By Aris ROUSSINOS
Britain's next prime minister will assume power in a country that has, as far as is possible without itself committing troops or suffering casualties, lost a war.
Britain's next prime minister will assume power in a country that has, as far as is possible without itself committing troops or suffering casualties, lost a war. Overmatched by Russian materiel, struggling to man the vast frontlines or retain the troops it is now forced to pressgang from the streets, it is difficult to see what can now turn the tide for Ukraine.
While Putin has not yet achieved the fast-moving operational breakthrough that has eluded him since the war's first hours, the acceleration of Ukraine's territorial losses on the eastern and southern sectors of its frontline paint a grim picture of the coming months. Now the situation is such that, as America's army secretary Dan Driscoll reportedly told his Ukrainian counterparts last week, Kyiv's military position can only worsen, and Moscow's can only improve. America's scepticism of Ukraine's chances is itself a self-fulfilling prophecy: in these circumstances, it is hard to argue against Driscoll's reported warning to Kyiv that "you are losing... and you need to accept the deal".
The war's outcome will now be decided by Russia and the United States, over the heads of both Ukraine and Europe. If this is a defeat for the European Atlanticists who are most determinedly hawkish against Moscow, it is also the end result of the worldview they embody. So enmeshed are European nations within America's defence structures, that it is impossible for Europe to sustain a major war without US support: and which only a fool could now believe is guaranteed. The Ukraine war was an opportunity for Europe's leaders to radically transform our continent's security framework towards a vision of strategic autonomy - in which, by taking responsibility for our own defence, we Europeans could assert our own interests and shape our own futures. Yet as the Russia analyst Jade McGlynn, a Ukraine hawk, observes: Europe "has chosen paralysis while others determine the fate of our continent" - a fate which is "the product of decisions not taken, responsibilities avoided, and illusions clung to for too long", not least the "bizarre teleological liberalism that sees liberal democracy as somehow feted to win out according to the laws of history".
As the war's early days revealed, Putin is no strategic genius. But with Europe's current leadership, he does not need to be. If it is Emmanuel Macron's tragedy to be a great man of history, trapped in the role of a 21st-century European leader, it is our far greater misfortune to be ruled by his peers. Europe failed at the historic task with which it was presented, settling back into its comfort zone of demanding a satisfactory outcome to the war it is not in a position to impose. Veering between a hawkishness that it cannot sustain - see Kaja Kallas this week demanding Russia's demilitarisation - and humiliating tributary missions to our Washington overlord which reflect our true situation, Europe's bellicose rhetoric on the Ukraine war has become increasingly detached from reality.
The simple facts of the matter are that the United States, on whom Europe's defence depends, is keener to end the war than Russia, which scents total military victory. Ukraine's overriding interest, in preserving the Kyiv government's independence from Moscow, increasingly diverges from Europe's, which is for the Ukrainian armed forces to distract and degrade Russia's military power long enough for Europe to effectively re-arm, or for some, so far unknown, deus ex machina appear to resolve the situation in a satisfactory manner. From its earlier heady expectations of total victory, and resultant disastrous overreach, Kyiv must now find a path to negotiating the least painful defeat the circumstances offer: Europe's political discourse is yet to catch up with this harsh reality.
Yet even still, for Britain, losing a proxy war is a better outcome than losing a war in which we are ourselves engaged. Due to the Army's prolonged mismanagement, Britain cannot field artillery or air defence to speak of. Nor can it cobble together the armoured brigade that is its Nato responsibility, nor sustain the munitions expenditure of a high-intensity war for more than a few days. The next prime minister will find themself at the helm of a country that has simultaneously enmeshed itself to an alarming degree in a losing war while bulldozing, through sheer incompetence, its own ability to field an army. Having entirely failed to rebuild its deterrent power in the nearly four years since the beginning of the greatest land war in Europe since 1945, it would take great optimism in Whitehall's wisdom and ability to assume that matters would suddenly improve if Britain were itself forced to fight. This is not a reassuring position to be in, and Washington enforcing a peace settlement that extracts us from this worrying bind should be accepted, even if its terms are no cause for celebration.
Yet dragging Britain's political class to hard reality is not an easy task. Though no doubt well-meaning, the pundit hawkishness that undermined previous attempts at peace negotiations has not served Ukraine well. It would have been better for Ukraine, and Europe, to have negotiated peace from a position of relative advantage, as the country possessed in 2022 or 2023. Yet those chances were squandered, with those urging negotiations condemned as Putinist appeasers by a commentariat which apparently believed that Ukraine was destined to liberate Crimea, topple Putin, and carve Russia into a constellation of weak ethnic statelets. Discounting the possibility of Zack Polanski hypnotising Putin into shrinking his munitions stockpiles, we are perhaps fortunate that the likeliest next prime minister will be either Nigel Farage, leading a Reform government with a mandate for total change, or an intervening Labour reformer. Shabana Mahmood has already set out her stall as a purveyor of uncomfortable truths and hard-nosed realism, while another likely contender for a Labour coup, the defence secretary John Healey, possesses the credibility to recalibrate Britain's rhetoric to its diminished capability.
Britain's next leader will be forced by events to construct a new and cautious vision for British security managing four separate poles: the United States, whose will and ability to defend Europe is clearly waning; Europe itself, which has proved itself disunited and incapable of sustained and concerted action; Russia, whose assertive foreign policy will have been bloodily vindicated by the war's conclusion; and the greatest industrial power in world history, China.
In our current circumstances of military and economic weakness, and near-revolutionary domestic political discontent, a continuation of Britain's hawkish stance on world affairs is simply not viable. Even if an interventionist foreign policy were wise - which it is not - or electorally popular - which it is not - it is simply now beyond our ability. It is unfortunate, then, that in his choice of the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society's Alan Mendoza as foreign policy adviser, Farage has settled on an advocate of total, ideological war against rivals great and small at which even Washington balks. It is, indeed, worryingly plausible that the domestic demands of neutering claims that he is a Russian asset, a Brexit-era liberal fantasy entirely downstream of the Clinton campaign's Russiagate conspiracy theory, will force Farage into reckless hawkishness to win the approval of the commentariat which will never come.
"Even if an interventionist foreign policy were wise - which it is not - or electorally popular - which it is not - it is simply now beyond our ability"
If Ukraine manages to retain its functional independence from Russia, obtain meaningful security guarantees from the United States, and join the European Union, then the cession of territory it currently does not hold and will not soon recapture is hardly the worst outcome. Certainly, it is a better than the looming loss of territory currently in its possession, and an even worse peace deal in the future. The Trump administration, proposing lucrative joint economic projects with Moscow, openly covets a stable future diplomatic relationship with Russia. Whether this is feasible may be doubtful, but so is Europe's current stance of simultaneous subordination to the former and hostility just short of open war with the latter.
Like Ukraine, Europe and Britain are forced by military and political disadvantage to take their orders from their imperial patron: America has decided that the war must end, and is now persuading Russia to agree. If this damages European pride, then it should: the continent will now pay the price for the weakness our leaders chose for us. Absorbing a bruised and shell-shocked postwar Ukraine, whose economy has been wrecked, a quarter of whose population has already fled to the EU into European political structures will be a generational challenge in itself. So, too, will be stemming the illicit westward flow of weapons, once the shooting stops.
Trump's Thanksgiving deadline for a peace deal has already passed. If the war is over by Christmas, it will be a miracle. Yet its likely unsatisfactory conclusion, and the narrow escape it may grant us from a far worse outcome, require a measure of sober reflection alien to Westminster's political culture. The Ukrainians, rightly, now place little faith in Europe's empty assurances. As Zelensky this week warned his nation, "Ukraine may now face a very difficult choice, either losing its dignity or the risk of losing a key partner, either the difficult 28 points, or a very difficult winter." If only our own leaders were so frank with us. Britain's rivals are growing in power, and our allies are demonstrably unreliable: yet as the Commons Defence Select Committee warned this week, Britain's ability to defend even the homeland itself is doubtful in the extreme. Farage is perhaps fortunate that the burden of defeat will fall on a Labour prime minister, and that Reform's foreign policy is so far little more than an empty page on a website: with his current foreign policy adviser, it is better that this is remains so. Losing a war is, historically, one of the greatest spurs to serious projects of national reform. In preparing for government, Farage must make use of what may only be a lull in hostilities to chart a swift and viable path towards guaranteeing the nation's basic security, and ensuring that Britain is never again left so dangerously exposed between its commitments and its capabilities.
Original article: unherd.com