Category Archives: Politics

Books, China, Government, Politics, Russia, Society, United States

Book Review: Autocracy, Inc

LITERARY REVIEW

Intro: Standing up to the tyrants in the East

THERE isn’t a more rigorous and engaging analyst of the crimes of the erstwhile Soviet dictatorship than Anne Applebaum, the acclaimed author of the Pulitzer prize-winning history of the Gulag, and also of Red Famine: Stalin’s War On Ukraine.

For her gifts, the historian is also rooted in the present, as a fearsomely active journalist, and the writer’s latest work is an up-to-the moment examination of how modern-day autocracies, not just that of Russia’s President Putin, but also including China, North Korea, and Iran, act as a kind of informal bloc to challenge what they see as the West’s “hegemony”.

It’s unfortunate that the phrase “axis of evil” has already been taken, since that would be a befitting description. Alas, it was inappropriately used by George W. Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to join together Iran, Iraq, and North Korea – which actually had no military or financial links at all.

Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, do, however, connect in this way, accelerated by Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

The only minor criticism of Applebaum’s formidable book is that it never mentions the Iraq War of 2003–2011 or the later Western intervention in Libya. For these were the developments which not only gave fuel to the anti-Western agenda, but also convinced many – including in the West itself – that we had little moral authority to criticise the military escapades launched by the Kremlin.

Applebaum is especially adept, however, in setting out the remarkable success of modern Russian propaganda – beyond the scope that Stalin could ever have dreamed of – using the worldwide web, and of China’s ability both to control its own people through technology and to censor what was thought to be unstoppable.

At the dawn of the millennium the ever-optimistic U.S. President Bill Clinton proclaimed that the internet would liberalise China, by exposing its people to all the possibilities and opportunities the free world had to offer.

When arguing, on similar grounds, for China to be admitted to the World Trade Organisation, he gave an address in which he ridiculed the idea that Beijing could keep a lid on things.

“Now, there’s no question that China’s been trying to crack down on the internet,” he declared. At that point, as Applebaum records, Clinton gave a wry smile, adding: “Good luck!” – and his audience joined in the laughter.

They are not laughing now. The Great Firewall of China, and even more sophisticated tools than that, have allowed Beijing to succeed, keeping billions of its citizens in a form of intellectual slavery.

In a similar vein, the German political establishment had long believed in the doctrine known as Wandel durch Handel – “change through trade” – the idea that making nice with Moscow in terms of market access would inevitably lead to political and cultural liberalisation. This was most notable with pipelines taking Russian gas to Europe. That dream, or self-interest, in terms of the aspirations of German business, has also been shattered. The kleptocracy just got richer and far  more ruthless. 

As the deputy mayor of St Petersburg in 1992, and in his first public role, the former KGB officer Putin argued that “the entrepreneurial class should become the basis for the flourishing of our society as a whole”. That was music to the ears of Western investors, but Putin was then, already, creaming off vast sums for himself and his associates, via his control of local export licences for raw material.

As Applebaum notes, under Putin’s perpetually renewed presidency this ultimately developed into “a full-blown autocratic kleptocracy, a Mafia state built and managed entirely for the purpose of enriching its leadership”. It was for his leading role in exposing this that Alexei Navalny paid with his life.

Despite his apparent personal austerity and regular crackdowns on colossal financial corruption within the Chinese Communist Party – the inescapable consequence of permanent one-party rule – Xi Jinping is only too happy to make common cause with the multibillionaire plutocrat Putin.

Central, this is because they share a primordial terror of a popular uprising against their regimes: in this context, it was striking how in 2022 Xi suddenly abandoned his hitherto iron-cast Covid lockdown measures after a public revolt threatened to spread to the streets of Beijing and Shanghai.

And the “no limits” friendship which Xi entered into with Putin on February 4, 2022, was specifically designed to demonstrate a kind of solidarity among autocracies, against what they both constantly refer to as the West’s “attempts at hegemony”.

Their joint communiqué denounced “the abuse of democratic values and interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states”. Weeks later, Putin sent his tanks towards Kyiv.

There was a tantalising glimpse of a possible fracture in the relationship at that moment: it seems likley that Xi was not given a warning by Putin of what was about to happen and, some months later, Beijing made public its grave concern about the Kremlin’s threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Nevertheless, as Anne Applebaum concludes, the challenge to “Autocracy, Inc” must come from within the West itself.

And, yet, if the forecasts are right, the American people seem likely to elect to the White House (again) their own version of Autocracy Inc: Donald J. Trump.

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Britain, Government, NATO, Politics, Russia, Society, Ukraine, United States

Give President Zelensky what he needs to defeat Putin

UKRAINE WAR

EUROPEAN leaders gathered at Blenheim Palace recently in a symposium that was a conduit for European solidarity. They surrounded Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in an image of steadfast support.

For Zelensky, he must be wondering how stalwart those allies really are. Two and a half years into Putin’s bloody and violent war, it must increasingly seem to Zelensky that NATO is offering just enough to keep Ukraine limping on – but not enough, anywhere near enough, in smashing Russian forces completely. What else could explain the West’s ambiguity and indecisiveness over the use of long-range weapons to attack targets inside Russia?

The British prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, has rebuffed Zelensky’s plea that he ditch the UK’s veto on Storm Shadow “bunker-buster” weapons, which have a range of up to 190 miles, easily capable of striking targets in Russia.

As it currently stands, the UK and other allies allow Ukraine to fire long-range missiles defensively at targets on Russian soil near the border, but not offensively or deep into Russian territory.

Such a position is, of course, calculated to avoid provoking Putin into wider retaliation. At the heart of that fear is the ultimate and terrifying prospect that the dictator might reach for the nuclear button, but even less apocalyptic concerns help to dictate policy.

Success in armed conflict can only be achieved if all the elements of the battlefield are dominated. In the traditional doctrine of NATO, this means winning “deep, close, and rear” battles – that is long-range strikes and raids on infrastructure (deep), front-line combat (close), and the essential support mechanisms such as logistics and headquarters (rear).

Just as Russia is hitting Ukrainian cities, factories, and infrastructure, any military general knows it is perfectly reasonable for Ukraine to do the same in order to degrade its enemy’s military capability. But with the current restrictions on missile use in place, Ukraine’s fighting forces can’t execute the “deep” battle. Zelensky is being forced to fight with one arm tied behind his back.

That’s why many are now pressing decision-makers in Washington, London, Berlin, and Paris to authorise the use of long-range weapons, such as the UK’s Storm Shadow, to strike targets inside Russia.

That would likely lead to some escalation. But as in the Cold War, many strategists are confident this war, at least, won’t go nuclear, despite the warnings of those concerned about the UK’s deepening involvement in the conflict.

For one thing, Russian tactics would probably use a tactical nuclear weapon only to stop an enemy breakthrough in Ukraine. Such a breakthrough could only occur in one of the four eastern provinces that Putin has decreed to be forever Russian. Where is the logic in irradiating many square miles of your own soil?

Then there is the relationship between China and Russia to consider. President Xi has so far offered only mild support to Putin and is unquestionably the dominant partner in the relationship. China has consistently opposed the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Of course, matters could seriously escalate long before it reached nuclear proportions.

A cyber attack on the scale of the IT outage chaos caused by CrowdStrike is well within Russia’s capability, as is severing underwater communications or energy pipelines in the North Sea. And if the Houthi rebels in Yemen were capable of striking Tel Aviv, we cannot rule out a long-range conventional missile strike on a target in Western Europe, even potentially one on the UK.

Nevertheless, military strategists and theoreticians often refer to the concept of “limited war” – that is, restricted in its aims and its geography. The war in Ukraine does indeed have limits, but history has demonstrated that Putin’s ambition is not restrained in the same way.

Before Ukraine there was Chechnya and Georgia. Why, after Ukraine, should we not think there might be Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia, or even all three? Why not Poland? Anxiety levels are already high in the Baltic States, and one has to wonder why at this moment in their history, both Sweden and Finland recently chose to join NATO. The fear of Russian expansion is tangible on Russia’s borders – no wonder the Poles are spending more than 4 per cent of GDP on defence and building the largest army in Europe.

Any discussion of Ukraine’s prospect of achieving military success must also confront the issue of Donald Trump returning to the White House in November. He has made the claim that he could settle the war in a day with one telephone call. If that’s the case, Ukraine must be given every chance to achieve a position of advantage on the battlefield before that call is made.

If this war is to have a successfully negotiated end, Ukraine must be in the strongest possible position at the start of any talks. The reality is that Putin must be stopped, and Ukraine is the place to stop him. The best means of doing so is by giving Kyiv what it needs to finish the job.

The price of stopping Putin now is far better than paying the price of a wider devastating war – as the history of the last century shows.

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Britain, Economic, Government, Politics, Society

Sir Keir Starmer and the UK Labour Party

BRITAIN

FOR the first time in 14 years, and following an accurate exit poll, we have a Labour government. As protocol states, Sir Keir Starmer travelled to Buckingham Palace for an audience with King Charles III. In that historic setting, the Monarch invited Sir Keir to formally become the 58th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and to form a Government.

The people of the UK have spoken, and Labour has convincingly won the election by a healthy majority.

There are many others, of course, who will be disappointed. But it is important to remember that our democracy can only function if the losers of a free and fair election graciously accept the result. As they have.

There is little doubt Sir Keir has turned his party around since becoming its leader.

Previously, it was slipping towards irrelevance under Jeremy Corbyn. Sir Keir set about expunging its Marxist policies and MPs, and has tackled the scourge of anti-Semitism with some success.

Transforming Labour into the party it is today has surely tested his mettle. Yet it is now that the hard work really needs to begin.

However, other than saying he puts “country first, party second” and wants “change”, Sir Keir has left voters with little clue about what he intends to do in power or how he would tackle the country’s many problems.

Wealth creation is his priority, but we know he will saddle business with a slew of new rules and obligations, while driving rich foreigners overseas by abolishing non-dom tax status.

Relying, as he does, on faster economic growth to pay for better public services is welcome. But what will fuel such a miraculous turnaround?

Of course, creating a stable political environment can help. Trade union reforms put forward by Angela Raynor, however, and a plan by Labour to give workers more rights, would likely inhibit that progress.

As a result, the party will inevitably need to raise money to fund its “agenda for change”.

Since it has pledged not to borrow more and will not slash public spending, the answer is likely to be taxing businesses, pensions, property, and inheritance. The politics of envy may soon surface.

Despite Sir Keir’s insistence that Labour can be trusted with defence, he has refused to commit to boost our dangerously depleted military to 2.5% of GDP. And that raises questions of whether the UK will be in a position to continue helping Ukraine in its war with Russia.

On soaring levels of immigration, which is putting intolerable strain on public services and social cohesion, and Sir Keir saying he will scrap the Rwanda scheme for illegal immigrants, Labour has offered no fresh thinking.

Other questions are multiplying. Given the need for energy security in a volatile world, is Sir Keir really going to ban new drilling licences for North Sea oil and gas? And what of Labour’s dogmatic target to decarbonise electricity by 2030? Quite clearly, that would risk the lights going out.

And will Sir Keir defend the ancient freedoms of the press? That’s essential in holding the powerful to account in a free and democratic society like the UK.

The millions of voters that have given him the landslide victory, Sir Keir must use it for the good of the whole nation – not just Left-wing interest groups.

For the Conservative Party, a disaster at the ballot box never seen before in its history, must lead to a period of reflection.

Over the years, the Conservatives have boasted of being a broad church, encompassing a wide range of views. Today, the congregation seems to have no unifying creed at all. This schism will continue with members moving to the far-right Reform UK Party led by Nigel Farage unless solutions can be found in stabilising traditional Conservative values and principles within the party.

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