War on Our Doorstep: How do we respond?

[djnotts]

Apparently someone has finally told Starmer how many troops UK actually HAS.

BBC News press round-up:

"The Financial Times reports that Sir Keir Starmer has shown a "change of heart" about plans for a peacekeeping force in Ukraine. The paper says he's turning towards air and sea support for Kyiv, rather than putting European boots on the ground.

Defence Secretary John Healey has spoken to the Times about Britain's nuclear deterrent, warning that it has the power to inflict "untold damage". He made the comments in an interview with the paper, after laying the keel for the first of Britain's new generation of nuclear submarines."

Let's hope Putin is playing a very long game.....

[Nearholmer]

TBH, Im more than a little confused about how precisely a British, or broader Western European, force would be deployed, but then maybe that’s part of the point: to make very clear that there is a substantial force available that could be used in multiple different ways, and to maintain constructive ambiguity during negotiations.

There’s certainly a lot of sabre-rattling going-on in both directions, which is both good and very bad at the same time.

[djnotts]

^ Nearholmer:

"TBH, Im more than a little confused about how precisely a British, or broader Western European, force would be deployed, ........"

I suspect those considering/threatening such deployment are no less confused than you (and I).

"....but then maybe that’s part of the point: to make very clear that there is a substantial force available that could be used in multiple different ways, and to maintain constructive ambiguity during negotiations."

But is there (in theory probably yes) and could it (in practice probably no)?

Constructive ambiguity is a nice concept, but in this instance the rest-of-the-west is a minor player in the negotiations - Trump has been pretty unambiguous, throwing away the stick from day one and relying on only the carrot of profit.

[pete75]

Apparently someone has finally told Starmer how many troops UK actually HAS.

BBC News press round-up:

"The Financial Times reports that Sir Keir Starmer has shown a "change of heart" about plans for a peacekeeping force in Ukraine. The paper says he's turning towards air and sea support for Kyiv, rather than putting European boots on the ground.

Defence Secretary John Healey has spoken to the Times about Britain's nuclear deterrent, warning that it has the power to inflict "untold damage". He made the comments in an interview with the paper, after laying the keel for the first of Britain's new generation of nuclear submarines."

Let's hope Putin is playing a very long game.....

Untold damage if it works, which it may not. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68355395

[Nearholmer]

concept, but in this instance the rest-of-the-west is a minor player in the negotiations

True, but I only said “during”, not “while participating in”.

[djnotts]

concept, but in this instance the rest-of-the-west is a minor player in the negotiations

True, but I only said “during”, not “while participating in”.

I concede!

[Biospace]

Surely it's not difficult to recognise the commonalities between British and Russian people? If my opinion is that we have more in common with them than US citizens, do you have a problem with this unless I write a small essay on the subject in evidence of my opinion? It appears so. If you're so disbelieving, I'll offer two points: tea drinking and our home cities being bombed by the Germans in the 1940s.

Or perhaps, through treating opinions contrary to your own as facts, you simply enjoy trying to pick apart points of those who question you, rather than engaging with the actual discussion in a constructive manner.

I had, genuinely, expected any substantive reply to set out some cultural synergy I was unaware of. Instead, you seem to believe that tea drinking and the shared experience of being bombed by Nazi Germany... are an appropriate basis for deciding geopolitical allegiances today. Have you found anyone in the Foreign Office who supports that approach?

As others have pointed out, this place is intended to be somewhere for discussion. I have my opinions - that the Russian situation was could have been managed far better by both the EU and USA after the fall of the USSR, that war often leads to more war, that unexpected consequences often follow even the most carefully planned campaigns, that sending too many UK missiles into Russia is not the best route to a stable and lasting peace.

It's also my opinion that the mineral wealth under Ukrainian soil plays a significant part in everyone's interest in that nation, that Russia can not be beaten in conventional military action along its own borders without a massive loss of life and risking sounding the starting pistol for WW3, that the nature of Western involvement in Ukraine have added to a situation which eventually prodded Putin into this war (after years of ignored warnings), that we've driven Russia ever further into the Chinese state's influence - who is likely to be the main longer term beneficiary.

And yes, it’s my personal view that British people have more in common with Russian people than with Americans. You're more than welcome to disagree with any or all of these opinions - they are, after all, personal to me. Perhaps it's possible you're able to engage more thoughtfully than you do? I could provide plenty of examples to back up what you refer to as 'cultural synergy,' but I don’t see this as the place for an in-depth essay - as I put to you a few pages back, if you're genuinely interested start a topic on this very subject, it's a fascinating one.

Here, I’m far more concerned with how to go about creating the conditions for lasting peace and stability, in particular creating a strong, pragmatic European approach rather than relying so heavily on American money and armaments. Putting an end to the ongoing loss of so many young lives - and future hatred - should be central to the whole discussion.

[Lance Dopestrong]

Patton wanted to rollup up the soviets at the end of WWII while they were weak.

He was derided for it at the time, and some suggest even murdered for continuing to promote the idea, but the intervening 80 years have shown that Old Blood and Guts probably had the right idea.

[djnotts]

With no (visible) signs of Europe (incl UK) filling the gap, any deal will likely result at best in a Ukraine-rump fighting on for maybe a year before Russia holds all the land. USA business probably allowed to operate in some sort of partnership with Putin's oligarchy.
Putin and Trump have realised, correctly, that EU/UK simply doesn't have the political nor popular will to go to war now in order to avoid being rolled over completely some time in the future. It could take on Russia without USA, but it won't.
As the headlines say:
"Several front pages reflect US President Donald Trump's insistence that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is jeopardising a peace deal with Russia. "Back my peace or lose all of Ukraine, warns Trump" is the headline on the front of the Daily Mail. The Times says there has been "rage" from the White House after Ukraine "appeared to resist a US ultimatum to concede swathes of territory". The Guardian says Trump has warned his Ukrainian counterpart that "Crimea is lost"". (BBC News)
About right for once I think.

[Nearholmer]

And yes, it’s my personal view that British people have more in common with Russian people than with Americans.

Im still intrigued by this notion.

Why do you think that?

FWIW, I think we have a lot less in common with very many people in the USA than the unfortunate coincidence of language suggests, but I’m really struggling to understand why you think we have more in common with people in Russia. How do you know?

[toontra]

And yes, it’s my personal view that British people have more in common with Russian people than with Americans.

If that was indeed the case then it would lay open the possibility of, at some point in the future, British people being happy to live under a corrupt dictatorship where any dissent could result in (at best) imprisonment or death.

I have this conversation with a family member - a native Serbian and Putin/Trump-worshiper. I point out to her that if we were having the converse conversation in Russia and it was overeheard there could be dire consequences for the person criticising the state. That's the difference and it's a pretty massive one.

Mind you, the way things are going with UK politics such an outcome sadly seems less and less unlikely.

[roubaixtuesday]

And yes, it’s my personal view that British people have more in common with Russian people than with Americans.

If that was indeed the case then it would lay open the possibility of, at some point in the future, British people being happy to live under a corrupt dictatorship where any dissent could result in (at best) imprisonment or death.

I have this conversation with a family member - a native Serbian and Putin/Trump-worshiper. I point out to her that if we were having the converse conversation in Russia and it was overeheard there could be dire consequences for the person criticising the state. That's the difference and it's a pretty massive one.

Mind you, the way things are going with UK politics such an outcome sadly seems less and less unlikely.

re more in common with Americans, the emboldened is literally what is happening in the US right now. People are being grabbed off the streets by masked men and imprisoned indefinitely without due process.

[deeferdonk]

Patton wanted to rollup up the soviets at the end of WWII while they were weak.

He was derided for it at the time, and some suggest even murdered for continuing to promote the idea, but the intervening 80 years have shown that Old Blood and Guts probably had the right idea.

Would have to disagree with that.
The Soviets outnumbered the Allies, Britain and other allied countries weakened after years of war, Germany needed to be occupied, Japan still to be defeated and occupied, it would have been insanity to go into a further protracted war with the Soviets and probable communist Chinese allies. The US's only guaranteed and expedient victory would be the deployment of Nukes against Moscow, but wouldn't have been able to occupy all of Soviet land so would have been years of resistance/guerrilla warfare, millions more dead.

[Lance Dopestrong]

Would have to disagree with that.

It's recorded historical fact. That is exactly what Patton wanted.

Patton's forces rolled up the Wermacht in North Africa, Sicily, and then France and Germany. I've been in the Army and I wouldn't second guess arguably the most effective (if highly controversial and unorthodox) allied commander of land forces of the entire war.

Throw in the small fact that the US was by then a nuclear power and the soviets were not and Patton's belief becomes even more compelling.

Pattons plan was to re-arm the Wermacht and bring them under allied control. Politically that was completely unpalatable, but militarily it is likely that such combined allied forces would have prevailed. To this day the scenario is still wargamed at Sandhurst and is, in the main, regarded as a viable scenario, at least militarily.

Patton is on record on multiple occasions showing support for taking the soviets, and I don't have the credentials to contradict his belief that it was achievable. Unless your surname is "Rommel" it's unlikely that you do either.

[Nearholmer]

There’s a mass of documented snippets, speculation, and entirely made-up stuff about what Patton may or may not have advocated militarily, either semi-privately, or publicly, and where his political sympathies did or didn’t lay, so it’s hard to pick out truth from fantasy, but what does seem clear is that he came perilously close to forgetting that a soldier, however senior, and however good they are at their job, is an arms-bearing civil servant, so is under the direction of their political masters.