Foreign Policy Reversal: At Last!

The May government is suddenly coming to life. It began as if mesmerized by the aura of power, allowing drift and inaction in the country while engaging in rows within itself. Then came Trump. Somehow this energised the reformers to crush those who bumble their way through the glum political landscape of the status quo to the glory of a knighthood after many useless years of public service. Not only has it produced a coherent strategy for Brexit (with which this blog disagrees) although we await the detail, it has seen the wild card Trump as an opportunity to play a very different hand on the international stage. But most important of all, at last it has dumped the calamitous foreign policy of intervention against which this blog has for years campaigned. Armed interventions for regime change and nation building are out and Assad can stay if his people vote for him. This is not a change of direction. It is a reversal and it is to be applauded. Three cheers for Boris. Three cheers for Theresa.

There is still a blank spot over Russia. Russia did not illegally ‘annex’ Crimea. A Fascist mob, encouraged by the West, overthrew the legitimate, democratically elected government of the Ukraine and replaced it with one that announced it was hostile to Russia, to Russians who do and have always lived in eastern Ukraine and that Russian would cease to be an ‘official’ language. The terrified Russian Ukrainians, many families of centuries standing, took up arms to defend themselves and rang up Putin to ask for help. This came at a mobilisation speed which startled the West.  Crimea, which is almost entirely populated by Russians and was for centuries part of Russia, was ‘given’ to Ukraine by Khrushchev when he was Soviet leader to honour his birthplace and when everything was an integral part of the Soviet Union. Not surprisingly a referendum was held in Crimea asking the question would they like to rejoin the Russian Federation? 80%  of the population voted and 95% said Yes. That is democracy at work and it is silly to call it illegal.

Sooner or later we will have to accept that and end sanctions on Russia which have hurt the EU very badly. Indeed they have produced the economic stagnation which threatens the stability of the eurozone and with it the EU.  Moreover if we do accept the illegal claim, we are morally obliged to hand the Falklands back to Argentina, Northern Ireland to Dublin and Gibraltar to Spain.

But yesterday was a good day and it is the first step in making the world a safer place.