Appeasement, Realism, Collusion and Analysis

 “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last”.

Winston Churchill

May 28th. I am an analyst. I am not a politician and thankfully for Europe and the wider world I am not a commander. Some say I am a good analyst. If so, my job is to analyse, not proselytise or order.  Last week I was in Poland at the superb Strategic Ark Conference hosted by the outstanding Polish International Affairs Institute and led by my friend, the impressive Slawomir Debski. At the Conference I spoke to Polish ministers, senior commanders, as well as senior Ukrainian friends and contacts.

Like most reasonable people I deplore Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its subsequent atrocities. I am also firmly committed to a Ukraine that is whole and free and a Europe that is secure from further Russian aggression. BUT, I am not going to collude in the pretence of action where none exists. At the conference one senior Polish figure, who I greatly admire, rather sneered at so-called ‘realists’ for questioning whether Ukraine can evict Russia from the 18% of Ukrainian territory it is currently occupying and thus return to its 1991 borders. His argument was that all wars ebb and flow and whilst this is a hard moment for Ukrainian forces they will somehow magically prevail. 

Wars only flow, as opposed to ebb, because some internal or external factor changes. Take World War Two. Yes, Britain defied the Nazis in 1940 but could not defeat them alone. The external change factor was that America and Russia joined the war in 1941 which acted as a massive force multiplier for Britain’s efforts. At present, Ukraine is fighting an incompetent Russia led by an entrenched megalomaniac nationalist with both sides near exhaustion. The war is thus drifting towards stalemate over the bodies of thousands of dead young men, like some World War One cloud of mustard gas. In the time it has taken me to write this piece more will have been killed in the human meat-grinder that is eastern Ukraine.

And yet, I am being asked to pretend by leaders that Ukraine will win, even though Kyiv’s Western partners are clearly unwilling to take any risk or supply and re-supply the Ukrainians all the necessary equipment and resources they need. Many Western states are not even prepared to rapidly build up their own defence industries simply to replace the weapons they have already given Ukraine.

Let me be clear: as an analyst I will NOT collude with strategically illiterate and pretentious politicians who have done so much to reduce the West this century through their incompetence and risk aversion. They did it in Iraq. They did it in Afghanistan. Now, they are doing it in Ukraine. They are NOT even prepared to provide free Ukraine with the security guarantee of affording NATO membership. This profound lack of strategic imagination and leadership is not just a tragedy for those dying in this war, often horribly (Western publics never see that because our leaders treat us like children).

Freedom can never be secure in the absence of well-led power and playing politics with strategy is the very opposite of good leadership. Once again, Western politicians are asking analysts to pretend the emperor is magnificent when he really does have no clothes simply in the hope that the rest of the world does not see our nakedness…it does!

The tragic irony is that the West is so close to defeating Russia on Russia’s terms if only it had the political will and the courage to offer Ukraine a road-map to NATO membership. Historians will come to view Putin’s War as one of the great historical cockups. OK, he might gain some or all of Donbas and Crimea, but he has already lost Finland, Sweden, and the rest of Ukraine to the West, the very thing he wanted to prevent.

Let me also be clear to strategically challenged wishful thinkers: unless there is a very marked uplift in Western support for Ukraine the stalemate to which I refer will be highly unstable even if a new temporary Line of Contact is established. Ukrainian forces have been forced onto the defensive precisely because the collective West has decided for a host of mainly domestic factors and political weakness that its leaders do not really care enough to make it otherwise. The question now is whether the survival of the rest of Ukraine as a free state is a risk worth taking for Western leaders who time and again this century have demonstrated they lack both the strategic patience and acumen to prevail in long wars. And, how long before Putin launches the next phase?

To paraphrase Churchill: an appeaser is indeed one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last, whilst a colluder is one who assists the crocodile in the business of consumption. A realist, on the other hand, is simply one who understands that unless he can find a way to kill the crocodile first then he too will be eaten. Still, at least he is willing to give it a go…as Churchill did. An analyst? He or she is simply one who describes the crocodile, warts, teeth and all, for what it is…a bloody crocodile. Or, at least, they should be...

Julian Lindley-French