Ignoring the real threats

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Ignoring the real threats

Pete North • 15 March 2022

China and Whitehall are a greater threat than Russia

I’m not that keen on the idea of sanctions as they tend to backfire, but all of this over Ukraine has been instructive as to who our friends really are. India may may bail out Russia by taking up an offer to buy crude oil and other commodities at a discount despite Western attempts to isolate Moscow through sanctions.

India, which imports 80 per cent of its oil needs, usually buys only about 1 per cent from Russia, but with oil prices up 40 per cent so far this year, the government is looking at increasing this if it can help reduce its rising energy bill. Meanwhile Pakistan sits on the fence and China mulls supplying weapons to Russia.

One of the reasons I’m not so keen to alienate Russia is because the real external threat to the West comes from China. This isn’t 1940, Putin isn’t Hitler, he’s not blitzkrieging across Europe and couldn’t if he wanted to. But in the last three decades China has been waging a silent economic war on the West, and we foolishly allowed the communist regime to asset strip us.

Europe may have made itself dependent on Russian gas, but perhaps the greater sin is our reliance on China for manufactured goods and electronics. We’ve offshored manufacturing to China and services to India – our two greatest economic enemies. If anything, we’ve needed Russia on side or at least as a neutral broker but the West’s policy of hostility to Russia has only made our enemies more powerful.

Though it’s suddenly the “right thing to do” to cut off energy suppliers on democracy and human rights grounds, this doesn’t extend to suppliers of solar panels, rare earth minerals and the electronics we need to transition to a Net Zero grid. It’s also something of a moral sidestep to cut off Putin but then ask Qatar and Saudi Arabia to ramp up production.

I have no sympathies with the Kremlin. I’m just not that interested in Russia’s border spats with its immediate neighbours and I don’t think it’s worth wrecking our own economy over something that has little to do with us. Ukraine is a dysfunctional corrupt mess, riddled with cronyism and corruption, and there’s as many American oligarchs stirring the pot as there are Russian. I can’t help thinking that once again, Britain is witlessly doing the bidding of corporate America and the Biden regime.

We may well be witnessing the global realignment of powers, and perhaps a new cold war, and if national security matters at all it’s Chinese and Indian influence we need to ringfence and isolate – and that must also extend to our immigration policy. But no, we’re cancelling Russian orchestras while Whitehall is riddled with Chinese money and influence.

Being that Britain has chosen to exist independently of the EU, we must ask why the UK isn’t positioning itself as a neutral broker with Russia. The UK is not dependent on Russian gas and any shortfall can be replaced with British shale gas. Instead Britain is in lockstep with the EU in escalating the Ukraine conflict, pumping in weapons that will fall into the hands of terrorists. This is not in the national interest nor is it doing much for national security.

Globalisation has been a disaster for national security and trade/food security – much of it premised on the flawed logic underpinning the EU – that countries economically dependent on each other won’t go to war. The EU itself is undermining that notion by making overtures to Ukrainian EU membership – escalating the tension – having shut down its nuclear power in favour of Russian gas.

Brexit has given us an opportunity to rethink our trade relationships, and if we are at all serious about national security then we need to think long and hard about our relationships with China, India and Pakistan. We must also ask why we are imposing economic sanctions on ourselves by committing to climate agreements that China has no intention of abiding by.

The national interest is for the Ukraine conflict to end as soon as possible. Right now we have two choices. We can continue to humiliate and alienate Russia through our Ukrainian proxy, thereby lengthening the war, exacerbating economic stresses at home, causing countless more deaths, or we can withdraw our support for Ukraine and demand Zelensky finds a settlement with Russia. If that means Ukraine loses its Russian speaking eastern rust belt, who cares? Nobody cared before. This has been going on for years.

When it comes down to it, Russia isn’t a threat to us so long as we don’t park our tanks on their back lawn. We have next to zero strategic interest in Ukraine, and the greater danger to our health, wealth and freedom sits in Whitehall, Westminster and Number Ten. Politically, we have better things to do. Why should we back the elite’s campaign against Russia (at enormous cost to ourselves) when our elites are waging war on us?

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