Is there any more pressing topic than the risk of the escalation of current conflicts into wider wars? Ignoring the USA, is the Western resolve demonstrably tough enough?
Has Western behaviour in the face of bare faced hostility made its leaders a laughing stock in Moscow, Beijing and other hostile capitals? Has strategic myopia or political self-preservation put at risk the very fabric of democracies, as Western nations fail to face realities and the need to pay a price for resisting aggression? Russia and China are sworn supporters of each other, and so, as both of them are seeking to reduce Western civilisation, is the West behaving to defend itself or to appease and hope for the best?
RUSSIA’S WAR ON EUROPE FUNDED BY EUROPE
The UK and nearly all of the rest of Europe declare undying support for Ukraine and are pledged to stop Putin. Talking a good game in war or sport has never been enough. Western talk is belied by action, not just in the drip feeding of weaponry for at least 2 years but also in the use of sanctions: proclaimed as a core punishment for Putin. The reality is that sanctions have been half-hearted. European dependence on Russian oil and gas has been well regretted, as a tragic strategic error. Russia’s ability to make war depends on it selling its fossil fuel products: China and other nations replaced Western purchasers to some extent but incredibly Europe has carried on buying and still buys Russian Liquid Natural Gas directly.
The UK officially stopped imports of Russian oil and fossil products in December 2022. However, as recorded in a New Statesman article in June, a study by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air found that Russian crude oil, oil products and LNG shipped under British ownership or insurance is about £205 billion since the war started.Apparently 3 out of 4 Russian LNG carriers are UK insured. And due to a loophole in sanctions the UK buys Russian oil products refined in India and Turkey. Europe bought more Russian LNG in 2024 than ever before. And a “dark fleet” of uninsured vessels carrying Russian fossil fuels passes through the English Channel every day.
The reason apparently that these things are not stopped is that, if sanctions on Russian fossil fuels worked, the price of fossil fuel products globally would rise and inflation increase.
Meanwhile in recent articles Fiona Hill, an ex-U.S. adviser on Russia and an author of the UK Strategic Defence Review, records that “Russia is at war with the UK”. Why are not the sanctions against Russia applied at least by Europe and the UK the toughest possible instead of a hotchpotch of actions announced bit by bit and not really enforced? Trump threatens more but it seems is slow to offend the man Putin who he seems to admire.
For the UK to pretend to be absolutely committed to Ukraine and then to permit legally so many UK companies, such as Seapeak which is, among other things, a legal shipper of Russian products, to be involved in the distribution of Russia’s main source of funding for its evil war smacks of something seriously wrong. The rest of Europe is even more culpable it seems. Tough rhetoric is useless if action is half-hearted. Is Putin laughing still?
BEING FRIENDS WITH CHINA
The historic strategic misjudgements of this century about China by Western leaders are now well understood. The belief by successive UK and other Western governments that China could be a global friend, a partner in free trade, was myopic. Unlike democracies, China, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, can take a long view and implement long term strategy as voters are irrelevant. When the West struggled for cash after the financial crisis, and even before that, its greed to access the Chinese wallet meant being blind to China’s overall plan: to replace the West and especially the USA as the dominant world influence, backed by unassailable military strength. But the West woke up, or did it?
Chinese businesses must do whatever the CCP demands in China’s interests. Huawei, after much Western kicking and screaming, is no longer trusted in the 5G and fibre optics communications world. The UK seeks to undo prior welcoming of Chinese investment in critical UK infrastructure, such as energy and nuclear power. But past blindness means that dependence on China for so many things, such as key materials like rare earth products, is obvious. So, China, in dealing with the braggart’s tough 100%+ tariffs has strong negotiating power. It will out manoeuvre Trump because it will perhaps negotiate what China needs from him now in technology in exchange for say vital minerals and end the agreement when it is ready. The UK has declared its desire for strong trading with China, and lets it still influence UK universities through its cash on sponsored programmes and its influx of Chinese paying students. It is well known China steals UK data and cyber-attacks the UK. Surely that cannot be tolerated when China’s strategic objectives are kept front of mind.
China dominates the world of steel. It seems its dumping, so undermining European producers, is tolerated. A report in May described how, in the USA, Chinese power inverters had been found to contain undisclosed communication devices which can operate as a “kill switch”. So, if these are common, China can turn off the power in nations where they are used: a power inverter converts DC electricity generated by solar panels into AC which grids can use. As with most Chinese goods, European buyers purchase inverters because they are so much cheaper than local products. The Chinese control apparently 60% of the UK inverter market. And the UK Government’s energy policy depends heavily on solar equipment, and so on China.
China’s electric vehicles are so much cheaper than Western ones such as Tesla or VW. They dominate the European market and will likely do so in the UK. And is it known whether these EVs contain any secret technology enabling levels of control from China? Likewise other key products.
Then, the UK contemplates allowing the huge Chinese embassy to be built on a site in the City of London which sits over key financial services infrastructure. UK security experts and the USA warn against it, as if they control such a site the Chinese may influence key financial services. But will they be permitted as appeasement?
It needs to be remembered that China is Russia’s close ally and supporter in Ukraine, its weaponry perhaps in use there. It supports Iran and North Korea. These are not the West’s or the UK’s friends, but the opposite. Policy should be to end dependency on China for anything important as soon as possible, if the strategic lessons of the past are to be heeded. But any efforts to do this are again at best half-hearted: is the CCP laughing too? It smiled publicly when the UK gave up the Chagos Islands.
MILITARY CONSEQUENCE
Russia is running on a war footing and Europe admits publicly it cannot defend itself without the USA. It says it is rebuilding its defences. Will fast action match rhetoric? It certainly is not in the UK where the commitment to building defence is pedestrian and all money to get to just 3% of GDP depends on fiscal conditions. Current increases in the UK to 2.6% of GDP by 2027 may not even be enough to supply Ukraine alone, it is said, let alone rebuild UK defences. The recent NATO summit at which NATO countries committed to reach 5% of GDP by 2035 sounds like a success. But NATO now include certain infrastructure spending, such as on energy security and migration, as a type of defence spending, and 1.5% is in that bucket: and so as for the UK these items have previously been budgeted for and the PM now vaunts a commitment to 4.1% of GDP on defence by 2027. This is nonsense because most of the increase is spending on things which do not make us safer, not being military people or equipment! This new definition of extras of 1.5% to qualify as defence spending is smoke and mirrors probably merely to satisfy Trump’s demand for 5%, which cannot be reached by core defence spending.
The lack of any sense of real urgency is dangerous. Commitments to spend in future years satisfy the here and now but so often, as seen with climate change commitments, disappear as other priorities take over. Despite the razmataz around the NATO summit, Europe’s struggle to talk with one voice and its fudging about defence will hardly have Putin and Xi trembling. Progress on spending is to be reviewed in 2029. Trump will then be irrelevant. Our European leaders hoping then for a softer financial ride?
China’s military expansion, now with the biggest navy in the world, expanding nuclear arsenal, and power to match the USA, threatens hegemony in Asia and takeover of Taiwan. Chinese ships devour not just fish across European waters, but it is said undersea cables. The commentator, Matthew Syed, refers to current leaders of the West as political pygmies, lacking any vision. A new tribe of leaders is surely needed to demonstrate real gumption and face the world’s harsh reality whole heartedly, not with ambivalence, and persuade their electorates that security and freedoms are costly and demand sacrifices. Or else Putin and Xi can carry on laughing.
