No.238 - We Have to Make A Stand. Now!
Dear James,
The difference between liberal democracy and authoritarian autocratic rule has never been so starkly and brutally revealed. Today Vladimir Putin is about to place a column of heavy weaponry, 40 miles long, around Kyiv, the capital of the Ukraine. These weapons include massive artillery pieces, multi-stage rocket launchers, hundreds of tanks and similar numbers of armoured personnel carriers. When they are unleashed they will kill thousands of innocent people in Kyiv. Women and children will be his victims. It has never been clearer that nations in the hands of autocrats and their cronies adhere to only two principles - that ‘might is right’ and they will protect that power to the end.
Until recently, I believed that this ultimate clash between good and evil, liberalism and autocracy, would not happen for a few years yet and then probably in Taiwan. I was wrong. It’s happening here and it’s happening now in the Ukraine. The Free World has a choice. Stand up and stop it or forgo our moral superiority for many years to come. Anything less will amount to a surrender to evil.
Putin’s tactic has always been to escalate and if necessary, in the final analysis, to escalate to the threat to use his nuclear arsenal. He has shown this in Chechnya, in Syria and also in our own country. I’m told that in Syria, wounded soldiers were told to turn off their mobile phones before they got to hospital because the Russians would follow the signals and, at the right moment, destroy the hospital with a precision missile. Hospitals, children or women have never deterred Putin. He has never recognized the Geneva Convention and has known until now that the West would not challenge him because we don’t have the guts to fight for our beliefs. This morning, in Poland, our own Prime Minister was confronted by a woman, Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Centre who said she was "very disappointed" by the PM. "I see that there is a sense of hopelessness from the West”, she told him face to face. She then very movingly compared the predicament of a Ukrainian mother and her young children cowering in an underground car park in Kyiv with western politicians living normal lives in London and New York. She wanted a no-fly zone instituted in Ukrainian air space. It was powerful stuff for which Boris Johnson had no answer except that we could not institute a no-fly zone because it would mean shooting down Russian aircraft and that would mean nuclear war. The last time this happened was in Cuba in 1962. Then, the world survived by a hair’s breadth. But only because President Kennedy stood up against the threat. And that, in the end, is the only thing that crazed autocrats will understand. Unless and until we are willing to do that we will be seen as weak and the autocrat will win.
There is much rhetoric swirling around the world today. This morning a Zoom speech by Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, at the Council for Civil Liberties in Geneva was met by a walkout of the vast majority of delegates. Similar is happening at the UN General Assembly in New York today. But rhetoric is words. Words mean nothing to autocrats unless accompanied by actions. The Free World has this time acted to a degree beyond what Putin ever expected. However, it has not acted on Putin’s ultimate threat. To use his nuclear arsenal. Why? Because the Free World is not willing to face another Cuban Missile Crisis. Putin sees this as weakness and, although I hate to say this, unless each and everyone of us is willing to put ourselves on the front line over Ukraine, he’ll be proven right yet again.
So the evil day can no longer be put off, James. We’ve dithered far too long. For the second time since the Second World War, the Free World is facing its ultimate test. A no fly zone may require us to confront Russian jets yet, remember, those jets will not be over Russia. They’ll be over an invading army operating over a free nation fighting for its life in the cities and fields below. It’s for those reasons, that I, with a very heavy heart, say that Boris Johnson and the Rest of the Free World must now take that risk. Institute a ‘No-Fly Zone’. Now!
BH - Your Concerned Constituent