Sunak has declared war on Russia

Somehow this is not front page news, but the Prime Minister has formally committed the UK to a course of action tantamount to a declaration of war with Russia.

On 12 January the British Prime Minister signed an ‘Agreement on Security Co-operation’ with the President of Ukraine. The Preamble says that we are jointly ‘determined to end forever’ Russia’s attacks and are committed to ‘Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its borders, which have been internationally recognised since 1991.’

There is no reference to the possibility of a negotiated settlement. Not that we seem to have exerted ourselves to make peace: in his interview with Tucker Carlson Putin reminded us of Boris Johnson’s intervention to block a deal in 2022, comments that provoked the latter into furious splutterances without (so far as I know) denying it.

In the absence of a diplomatic solution the ending ‘forever’ of Russia’s incursions implies a military defeat so decisive that no further Russian attempt is possible. What are the chances of success? What could we possibly gain? What do we stand to lose?

Choosing the 1991 boundaries means that the invaders are to be driven out of all disputed areas including Crimea which Premier Khrushchev added to the territorial patchwork in 1954, never dreaming of the present situation. It should also be remembered that several other countries occupied lands in Western Ukraine before the consolidation imposed by the Soviet Union in 1945. Historically Ukraine has changed shape like Proteus and we have now joined a quarrel of Balkan complexity.

The same preamble goes on to say that the UK will help the Kiev regime towards ‘realising its European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations, including towards European Union and NATO membership.’ This decades-long eastward territorial creeping by NATO is what has led ultimately to Putin’s ‘Special Military Operation’ (SMO), pace the document’s claim that it was ‘unprovoked.’ Presumably some in Washington have calculated that nuclear missiles sited on Russia’s border could obliterate Moscow in a lightning strike and so - victory! Little wonder that Russia’s London embassy said the new Agreement left the opposing parties ‘without chances for peace talks.’

So far we have supplied Ukraine with money, armaments and, it is alleged, special forces soldiers; but not formally entered the war on its behalf. No other Western nation has done the latter - why has our PM chosen to be the first? At whose request - or command? Has Sunak taken note of the publicly expressed dismay of our military class at the under-manning, under-resourcing and DEI-weakening of our armed forces?

Could our armed forces be put into direct combat with the Russians? Would that risk invoking Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and drawing in other NATO members? Already there are signs that some would welcome the prospect of European-wide conflict, as witness the rush to claim that the missile that killed two workers in Poland fifteen months ago was Russian, rather than Ukrainian as it turned out.

The PM has not sought Parliamentary approval for this Agreement. Constitutionally he does not need it, having the use of the royal prerogative; but in 2003 even the Blair government put the Iraq question to a vote in the House of Commons.

Sunak has acted precipitately and in a way unlike that in which we entered the first two World Wars. Those declarations were on an ‘if’ basis, pursuant to written guarantees: in 1914 to Belgium and in 1945 to Poland. In both cases there was the technical possibility, however slight, that the aggressor would desist and when he did not he then gave us the casus belli. By contrast the Russian SMO has been operating for just under two years and so under the Agreement the conditions for a call to British arms exist now, not hypothetically.

In 2005 the Birmingham Labour MP Clare Short put forward a Private Member’s Bill to make war subject to prior Parliamentary approval or post facto ratification. It failed but surely it is time that we revisited the general issue of war authorisation, as discussed in a 2006 Constitutional Committee report. We have so many rights under the ECHR, rights used to our disadvantage in dealing with tides of illegal immigration; yet by starting a war a British Prime Minister can take away our right to life without so much as a ‘by your leave.’

This Agreement lays the foundation for catastrophe and possibly our national extinction. Parliament should press for its withdrawal, or for ratification with the scope for radical amendment.