NATO Plans
The latest Wikileaks contain an interesting plan for the defence of Poland and the Baltic states from a Russian attack. On the one hand this is just military preparedness for any eventuality. On the other it is stoking tension to no purpose.
Russian military doctrine, though nervous of NATO encirclement, no longer sees a NATO attack as likely or realistic and the proposed modernisation of Russia’s somewhat creaky armed forces, recognises this. Above all it knows that Russian attack on Western Europe to create some huge Russian Empire in the west, according to the earliest and wildest dreams of the early Soviet revolutionaries, is as daft as Britain setting out to reconquer Africa.
Unfortunately the U.S. military has always played a disproportionate role in the direction of the United States, upon whose success the very foundation of the country rests. Thus instead of a wind down after the end of the cold war, there was a cranking up, given fuel by 9/11. British foreign policy needs now to exercise a more restraining hand on the Pentagon. We have to go back to our Viet Nam posture. Do it if you want but we are not with you. Thus there should be no British division in this rash Nato plan. France has already said no.
No wonder the Russians have a network of spies. They do not trust the west and with good cause. Yet it is not Western Europe which is the problem It is the U.S.. President Obama has done quite a bit to ease relations with Russia and build bridges. He needs to do more of the same. Meanwhile we all need to remind ourselves of the difference between WWII and WWI. Fighting Hitler and the Nazis was justified and necessary for the preservation of freedom and decency. It was a fight against one of the most bestial, cruel and tyrannical regimes ever to blacken the pages of history.
WWI was not like that at all. There was no great ideological divide. There were rivalries and jealousies and over powerful militaries. There was much more to be lost by fighting than by not. Civilisation, or European civilisation, was not in fact under threat. It was an entirely useless war for no honourable purpose, whose only lasting outcome was carnage of young lives on an unimagined scale and the creation of the conditions which made the second world war, not only certain but necessary, with even greater carnage across the globe.
There is nothing meaningful to fight for from one end of Europe to the other now and we should use all our powers of planning to make use of the peace which past suffering has bequeathed us. It is time for the U.S. to shrink the Pentagon establishment by a quantum and concentrate on the problems in its own backyard. These are considerable and growing.