Defence policy is in Νεφελοκοκκυγία

 Hi All,

Much to my delight I have learned something new today and that is that Cloud Cocko Land was first thought up by the ancient Greeks, which  according to Wikipedia,  was Νεφελοκοκκυγία (Nephelokokkygia) or Cloud Cuckoo Land- as a place, but like Atlantis functions as an allegory because : 

"Cloud cuckoo land is a state of absurdly, over-optimistic fantasy or an unrealistically idealistic state of mind where everything appears to be perfect. Someone who is said to " live in cloud cuckoo land " is a person who thinks that things that are completely impossible might happen, rather than understanding how things really are."

And this dear reader is exactly where our current crop of generals and politicians reside. The generals live there when they call for conscription (the draft) in the belief that our country is anything like the generation of my grandparents who served in world war 2, when things like patrotism and the Royal Family were taken for granted by all political parties, rather than the self-loathing of the elites toward British history, the Empire, woke etc etc that we have today, especially given  that to self -identifying as a 'patriot', is bad and seen as right wing extremism. Woke has another victim.

But don't worry, our politicians say, we are a great power and we have the nukes! Yet exactly how this is going to get Russia out of Ukraine or stop them is a mystery. I cannot see any British government using nukes in a first strike capacity and not one against a nuclear armed state like Russia. The nukes, as the generals will tell you, is only credible if it is backed up by conventional power as well.  Yet this conventional power does not exist : the RAF is more concerned with not employing 'posh white men' (there's the dam busters gone and don't mention their Labrador's name) , the army is down to 70,000, destroyers have gyms were missiles should be, frigates are being desposed of because there are no personel to man them and because of costs it is rumoured one of the aircraft carriers (which are frequently breaking down and don't have aircraft on them) might have to be sold because of budget cuts.  What happened to the nation that built an empire which once covered a quater of the globe, abolished slavery and brought civilisation- science, medicine, technology- to the corners of the Earth? 

In short the military and political leadership are living in cloud cucko land. In one hand they wish to pump up the talk of Russia as another Hitler or Kaiser and the necessary Churchillian resolve to confront with force if necessary this foe. On the other hand, they act- rather than rhetorical Churchill-  as if we are living in a utopian era of international goodwill,  by driving the defence forces into second and third rate status.

 Put simply Britain is engaging in Churchill like rhetoric, but backing this will 1930s appeasement style spending. But even by the late 1930s, Britain under the arch -appeaser Neville Chamberlain, at least began the process of rearming for war, whereas in today's era we are neither engaging in appeasement (and thus keeping defence levels low) not rearmament. It is the worse of both worlds.

 So if we do end up in this war against Russia or even involve ourselves in another Korean war or a war with China (or horrifically all 3 wars at the same time) we would suffer a massive defeat. To be sure these wars would be allied wars, but the reality would be we would quickly be shoved out of them because of lack of manpower or equipment and thus be more of a liability than an asset  and maybe even see our '1905' moment abroad and at home  (a la the Russo -Japanese war and subsequent Russian revolt against the Tsar). 

During the dark days of the early part of world war 2, three men (one of them to be a future Labour leader)  - a socialist, a liberal and a conservative -  wrote 'Guilty Men' under the pseudonym "Cato". The polemic described the folly of British policy during the 1930s, the failures of the war so far and how Britain was woefully unprepared for war in 1939. The essay identified 15 'guilty men' who were held responsbile for this debacle. One wonders who the guilty men are going to be this time around, if as seems likely we are to end up in another great power war, but the list is probably going to be long.