President Zelensky, wearing a suit, in No. 10 Downing Street, with the leaders of the ‘UK’, France and Germany.
In today’s discussions between the leaders of the four countries, Sir Kier Starmer said, ‘We stand with Ukraine.’ Who are ‘we’, what does it mean ‘to stand’, and where is Ukraine are three questions which jump out of such a woolly statement, and of course there are many others, so many and at such a complexity which is way beyond the ken of this simple pagan blog.
After Downing Street President Zelensky has met the NATO chief, and the President of the EU, and then to Italy and Rome, all in a few days and at meetings at the highest leadership level of the many organisations, alliances, groupings, opinions, possible support giving and definitely opinionators in this strange patchwork of jurisdictions over the lands north of the Mediterranean Sea and to the borders with Russia, with NATO itself extending over the …. Atlantic Ocean …. to the USA and Canada.
What does Zelensky want? Money, weapons, opinion to go against Russia, and troops, and to join NATO, and probably the EU as well. Everything from that looks into this strange patchwork as if these few days of discussions could yield a tangible result and within a month a large army of fit and well trained troops would head east and win the war for Ukraine. ‘UK’ politicians are keen on the idea of developing the arms industry, such is the economic plight going on here, and if someone would pay for them, there is probably a large stack of weapons which could be provided. If one weapon followed another, at astonishing monetary cost and destructive to human life, would that end the war and bring a long lasting solution to conflict in that region. News has it that Sir Kier has promised assistance worth £100bn to Ukraine, and that’s something the veterans in the UK wish that just a tiny weeny fraction of a fraction of that would be provided to give them a safe place to live, like other countries honour and care for those returning from traumatic combat. But £100bn can be promised to Ukraine.
From an outside looking in everything looks simple and uniform – in the sense of that word being ordered and clear and its purpose obvious. From the inside, everything looks different. The grouping of Sir Kier Starmer, President Macron and President Steinmeier with President Zelensky fits no one piece of the patchwork. The ‘UK’ has left the ‘EU’, NATO has the word Atlantic in the title and only the west coast of France faces the Atlantic Ocean, its north coast faces la Manche (the sleeve of water and which it does look like a sleeve) and which the English call not surprisingly the English Channel, and the coast of Germany faces the North Sea. How far does a coastline stretch, even the coastline of a mighty ocean like the Atlantic? Well, a long way in NATO. The Atlantic facing countries of the ‘UK’, Republic of Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal, and Canada and the USA on the other side are not one particular grouping at all, and why does Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia not be included in the geographically named North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, or at least down to Senegal? Because of course the regions down the west Atlantic coast of Africa have their own cultures, political systems, tribal matters and conflicts and violent wars going on, and are not included in the ‘western’ matters of the geography north of the Mediterranean Sea. And the Irish Republic neither is in NATO, because ironically of the war the ‘UK’ is waging over several centuries onto the land and people of Eire.
If one unifying factor was to offer troops to Ukraine, would unify the patchwork of terms and acronyms and promises and confusions? There also it cannot be a uniform grouping, because of that matter of uniforms. Troops wear uniforms, it is how they are identified as being for one side or the other, and the uniforms show something of their national origin, and of course there is the flag. The Vexed question of Vexillology gets more and more intractable. Between the four leaders meeting in Downing Street today, Ukraine is undergoing the war with Russia, it’s soldiers are physically fighting, and Germany and France have announced that national service is going to be reinstated, on a voluntary basis, but movement is movement. Intention comes before the sign of movement, and physical movement has a direction. In the chain of four men, one in the east in an active fighting war, France and Germany in the middle, and over La Manche Sir Kier Starmer talking about ‘we stand with Ukraine.’ The problem is that it is the ‘UK’ which does not stand with Ukraine, only in social media and armchair opinions, but in reality, it is the ‘UK’ which cannot raise troops to send over to assist.
What if tomorrow it was announced that all young people – males and females, and everyone in between in the legality of gender equality, – between 16-35 was to report to their local Forces of Army, Air Force and Navy and begin a quick programme of boot camp training to get into battle ready condition within 2 months, what would happen? Answer: Nothing. In the ‘UK’ we have no cohesion to raise a force. In France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, the young people are within an alignment of government, a functional police force able to do their job, a sense of citizen identity, and there is already the understanding that if mobilisation is necessary then physical readiness needs to be there. In the ‘UK’ where has that national citizen energy gone?
The last 25 years of Tony Blair ‘uni’s’, the selling off of playing fields where schoolchildren used to run around, the dropping off the radar of national service where young men went through the training and learnt a lot of other things besides while females served the nation in the other equally necessary ways for the functioning of a society, the collapse of the NHS and ‘social care’ resulting in millions of workers being flown into the ‘UK’ to prop up the organisations set up by the Labour government and whose only allegience to coming here is for the salary and the benefits, and who many would not be at all happy if their children were now requisitioned into an army instead of living their new life in the ‘UK’ with all the amenities and ease of this still not too hot or climatically disastrous country. The countries who have one calendar with one predominant belief system, even if folks do believe it or not, but the society does hold together from it, the people move at roughly the same tempo. Here in the ‘UK’ now with so many religions and beliefs and allegiances with so many places on Earth, and so many different views on gender and family structure and cultural norms, it would not be possible to ‘raise an army’ because we have no cultural or societal cohesion.
What if Sir Kier Starmer took back his offer of £100bn assistance and said sorry, we can’t afford it, and instead waved from the English side of La Manche and said good luck, not a great situation you’re all in over there, but here on the Atlantic we’ve got a lot of problems going on and after all, charity begins at home? It is not likely he would do that, but in the chain of events and the chain of people all meeting in these few days, someone talking about the relevance of geographical and oceanic terms would be such a welcome relief.