Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has weighed in on the issue of NATO involvement in Ukraine. He says:
“I accept the reasoning behind our stance. But suppose he uses chemical weapons or a tactical nuclear weapon, or tries to destroy Kyiv as he did Aleppo in Syria, without any regard to the loss of civilian life – is it sensible to tell him in advance that whatever he does militarily, we will rule out any form of military response? Maybe that is our position and maybe that is the right position, but continually signalling it, and removing doubt in his mind, is a strange tactic.”
He is absolutely right, despite critics of this view who fear it may escalate tensions and the threat of war.
As I said in a previous post on this subject:
Bullies work on the basis that the average, sensible, person is afraid to fight. We know the consequences of fighting and most of us have developed strategies to avoid fighting at all costs. We do not want to have black eyes and chipped teeth and bruised knuckles. We fear pain. We fear the shame and humiliation of being hit, or being seen to be brawling. We are experts at backing down, apologising, genuflecting before thuggery with all the verbal dexterity and submissive body language we can muster: just don’t hit us! Bullies sense this and this is how they bully. We might escape the attentions of a Friday night beer-soaked street fighter, but on a global scale, this is as unconscionable as it is catastrophic.
The issue is this: If one side indicates that it is unwilling to escalate, it gives the other side the green light to do whatever it pleases.
The reason Putin has so effectively warned us off from helping Ukraine from the get-go was because of his ominous threat of “consequences greater than any you have faced in history” if we in the West intervened. His threat carried weight because we believe he is willing to use his nukes.
Meanwhile successive politicians backed by public opinion in the West have indicated that we are unwilling to use nukes. Thus the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction is undermined: it is only effective if both sides believe the other side is actually willing to use resort to Nuclear warfare, if not as the aggressor then at the very least as a robust response in kind.
Similarly, sending messages that NATO will not under any circumstances enter the conflict has emboldened Putin further. He really should be very worried that we might if he goes too far. So Tony Blair is right and we must put that concern back on the table. If he has no fear of awakening the NATO kraken, he will continue to behave with impunity. This view is shared by retired General Sir Chris Deverell, speaking to The Times, he said:
“I have been against the imposition of a no-fly zone by NATO in Ukraine, believing that it would surely escalate the conflict, but Putin seems hell-bent on escalation. So the question is becoming: does NATO fight him now or fight him later?”
As Putin becomes increasingly desperate to regain momentum for his stalled invasion, it is likely that he will resort to committing even greater atrocities against Ukrainian civilians. Are we, in the supposedly free and civilised world, just going to stand back and watch? Once again, I pose my original question from my first post on this subject: Have we been saying “Never Again” for the past 80 years while really meaning “Okay, just this one more time and then we really mean it, seriously!”?
