Escalating sanctions will be an own goal for Europe
News & Social Media / Post
The Ukraine war will throw all of Europe into chaos
President Zelensky, speaking to the Italian Parliament has said “The Russians destroying our fuel depots, and preventing us from exporting wheat. It will lead to a food crisis in North Africa, sending thousands and thousands of migrants toward your shores unless this war is stopped. We need sanctions”.
Zelensky is running a diplomatic campaign all around Europe and the West, tapping into national security fears to spur more intensive action against Russia. The way he’s going about it you could be forgiven for thinking he wants to start World War Three. He’s hoping that his emotional blackmail will work on the virtue signalling simpletons in Europe’s ruling class. That’s actually a safe bet.
But he’s not wrong about an emerging food crisis. Russia and Ukraine supply thirty percent of the world’s wheat, and it is not beyond Putin to deliberately cause an African famine with a view to flooding Europe with migrants, It’s the one issue that could destabilise European politics, to the point where Italy or even France could quit the EU.
That is precisely why it is not in the Europe’s interests to ramp up sanctions.
We often roll out the word “sanctions”, believing it means dry non-violent technocratic measures in place of armed conflict. But let us not beat about the bush. In joining in sanctions we have declared an economic war on Russia, which could be every bit as deadly as a shooting war in the long run. Sanctions are certainly hurting Russia, but Putin does have cards to play. If he’s going down he can take all of Europe down with him by cutting off the gas and causing a another migrant crisis. This doesn’t end well for anybody.
In that respect, it could be the EU’s rogue members that save it. Hungary has said it will veto any sanctions, and will not support a no-fly zone or an EU peacekeeping force. Hungary most definitely has skin in the game, and will be the loser in any economic war whoever wins. All the same, that won’t stop the EU ramping up the rhetoric and stoking Putin’s paranoia. Von der Leyen continues to make noises about fast-tracking Ukrainian EU membership.
It’s interesting that British FBPE remainers see that as a wholly positive thing, affirming Ukraine’s identity as a Western European democracy (and their own narcissism), but if you’ve been paying attention, Ukraine is very far from an EU type social democracy, with a large contingent of actual Nazis. If remainers thought Brexiteers were fascists, they’re in for a blood chilling shock.
On the ground, the the war in Ukraine is entering a new phase. The ground offensive has seemingly come to a standstill, but with the West intent on crippling Russia economically, Putin has resorted to indiscriminate bombardment. If he can’t take Ukraine, he will leave it in ruins – and cause a massive displacement of people. This has become a proxy war between Russia and the West, and the West seems intent on fuelling it.
We are already feeling the pinch of Covid and climate policies, and even comfortably off households are wondering if they’ll be able to afford heating at all next winter. The price of fuel means that working from home may yet become the new normal. The economy may never bounce back to pre-Covid levels. We’re all in it for the long haul and the very last thing we need is additional pressures on the household budget. The national interest is for this war to end as soon as possible.
Then as much as the EU seems to have a deathwish, Boris Johnson seems to forget that just last year he was losing ground over the wave of dinghy migrants. We were told the boats would be turned back. We were told the abuse would end. But that was a lie. The Tories are openly discussing the use of asylum seekers as replacement workers, with the nodding approval of Labour and the NGOcracy, while Johnson fuels the war in Ukraine with more weapons and sanctions.
As much as we already have nowhere to put dinghy scroungers, Johnson is ensuring there will be many more of them. We are sympathetic to the plight of displaced Ukrainians, but Ukrainians will be used as a trojan horse for economic migrants, effectively abandoning any notion of border control – not all that long after a referendum in which bringing immigration under control was a central issue. At a time when competition for jobs is the last thing hard pressed Brits need.
It’s clear now that there is no thinking going on in Number Ten. Johnson is buffeted from crisis to crisis, where emergent needs erase all other concerns, and promises become meaningless. He came into office promising a new Britain. What we’re getting is more of the same – open borders, rampant wokery, Net Zero, public finances in a hole and more war. Everything we feared about a Labour government is happening under the Tories.
As we have remarked before, we are used to starting wars with no real domestic consequences, to the point where we even forget that we are militarily involved. But this war on our doorstep has real and lasting consequences for all of us. It is not in our interests to prolong it or escalate it. The economic fallout, coupled with Johnson’s suicidal Net Zero agenda will destroy our wealth and wellbeing. Why are we having to sacrifice our prosperity over a scrap of eastern European rust belt and middle class anxieties about the weather? And how can we “stand up for democracy” if we don’t even get a say in it?
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