World Archives

Saturday

19 Mar 2022

France is strong where Britain and America are weak

Emmanuel Macron unveiled his campaign manifesto in a carefully orchestrated press conference on Thursday and his pledges to cut taxes and reform the welfare system dominated the headlines on Friday morning. But the president also touched on defence, promising that spending – €32.3 billion when he came to power in 2017 – will rise to €50 billion by 2025. Some of that money will be invested in cyber warfare technology, as well, presumably, on ammunition; if reports are to be believed the French army would run out of ordnance after four days of a major war. It’s a favourite pastime of Anglophones to mock the French military, though only those

Justin Bronk

The Russian army is running out of momentum

As the Russian invasion enters its fourth week it is clear that its forces are running out of momentum, although they continue to make limited territorial gains in the south and east of Ukraine. Having been denied a quick victory over Ukraine itself, Putin now needs to force the Ukrainian government to accept a ceasefire agreement that largely freezes the frontlines and allows him to claim a victory domestically. His strategy now appears to be to cut off the Ukrainian forces fighting a desperate battle to hold the line in Donbas in the east against combined Russian and separatist Donetsk and Luhansk forces from the rest of Ukraine, and to concentrate

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

Russia has never been a part of the West

In 1697 Tsar Peter the Great set out on a great journey across western Europe, seeking the support of European monarchs in his confrontation with the Ottoman Empire. Unsuccessful in securing alliances, he returned instead laden with ideas acquired in his travels through Britain and Holland, which he promptly put into action in modernising Russia. The most visible symbol of this new nation was Saint Petersburg, the intended new capital of his empire. By 1858, an English visitor to the city described it as ‘one of the handsomest cities in Europe’, with a street of residences ‘so large that 50 extend over an English mile.’ And so it was that

Friday

18 Mar 2022

Steerpike

Does Twitter think Trump is worse than Russia?

Who decides what gets counted as ‘misinformation’? For the increasingly large number of people who get their news from social media the answer these days is probably Facebook or Twitter, which in recent years have become far more powerful than any old press baron. This became particularly apparent during the tail end of the Donald Trump era, when Twitter began slapping fake news labels on the outgoing president’s tweets. As Trump rallied against the results of the 2020 presidential election, Twitter responded by hiding his tweets behind warning labels which said their content was ‘disputed’ or ‘might be misleading’. Eventually Trump was booted off his favourite platform ‘due to the risk

James Forsyth

How to stop China from attacking Taiwan

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the West has got many things right. Yet there is no doubt that Western mistakes over the past few years, and splits in the weeks and months beforehand, made Putin think he could get away with his invasion. The West cannot afford to repeat these with Taiwan, I say in the Times today. There are four lessons that the West should learn from Ukraine if it is to deter China from attacking Taiwan. First, it should be explicit that Beijing will be hit with sanctions at least as strong as those on Russia if it tries to blockade or take Taiwan. The West should move to

Fraser Nelson

Why it was a mistake for Ofcom to remove Russia Today

In conflicts, there is always a temptation to mirror the tactics of one’s opponents – which is why it’s depressing to see Ofcom do so by taking Russia Today (RT) off air. The fight is not just between Russia and Ukraine but a democratic view of life and authoritarian rule. In our system, we believe that truth is arrived at through open competition of argument. In Putin’s system, opposition is stymied and censored. Britain’s experiments of TV censorship in the past have been ineffective as well as illiberal It’s not as if Britain has to worry about the contagious power of Putin’s ideas undermining our social or political fabric –

Philip Patrick

Does Putin’s Judo philosophy explain his sanctions response?

Contemplating leaders and their heroes can be a revealing business. Churchill had busts of Nelson and Napoleon at Chartwell (and a portrait of John Churchill by his bedside). Ronald Reagan had a bronze head of an anonymous cowboy in the Oval Office; Boris Johnson has a bust of Pericles (who took advice only from his mistress Aspasia) on his desk at No. 10. Napoleon had a bust of Hannibal. But what of Vladimir Putin? According to the man himself he owns several portraits and a ‘very beautiful’ bust of a certain Kano Jigoro. If you are neither Japanese nor a fan of martial arts that name may mean little. Kano

Nigel Jones

Is Boris channeling Churchill in his response to Russia?

Boris Johnson’s hero – apart from himself – is Winston Churchill, who led Britain through the dark valley of World War Two. Our present PM has even written an adulatory biography of the great man, and clearly would like to channel Churchill as a war leader and emulate his success. Will the war in Ukraine give him the opportunity? Although Britain is not – yet – a direct belligerent in the current conflict, it is already playing a major role. It is supplying anti-tank NLAW weapons and missiles to the Ukrainians; it is ramping up diplomatic support for the invaded country; and – albeit unofficially – British Army veterans and

Freddy Gray

Why was the Hunter Biden laptop story covered up?

It’s now a familiar pattern – a sensational news story is dismissed by serious journalists as bogus right-wing agitprop. You’d have to be a swivel-eyed conspiracy theorist to believe that. You don’t want to be one of those. Then, a year or so later, the same important media organs, the same authorities who made you feel crazy for thinking that the story might be credible, turn around and tell you that, yep, it was true all along. It was just politically awkward to say so at the time. We saw it in the Covid years with the Wuhan lab-leak theory. We saw it to some extent with Jeffrey Epstein. And

Boris Volodarsky

Russian intelligence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

Western countries have always had a rather high opinion of Soviet intelligence. British secret services – MI5, MI6 and Special Branch – tended to greatly exaggerate Russia’s successes during the Cold War and even after the collapse of the USSR. But the reality when it comes to Russian secret services is rather different. As the famous Russian satirist Vladimir Voinovich, the author of the dystopian ‘Moscow 2042’, put it: ‘I am not afraid of the KGB. Either their car will break when they decide to come and arrest me, or they run out of petrol on the way to my home, or they simply forget my address.’ Have things improved in the years

Thursday

17 Mar 2022

Jonathan Miller

The Macron Paradox

With just 24 days to go before the first round of French presidential voting, the political landscape has become borderline surreal, a dream state of self-induced hallucinations. The war in Ukraine has utterly overshadowed the vote. Any resemblance to an actual democratic contest might now be regarded as coincidental. If the current polls are right, Macron will enter the second round with Marine Le Pen in a straight replay of 2017, with the same inevitable result. I have my doubts about these polls. But it might not matter much who faces Macron: unloved yet unbeatable. Macron isn’t even campaigning. He’s at 30 per cent in polls for the first round, campaigning through a

Charlie Peters

Nazanin is free. But at what cost?

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release, alongside fellow prisoner Anoosheh Ashoori, has attracted enormous amounts of praise and joy at a time when the news has felt like a relentless stream of misery. How could you feel anything other than joy at the release of a young mother after six years away from her child? These freed Britons have endured an unimaginable plight, suffering horrific conditions in one of the world’s most notorious dictatorships. But when these outpourings of relief and jubilation pass, a serious reckoning over how the Foreign Office secured their release must take place. The British government has paid £400 million to a horrific regime with at best a questionable claim to the

Francis Pike

Turkmenistan may emerge as a global powerbroker

While the world is watching Ukraine, there is another former Soviet republic that has quietly undergone regime change. Turkmenistan’s 65-year-old former president, known, in the manner of a comic book superhero, as ‘The Protector’, stepped down in February. With Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s departure, the Mejlis Assembly duly called for elections on 12 March. As regime changes go this one was hardly revolutionary. The Protector’s son, having just turned 40 (the minimum age at which a candidate can stand for the presidency) won the election at a canter. The only surprise was that Serdar, ‘The Son of the Nation’, won just 73 per cent of the vote compared to his father’s 97 per cent winning

Hardeep Singh

Will India’s neutrality on Putin’s aggression backfire?

As the western world tightens sanctions on Russia, India is opting for a different strategy: sitting on the fence. ‘We are on the side of peace,’ India’s prime minister Narendra Modi insists. In reality, this means keeping shtum when it comes to condemning Putin’s aggression and abstaining at the United Nations General Assembly on a resolution criticising Russia. India’s stance has, unsurprisingly, sparked a backlash. President Biden has said any country which effectively supports Putin would be ‘stained by association’. While he didn’t single out India by name, it was obvious who he was talking about. Closer to home, Tory MP Johnny Mercer has pinpointed India for its stance on Russia: ‘In 2021/22 we are giving £55.3m

Mark Galeotti

Putin’s totalitarian turn

Putin, of course, can never be wrong. Hence the desperate struggle, familiar to other personalised authoritarianisms, to find suitable scapegoats, because if the monarch is infallible, then anything that goes badly must be someone else’s fault, whether because they misled the boss or simply failed to follow orders. What is especially alarming is when the blame comes to fall on a whole country for failing to live up to his notion of their destiny. Colonel General Sergei Beseda, head of the Fifth Service of the infamous Federal Security Service (FSB), is reportedly under house arrest, accused of embezzling funds intended for the subversion of Ukraine. However, Beseda was one of

Lisa Haseldine

What Russians are really being told about war in Ukraine

‘They are lying to you here,’ declared the placard held aloft by the journalist who stormed the set of one of Russia’s most popular news channels this week. Marina Ovsyannikova also recorded a video saying she was ashamed to work for what she called a Kremlin propaganda network. So what are Russians really being told about Putin’s war in Ukraine? British viewers might be surprised to learn there are plenty of similarities in what Russia’s media is reporting on compared to the Western media: the ever-increasing list of sanctions imposed by Europe and the United States on Russian companies and state figures, the shelling of Ukrainian cities and the meetings of leaders attempting to

Andrew Tettenborn

Boris is right to ask for Saudi oil

War and virtue don’t mix well, especially when it comes to the dirty business of energy supplies. As soon as the Ukraine situation turned nasty the UK government quietly did a turn on winding down North Sea gas, and may possibly do the same on fracking. And, having sworn off Russian hydrocarbons, Boris is now looking for urgent supplies. In doing so he is talking to some pretty doubtful regimes. Yesterday he visited Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi; he has also put out feelers to Qatar. Opposition parties have made hay. In Scotland, opposition to North Sea gas and ‘extreme fossil fuel ideology’ has come from both Nicola Sturgeon and

Rod Liddle

The invasion of Ukraine has exposed the West’s impotence

When the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, addressed the House of Commons recently, he was afforded two standing ovations from MPs, both lasting about 40 seconds, before and after he spoke. He was probably used to it, having received a similar reception when addressing the European Parliament a week before. On both occasions, then, he was engulfed by warm, moist waves of adulation and respect. On both occasions he also asked for important, difficult stuff from the people he was addressing and didn’t get any of it – just lots of applause and legislators delicately dabbing their eyes before quickly averting them. If Le Creuset saucepans had been allowed into the

Douglas Murray

The West has rediscovered its purpose

Over recent days I have been reflecting on War and Peace. Or Special Operation and Peace as it must now be known in Russia, unless you want to spend 15 years in prison. And I am reminded once again of how utterly unpredictable war always is. On this occasion almost every-thing that people imagined just a couple of weeks back has been completely inverted. In no particular order the list includes the following. A few weeks ago Vladimir Putin looked like a strongman. Today he looks like a weak and deluded leader. A few weeks ago Volodymyr Zelensky looked like an ex-comedian who might soon be out of his depth,

Nicholas Farrell

The war in Ukraine may benefit the populist right

Ravenna, Italy Ever since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, it’s been widely assumed that Europe’s right-wing populists are finished. Figures such as Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini and Viktor Orban have all been cast as Putin’s useful idiots – defending his nefarious deeds because they saw him as a vital ideological ally. Now that Putin’s craven cruelty can no longer be excused, it’s argued, time is up: both for their sordid dance with Putin and for them. ‘The invasion has already done huge damage to populists all over the world who prior to the attack uniformly expressed sympathy for Putin,’ writes Francis Fukuyama in a recent essay. But what if