British PM has declared war on Russia

Rishi Sunak is more a PR than a PM. We got our first taste when he started placing Facebook ads during the leadership campaign following Boris Johnson’s ousting. He markets himself like Tony Blair, who called for ‘eye-catching initiatives’ with which he ‘should be personally associated.’ The latest in the Mail is ‘Rishi Sunak to ban the sale of disposable vapes’ for the sake of children’s health - the article fails to credit Scots campaigner Laura Young, who has pushed for this since 2022.

If Sunak wishes to protect young people he could work harder not to put them in deadly danger with his support for Ukraine. The Mail’s noble Cassandra Peter Hitchens was even more strident than usual in his Sunday column, warning of ‘war, privation and perhaps conscription.’

As so often, our military is fighting the last war and the game has changed. In Jordan three US soldiers have just been killed and dozens injured in a UAV-style drone strike. In Vietnam it took 50,000 rounds to kill one enemy; today a single mini-drone can chase its victim as he flees round a tank and explode right next to him. What could a swarm of these do to a ‘citizen army’ formation? Just wait until this technology falls into the hands of criminals and political assassins.

Hitchens reminds us that we lost the flower of our youth in WWI and were bankrupted to boot; and were broken again after WWII. Yet our caretaker PM, voted into office by 202 Tory MPs and no-one else, is eager to re-open the gates of Hell with his 12 January ‘Agreement on Security Co-operation’ with Kiev. For whose benefit has he done this?

Our 1914 intervention - launched in a tiny Privy Council meeting - did not save ‘Poor little Belgium’; how many lives might have been spared there and elsewhere had we desisted? Nor will Ukraine be rescued by Sunak’s rushing in where angels fear to tread. Goodness knows how many combatants have been killed and injured so far because of the lavish Western ‘assistance’ that has prolonged the conflict; and now our PM has cemented us into it with this fatal document.

The Agreement’s preamble makes contentious assertions: Russia’s attacks were ‘unprovoked’; those attacks started in 2014, and by implication Russia was the unprovoked aggressor; what Putin calls the ‘special military operation’ of 2022 was a ‘full-scale invasion’; Ukraine’s borders should be as set by their international recognition in 1991.

In championing Ukraine’s cause, the UK is ‘committed to common values of democracy, the rule of law, good governance, and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.’ Again, not everyone will see Zelensky’s regime as exemplifying all that.

The UK intends to ‘end forever’ Russia’s attacks, to help absorb Ukraine into both the European Union and NATO, and ‘to fully restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders.’ Given the composition and outlook of most of those living in the disputed areas the latter objective would seem to imply not only permanently defeating Russian military forces but expelling or subjugating the majority of the local population.

It is not clear to me that Sunak understands what he has done. This is not a territorial guarantee against some future eventuality. It is a commitment to assist Ukraine in driving out an invader who is already there. It is more than the EU, NATO or the US have so far dared to do. If I read it correctly, it is a de facto declaration of war, war with the world’s most heavily-nuclear-armed State.