Hi All,
As far as Britian is concerned it seems that the left is banging the drum beats of war far more than the right in respect of Ukraine, something which I've never seen the left be so keen on, not even when ISIS was cruicifying entire villages and comtting war crimes and atrocities in the middle east.
On one hand this is easy to explain : all Britain and for that matter everyone else opposed to this invasion is doing is 'sanctioning' Russia. Yes these sanctions are 'unprecedented' but it has been said before no-one is contemplating or wants to send actual troops on the ground or even throw a few cruise missiles at Russian tanks. Ukraine has pretty much been left in the position of doing the actual fighting and maybe getting a few old Soviet era jets or not. It is therefore easy tos it from the sidelines and on the moral high ground -and the left love moral high grounds- when you're not actually risking anything.
But there is something more viscreal going on here and I'm trying to figure out what and why.
The left go in for the idea that 'international law' is some kind of Federal penal and civil code for the entire world, rather than being a structure or framework to which sovereign states have agreed to abide by, in their conduct to each other. So they see a global law code and constituion which overrules the power of sovereign states. The fact is the left knows that their concept of international law is only enforcible if the great powers of the world (a concept they hate) actually agree to adhere to it : Russia is one of those powers and is of course flouting all of these rules right now. In fact the very thing that might bring a peace about (something the left always likes, they were the first to say we 'should be talking to the taliban') is the very 19th century idea of 'spheres of influence' and 'protectorates' and 'buffer states'. For some reason if it were anywhere other than Russia then the left would be telling us that this is what would have to happen, but today it is coming from the 'futher' or as I like to call it the 'Trumpian-Farage' right who would say :
'Russia feels threatened by NATO expansion, so she had to draw a line with Ukraine after all the other parts of her old empire- or as Russia sees it 'the near abroad' - had broken away, Russia needs several Finlands and not the Yanks on her border'.
This might have been possible twenty years ago or mabye even a decade ago, but it isn't now and in any case I think Putin himself has changed tac on this and is clearly intent on restoring at least the old Russian /Soviet Empire. If he is not stopped in Ukraine and he succeeds then he will go after the rest of it.
The other explanation is that the cultural wars have spread from America to Britain's political elite. To put it bluntly those on the fringes of the left and the right have over the past 3-5 years become less fringe and more mainstream. Politics is increasingly 'with us or against us' on every single issue, especially history, idenity, race, gender and sexuality. Even though ethnic minoritites, LGTBQYWET and the other groups the left say they fight for are more concerned with things like inflation, job security and satisfaction and you know, what's for tea tonight love? issues rather than pulling down statues because it makes them feel less guilty for being a rich, privlidged university student type middle class white liberal.
So in that all consuming cultural war place the issue of Russia and Ukraine becomes a matter not of looking at historical or geopolitical/ religious nucances, but becomes personal black and white on one man (even if the irony is that the left reject the idea of 'great men' version of historical analysis) i.e. you either despise or admire Putin in equal measure and that should inform your stance on the Ukraine war. Therefore the liberal left universally hate Putin on these grounds : for his apparent xenopobic - Russian nationalism, anti-gay rhetoric and support for his politicised version of Christianity, wherein Russia via the Rus Orthodox Church is 'the New Rome'. To those on the further (and far) right they love him for the inverse : putting his country first rather than submit to sub-national organisations , his get things done 'strongman' image and the cultivated idea that he is a 'four dimensional chess player' , family values and Christian moral sensiblities i.e. anti gay marriage (however much of a sham this might be, given his various mistresses and the reality of life in Russia when one looks at the chronic prostitution, drugs, suicide, alocholic, abortion, birth and death statistics ).
To top it all the left in our country are playing domestic politics with this issue, in that they are trying to tie the conservative party and therefore the government in with Russian oligrachs based in London and contributions made to the conservative party. The thing is that not every oligarch is a Putin supporter and the various posionings of them on British soil attest to that, many of them are in exile because of Putin, but it plays well when broadcasting images of building being bombed and inferring that the party who runs Britain is in effect controlled by Russia puppet masters (a reverse of the 'Zionov letter' of 1924).
Then there is the refugee issue which the left are as usual getting hysterical about : as if accomdating 100,000 is not enough which plays into the hysteria of a xenophic Britain post Brexit and how British leadership in Europe is dimished- although I would suggest that Britain never had any real leadership in the EU as that is dominated by Germany and France, so leave it to them . Ukraine of course wants to be part of NATO and the EU, just like the Baltic States are. You can see why, because it isn't for any love of the EU, but just like the rest of eastern europe, it is because of cash and to achieve a double sense of security (we have yet to see if NATO would ever hold together if such a country was attacked and the EU includes neturals like Ireland who I don't think would ever go to war to protect Latvia).
Britain leaving the EU has always been misunderstood by the British liberal left. Or rather they confuse political instutions- the EU with NATO, national states and the people living in them ,so they do not understand why people might support NATO, why they might love Europe the continent and her people, a cultured and diverse grouping which can never really fit into one homogenous state and want to be part of NATO to keep Europe free, but at the same time detest the EU because of its political and ideological suppositions which take away that very democatic ideal which NATO is there to uphold.
One final thought on this question is the idea of war itself is, I think, taken rather differently in the left and right. To the right wars arise for a variety of reasons but boil down to 'national interest', in other words defence of one's homeland, people and resources is a given, followed by strategic considerations such as other powers who could threaten your nation and the need or not to form alliances to counter those threats, what follows from this is a need to secure and obtain the flow of resources to uphold the power of a nation state and that requires the ability to project force across the globe. Thus both the UK and the USA in their times as super powers relied and rely heavy on 'blue water' naval power proejection to secure the sea lanes of the world , which goes beyond a mere defensive naval posture and tiny fleets.
The left, by contrast, see warfare as acceptable for less hard nosed or selfish reasons as national interest. For those who aren't pacificsts the liberal left see the reasons for war in a sort of secular version of the Christian 'just war' theory which takes us on a journey of secular "chivarlous romanatism " in that one is fighting for the lofty ideas of democracy, equal rights (berating other cultures for their social conservatism and forgetting democracy is very much a western concept: liberals aren't as relativsic as one might thing!), being the world politceman (preventing genocides, humanitarian missions and regime change, see international law above) and of course wars of national defence (but only with the permission of the UN and only when the enemy is already at the gates, knocking the walls down). All of this warfare must be done within a set of constrained rules of engagment, lest 'war crimes' occur, which to those who don't stick to' the rules' doesn't mean a thing and actually gives them an advantage. Russia doesn't stick to the rules.
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