “powerlessnesses,” nations with no hope of exercising power beyond their borders. Alongside the middle and small, there may also be two or three “major” powerless nations: India, Brazil and Australia.

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      But, of course, the most pathetic aspect of the description of Britain’s ambition is the fact that Johnson’s days as prime minister appear to be numbered. He is already being hauled over the coals by his own party for his impertinent habit of partying during a pandemic. 

      In a press conference in Kyiv on February 1, Johnson deployed his most muscular rhetoric. For once finding himself not just on the world stage but in the eye of the hurricane, he felt empowered to rise to the occasion. “This is a clear and present danger,” he solemnly affirmed. “We see large numbers of troops massing, we see preparations for all kinds of operations that are consistent with an imminent military campaign,”

      The hollowness of Johnson’s discourse becomes apparent with his use of the expression, “clear and present danger,” a locution that derives from a US Supreme Court case concerning the limits on free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes used the phrase in his draft of the majority decision in 1919. It became a cliché in American culture, even reaching the distinction of providing the title of a Hollywood action movie based on a Tom Clancy novel.

      As for his analysis of the clear and present danger, Johnson, who studied the classics at Oxford but maybe missed Aristotle, seems to ignore the logical inconsistency of assuming that if A (military buildup) is consistent with B (a military campaign), it does not make B predictable and even less “imminent.” That, however, is the line the Biden administration has been pushing for weeks. Johnson’s abject adherence to it may be a sign of the fact that Johnson is incapable of doing what Chalmers claimed he was trying to do: differentiate Britain — even “to some extent” — from the US.

      Historical Note

      The Times’ Mark Lander is well aware of the hyperreal bravado that explains Johnson’s move. “The theatrical timing and cloak-and-dagger nature of the intelligence disclosure,” Lander writes, “which came in the midst of a roiling political scandal at home, raised a more cynical question: whether some in the British government were simply eager to deflect attention from the problems that threaten to topple Prime Minister Boris Johnson.”

      Lander goes on to cite Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the United States, eager to remind people of the historical logic of Johnson’s move. She refers to a British tradition rife with cloaks and daggers. “Where the Russians are concerned, you’ll always find the U.K. at the forward end of the spectrum.” She wants us to think back to Britain’s active participation in the Cold War, punctuated by an occasionally embarrassing episode such as the 1961 Profumo affair, starring model and escort Christine Keeler. But she knows that what best illustrates that glorious period for Britain in its holy struggle against the Soviet Union is James Bond, who has long been “at the forward end” of the Hollywood spectrum. In our hyperreal world, Pierce knows that fiction will always dominate and replace our understanding of reality. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      We need to ask another question in a world conditioned by the image of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson. Does the world really need muscular players today? The ancient Greeks imagined Heracles as a naturally muscular hero, who built up his bulk through his deeds, not through his workouts in the gym or to prepare for body-building competitions. Heracles was about killing lions with his bare hands, slaying Hydras, capturing bulls, and even cleaning stables — that is, getting things done. For the Greeks, Heracles was a muscular being, not a muscular player. 

      When Greek playwrights actually put Heracles on the stage, he could be tragic (Euripides, “The Tragedy of Herakles”) or comic (Aristophanes, “The Frogs”). In that sense, Arnold Schwarzenegger, from “Conan the Barbarian” to “Twins,” fits the role. The difference is that Heracles was a deity (the son of Zeus with the mortal Alcmene) and, thanks to the completion of his seven labors, became a god on Mount Olympus. When Schwarzenegger completed his labors as a muscular player in more than seven films, he became a Republican politician in California.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Britain’s Still Got It

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      Since Brexit in 2016, the United Kingdom’s growth rate has been poor. Inflation is at its highest rate in 30 years. In December 2021, it had risen to 5.4%. Wages have failed to keep up and, when we factor in housing or childcare costs, the cost of living has been rising relentlessly.

      COVID-19 has not been kind to the economy. Rising energy prices are putting further pressure on stretched household budgets. To stave off inflation, the Bank of England is finally raising interest rates, bringing an end to the era of cheap money. Payroll taxes are supposed to go up in April to repair public finances.

      Has Britain Achieved a Post-Racial Politics?

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      The Resolution Foundation is predicting that “spiralling energy prices will turn the UK’s cost-of-living crisis into a catastrophe” by spring. The UK’s 2022 budget deficit will be larger than all its G-7 peers except the US. The beleaguered Boris Johnson government finds itself in a bind. At a time of global inflation, it has to limit both public borrowing and taxes. Unsurprisingly, there is much doom and gloom in the air.

      We Have Seen This Movie Before

      Since the end of World War II, the UK has experienced many crises of confidence. One of the authors move to the country in 1977. Back then, the Labour Party was in power. James Callaghan was prime minister, having succeeded Harold Wilson a year earlier. The British economy was the fifth-largest in the world but was buffeted by crises. In 1976, the government had approached the International Monetary Fund (IMF) when, in the words of Richard Roberts, “Britain went bust.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      From 1964 to 1967, the United Kingdom experienced “a continuous sterling crisis.” In fact, the UK was “the heaviest user of IMF resources” from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s. The 1973 oil crisis spiked energy costs worldwide and pushed the UK into a balance of payments crisis. Ironically, it was not the Conservatives led by Margaret Thatcher but Labour led by Callaghan that declared an end to the postwar interpretation of Keynesian economics.

      In his first speech as prime minister and party leader at the Labour Party conference at Blackpool, Callaghan declared: “We used to think you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour, that option no longer exists.” After this speech, the Callaghan government started imposing austerity measures.

      Workers and unions protested, demanding pay rises. From November 1978 to February 1979, strikes broke out across the UK even as the country experienced its coldest winter in 16 years. This period has come to be known as the Winter of Discontent, a time “when the dead lay unburied” as per popular myth because even gravediggers went on strike.

      In 1979, Thatcher won a historic election and soon instituted economic policies inspired by Friedrich von Hayek, the Austrian rival of the legendary John Maynard Keynes. Thatcher’s victory did not immediately bring a dramatic economic turnaround. One major industry after another continued to collapse. Coal mines closed despite a historic strike in 1984-85. Coal, which gave work to nearly 1.2 million miners in 1920 employed just 1,000 a century later.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Throughout the 1970s, the UK was dubbed “the sick man of Europe.” People forget now that a key reason the UK joined the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973 was to make the economy more competitive. Between 1939 and the early 1990s, London lost a quarter of its population. Yet London and indeed the UK recovered from a period of crisis to emerge as a dynamic economy. Some credit Thatcher but there were larger forces at play.

      There Is Life in the Old Dog Yet

      Last week, one of the authors met an upcoming politician of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A strong nationalist, he spoke about the importance of Hindi, improving India’s defense and boosting industrial production. When the conversation turned to his daughter, he said that he was sending her to London to do her A-levels at a top British school.

      This BJP leader is not atypical. Thousands of students from around the world flock to the UK’s schools and universities. British universities are world-class and train their students for a wide variety of roles. Note that the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca were able to develop a COVID-19 vaccine with impressive speed. This vaccine has since been released to more than 170 countries. This is hardly surprising: Britain has four of the top 20 universities in the world — only the US has a better record.

      Not only students but also capital flocks to the UK. As a stable democracy with strong rule of law, the United Kingdom is a safe haven for those seeking stability. It is not just the likes of Indian billionaires, Middle Eastern sheikhs and Russian oligarchs who put their wealth into the country. Numerous middle-class professionals choose the UK as a place to live, work and do business in. Entrepreneurs with a good idea don’t have to look far to get funding. Despite residual racism and discrimination, Britain’s cities have become accustomed to and comfortable with their ethnic minorities.

      Alumni from top universities and skilled immigrants have skills that allow the UK to lead in many sectors. Despite Brexit, the City of London still rivals Wall Street as a financial center. Companies in aerospace, chemical and high-end cars still make the UK their home. British theater, comedy, television, news media and, above all, football continue to attract global attention.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Napoleon Bonaparte once purportedly called the UK “a nation of shopkeepers.” There is an element of truth to this stereotype. The British are a commercially savvy, entrepreneurial and business-friendly bunch. One author knows a dealer who trades exclusively in antique fans and a friend who specializes in drinks that you can have after a heavy night. The other has a friend who sells rare Scotch whiskey around the world and an acquaintance who is running a multibillion insurance company in India. Many such businesses in numerous niches give the British economy a dynamism and resilience that is often underrated. Everything from video gaming (a £7-billion-a-year industry) to something as esoteric as antique fan dealing continues to thrive.

      The UK also has the lingering advantage of both the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire. Infrastructure and assets from over 200 years ago limit the need for massive capital investment that countries like Vietnam or Poland need. Furthermore, the UK has built up managerial experience over multiple generations. Thanks to the empire, English is the global lingua franca and enables the University of Cambridge to make money through its International English Language Testing System. Barristers and solicitors continue to do well thanks to the empire’s export of common law. Even more significantly, British judges have a reputation for impartiality and independence: they cannot be bribed or coerced. As a result, the UK is the premier location for settling international commercial disputes.

      In 1977, the UK was the world’s fifth-largest economy. In 2022, 45 years later, it is still fifth, although India is projected to overtake it soon. The doom and gloom of the 1970s proved premature. The same may prove true in the 2020s. The economy faces a crisis, but it has the strength and track record to bounce back. The UK still remains a jolly good place to study, work, invest and live in.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      ‘Hypocritical’ Britain to blame for every Channel migrant drowning, says Macron

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      Emmanuel Macron has said Britain bears the responsibility for all migrant deaths in the Channel and accused Westminster of ‘hypocrisy’. Speaking to the regional French newspaper La Voix du Nord, President Macron said he will “step up” the pressure on Boris Johnson to establish a legal route to Britain for asylum seekers – something Westminster has so far declined to do.“The responsibility for those who die at sea does not fall upon France but upon this British refusal,” Mr Macron said. Responding to the President’s comments on Wednesday, UK home secretary Priti Patel said they were “absolutely wrong”. Ms Patel told MPs on the Commons Home Affairs Committee: “Macron’s comments are wrong. They’re absolutely wrong. So, let me be very, very clear about that.”President Macron told the French newspaper that the British economy is reliant on low-paid, illegal immigration labour, adding: “The British continue to have a system from the 1980s, which manages economic immigration through hypocrisy. There is no legal immigration route.”He added: “The British must articulate their needs in terms of the economy and reopen a path to legal asylum requests. We are going to step up the pressure.”Priti Patel highlighted that “very good work” was being done by the UK ambassador in Paris and praised the “co-operation that we have to have with France to combat the dangerous and unnecessary crossings, dealing with illegal migration, but also working with like-minded partners across Europe.”She concluded: “So, those comments are just wrong.”The numbers of migrants crossing the Channel is rising and six times as many people made the perilous journey by boat this January, compared to the same month last year. UK authorities intercepted or rescued 1,341 people compared to 223 the year before.France has previously proposed setting up joint processing centres on French soil, where applications for asylum in Britain could be examined by British immigration officers.Last year, French interior minister Gerald Darmanin urged Britain to open a legal immigration route because “at the moment anyone who wants to ask for asylum has no other choice but to cross the Channel”.He also said that relaxed labour practices on the other side of the Channel created a “pull effect” on people who were looking for work.The tension between France and Britain came to a head in November last year when 27 people tragically died making the journey across the Channel in freezing conditions. Following the tragedy, Boris Johnson called on France to take back people who had entered Britain illegally as a deterrent measure. Mr Macron, who is expected to announce his campaign for re-election soon, is now pushing for a new agreement between the EU and the UK. President Macron has yet to declare that he will seek a second term in France’s April elections and told La Voix du Nord that the crisis over Ukraine and coronavirus come first. He said that plunging into the presidential campaign now would betray a promise he made to be president “until the end” and would be wrong at a time when “we have a crisis on the Ukrainian border which threatens our collective security”. More

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      Dissecting the Ukraine Crisis (Language and the News – Updated Daily)

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      As we announced in January, by highlighting the everyday abuses of the language of public personalities and the media, Fair Observer’s new running feature prolongs the four-year-old tradition of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary (now reduced to a weekly format). We will frequently add new items to the month’s entries. Each item will cite an occurrence in the news and add a short reflection focusing on its intended and unintended meaning.

      We invite readers to join us and submit their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

      February 1: Multiple Audiences

      CNN reports that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is feeling some discomfort in the face of US President Joe Biden’s eagerness to create panic around the idea of a Russian threat. Zelensky himself describes Russia’s actions as “dangerous but ambiguous.”

      “Earlier in the day, another source from the US side said there is a recognition in the White House that Zelensky has ‘multiple audiences’ and is trying to balance them. ‘On the one hand, he wants assistance, but he has to assure his people he has the situation under control. That’s a tricky balance.’”

      Though the source cited only two of the audiences, there are certainly a few others that were not mentioned. It could be said that nearly every relatively powerless country has at least two audiences: its people and whatever hegemonic power has decided to support it. The United States is by far the most prolific hegemonic “audience” of countries across the globe, though some fear China may surreptitiously catch up. The idea of being an audience, of course, implies an attitude of listening attentively, usually through the hegemon’s diplomats but just as significantly, through its spies.

      Why Monitoring Language Is Important

      Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

      In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

      Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

      Fair Observer’s Language and the News feature seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Trouble at home but a warm welcome expected for Boris Johnson in Ukraine

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      “It’s a pity that Boris Yeltsin still isn’t the Russian leader, he liked to party, he and your Boris would have got on well together,” Nicolai Olynik observed. “Maybe all this fear of war could have been lifted a bit with a few drinks.”There has not been much cause for levity in the Donbas, eastern Ukraine, amid warnings of an impending conflict and around 125,000 Russian troops massed at the border.Nor have people here been following the ‘partygate’ saga in the UK in much detail. But the scheduled visit to Kiev on Tuesday by Mr Johnson has kindled some interest in what has been taking place in London in recent days.There is, undoubtedly, a feeling of gratitude in Ukraine over the weapons – NLAW anti-tank missiles – that the UK has supplied to Kiev as the threat of invasion by Kremlin forces rose in recent months and hope that support will not be dissipated by focus on domestic British issues.Mr Johnson was also supposed to have had a telephone call on the Ukraine crisis with Vladimir Putin before meeting the President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev. That call, however, was cancelled because the British Prime Minister had to be in the Commons following the partial report by Sue Gray on breaches of lockdown parties at Downing Street, and is now scheduled to take place on Wednesday afternoon.Mr Johnson, speaking on Monday, declared that President Putin needed to “step back from the brink… any incursion into Ukraine beyond the territory that Russia has already taken in 2014 would be an absolute disaster for the world, and above all it would be a disaster for Russia.”Mr Olynik, a 33-year-old businessman said: “It is a pity if this phone call between Johnson and Putin is not done, maybe we would have more of an idea about what the Russians want to do. At the moment there is a lot of uncertainty here and lot of different ideas about what’s going to happen. Any news about Putin’s intentions would be good to know. Mr Yeltsin probably could have been bit open after a few vodkas and champagne.”Mr Yeltsin was the first President on the Russian Federation, for eight years, from 1991. His excessive drinking became a public issue and a matter of international interest. Documents, declassified two years ago, showed that by the mid-90s, the UK government had drawn up contingency plans about courses of actions to follow if he were to die in office.

      Boris Johnson is today the most disliked, disrespected and ridiculed character in Britain. Even schoolchildren are laughing at himRussia’s NTV stationSome Russian media outlets sought to pillory Mr Johnson over the party allegations.The state backed Rossiya 1 channel claimed that his “anti-Russian hysteria” was “a way to divert attention from domestic problems” as he sought to “stifle” scandal. “Only anti-Russian sanctions can distract from Johnson’s protracted ‘Partygate’. ” NTV, owned by Gazprom, declared: “If it were in the power of Boris Johnson, [Sue Gray’s report] would have disappeared into the bowels of the Victorian sewers of the city of London. Boris Johnson is today the most disliked, disrespected and ridiculed character in Britain. Even schoolchildren are laughing at him.”Anatol Mischenko, a business partner of Mr Olynik, commented: “Yeltsin was very indiscreet, Putin is not like that of course, he is a very controlled person I think. Maybe he’ll try to use the issue of British weapons in a bargain with the UK. “But I do not think it’ll be possible even for world leaders of big countries to know what Putin is thinking until he does something : and for a place like this, that is quite worrying.”Slovyansk was the first city to be seized by separatists and experienced some of the brutalities of the conflict including extra-judicial killings and torture of prisoners. It was later retaken by Ukrainian forces. The Russian backed Donetsk Peoples Republic is a short distance away, and there have been frequent clashes since the 2014 war. “We’re quite a way away from Kiev of course, and only time we hear about international leaders is when they come for a few hours to say they have been to the frontline,” said Galyna Ostapenko, a ceramic designer. “Even then they normally go to Kramatorsk [a nearby city] rather than here, I think some British MPs went there recently. More