Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 213

Russia: Time To Ease Back

The dual signals now coming from Russia are in the classic conflicting form of the diplomatic message that the time has come to talk. On the one hand Russia has used its influence to make the separatists yield up control of the MH17 crash site and has not given any decisive help to separatist fighters as they lose ground  to the advancing Ukrainian army.  On the other it has announced a major air exercise close to the Ukraine border.

The West can therefore claim that its targeted sanctions have had some effect, while Russia can assert it will no longer be lectured and pushed around. The separatists can see that union with Russia is a fading hope, while Kiev can see that full control of the eastern provinces without some kind of federal structure allowing a good deal of autonomy is impossible. So it should be feasible to find a way forward to end the crisis and the West needs to start the ball rolling. It will find it will roll easily to Moscow; it will not be uphill.

Failure to do that while maintaining a programme of isolating Russia, may provoke Moscow to lash out with an unexpected military move. The Russian military is tactically cleverer than that of the Western powers, not least because of a simpler command structure. Some will remember their lightening seizure of Pristina Airport at the end of the Kosovo war. Their move in response to Georgia’s foolhardy attack on South Ossetia was fast, effective and final. Moreover there has been no trouble since and Georgia has recovered its humiliation and prospered. This is in sharp contrast to the chaos and violence continuing in every country in which the West has intervened militarily since 9/11.

Looking at the statistics indicates no reason for the West to be paranoid about Russia. The combined populations of the US and EU are plus 800 million, whereas Russia has under 150 million. In economic terms the combined economies of the U.S and EU are 16x that of Russia. The total defence expenditure of NATO countries including the US was close on $ 1 trillion in 2012, while Russia spent $90 billion. These margins are more than enough to enable the West to come up with a foreign policy stronger than appeasement but short of bullying. At all costs there must be the recognition that Russia is very nervous about both NATO’s and the EU’s advance eastwards and any solution will either have to bring Russia into both as a full member, or recognise a sphere of influence for her in her near abroad.

Let us hope there is a leader in the West with the vision to start the discussion. One thing is for sure. It won’t be Cameron.

 

 

Ed Milliband: A Courageous Stand

It is an odd paradox that Ed Milliband is a much better Leader of the Opposition than David Cameron is Prime Minister, yet the latter is popular in his role and the latter is not.

Readers of this blog will know that it is my policy to look beneath and behind and not to join tribal movements of any kind. It is a significant indication of the character beneath the geeky aspect of Ed that it is he, not the Prime Minister, who has spoken for the vast majority in the nation in expressing condemnation of Israel’s sadistic bombardment of Gaza. He has done this, coming as he does from a Jewish family who found sanctuary from tyranny in Britain and whose grandfather was a Holocaust victim.

Not only has Ed Milliband wrong footed the silent Cameron, he has confirmed the fact that Israel has suffered a sea changing strategic defeat. Up till now there has been a hint that  criticism of the Jewish State was de-facto anti-semitic. This is no longer the case. Jews the world over are as horrified as everybody else. By its heavy handed military tactics and its obdurate approach to any form of peace discussion, Israel has separated itself from the high aspirations and principles of it founders,  and in so doing it has pulled open a plughole, down which sympathy for it is fast draining away.

1914-2014 : What Lessons?

The most striking outcome of the extensive programme of commemorations and historical analysis, including personal histories of ordinary men called to the colours or who volunteered, has been the final realisation that little good came out of what became the Great War. The scale of the sacrifice in no way measures up the meagre gains of the failed peace which followed. The mantra that they died so that we might live is no longer credible. For the first time the wider public knows that we would have lived anyway and if a wiser course had been chosen, so would they.

In a remarkably powerful Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, linked WWI and WWII together, through the diarised memories of the distinguished soldier, Alan Brooke (later Field Marshall Lord Alanbrooke) and concluded that there was  merit in the Christian teaching that the better way than fighting to eliminate enemies was to make them friends. Clearly there will be limitations; the Nazis and Pol Pot spring to mind at once.

In 1914 there were no such monsters in play. The nearest was the Tzar with his absolute rule and peasants in serfdom. Germany is painted as a repressive autocracy without merit and a threat to civilisation, but that is nonsense. Coming from an Anglo-German family split by the conflict, I know this be be so beyond any argument. Certainly the Kaiser was peculiar, even unbalanced, but he could have been managed without the slaughter of millions. Germany had been Britain’s traditional ally of long standing. Had the two countries stuck together, either the war would not have taken place or it would have been over by the first Christmas. Britain would probably not have even joined in. The Second World War would never have happened. Hitler would have been unheard of.

My father fought for the British as did my uncle. My father survived from the first day, when he volunteered, to the last. My uncle was killed at the Somme. He was just eighteen. I have no idea how many cousins fell on the other side. The biggest lesson to reflect upon this day one hundred years on is that most wars are unnecessary, all have consequences and few of those, in the end, turn out to be worthwhile. There are exceptions but the exceptions do not alter the rule.

Gay Priest Wronged

Like a multitude of others, this blog is outraged that a Church of England Canon has had his appointment as an NHS chaplain cancelled because he has recently married his partner and the local bishop has revoked his licence to act as a priest in the NHS.

This is intolerable. Unfortunately the C of E was given an exemption from the Act which made legal same sex marriages. The NHS, however, is not exempt from the law of the land,  under which it cannot deny employment to some person because of their sexual orientation or marital status. It is therefore in breach of the law.

This disgraceful episode underscores the mistake of having the Church function under one set of laws and the State operate under another, without a clear statement of principle that State law has primacy which the church cannot overrule. The Church of England must either further rethink its current penchant for putting its own doctrine above the fundamental principles of Christian teaching, or face disestablishment and a requirement to fall into line with the law of the land in all things without exception.

Meanwhile the NHS needs to think again about this cruel insult to a man of the highest integrity and the best intention. People in suffering or grief can gain great comfort from the support of a priest, regardless of the niceties of doctrinal controversy. Not one victim in crisis would care tuppence for the Bishop’s licence anyway.

Cameron is Dangerous.

Cameron has written to NATO leaders urging various increases in military preparedness in eastern Europe to send a signal to Russia not to put a foot further west. To put it simply Cameron is either briefed by the wrong people or he is strategically clueless when it comes to foreign policy. In a changing world where the tectonic plates of power are in flux, this is dangerous not for Russia but for Britain.

Cameron was the first to suggest backing the rebels against Gaddafi; Libya is now a failed state with Europeans in flight from the country and embassies shutting down. He was at the forefront of the bomb Syria campaign which mercifully his own backbenchers stopped. He has been confrontational in Europe. He is gleefully painting the Russians into a corner from which at some point they may lose patience and lash out. His backing for the rebels in Syria finds him lined up awkwardly with Al Qaeda affiliates. He has been slow, slower even than Washington, to remonstrate with Israel over its bombardment of Gaza.

He has been the hawk at the heart of European policy making, oblivious to the failure of every initiative, the string of post 9/11 failed and failing states and the simple fact that refusal to work with Russia has made the situation in Ukraine worse not better. To the unsavoury element in Kiev he turns a blind or naive eye. Now that Hague has gone from the foreign office there is nobody to whisper caution in his ear. He believes that diplomacy is about confrontation and red lines; those countries who do not bow down are enemies. He has absolutely no comprehension of the notion that diplomacy is about building alliances founded on common interests and building influence through friendship and cooperation.

This is all a terrible pity because on the face of it he is a nice, kind and considerate man.

Statins: A Personal Experience

There is quite a lot of media coverage of an alleged error in an article in the British Medical Journal which apparently contained a statistical mistake about the effectiveness and risks of blanket prescription of statins for everybody over, I believe, forty. This is what happened to me.

I was prescribed statins when my cholesterol level was marginally high. I have a genetic liver condition called Gilbert’s Syndrome which makes the liver work a little differently but is not considered to have clinical significance. After a month on the statins I became ill with vomiting and difficulty in digesting food. The statins were stopped but it took two years before I could eat a meal in the evening and all meals had to be reduced, resulting in major weight loss, without having previously been overweight.

I am now fully recovered and by adjusting my diet my cholesterol readings are well within normal for my age. Cholesterol should be dealt with by diet and only if that fails, or there are other reasons for the problem, should statins be prescribed. Blanket feeding of these pills to the population is ridiculous. It is like giving people a pill to combat heavy drinking when the true medical solution is to cut down alcohol intake.

Drug based medical treatment should be a last resort, not a first call. Too many doctors see themselves, or are required to see themselves, as  super pharmacists. They need to get back to being medical practitioners. It is a different thing altogether.

Israel and Gaza: Another Ceasefire Fails.

This is very bad news. The world will watch in mounting dismay at the very real suffering among the people of Gaza, who are, whatever their faults, human beings whose plight as ready targets in an area from which escape or safe shelter is impossible, ranks among one of the most upsetting  in the long sorry history of human conflict.

Strategically this is already a defeat for Israel. Before the conflict Hamas was on its uppers; now it is once again on the up. The sheer wanton brutality of a military campaign which batters residential areas in which the majority of the dead and injured have to be women and children, even if a few fighters are also blasted, violates the very principles of civilised behaviour which the Israeli State was founded to champion. This unequal contest of arms shocks Jews the world over as much as everybody else.

The excuses and explanations of the Netanyahu government are insupportable. Of course Hamas will fire rockets because the people of Gaza are held blockaded in a mass prison, lacking the facilities, means,  and money for a normal life and the economy to make any progress. Israel has made a virtue  of being repressive to the Palestinians so that no realistic prospects exist for a just peace. To this is added a bloodthirsty lust for excessive military force which is truly shocking.

If Israel wanted to be proportionate it could neutralize the Hamas rockets with its iron dome, and blow up the tunnels from within its own border with the fighters in them if necessary. Instead a murderous bombardment of civilians has done enormous damage to Israel’s credibility worldwide. If the people of Israel want to have any kind of future free from never ending wars and uncertainty, they need to elect themselves a different kind of government which understands better the values their country was inaugurated to enshrine.

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NATO: Is It Prepared?

It depends for what. According to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee, NATO is not ready to deal with the ‘Russian Threat’.  This Blog admires the Chairman of this committee more than almost any other MP. Rory Stewart is a writer, broadcaster, academic, historian and former soldier. He is perhaps the expert on  Middle East history since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It is therefore regrettable that he has led his committee to a wrong conclusion. This is that NATO needs to pull its socks up to confront potential overt and covert threats to former Soviet dominated states in Eastern Europe, sighting previously Georgia and South Ossetia and currently Ukraine and the Crimea as warnings to heed.

This Blog has argued extensively and exhaustively that Russia is not an enemy but the West is in danger of making it one. Russia is far more nervous of actual advances by NATO east than the West is of any supposed expansion of Russia westwards. Russia, faced with a relentless barrage of vitriol from people she still hopefully callers her partners, may indeed decide she has had enough and become an obstructive and belligerent rival in every sphere of foreign policy, forming an alliance with China and Iran and possibly India to form an alternative camp to resist and challenge western interests both financially and diplomatically wherever in the world they are asserted. Anybody in the West who supposes this would be a good thing is a fool.

Russia, with memories of invading armies going back to Napoleonic times, is paranoid about what it used to call its near abroad. It would not be difficult to find a formula for reassurance. As previously argued the best would be to bring Russia and all its former satellites into NATO. The threat to western civilisation comes from other quarters. Tony Blair was right to point that out.

Gaza Agony

It is true that Israel is threatened by Hamas. It is true that Hamas’s command, control and rocket launch infrastructure is honeycombed within residential areas of Gaza, not least because it is a tiny area with a dense population. It s also true that Hamas rockets can and do kill and maim Israelis indiscriminately. And, yes, the tunnel system for infiltration into Israel is not a tenuous thread of uncertainty, but a well engineered and effective conduit through which fighters can pop out of the ground in Israel and create mayhem. It is certainly true that Israel has a right and indeed a duty to defend itself and its people against these threats.

What is less certain is whether the scale of the Israeli response is proportionate and whether the large scale slaughter and maiming of women and children, which continues to shock the world, is justified. What is quite certain and beyond all doubt, is the fact that this kind of punitive bombardment of a population forcibly contained within the target area will stiffen resistance and feed resentment among Palestinians, making a solution more difficult to find. The aim of Israel should not be heavy handed punishment campaigns, which at best build a shattered calm which will not last long, but a lasting peace which will put an end once and for all to these recurring wars, which achieve nothing but suffering on all sides.