Lordre: Second_World

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The real reason Russia scares us in Britain?

Behind the false moral outrage of British killers at Russian killers, there may be a fear that Russia is still the Second World War victor we merely pretend to be.

After the Second World War, the victors became the United Nations Security Council, the top dogs effectively set up to rule the post-war world order by approving international peacekeeping missions and interventions and providing the military power to enforce them. This was a convenient compromise between brute military realities and the easily corrupted rule of international law.

Powers of the Second World War

Some fools compared the US and UK's pointless lynching and destruction of small Iraq with the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two. Similar such fools here now belittle the Russian war in Ukraine as somehow inferior to the West's displays of power, despite it being something undertaken against a powerful enemy with heavy foreign support and modern weaponry. It is no exaggeration to say that Ukraine is the most heavily-equipped and powerful opponent to have been confronted by one of the Security Council powers since World War Two. The UK simply doesn't dare wage war on large or heavily-equipped nations, no matter how much it hates them.

Western militaries remain too skittish to attempt anything similar to Russia's war in Ukraine when it comes to countries they complain about, and the reason may have nothing to do with either morality or military astuteness. It could be cravenness on the part of our country, which only attacks the most dilapidated, isolated, small nations where an easy victory can be claimed to much fanfare, and backs away from threats that could actually imperil Western troops.

The Russians evidently do not suffer the above problem, being willing to dive into perilous battles against their enemies as they did in the Second World War, and the resulting perceived difference in the character of our countries may be what actually scares us in the West. What Russia is doing in Ukraine could be an almost precise re-enactment of operations against Nazi Germany. It is fought on some of the same battlefields as that original "Great Patriotic War", as the Russians call it.

Propaganda and reality

The Second World War is certainly on many minds in Great Britain when we think of the conflict in Ukraine. Propaganda coverage and government statements in the UK somewhat resemble those of the Second World War, and the UK kept making World War Two references in the days leading to the outbreak of hostilities. Amid these continuous comparisons, there is likely to be a subconscious comparison between the craven modern Britain and the power that helped win the Second World War.

The unflattering reality is that the UK is not the same power it was in the Second World War. At that time, the UK was independent and played a leading role, devising its own strategies and pursuing its own interests. The US intervened to support the UK, which had entered into the war without any real need for a coalition. Now, the UK is merely led by lackeys of the United States.

Pretend power

Britain's attempts to look tough are now based on the cosplay of our leaders, who model themselves on iconic politicians of the past because they have no identity of their own. At the same time, many in the UK are likely to possess a kind of football hooligan envy of Russia, because that country is acting like the same beast it used to be in the past, whereas the UK is now nothing much more than a weak accomplice. Rather than acknowledge our country's inferior position and microscopic influence, they will claim the Russians are cheats or dishonourable in some way. This way, our subconscious awareness of our own weakness and inferiority is exploited to encourage hatred of the other country.

Where the UK and Russia are similar lies in the dismantlement of their broader empires, both voluntarily. However, where one began to live in its own empire's shadow and compensate with bombast, the character of the other may have remained the same, able to demonstrate its status with the resolve and steel that made it a victor in the Second World War.

The UN Security Council represented a compromise between the reality of military power and the desire for the rule of international law. By painting a member of it as our enemy, when they still have the military power, we risk seeing a military reality that is misaligned with our pronouncements about international law. This will make us like a police officer who can't arrest anyone or even get up from his chair.

When it comes to foreign policy, British politicians are overly fond of characterising themselves as Winston Churchill fighting against an evil aggressor abroad.

The UK has been trying to negotiate its own tripartite security pact with Ukraine and Poland, in a repeat of actions that contributed to the outbreak of World Wars One and Two. As such, it seems that the idolisation of past wartime leadership is so ingrained in British politicians that they don't mind repeating those men's mistakes.

1939, again and again

Britain's Defense Secretary Ben Wallace claimed there was a "whiff of Munich" when he visited Moscow, while continuing to warn about an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine. What is it with the constant World War Two comparisons, which were going on even during the Iraq War?

What is happening with these politicians is a kind of cosplay. Like lesser Roman emperors, they have no identity of their own (except maybe Boris Johnson) and have to compare themselves with prior historical characters or dress up as them, as UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss did in Moscow. And it is a portrayal of characters - as in, fictional ones. Living in comfort, it is possible that some subconscious part of us forgets that history actually happened, with our minds instead processing it only as song and story. Most of us who think of historical figures instead think of actors portraying them on a screen. Mixed with pervasive monitoring, social media, and the transformation of politics into live entertainment, the effect may be to blur the boundaries of reality and fantasy even among those involved in important policy decisions, resulting in a sense of stardom and glamour among political figures who should instead focus on reality.

Russia only needs to be compared with Russia

It is a well-known fallacy to point out that the other side, e.g. Vladimir Putin's Russia, is acting in some way like Adolf Hitler or Nazi Germany, but this fallacy has nevertheless become a talking point of British politicians. The refutation is clear: so what? Hitler enjoyed cream cakes as well, but that isn't a refutation of them.

Both sides annexed land and redrew the borders of Europe in World War Two. In fact, the Kremlin redrew more borders prior to, during and after World War Two than the Nazis did. The anti-Hitler Allies even demanded the redrawing of borders and division of Germany as a condition for post-war peace. The Nazi comparison is ridiculous, when Russia's actions are better compared with other Russian actions that the Allies approved of. Even the creation of the Eastern Bloc was agreed by the Allies themselves.

Repeating past mistakes

The assumption that the UK was a blameless and righteous power in earlier conflicts, and that the same approach should be cosplayed to maintain European security now, is also wrong.

The UK made strategically and morally dubious commitments in both World Wars and helped to start them. Britain's alliance with Belgium committed it to fight there in World War One, and was stupid. After the horrors of that conflict, the recognition that it was wrong to sacrifice so many men and deplete our own strength to protect a small country that would hardly appreciate it set in. That was the logic of Neville Chamberlain.

However maligned Chamberlain is, he had a point, from a moral perspective. As with Belgium, arguments about Britain defending Poland were irrational. Britain could not in fact help Poland, for purely logistical reasons, so it was making a pledge it could not fulfil. Of course, that did not make Britain's role in starting the war irrational; the pledge was simply fake. The strategic basis for waging a war on Germany and forgetting about Poland's fate was rational. Nazi Germany was an unacceptable competitor. Then, they conquered resources in Czechoslovakia and Poland and became an even more unacceptable competitor. The declaration of war was a choice in Britain's interests, not Poland's.

The Second World War is considered to be a just war. A consensus on that is still essential to the global security maintained by the victors of the war, the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. However, it was only truly known to be a just war at some point during it, when evidence of Axis atrocities was clearer. In the early days of the war, the conflict seemed like no more than a repeat of World War One.

Unnecessary grand alliances

The First World War was not a just war, and was not necessary for Britain. It was solely the result of faulty moral proclamations about protecting Belgium from the propagandised "Hun". It was not worth the loss of life to Britain, to prevent the Germans from humiliating France as they did in the Franco-Prussian War and were attempting to repeat.

The current pre-"World War Three" tensions in Eastern Europe are a lot more like those of World War One than World War Two. There is no clear indication that the other side is evil, carrying out any sort of mass atrocity, or planning anything truly offensive to humanity, so there is no moral case to make an alliance.

Britain has no strategic need for Ukraine or Poland. There are no cultural, linguistic or historical ties to either country. These is no reason to share their burdens, anymore than there is a need for us to share Morocco's burdens and side with it against Western Sahara. They are completely irrelevant, and yet our necks are potentially being risked for them.

It seems as if, in their eagerness to become heroes by re-enacting World War Two, British politicians have forgotten not just the horror of that war but the horror of World War One. Their cosplay is being done with no apparent goal in mind other than their own stardom.

Perceptions of World War Two still guide many a thought about how to wage war. Many see the Allies as a supreme example to follow to achieve victory, apparently forgetting that the Allies spent the start of the Second World War being picked off and defeated one at a time.

The newest big military alliance that seems to be under construction is the one against Iran in the Persian Gulf, with Israel cooperating more openly with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates in the area. It is unlikely that such cooperation would offset the kind of damage Iran is able to do against any specific target in that area such as a ship, naval base or oil facility if it actually goes on the offensive. So, what's the point?

Forming an alliance is the first thing to do if you are scared of taking a lot of damage from an adversary, and would prefer the damage to be more spread out across your broad coalition. If casualties are spread out between different member states of NATO in Afghanistan, for example, each country can brag that it lost very few soldiers while defeating many Taliban. But how does it look when your massive 30-nation alliance gets defeated by a small guerrilla organisation in one country?

Lack of commitment or willingness to fight alone

Another example of an alliance proving absolutely ineffective is the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. The coalition of Arab armies is not only failing to crush a rebellion in the country but running away, surrendering ground to low-tech rebels.

The problem is that alliances are usually formed to cover up weakness in the first place, and that weakness still exists in them. Alliances often lack commitment, and indeed they are formed in the first place by members who lacked the commitment to fight alone and sought an easier path.

Your military alliance helps the enemy target you

For example, when World War Two began, Germany achieved a massive winning streak against the Allies by simply targeting them one at a time. Allies form their alliance because they feel stronger at the thought of standing shoulder to shoulder with others against an adversary, like some propaganda poster emblazoned with slogans of strength in unity, but practical reality often doesn't work out that way. Often, it works out more like a hit list for the opponent, who now knows who to bump off when he sees them alone in some dark alley.

When the Germans formed their own mighty alliance to attack the Soviet Union, the USSR played the same game the Germans had played, targeting the weaker members of the Axis alliance on the frontline as a means of flanking the Germans. Were it not for the Germans' desire for a mighty coalition, and their false sense of security in that coalition, Soviet victory at Stalingrad may have been unattainable. The Soviets needed no allies to turn the tide in that battle, but the Germans failed because of their allies.

A domino effect

It is worthy of mention that NATO's Asian counterpart, SEATO, dissolved almost immediately after America lost the Vietnam War, proving that all it takes to destroy such a military alliance is to destroy one party protected by the alliance. Since an alliance often involves weak members and thoughtlessly adds members to its ranks, including pitiful ones, defeating an alliance member becomes so easy that the alliance's existence is more of a boon to the opponent than a threat. This is why NATO would not add the feeble Afghan regime or any other especially weak government to its alliance, since it might tie the fate of the alliance to that one regime, as was the case with South Vietnam.

In a military coalition, one member is always more vulnerable than another, and another is more vulnerable following the fall of that first one. As such, alliances often fall like dominoes. Unless their individual members are mighty and committed enough to go it alone and take all the casualties for a significant amount of time (like the British Commonwealth, followed by the Soviet Union, in World War Two) a military alliance means little against a strong peer opponent.

In their worst form, alliances are just propaganda, a false parade of flags to lift the spirits of a fool, good for enticing you to go to war in the first place but not for helping you win.

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