Fighting talk

 

A British army officer, earlier today

General Sir Patrick Sanders is the new chief of staff of the British Army. I suppose it is a relief that his opening address to the troops did not stress the importance of transgenderism or using your commanding officer's preferred pronouns. What he did say, however, is even more ominous.

He told his soldiers to prepare for the possibility of land war in Europe, stating the following,

"I am the first Chief of the General Staff since 1941 to take command of the Army in the shadow of a land war in Europe involving a continental power. Russia's invasion of Ukraine underlines our core purpose - to protect the UK by being ready to fight and win wars on land".

Anyone who understands the European Union, Vladimir Putin, and the role of the United Kingdom in this conflict will see that these statements lack integrity. Let's start with Putin.

A lot of nonsense gets talked about this man. He is undoubtedly a bastard, but no one ever got a job with the Soviet Union's not-so-secret police, the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (a bit of a mouthful - we know them as the KGB) by being a nice guy. But I have heard respected American commentators describe Putin as 'the ex-head of the KGB'. He was no such thing.

Putin was a middle-ranking KGB officer who was posted to Germany early in his career and wanted to go to Berlin for the nightlife. Instead, he was posted to Dresden, a city so boring that the British tried to bomb it off the map in World War 2. He never got over the perceived snub, and has been working out his resentment ever since. Never underestimate a frustrated man who has even a tiny bit of power.

His invasion of Ukraine is being presented as some sort of European power grab. Again, this is nonsense on stilts. He wants Ukraine because he feels it is a part of Russia, the same reason China wants Taiwan, exactly the same reason, in fact, and the Chinese will be watching the action in Europe with their usual inscrutable interest. Putin doesn't want Finland or Byelorussia or Azerbaijan, and the idea that the British Army is somehow defending the UK from this new Peter the Great is just absurd.

So, why is General Sanders so exercised about the possibility of land war? Essentially, because the EU wants him to be. The fact that the European Union wants an EU army is no secret. The fly in the ointment is that the British Army - still regarded as the best troops on the planet - left the bloc along with the Brexit vote. So, they are being called in not to protect London against Putin's tanks - which would require a longer haul than even Napoleon made in the opposite direction - but as a sign that Britain will do the EU's bidding. There is another aspect to this, and a seriously unsavoury one.

War, as the song goes. What is it good for? Well, two answers spring immediately to mind. Firstly, profits for arms manufacturers, always a motive force behind war. Secondly, a bloody good war deflects and distracts the public's attention from the decline and fall of the British empire.

Putin is not Hitler. Adolf wanted lebensraum for the German people, room to live, who he felt to be superior to all other races. It's all in the book My Struggle, the accepted English translation of Mein Kampf. This book, incidentally, is a long read - and don't read it on the beach - but worth your time if only as a study in psychosis.

Putin does not want this for Russia, which is the largest country on the planet, covering 11% of the earth's land mass. He wants what he thinks is his. Why should Britain be so concerned? The British Army couldn't care less about Eritrea, where essentially the same thing is happening.

If there is land war in Europe, and Putin has to be stopped, why do the British have to rush over from the farthest point West from Vladivostok before Ireland, next stop being the USA? I suppose there is one answer. You can't exactly rely on Sweden to do it.