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THE WEST CANNOT FACE A WAR
The Nation, UAE
March 11 2014
March 11, 2014
Robert Fisk - For some reason, our last century's two world wars
started rather far from home. I bet that most people in January 1914
couldn't find Sarajevo on a map. But then again, how many of us -
really, I mean - could have found Simferopol on a map a year ago? Or
three weeks ago, for that matter? The Second World War started because
Britons simply wouldn't take another crooked deal like Czechoslovakia -
"a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing", in which
our Neville at least put distance in front of ignorance. So Poland
it was, which, by awful mischance, shares a border with modern-day
Ukraine.
And this really is, I fear, the sort of grim, only slightly understood
consciousness that we can't let Poland/Ukraine down again, that we
can't let Putin threaten little Ukraine as we let Hitler threaten and
invade Poland. Poland is on Ukraine's doorstep - it's funny how we
get upset about countries that are "on our doorstep" - that's what we
said about Bosnia in the 1990s. They were in the backyard, I suspect,
no privies, you know the sort of thing.
But, of course, Putin is not Hitler and it would be well to try to get
the Second World War out of our bloodstream - not least because we
have the First World War coursing through our corpuscles this year,
and besides the Russians were on our side in the last war and in the
war before that (for a time). So were the Serbs. But what struck me,
watching all the EU spivs looking serious in Brussels last week, is
that these people have no experience of war and somehow think that
once they have made their threats, they can all go home and forget
"the crisis". I admit I am much moved by a newspaper headline in
Beirut last week that began: "War looms..." Well, let's hope not.
And the "crisis" or the war "looming" in the Ukraine is of great
interest to someone who lives not a hundred miles from my home:
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who will have been much relieved
to see Putin leap to the rescue of Russian Ukraine as firmly as he
did for Syria. Indeed, Assad, according to his government, has even
sent a telegram to Putin - do people still send "telegrams", by the
way? - in which he "expressed ... Syria's solidarity with Putin's
efforts to restore security and stability to Ukraine in the face of
attempted coups against legitimacy and democracy in favour of radical
terrorists". Syria was committed, Assad said, to "President Putin's
rational, peace-loving approach that seeks to establish a global
system supporting stability and fighting".
And Assad praised Putin's "wise political leadership and commitment to
international legitimacy based on the law that governs ties between
nations and peoples". Phew. Well, we got the point. Assad liked what
he saw in Simferopol, although I notice he didn't say anything about
the ousted Viktor Yanukovich - and I'm not surprised. The Ukrainian
leader did a bunk out of his own country. Assad did not run away.
Putin, I suspect, will have liked that, just as Putin will have
enjoyed the fact that Madame Clinton, Obama himself, David Cameron
and Messieurs Hollande and Sarkozy - all of whom said years ago that
Assad would go, was about to go or virtually gone - were totally wrong.
So what did I really think when I saw all these folk meeting in
Brussels? I was reminded of a wonderful description of a British
politician. It was written by Lawrence of Arabia and I take it from a
fine new book on him by Scott Anderson. The man in question was "the
imaginative advocate of unconvincing world movements ... a bundle of
prejudices, intuitions, half-sciences. His ideas were of the outside,
and he lacked patience to test his materials before choosing his style
of building. He would take an aspect of the truth, detach it from
its circumstances, inflate it, twist and model it." The politician
was Mark Sykes of Sykes-Picot infamy, trying to be nice to everyone.
But lest you think Sykes was too removed from our time, try this
from the mouth of another British politician: "However much we may
sympathise with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful
neighbour, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the
whole British Empire (for which read "the EU") in war simply on her
account." Our Neville again, of course, in 1938.
Makes you draw in your breath a bit, doesn't it? The Russkies are not
going to be shaking in their boots at sanctions. Punishing Russians
and Ukrainians involved in Russia's move into the Crimea will be a
"useful tool", said Obama - though why the US President has to use
the language of computer geeks to threaten Moscow is beyond me. But
that's what it's all about, isn't it? We can't have war "looming". It
would destroy all our internets and computers and live-time news
and globalisation and "tools". It might even destroy us! Read that
line again, the one from our Neville. They'll patch something up, a
political gig to let Russia gobble part of Ukraine but still calling
it a federated republic. Pity about the Tatars. Peace in our time.
On the subject of Ukraine, you might - if you happen to be passing
through Beirut - pick up two hefty volumes by Katia Peltekian, an
Armenian researcher who specialises in publishing news reports about
the 1915 Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks. The Times and
The Manchester Guardian gave extensive coverage to the century's first
Holocaust - some of the young German military witnesses turned up in
the Wehrmacht in Russia less than 30 years later - and Peltekian has
captured most of these reports in 976 pages.
What is most intriguing is the way in which the Great Powers lost
interest in the one and a half million Armenian dead almost as soon as
the 1914-18 war had ended. The Times was filled with heartbreaking
letters from Armenians and the British society which supported
them, pleading with the British and French and the Italians and the
Americans - pretty much the same lot who were rambling on in Brussels
last week - to let them have a nation that included part of eastern
Turkey. Be patient, the Armenians were told. They had already been
scattered across the Middle East, but were still being killed inside
Turkey itself. Some found refuge in Russia. And some in the Ukraine
... -Independent
http://www.nation.com.pk/international/11-Mar-2014/the-west-cannot-face-a-war
The Nation, UAE
March 11 2014
March 11, 2014
Robert Fisk - For some reason, our last century's two world wars
started rather far from home. I bet that most people in January 1914
couldn't find Sarajevo on a map. But then again, how many of us -
really, I mean - could have found Simferopol on a map a year ago? Or
three weeks ago, for that matter? The Second World War started because
Britons simply wouldn't take another crooked deal like Czechoslovakia -
"a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing", in which
our Neville at least put distance in front of ignorance. So Poland
it was, which, by awful mischance, shares a border with modern-day
Ukraine.
And this really is, I fear, the sort of grim, only slightly understood
consciousness that we can't let Poland/Ukraine down again, that we
can't let Putin threaten little Ukraine as we let Hitler threaten and
invade Poland. Poland is on Ukraine's doorstep - it's funny how we
get upset about countries that are "on our doorstep" - that's what we
said about Bosnia in the 1990s. They were in the backyard, I suspect,
no privies, you know the sort of thing.
But, of course, Putin is not Hitler and it would be well to try to get
the Second World War out of our bloodstream - not least because we
have the First World War coursing through our corpuscles this year,
and besides the Russians were on our side in the last war and in the
war before that (for a time). So were the Serbs. But what struck me,
watching all the EU spivs looking serious in Brussels last week, is
that these people have no experience of war and somehow think that
once they have made their threats, they can all go home and forget
"the crisis". I admit I am much moved by a newspaper headline in
Beirut last week that began: "War looms..." Well, let's hope not.
And the "crisis" or the war "looming" in the Ukraine is of great
interest to someone who lives not a hundred miles from my home:
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who will have been much relieved
to see Putin leap to the rescue of Russian Ukraine as firmly as he
did for Syria. Indeed, Assad, according to his government, has even
sent a telegram to Putin - do people still send "telegrams", by the
way? - in which he "expressed ... Syria's solidarity with Putin's
efforts to restore security and stability to Ukraine in the face of
attempted coups against legitimacy and democracy in favour of radical
terrorists". Syria was committed, Assad said, to "President Putin's
rational, peace-loving approach that seeks to establish a global
system supporting stability and fighting".
And Assad praised Putin's "wise political leadership and commitment to
international legitimacy based on the law that governs ties between
nations and peoples". Phew. Well, we got the point. Assad liked what
he saw in Simferopol, although I notice he didn't say anything about
the ousted Viktor Yanukovich - and I'm not surprised. The Ukrainian
leader did a bunk out of his own country. Assad did not run away.
Putin, I suspect, will have liked that, just as Putin will have
enjoyed the fact that Madame Clinton, Obama himself, David Cameron
and Messieurs Hollande and Sarkozy - all of whom said years ago that
Assad would go, was about to go or virtually gone - were totally wrong.
So what did I really think when I saw all these folk meeting in
Brussels? I was reminded of a wonderful description of a British
politician. It was written by Lawrence of Arabia and I take it from a
fine new book on him by Scott Anderson. The man in question was "the
imaginative advocate of unconvincing world movements ... a bundle of
prejudices, intuitions, half-sciences. His ideas were of the outside,
and he lacked patience to test his materials before choosing his style
of building. He would take an aspect of the truth, detach it from
its circumstances, inflate it, twist and model it." The politician
was Mark Sykes of Sykes-Picot infamy, trying to be nice to everyone.
But lest you think Sykes was too removed from our time, try this
from the mouth of another British politician: "However much we may
sympathise with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful
neighbour, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the
whole British Empire (for which read "the EU") in war simply on her
account." Our Neville again, of course, in 1938.
Makes you draw in your breath a bit, doesn't it? The Russkies are not
going to be shaking in their boots at sanctions. Punishing Russians
and Ukrainians involved in Russia's move into the Crimea will be a
"useful tool", said Obama - though why the US President has to use
the language of computer geeks to threaten Moscow is beyond me. But
that's what it's all about, isn't it? We can't have war "looming". It
would destroy all our internets and computers and live-time news
and globalisation and "tools". It might even destroy us! Read that
line again, the one from our Neville. They'll patch something up, a
political gig to let Russia gobble part of Ukraine but still calling
it a federated republic. Pity about the Tatars. Peace in our time.
On the subject of Ukraine, you might - if you happen to be passing
through Beirut - pick up two hefty volumes by Katia Peltekian, an
Armenian researcher who specialises in publishing news reports about
the 1915 Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks. The Times and
The Manchester Guardian gave extensive coverage to the century's first
Holocaust - some of the young German military witnesses turned up in
the Wehrmacht in Russia less than 30 years later - and Peltekian has
captured most of these reports in 976 pages.
What is most intriguing is the way in which the Great Powers lost
interest in the one and a half million Armenian dead almost as soon as
the 1914-18 war had ended. The Times was filled with heartbreaking
letters from Armenians and the British society which supported
them, pleading with the British and French and the Italians and the
Americans - pretty much the same lot who were rambling on in Brussels
last week - to let them have a nation that included part of eastern
Turkey. Be patient, the Armenians were told. They had already been
scattered across the Middle East, but were still being killed inside
Turkey itself. Some found refuge in Russia. And some in the Ukraine
... -Independent
http://www.nation.com.pk/international/11-Mar-2014/the-west-cannot-face-a-war