There isn’t that much in Russia that works,
they have practically no exports except oil, gas and commodities, which in part
is the reason their economy has been in steep decline lately, but there are
still some things they do well. The FSB, or KGB mark II is still very good
indeed. The military despite sometimes using obsolete, clunky weaponry can still
perform as they have ably demonstrated recently in both Ukraine and Syria. Perhaps
the biggest strength of the Russians is that while they themselves believe in
truth, they are willing to lie without any scruples whatsoever. We on the other
hand have all sorts of scruples, but no longer believe in truth.
The experience of World War II taught the Russian
military and security services the benefits of deception. While the Western
Allies too deceived the Germans about exactly where in France we would invade,
somehow in the decades since we have forgotten the lesson. The KGB won the Cold
War. They were able far more often to gain our important secrets than we
theirs. This was in part because Western intellectuals and politicians (some in
quite high places now) were willing to betray their country because they
sympathised with Soviet ideology (socialism).
The Russian military didn’t really lose the Cold
War. It could have prevented the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union
with remarkably few machine gun bullets. It was Gorbachev’s failure
to defend the Motherland, i.e. the historic Russian Empire plus buffer states
that led to the worst loss of Russian territory in history. What had taken
centuries to gather, still worse what had been Rus’ from the beginning, Ukraine
and Belarus were lost. It was as if the Russian heart had been ripped out.
But the Russian military retained its traditions
from World War II. Its training remained just as brutal and the way it fought
just as cruel and effective. It does not find itself limited by concern for civilian
casualties, nor does it need to fear that a Syrian will be able to sue a
Russian soldier in the Moscow courts. No Russian soldier will be convicted for
doing something excessive. Rather he will receive a medal for it. This is why a
Russian regiment is always liable to defeat a NATO regiment, for the simple
reason that it will not have to fight with one hand tied behind its back and it
will be willing to take casualties.
There is something excessive about Russian history.
The pity is that it is so little known outside Russia. No wonder we struggle to
understand our opponent. They know our history. They know our literature far
better than we know theirs. They can speak our language, while most people in
the West think Russian amounts to mirror writing (Я, И,
etc). When I first read the story of how Russia developed from its tiny beginnings
in Kiev to stretching across most of the Eurasian landmass I was struck most by
the cruelty. Two princes are bumped off because they got in the way, another is
blinded. The most terrible thing that Ivan does is to himself when he kills his
own son and heir in a fit of temper and then regrets it. The most saintly Tsar
Alexandr may well have been involved in the assassination of his father. The
cruelty also done to the Russians by invading forces (Mongols, French, Germans,
Poles) was such that the Russians always found a way somehow to take revenge
and in their taking revenge they found a way to be excessive.
It is this tendency to excess that explains best I
think the use of Polonium to kill Litvenenko and Novichok to attempt to kill
Skripal and his daughter. It just isn’t necessary to use such exotic methods. It’s
excessive. It’s an attempt to say we can do what we want. We can do anything. Therefore
fear us. It’s like putting a horse’s head in someone’s bed. Just like in the
film, it works.
The Russians know that while they believe in truth
and only tell one truth in their media, we in the West must be unbiased to the
extent that we think everything is a matter of opinion. This enables them to
lie with impunity. No matter how unlikely the lie, the BBC will report that the
Russians say that they have no troops in Crimea, no troops in the Donbass and
no Russian planes have killed any civilians whatsoever in Syria. This will all
be reported impartially. Some people here, especially those who hate the West,
will give the Russians the benefit of the doubt. After all who really knows the
truth? Perhaps the CIA or Mosad brought down the Twin Towers, maybe they faked
the moon landings.
If you tell a lie consistently enough and your
opponent doesn’t really believe in truth anyway no wonder you convince some of
them and make everyone else doubt. Just like being excessive, this is a
strategy that works.
The only way to defend against someone who lies is
to know the truth and believe the truth. This is the key first stage in how we
must learn to respond to our opponent. The problem is that we are going to have
to reverse decades of misinformation from our universities that there is no
such thing as truth.
In the West intellectuals typically believe that
morality is no longer a matter of truth, but rather opinion. Who am I to judge? Everything
is permitted.
Prince Charles wants to be defender of faith, i.e.
all faiths rather than defender of the faith. The word “the” here makes all the
difference, for in defending all faiths he is saying none of them are true, but
rather all of them are just matters of opinion.
Even the most basic of truths have become a matter
of subjectivity and relativism. No longer is someone’s sex something fixed and unchangeable.
This is the view held in Russia and most of the world throughout human history.
Instead in the West someone’s sex is a matter of opinion, something I can
decide and choose based not on the facts but on how I feel.
In academia everything becomes plural. No longer do
we have history, but rather histories. No longer does the BBC describe civilisation,
but rather civilisations. Who are we to judge? Who are we to have confidence in
Western Civilisation or think that anything good at all came out of it. Rather
all must win prizes, all must be relative and all must be equal. No wonder we
are unwilling to defend that which we no longer even value.
We have lost all sense of what we discovered,
invented and composed. We ceased to defend our continent and our island. No
wonder we are losing to someone (Putin) who believes in the truth, but is
willing to lie. We made his job easy, because we have nothing left to defend,
not even the truth.
What must we do? We must begin to defend our values.
We must realise that these values are not so vague that they can apply to
anyone from anywhere. Rather our values come from our history and have developed
because our people were changed by that history. We are the children of Magna
Carta and the Bill of Rights. Britain is as it is because of British people and
the British history that made them this way. We are not the same as everyone
else in the world who did not have that history. It is time that we began to
defend that which is truly ours rather than some vague thing that is really
no-one’s.
We must find objective truth and defend it from
lies. Our media and politicians must not be impartial about lies. Say that it
is a lie and then treat it with the contempt it deserves.
We must cease to be balanced about defending how we
live. Democracy and free markets are better than tyranny, fake democracy, the
crony capitalism of corrupt oligarchs and any form of the socialist experiment
that has already been shown to have failed. This is not an opinion. Free markets,
the rule of law and democracy are the condition for the possibility of
prosperity and opportunity for all. This is a truth we must defend and hope to
spread worldwide.
We must understand our opponent. Russia is more
dangerous now than at any time except when it was ruled by Stalin. It is more
desperate and the people in charge more ruthless. They know no boundaries. It
is very difficult to predict how next they might lash out.
We need to spend more on the armed forces. NATO
needs to be able to defend our territory against a conventional attack. At the
moment we could not protect Eastern Europe except by using nuclear weapons. We
need to deter the Russians from any further adventures.
Many UK universities, including mine, have wonderful
Russian collections, but no-one can read them. Foolishly we closed down the
Russian departments when, after the Cold War, we thought they were no longer
needed. You cannot understand Russia, without knowing the language. They have a
different mentality that only becomes clearer with conversation. Russian is a
subject worth studying and more useful today than many.
We need to deter Russian aggression, but we also
need to work towards peace. We do not want forever to have Russia as an
opponent. They are too dangerous. Don’t underestimate the Russian military or
security services. They are willing to fight without rules and in ways that are
unexpected (see e.g. the failure to surrender after losing Moscow in 1812).
This was the key to their past victories and would form the basis for future
ones.
We must treat Russia now as we treated the Soviet
Union during the Cold War. Both sides then knew that there were limits. We
accepted that that there were things we could not change, such as the invasions
of Czechoslovakia and Hungary. They knew there were lines they could not cross.
Eventually with patience on the part of both sides this developed into détente and finally into something approaching
peace. We must start again and work for the same goal. But if we have the good fortune to make peace again, don't let's squander it as we did in the years after 1991.
