Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

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The Ukraine is beginning to look as if there may be some way out of its dire situation. The new president has a mandate the mob appointed Government in Kiev previously lacked and is already making conciliatory noises. Putin  has declared himself willing to enter into a dialogue with Poroshenko and they have already had a brief exchange of words. Make no mistake, the obstacles to progress are formidable and the possible pitfalls like a honeycomb. Nevertheless there is now some light, where formerly there was only darkness.

Without going into the detail of where things might now go, this Blog will step back and try to sketch out the big picture. This is because there appears not to be one in either the State Department or the Foreign Office, or if there is , it is locked away out of sight. By following a series of knee jerk decisions based upon the dogma of tribal politics, the pile up of disasters is spectacular. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Crimea, as well as large Al Qaeda associated armed formations operating in Syria, Iraq and various failing states in Africa. Meanwhile tensions rise over all manner of territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Some of these misfortunes are a direct result of Western policy, some are made worse by the Western response and some are disasters in the making.

During WWII Western policy was the defeat of the military/ fascist dictatorships of Germany, Japan and Italy whatever the cost. Following victory, the emphasis changed to building stable democracies in the shattered countries, with the underlying aim of eliminating a return to the bad ways of the past, but also increasingly, to prevent the expansion of communism. This later objective became known as the Cold War. When that ended in the collapse of the Soviet system and the break-up of the USSR, as well as the conversion of China into an economic powerhouse built on a unique platform of communist led capitalism, the world was for the first time for over a hundred years without power blocks and formal enemies.

Unfortunately the success went to the heads of Western foreign policy makers. They chose a path of expansion and domination when they should, instead, have seen the need for inclusion and compromise. Lunatic invasions and occupations went hand in hand with a steady expansion of NATO eastwards, without, at the same time, making any serious attempt to bring Russia into the fold. Way back when the first countries in post war Europe got together to create the Common Market, they did so in the belief that the only way to guarantee peace and stability in Europe ( or that part not under the control of the Soviets) was to unite the vital interests of the old rivals, France and Germany, in a common cause.

At the end of the Cold War the same principle applied to Russia. She should have been invited into the EU and helped to meet the conditions for membership. The instability in the East is a direct outcome of this failure to think with strategic coherence then. It is time to now to start afresh.

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