This election is likely to be the last before 2027, the year most widely regarded as being the moment of maximum danger of an attack on Taiwan by China, a war that we would risk losing were we to become involved directly.
At the same time, we have tied a knot in relations between ourselves and Russia, a knot which we are pulling ever-tighter on a rope which might snap at any moment.
The Middle East continues to spiral towards a regional war as Western weapons are used to commit a massacre in Gaza and Western bombs fall on Yemen.
Relations between North and South Korea are heading towards dangerous territory as the North continues to deepen its military partnership with Russia and the South considers switching from an indirect supply of arms to the Ukrainian war effort to direct shipments of weapons.
We are heading down a slippery slope towards a world war on at least four fronts, a war that we are in no fit state to fight.
We have spent the last 30 years running down our military to the point where it is functionally no longer existent.
The Army barely has the resources to put together more than a token force which will, in any case, run out of ammunition after a few days or weeks of fighting.
The Navy has wasted its money on great, hulking aircraft carriers which we do not have the resources to utilise effectively and which will be sunk in the opening exchanges of the war.
The RAF scarcely has the resources to scramble fighter jets from one side of the country to the other to intercept the Russian jets which routinely test our airspace.
Our critical infrastructure, including undersea electricity connectors, is wide open to sabotage.
We have no credible air defence system in place across mainland Britain.
The military-industrial base across the Western world has been allowed to atrophy and is incapable of resupplying Ukraine, let alone ourselves.
Our geopolitical strategy has been everything it should not have been. We should have crafted our policy thoughtfully and worked towards peace, while maintaining a military parity with our rivals.
Instead, we have tried to impose our “values” on the world, as we went about stripping ourselves of the power to defend them.
Nowhere has this been exemplified more than in the tragedy of the Ukraine war.
People may remember that in 2012, Ukraine co-hosted the European football championship, with England fans flying in to an airport in Donetsk which, two years later, would lie in ruins.
People may also remember concerns raised in the run-up to the tournament about the risk posed by far-right Ukrainian organisations.
By then, Ukrainian politics had roughly coalesced around a 50/50 split between a Western-leaning side and a Russia-leaning side, a divide which correlated approximately with the geographical distribution of Russian speakers.
Power had alternated between these two sides and in 2010, a Russia-leaning president, Viktor Yanukovych, won a presidential election described by international observers as having been free and fair.
A year after Euro 2012, Ukraine was in the process of ratifying an association agreement with the European Union at the same time as negotiating to join a Customs Union of former Soviet states.
The EU, however, insisted that Ukraine must choose between the two.
The process broke down, pro-Western protests broke out and, months later, Yanukovych was overthrown in a violent insurrection.
The same far-right street fighters who the Western media had been warning about before Euro 2012 were now throwing Molotov cocktails at the police.
Counter-protests then broke out in the Russia-leaning areas of Ukraine, and this is where things became murky as Russian agents and provocateurs entered the mix.
This should have been the occasion for the West to pause and look again at where its geopolitical strategy since the Cold War had led.
By 1992, Russia was a defeated superpower. At this point, we had two options: step back and allow time and space for new relations to emerge organically, or try to contain Russia economically and militarily.
Our choice was to expand NATO up to and beyond the borders of the Soviet Union and, in 2008, George W Bush announced US support for Ukrainian membership.
There are those who argue that each country has the right to make its own decision about whether to join NATO. No country has the “right” to join NATO. It is up to us to decide whether it makes geostrategic sense for a country to join – whether a particular course of action will make the ultimate outcomes we seek more, or less, likely.
It was clearly intolerable for Russia that, having faced the massed ranks of NATO across the Iron Curtain, it should have to face those same forces, potentially including Western nuclear forces, on its border with Ukraine, with millions of Russian speakers brought within NATO territory.
Any idea that NATO is a “defensive alliance” will be news to residents of Belgrade.
For Ukraine to join the European Union, or to ratify an exclusive trade deal with the EU, would have put up economic barriers between Ukraine and Russia, two countries which until recently had belonged to the same unitary state, and between people on either side of the dividing line who thought of themselves as being ethnically and culturally Russian.
We are told that it was the will of the “Ukrainian people” to join with the West.
We will never know, because the pro-Western insurrection which toppled Yanukovych had taken place a year before the next scheduled presidential election, and there has not been an election across unitary Ukraine since then.
The are two possible solutions to the Ukraine war: a military solution or a diplomatic solution.
A military solution assumes that Ukraine is able to overcome its deficits in manpower and material, that it is able to conduct successful offensive action and that there is no nuclear escalation.
Even then, the only really benign outcome is that a Russian military defeat leads to a democratic revolution, otherwise Russia might simply regroup and try again, either in Ukraine or in the Baltic states – perhaps, the second time around, with Chinese arms.
This latter prospect is one which becomes especially real if China makes a move on Taiwan, as everybody seems to expect.
A Chinese invasion or naval blockade of Taiwan would take out the world’s largest computer chip maker and the resulting sanctions and disruption would jeopardise the global supply of essential manufactured goods, including medicines.
If the US were to intervene directly, or if China thought the Americans were planning to do so, then China would launch missile strikes on US bases and warships in the region.
Wargaming by the Pentagon has shown the US Navy to be vulnerable due to its concentration of forces and its reliance on hierarchical, digital communications, weaknesses that are not going to be fixed this side of 2030.
The prevailing view appears to be that the US is more likely to lose such a war than win it.
Anybody who wishes to understand where such a conflagration could lead would do well to read ‘2034’, a novel by retired US Admiral James Stavridis, the former Supreme Commander of NATO.
A war with the US would remove from China any restraint on its supply of weapons to Russia and could even raise the prospect of Chinese troops and armour appearing on European soil, since an invasion of Taiwan would primarily take the form of an amphibious assault.
If Russia were to defeat Ukraine, or come to a favourable peace agreement with Ukraine, then it would be able to free up hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened troops, supported by its own war economy, plus all the armaments that China’s massive industrial capacity could produce and which the Chinese military could spare.
NATO currently has around 10,000 troops deployed in Eastern Europe across a patchwork of eight multinational battle groups – plus the national armies of the frontline countries.
NATO is also supposed to have 300,000 troops at a state of “high readiness” but these are not forces deployed in NATO formations. They represent commitments – credible or otherwise – by national governments to provide these forces within 30 days if called upon.
US forces, for example, would need to make the journey from bases in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, or across the Atlantic – if the Russians have not destroyed the ports by the time they arrive.
Meanwhile, the Western military-industrial base is being out-produced by Russia in the Ukraine war and simply does not have the capacity to supply a major conflict.
A Russian attack on NATO is likely to begin with the closure of the Suwalki Gap, cutting off the NATO personnel stationed in the Baltic states, including around 900 British troops.
To get a flavour of what a shooting war between NATO and Russia would look like, I recommend the 2016 novel ‘War With Russia’, written by Admiral Stavridis’ former deputy at NATO, the retired British General Richard Shirref.
Predicting the outcome of a major war is, of course, a fool’s errand.
It may be that Russia’s forces would be cut to ribbons by NATO’s sophisticated weaponry.
It may be that, as in Ukraine, offensive action turns out to be exceptionally difficult.
It should be remembered, though, that we are not talking about a single adversary and a single theatre of war.
We may well find operations in Europe competing for resources with the Pacific, the Middle East and Korea.
With armed forces that have been run down since the Cold War, and a military-industrial base which could scarcely handle a single major conflict, it is not hard to see how the West could be overwhelmed by a confluence of crises igniting simultaneous wars across the globe.
Our adversaries will be fully aware of this and may, indeed, be planning for it.
A diplomatic solution begins by taking Ukrainian membership of NATO off the table and by calling for an immediate ceasefire along the existing line of contact.
It means the offer of non-exclusive trade agreements that would allow Ukraine to look both West and East.
At the same time, it requires the rebuilding of our armed forces and our military-industrial base as a matter of urgency, in order to lessen the chance of armed conflict between NATO and Russia by ensuring that there is military parity on the ground.
A diplomatic solution should also try to forestall the casus belli of a future conflict by resolving, for example, the issue of citizenship rights for ethnic Russians in the Baltic states.
Two years ago, it might have been possible to limit Russia’s gains to the annexation of Crimea, with the possibility of referenda returning the Donbas to Ukrainian sovereignty with a high degree of regional autonomy.
It is now hard to imagine any negotiated settlement that does not leave Russia with a land bridge to Crimea for the foreseeable future.
This is going to have to be a long term peace process in which there will need to be careful bridge-building. Over time, it is to be hoped that democratic reform in Russia itself can become part of the picture.
Working towards peace in Ukraine can help to mitigate the single greatest threat to our security which is that, as things stand, our present policy is having the effect of pushing China and Russia closer together.
The stark and imminent nature of this threat means that the issue of war and peace must override all other considerations at this election.
Unfortunately, the Labour manifesto includes a commitment to support Ukrainian membership of NATO.
There are two party leaders who have demonstrated the judgement and the leadership to make the right decisions on this issue: Nigel Farage and George Galloway.
I would recommend a vote for Galloway and for any candidate who is supported by the Workers Party of Britain and who has a credible chance of winning.
If the Green Party were, between now and polling day, to rule out Ukrainian membership of NATO, then I would also recommend a vote for Green candidates who can credibly win.
Everywhere else, I recommend a vote for Reform UK.
Nigel Farage has earned the right to lead.
I am confident that Farage would veto Ukrainian membership of NATO as Prime Minister, and would call for a diplomatic solution to the war as Leader of the Opposition.
Farage’s clear stance on the Ukraine war may cost his party a significant number of votes.
Nevertheless, it is Reform UK which stands a chance of making an historic breakthrough at this election and creating a rupture with the pro-war, liberal-neocon consensus which has done so much damage since the end of the Cold War.
July 4th represents an opportunity for the public to take action and change the course of events, amid what is now the most serious threat to our security since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
With 2027 fast approaching, it may be our last chance to do so.
Published on 28-Jun-2024