Category: Russia

“Not waving, but drowning”

 24th February 2022

Here is a tweet worth pondering:

In its form and content the first couple of sentences of Farage’s tweet evoke one of the greatest English poems of the last century, the first verse of which is:

“Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.”

For at the moment everyone involved in the Ukraine invasion – Putin included – seem to be going much further out than others would have thought.

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In the United Kingdom we are facing this international crisis with perhaps the weakest cabinet in British political history.

And this is not a party political point – for some Conservative cabinets have been very strong indeed.

One example of this weakness is the Foreign Secretary whose idea of escalation is to contrive (effectively) photo-opportunities:

And so we ended up with a photo-opportunity, but in words:

The only thing this exercise showed is that we have a rather gullible Foreign Secretary:

This lack of seriousness by the United Kingdom government can be seen elsewhere:

7 March is over ten days away.

“hobble”

*
The fundamental problem, of course, is that there is little that the United Kingdom can actually do in this situation.
As this blog averred a couple of days ago, ‘sanctions’ are often things we use so as to pretend to ourselves that we are not politically impotent.
Any ‘sanction’ that would have any significant effect will adversely affect us at least as much as Russia – and there is no real political stomach for such self-inflicted pain.
And any military (mis)adventure is capable of ending in disaster.
The stark truth is that sometimes there is nothing that can be done when something must be done.
Of course: Ukraine must be given any aid and assistance it requests.
And we can hope that Putin and Russia will implode from their misadventure.
In these circumstances, sanctions and other measures can be public goods, worthwhile doing in and of themselves.
But we should have no illusion that they will have the direct effects that are wanted.
For in practice, ‘sanctions’ are likely to be mere pebbles and boulders being placed against the flow of Russian money.
The river will just find its way round such impediments.
And in the face of that torrent of money, we are not waving, but drowning.

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