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- Gun-toting Ambassadors, racist diplomats and squabbling officials - David Lammy needs to reform a failing Foreign Office
Jon Benjamin, Britain’s former Ambassador to Mexico, hit the headlines in May after pointing a semi-automatic rifle at a member of his staff. This incident spoke to a deeper rot at the heart of the Foreign Office at a time when Britain’s influence abroad is in sharp decline. Here’s what awaits David Lammy when he arrives in King Charles Street as the ninth Foreign Secretary since 2014. The Foreign Office wasn’t always this bad. William Hague focused on modernisation. He launched a Diplomatic Academy and reopened a language school, to create ‘the best diplomatic service in the world’. He grew the UK’s overseas network. Ministers worked in partnership with officials and there was a level of mutual respect. That all vanished after he left. Hammond was singularly unsuited, Boris was never taken seriously, Hunt had good ideas but was ignored by officials who knew he wouldn’t last long. The ‘system’ circled the wagons against an overly assertive Raab. Liz Truss was disinterested, Cleverly was liked because he had no ideas, and no one knew why Cameron jumped onto Sunak’s sinking ship having abandoned his own. Change in any civil service department relies on Ministers spending long enough in their departments to nudge the Mandarins forward. But he also needs to grip Foreign Office Officials who have resisted change better than Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes Minister . Sir Simon Fraser didn’t like Ministers spending Foreign Office cash, launched Hague’s Diplomatic Academy on a shoe-string and drove the Diplomatic Excellence Programme with little vigour. Sir Simon MacDonald blogged that he didn’t ‘do’ radical reform following the publication of Naked Diplomat Tom Fletcher’s Future FCO report in 2016 which made various suggestions to improve the capability of Britain’s diplomats. That Report was shelved and barely any its recommendations have been implemented. The Foreign Office has become progressively de-skilled. It stopped training diplomats in diplomatic skills over twenty years ago. Almost one third of diplomats fail or don’t even take the foreign language examinations that are a requirement for them to do their jobs overseas. A Foreign Affairs Committee demand that the Foreign Office reports on improvements in language performance has been routinely ignored for years. David Lammy needs to set his own vision to improve Britain’s international capabilities and task a junior Minister with holding officials to account. The balance between expertise and leadership at the top of the Foreign Office has never been struck. In 2020, Sir Philip Barton was parachuted into the job, tasked with merging the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development shortly after the onset of COVID. However, he lacked the corporate leadership skills needed to drive forward a complex merger. His main failing, highlighted in a report that I wrote in 2022, an inability to resolve in-fighting among former FCO and DFID officials and make clear decisions on the way forward. A damming National Audit Office report earlier this year highlighted a basic lack of progress in getting the two merged departments to work together. Essentially, after Dominic Raab was ousted in the teeth of bullying allegations, pressure to make the merger work evaporated. David Lammy should consider, for the first time, appointing a senior industry leader to drive the machinery of the Foreign Office along more professional lines. Which brings me back to Jon Benjamin. He’s not the only diplomat to have messed up. An Ambassador was once sent home for leaving the Embassy in his pyjamas. One diplomat wrote and circulated a note about Pope-branded condoms ahead of a Papal visit. Two diplomats fell foul of Russian honey traps while I was posted to Moscow. Benjamin’s case was different because the story was leaked by a local member of his staff. Two-thirds of Foreign Office staff are people employed locally to work in Embassies around the world. They are paid lower salaries compared to the average in their countries and are commonly treated as second class citizens by the well-paid and pampered minority of diplomats. Sir Simon McDonald solidified this disenfranchisement by dismissing them all as only having a job rather than a career. This lack of respect coupled with a sense that the Foreign Office has been drifting rudderless since the merger has fostered a toxic culture in British Embassies. The yearly staff survey confirms a stubborn and immovable level of bullying, harassment and discrimination across the UK overseas network. The Office spends millions each year paying consultants to offer advice on culture and things like that. It hasn’t worked. David Lammy should step back and look at whether a more modern structure for the organisation, less racist and colonialist and more authentically inclusive and internationalist, would be better . Because if he wants to the UK to have a greater impact on major global evets, like in Ukraine and Gaza, he first needs to fix a failing Foreign Office.
- Nigel Farage made three valid points about Russia (but i wouldn't vote for Reform)
If you search for UK Reform Party leader Nigel Farage’s recent comments about Russia online, you will first be greeted by a slew of western pundits and parliamentarians jumping on a bandwagon of condemnation. During a recent TV interview, he asserted that Vladimir Putin was provoked into war in Ukraine. His detractors didn’t acknowledge or debate the points that he made. The facts or arguments were incidental to their moral outrage. Just to be clear, I would never vote for Nigel Farage, or Reform (or, before it, UKIP) as I’m a pro-European, open borders, internationalist. Growing up as an army kid in Germany, I remember the border checkpoints when my family took weekend trips to Holland. Peace on the European continent has been earned, in my opinion, by allowing people of different nationalities to move and interact more easily. I don’t believe in unchecked immigration, but I do believe that the UK economy needs migrant workers across a broad range of skilled and unskilled roles. As a good example, both the NHS and the City of London would sag if reliant on British labour alone. That’s my view, based on the evidence that I’ve seen. But Farage’s comments illustrated a problem, particular to the UK right now, in which any discussion of Russia is more often than not driven by feelings rather than hard analysis of the available evidence. Take a recent Twitter/X article by British journalist and labour activist, Paul Mason. He responded to Farage by announcing that the NATO expansion argument – the idea that continued NATO enlargement has been a casus belli for Putin - is a lie. Like most journalists who support the ongoing war in Ukraine – specifically, the majority of journalists in the UK - he didn’t explain why it was a lie, simply that it was. Outrage brooks no debate. The available evidence is entirely incidental. This sits in sharp contrast to the US, where debate about the ongoing war in Ukraine is more open. Somewhat to my surprise, the Guardian recently carried an excellent article by Christopher Chivvis, a Senior Fellow as the Carnegie Endowment for peace. He argued that ‘Ukraine’s leaders should stop asking for NATO membership and the Biden Administration should stop considering it.’ His article carefully laid out a series of arguments to underpin this central judgement. I happen to agree, as having been closely involved in UK policy making towards Russia from 2013-2023, it's clear to me that repeatedly ignoring Putin’s expressed concerns about NATO expansion would cause the very conflict we see today in Ukraine. You don’t necessarily have to agree with me, or with Chivvis, but let’s at least discuss it. The British media is dominated by emotional proponents of the current UK and US policy, to continue to arm Ukraine with a view to a longer-term strategic defeat of Russia. Whenever Zelensky makes a plea, it is always for more weapons, never for genuine negotiations. But there are counter-arguments too, that Russia cannot be defeated on the battlefield, and that the US should get behind a negotiated settlement. In the run up to a UK general election that will almost certainly change the government in Westminster, these counter-arguments are almost entirely ignored. With the rare and pleasing exception of the Chivvis article, British citizens are subject to significant press censorship on alternative views of Russia. The Tories and Labour have entered a pre-election pact to whitewash all debate. As with the Mason article, we are asked to accept the current government approach to war in Ukraine as a given. Free speech has never been under such threat in a Britain that claims to stand up for liberty. Don’t get distracted by the evidence guys, it’s enough to know that Russia is bad. But I firmly believe that honest debate should trump blind cancellation. So, and back to Nigel Farage, he made four specific points that haven’t cut through the blizzard of outrage. First, that EU expansion can help explain Putin’s choice of war over peace. In my view, this is classic Farage, using the ongoing war in Ukraine to launch another attack at his old foes in Brussels. I don’t personally believe the evidence supports this. Russia undoubtedly saw the Eastern partnership programme as a way to peel former Soviet States away from Russia’s influence. Putin offering Yanukovych a $15bn back-hander to stay out of an Association Agreement was undoubtedly a flashpoint for the Maidan protests, which precipitated the Ukraine crisis in 2014. But since Ukraine signed the EU agreement under Poroshenko’s Presidency, the EU membership issue has largely blended into the background. Russian leaders practically never raise this as an issue now. The second and related point – what people like Mason and others write off as a lie, while offering no opportunity for debate - is that NATO expansion prompted Putin to choose war over peace. Here, in my opinion, Farage made a valid point, a point made over many years by more reputable academics and activists. Like many others, Mason proceeds from the argument that Putin has confected his concern about NATO only recently, to justify his actions. This is convenient for a readership that is starved of unhelpful context. But the facts show that this has been an expressed concern of Russia for eighteen years. Cast your mind back to Bucharest in early April 2008 at the NATO Summit. This is the Summit where Putin agreed to allow NATO to continue to transport military equipment through Russia to support the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, Putin also railed against proposed expansion of NATO. Two years after the former Soviet Baltic states joined NATO, he saw further NATO expansion as a threat to Russian security. ‘Let’s be friends, guys,’ he implored NATO leaders. He specifically warned against Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO. He was ignored and, within four months, Russian troops poured into Georgia to prop up the separatist states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. NATO blamed Putin (though Medvedev was by that time President) for what happened in Georgia. Yet, despite this, Russia tried to maintain relations with the west, including Hillary Clinton’s botched attempt at a reset. Since then six new countries have joined NATO. And here, Farage’s third point comes in. ‘They are coming after us again!’ Hard-wired into the Russian psyche is an idea that their enormous and difficult to manage country has constantly faced external threat over the centuries. Those threats including Nazi Germany, Napoleon, the Swedes and Lithuanians and the Mongols. Russia sees NATO as the grouping that bombed Belgrade, dismembered Yugoslavia, and caused mayhem in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, all in the cause of liberty. We might take a different view on each of those theatres of conflict. But believe me, having lived in Moscow for four and a half years, many Russians really do believe this. So, when the Polish President talked recently about dismembering Russia into a host of ethnic states, you might see how this feeds Russian paranoia. Which brings me to Farage’s fourth point. The Putin has used NATO expansion as a reason to justify his war in Ukraine. Ordinary Russians look on the map and see that NATO, and its aspirant states, almost completely encircles their country as far as the border between Georgia and Azerbaijan. Russians don’t see NATO as a so-called ‘defensive’ alliance. To them, it is a vast military empire with far more troops and equipment than Russia has. NATO now accounts for 55% of all global defence spending – that’s at least ten times bigger than Russia, despite its vast spending on the war. The USA alone spends 6-7 times more each year on defence than does Russia. And despite its overwhelming advantage, NATO still encourages all of its members to spend even more which, if they did so, would add over $80bn each year to NATO spending. It therefore isn’t difficult for Putin to convince his electorate that in this fight he is Luke Skywalker, and Joe Biden is Darth Vader. That’s one reason why domestic support in Russia for the war remains high. That’s also why developing nations in BRICS and the wider developing world increasingly see Russia as the plucky small guy, fighting for its rights against NATO. Very few non-European or non-NATO nations signed the communique at the recently so-called Ukraine peace Summit in Switzerland. They see a Ukraine that cannot win a war on its own against Russia despite the NATO billions. Farage is simply suggesting we have a debate about whether peace in Ukraine would be better than war. You can’t blame him for offering a point of difference when the main political parties, and the British media, as typified by journalists like Paul Mason, are set against all debate. Let’s hope that when the new Prime Minister walks into 10 Downing Street at some point on 8 July, they look above the parapet and ask for fresh advice on how badly off-track our policy towards Ukraine has become.
- Ukraine will never join NATO - recent media appearances
My core analysis remains unchanged: only negotiations will end this war and the US, in particular, is key in insisting that Zelensky do this. The US is increasingly doing high-G turns to package Ukraine's ongoing (and, I suspect, permanent) exclusion from NATO, in the run up to the military alliance's 75 anniversary summit in Washington. More high profile speakers are stepping up to press Biden to tell the truth that Ukraine will never join. I don't sense that he is listening or, if he is, will make a clear statement on this point, against the entreaties of an increasingly grasping Zelensky. Over the past couple of weeks I've had a busy time talking to various people about the ongoing war in Ukraine. You can find here a selection of my interviews. With Aaron Mate and Katie Halper on their Useful Idiots show On the Daniel Davis Deep Dive to discuss the so called Ukraine Peace Summit (or, Zelensky's asking for more weapons, summit). Recent interview on RT following Nigel Farage's comments on NATO.
- The ticking time bomb of Ukrainian debt (that the west will have to pay)
The G7 recently made the headlines by agreeing to lend Ukraine $50bn which will be repaid using the yearly interest accrued on $329bn of confiscated Russian sovereign foreign exchange reserves. When it is finally structured, the loan will consist of a series of loans by G7 member countries, with the US topping up the fund by the required amount so it hits the $50bn mark. Taking a step back from the legality of, effectively, expropriating another country’s sovereign assets to repay a rival country’s debt, what does this mean for Ukraine? Figures vary, and the Ukrainian government is increasingly coy about releasing economic data sets, but Ukraine’s economy is currently around $180-190bn in size. To put that into context, that is around 11 times smaller than Russia’s economy and 131 times smaller than the US economy. $50bn, therefore, represents around 27% of Ukraine’s yearly GDP. That is a huge figure for a single loan. But the problem is that Ukraine has been borrowing this amount every year since the war started. According to politico, Ukraine borrowed $58bn in 2022, $46bn in 2023 and is set to borrow $52bn in 2024. So, in just three years, Ukraine will have borrowed 82% of GDP. Ukraine needs to borrow this much because its government spends almost twice as much each year as it receives in income from taxation and other sources. To put that into context, the European Union sets a limit that Member States cannot run a budget deficit of more than 3% of GDP. Ukraine, which aspires to join the EU, has been running a yearly budget deficit of 25% since the war began. And in addition to that, with Ukraine running a deficit on its current account each year – the difference between how much it exports and imports – it also needs capital to stop its currency going into meltdown. And here’s the thing, Ukraine will probably need to borrow even more this year than what is currently forecast. Don't be fooled by the official defence budget for 2024 of $28.6bn; this is around half of what Ukraine actually spent on defence in 2023. (Ukraine adjusted its original 2023 defence budget up from $39.4bn - still more than the 2024 budget - to $56.3bn). Ukraine’s massive spending spree on the war effort, in 2023 at least, accounted for one third of total economic output. With Zelensky showing no appetite to negotiate, there's little reason to believe it won't in 2024. So, with Ukraine taking on 25% of its GDP in debt each year, its debt mountain will continue to spiral out of control. The EU forecasts that Ukrainian debt is growing by 10% of GDP each year since the war started, but I view these forecasts with a heavy dose of scepticism. Even if Ukraine’s economy grew by 5.5% in 2023, it remains smaller than it was in 2021, before the war started. More realistically, Ukraine’s debt is growing by 15-20% of GDP each year. So, Ukraine’s debt will hit 100% of GDP in the current financial year (if it hasn’t already). And the really worrying thing is that there are no plans to repay any of it. Because Ukraine isn’t making debt repayments each year to tamp down its debt growth. In fact, Ukraine stopped making payments ona its existing external debt in 2022 when the war started. For those who remember the onset of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, Ukraine immediately refused to pay a debt of $3bn that Russia had given it as part of the deal with Yanukovich to stay out of the EU Association Agreement. Fueled by hubris and self-righteousness, Ukraine has become addicted to taking on debt and then refusing to make payments on that debt. Since the start of the war, Zelensky has been pressing for the $329bn in frozen Russian assets to be given to Ukraine. The G7 loan of $50bn therefore marks an alarming shift in that direction. It assumes that Ukraine itself will never need to repay the debt itself, even though it’s Ukraine’s debt. But when the war ends, if this needless war ever ends, who will repay the G7 countries their loans then? The Americans seem to believe that it would be possible to continue to freeze Russia’s frozen reserve assets even after war finished. If that be so, what motivation, then, for Russia to stop fighting if it feels that massive sanctions and the theft of its assets will continue? As I said at the top, Russia’s economy is 11 times larger than Ukraine’s. Russia is also bringing in healthy amounts of capital each year as its exports continue to exceed its imports. Put simply, Russia gains a surplus of around $50bn each year in its exports, which roughly equates to what Ukraine borrows each year to prop up the war effort. While Putin has offered a peace deal – or at least, terms for peace negotiations to restart – Russia has sufficient resources to keep fighting, even if the fighting results in a barely shifting stalemate. So, in economic terms at least, winning the war doesn’t matter to Russia right now, even if he and the Russian people would prefer an end to it all. Because the longer the war continues, the more indebted and delinquent Ukraine becomes. Putin knows that practically all of the foreign money that Ukraine borrows comes from western countries that are bankrolling Ukraine’s fight. And we have already seen the sands shift in western support with pure hand-outs transitioning to actual loans. So, over time, the west will increasingly offer Ukraine debt rather than freebees. And it is pure fantasy to believe that Russia will repay this debt, as Russia wants its frozen money back. A one-sided peace will not be possible in which the west continues to punish Russia, including economically, after the cannon fire stops. Indeed, stealing Russia’s assets will only lead to potential further escalation, prolonging Ukraine’s suffering, and ramping up its unsustainable debt still further. This war will end when Putin feels that there are economic incentives to stand his troops down and to negotiate a lasting peace. Until then, the west is holding a ticking time bomb of debt that Zelensky doesn’t believe that he should have to pay. Or, to put it another way, he is paying for this war using credit cards; except that they are our credit cards, not his.
- How British diplomacy is failing Ukraine
I recently had the pleasure of talking with Anatol Lieven, Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. We discussed how UK decision makers have failed to draw lessons from the history of Russia, and how this ignorance has fueled an avowedly hawkish sentiment in London, with the disastrous consequences we see today in Ukraine. A link to the video is below.
- Zelensky’s peace formula is dead: my takeaways from the Swiss summit
In what was an echo chamber for Ukraine’s allies to encourage Zelensky to continue to reject formal peace talks with Russia, the Swiss Summit delivered nothing. Here are my key takeaways. The west makes up two-thirds of the signatures Of the 82 signatories to the Communique, 45 were European Countries including non-EU members, there were 4 European Institutions and 5 other western allies that have sanctioned Russia, including Japan. Add in Israel, which is a US client state, that makes 55 countries and institutions. BRICS blocked the Summit as did 9 G20 Members No BRICS member state associated itself with the final communique. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, they believe that Russia should be involved in any peace process for it to be credible. India’s representative at the Summit said that “only sincere and practical engagement” between Russia and Ukraine can lead to enduring peace. The second point is that Ukraine will need to make difficult compromises in any peace process, something Zelensky has been determined not to do. Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister said, “we believe it is important that the international community encourage any step towards serious negotiations which will require difficult compromise as part of a road map that leads to peace.” There were also major G20 no-shows with 9 of the non-western members not associating themselves with the Communique. The notable exception to this was Argentina, which got behind the summit outcome. The Middle East completely turned its back on the Summit Given almost unconditional US support for Israel’s actions in Gaza, Middle Eastern Countries turned their back on the summit and final communique. They were most likely turned off by a US-engineered peace initiative for Ukraine that, much like US efforts in Gaza, seek to support one side over another in the conflict. Only Qatar, which is playing an active role in negotiating prisoner handovers associated itself with the Communique. As did the wider Global South Of the 27 non-western allies who signed the communique, there was a very limited showing from mostly smaller Asian and Pacific (6) Latin American (9) and African states. This sent a powerful statement that the Global South was turned off by this initiative. Ukraine’s position on territorial integrity not sustainable While western media have claimed the communique endorsed Ukraine’s territorial integrity as a basis for a just and lasting peace, this isn’t correct. A core part of Zelensky’s so-called peace formula is the requirement that restoring Ukraine’s 1991 borders is core to reaching any peace deal. This is highlighted under the umbrella of the fourth point of Article 2 of the UN Charter that States should “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations”. However, Russia claims that NATO expansion, including towards Ukraine, is a threat to its state under the same clause of the UN Charter. The communique wording is therefore ambiguous on this point. Indeed, Russia might argue that the final paragraph of the text refers to its rights as much as to Ukraine’s rights. At best, the communique was therefore inconclusive on territorial integrity. This confirms my assessment that any future peace deal will require Ukraine to make compromises, based on the battlefield realities, which are not likely to shift. Ukraine trying to demand a one-sided text on nuclear and prisoner exchange While the communique as a whole is a demonstration in diplomatic circumlocution, there are obvious points where Ukraine has tried to stamp Zelensky’s so-called formula on the text. The clause on returning Zaporizhia to the “full sovereign control of Ukraine” ignores the fact that it is currently under Russian control. Likewise, the clause on the return of “deported and unlawfully displaced Ukrainian children”: this would never make the text of any peace deal as Russia claims, rightly or wrongly, that is has acted to protect vulnerable children. The point is, that trying to shape a communique that pushes Ukraine’s positions and ignores Russia’s, will never garner broad-based international support. Zelensky’s demands for military withdrawal, restoration of its borders and a war crimes tribunal are dead in the water As I predicted in my separate article, Zelensky’s demands to settle for peace by turning back the clock to 1991 can never be met in this one-sided format for dialogue. Ukraine has not secured significant backing from the Global South for the less contentious topics discussed in Switzerland. It will never be possible to find agreement on the far more contentious points, if non-Western states consider that this is a US-led attempt to impose an outcome on Russia in absentia. A follow-up event in Saudi Arabia will put more pressure on Zelensky to compromise and involve Russia So with BRICS and the Global South decidedly lukewarm on this Swiss Initiative, it won’t be possible to garner their support for a tougher line on Russia in future. If another Ukraine Peace Summit is convened – and there are suggestions that this might take place in Saudi Arabia – the pressure will grow on Zelensky to make compromises and involve Russia. So, the biggest outcome from the Summit, if there was one, was to confirm that Zelensky’s so called 10-point peace formula is dead in the water. It’s time for him, now, to start talking to Russia.
- Uncontrolled spending on nukes and war in Ukraine – the Tory-Labour election pact
On 12 April, Keir Starmer announced that Labour would commit to increase UK defence spending to 2.5%. While the Conservative Party has been talking up the need to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP for some time, Rishi Sunak made his formal announcement on 24 April. On the eve of Rishi’s reveal, the UK Defence Journal declared ‘Britain to boost defence spending due to threat from Russia!’ Out of the blue, spending 2.5% of GDP on defence had become a joint Tory-Labour commitment. For voters, at a time of an ongoing proxy war in Ukraine, Israeli atrocities in Gaza and growing fear of China, spending an extra 0.5% of GDP on defence a headline grabber. But why is there no debate between the two main political parties in the UK general election campaign about foreign, security and defence policy? The Tories and Labour have been completely silent on how much this additional 0.5% will cost in hard-earned, tax-payers’ cash. At a pre-election debate, the phrase ‘2.5% on defence’ slipped off Deputy Labour Leader Angela Rayner’s tongue quicker than the sale of her council house in Stockport. In its review of the Conservative Manifesto, the Institute for Fiscal Studies only refers to increased defence spending in percentage terms, and not in pounds and pence. In fact, the Tory-Labour pact on defence spending will cost in excess of £13bn each year. Apparently, cutting the size of the civil service and cutting benefits will largely fund this. Although no actual plans for this have been set out. So we should assume an increase in UK government borrowing which has now risen above 100% of GDP, with a government deficit that is currently twice as high as the limit set within the European Union (3%). Let’s be clear, the Tory-Labour plans for defence spending exceed the total cost of their respective election spending pledges. Labour spending plans top off at around £10bn and Keir Starmer and crew can barely breathe without being pressed on how they’ll fund breakfast clubs for primary schools, or a warm house plan to stop elderly people dying because they can’t afford to pay for heating. The Conservatives are looking to cut taxes, despite massive debt and a large deficit. But where they are planning to spend more, for example on Sunak’s bizarre kids’ army, those costs fall far short of the assumed Tory-Labour increase in defence spending. And what the public doesn’t know is that most of the new money for defence has already been spent. The UK already spends 2.3% of GDP following a huge recent splurge. The remaining 0.2% will disappear quicker than a British Minister’s deleted WhatsApp messages. But this money isn’t giving us anything new. In fact, the day-to-day budget this year to pay for the lads and lasses on the front line of our defence has been cut by £2.5bn. Many service personnel worry about whether they’ll have a house to live in. Submariners talk about the increased stress of longer deployments which have been driven by the need to cut costs. No, this 0.5% increase in defence spending will be shuffled towards completely out of control spending on the defence procurement programme and the proxy war in Ukraine. In March 2024, the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee reported that the Ministry of Defence has been consistently unable or unwilling to control the spiralling costs and delivery schedules of its 1800 (that’s right, eighteen hundred) defence projects. The MoD has a woeful track record: whether it’s a £430m overspend on the Warrior programme or £2.5bn over on new aircraft carriers, a 59% delay in delivering the Challenger 3 tank or an extra 7 years for Dreadnought. On 4 December 2023 the National Audit Office produced a review of the MoD’s equipment plan for the next decade concluding that it was ‘unaffordable and facing the largest budget deficit since the plan was introduced in 2012’. Note here that the current plan was developed two years before the Ukraine crisis started. So the motto for UK defence procurement should be ‘delivering last decade’s technology in the next decade at whatever cost.’ According to the MoD’s estimates, the costs of the equipment programme have shot up by 27% or £65.7bn over the past year alone. And that is based on their ‘most likely’ scenario for spending. In the ‘worst case’, the total increase in cost will amount to almost £80bn. Add in other expected cost overruns that the MoD reassures us can be absorbed by efficiency savings, then the cost shoots up to over £104bn. The Public Accounts Committee noted that these estimates do not account for an estimated £12bn in additional requirements for the Army. By far the biggest area of budgetary pressure is in the nuclear programme which is currently overspent by 62%. These include the much-delayed ‘Dreadnought’ submarine as a replacement for the SSBNSs that carry the UK’s nuclear missiles. There is a joint UK-US project to build a new class of submarines to counter the apparent threat from China under the AUKUS programme; however, the current generation of Astute class fleet submarines in the UK has only been operational for ten years. We have a programme to design a new nuclear warhead with the US, as if having 225 nukes wasn’t enough. None of these massively costly projects are giving us capabilities that we don’t already possess. While they are undoubtedly strengthening the UK’s military industrial supply chain, they aren’t making us safer. After expensive nukes, the Tories and Labour are jointly committing to prop up proxy conflicts. £3.9bn will be allocated from the Treasury reserve in the current financial year, principally to fund the UK’s weapon shipments to Ukraine, but also the cost of supporting US strikes against Yemen. As I understand it, this ‘reserve’ funding for proxy conflicts will become normalised within the defence budget from 2025/6, after the general election dust has settled. With practically no parliamentary scrutiny, a massive financial commitment to the government in Kyiv has been baked into the government’s spending plans under the next parliament. There has been no discussion of either expensive nukes or support for proxy conflicts by the Conservatives or Labour in the election campaign. The UK is practically the only country in the western alliance where any discussion of defence spending on nuclear weapons or war in Ukraine is almost completely stifled, by the government, the main opposition party and the mainstream media. Afraid to show weakness, the Labour party has refused to chart its own policy on foreign defence and security policy. As they will most likely win the election, we should assume big spending on nukes come what may, and on proxy conflicts until a negotiated settlement is reached in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza (arguably the flashpoint for Houthi strikes against western shipping). A brief attempt to shift debate towards spending more on international engagement including through overseas aid and diplomacy evaporated. UK electors now face a terrifying lack of choice, with both the Tories and Labour preferring war-war, over jaw-jaw.
- Zelensky’s Peace Summit will be another echo chamber to browbeat nations for more weapons and money
In one of his more bizarre outbursts, Volodymyr Zelensky, red of face, jabbing his finger, recently accused China of being “an instrument in the hands of Putin”. He said this at the recent Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore as part of a world tour, in which he is encouraging participation at what Ukraine calls the Global Peace Summit. This will take place in Switzerland from 15-16 June, and China has said it will not attend. Zelensky was treading a now well-worn path in which he and other senior Ukrainian figures insult countries that don’t bend to Ukraine’s demands for support in the war with Russia. He believes that China has been discouraging countries from attending the Summit but provided no evidence of this. Some reports suggest that up to 107 States may attend. Although, in addition to Xi Jinping, there’s a chance Joe Biden may also not attend because of a fund-raiser in Texas. Those who do send country delegations will undoubtedly enjoy the comforts of the Bürgenstock Resort on the shores of Lake Lucerne. Though I suspect many will be confused about the purpose of the event. For, despite its billing, this won’t be a Global Summit. If it was, it would undoubtedly look at the appalling situation in Israel and Gaza, and no doubt other conflict hotspots across the world too. It might consider more broadly how to strengthen the adherence of states to their obligations under the UN Charter or review progress in strengthening international peacebuilding architecture. But it won’t do those things. Indeed, the Swiss Government, which is hosting, refers to it as the Summit on Peace in Ukraine. Although it isn’t clear that Switzerland is in charge, as most of the press reporting about invitations appears to issue from Zelensky’s office. So this raises a diplomatic question as to the precise scope of the event itself? Summits are normally hosted by the countries in which they take place; those countries shape the agenda and try to steer a communique that represents the best outcome of what can be agreed among the parties. In this case, there appears to be a diplomatic tug of love between the Swiss and the Ukrainians about who is running the show. For Ukraine, the Summit is explicitly an opportunity to push Zelensky’s so-called ten-point peace formula, which is essentially the points he made in a speech at UNGA. The formula does contain some helpful lines on nuclear safety, food and energy security and environmental protection. But it also contains three points that are probably unachievable. Namely, the full restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, by which it means Ukraine’s border pre-2014. This, according to Zelensky, ‘is not up to negotiations’. Secondly, the full withdrawal of Russia’s military and, third, the establishment of a tribunal to investigate alleged Russian war crimes. However, Ukraine’s pre-2014 border won’t be restored because the west tacitly gave up on Crimea in 2014 and focussed its energy instead on attempts to mediate a peace in the Donbass. These attempts notably included the Franco-German orchestrated Normandy format, which failed in the teeth of US and UK interference; namely, the locking in of sanctions against Russia under an unattainable notion of full Minsk II implementation. European leaders won’t commit to a plan where retaking Crimea is a key element, indeed, western war aims in Ukraine are now utterly unclear, beyond helping Ukraine to hold on from further territorial losses. Even though hardline and now sidelined figures like Boris Johnson and Liz Truss have long supported the aspiration to re-take Crimea, Ukraine does not now and will never have the military capabilities to do so. So the second and related aspiration of the full withdrawal of Russian troops is also unrealistic, however the map is drawn. Using western weapons to strike targets in the west of Russia won’t change the balance of power on the battlefield in Ukraine which favours Russia. It also won’t decisively shift Russian public opinion away from support for Putin in this war. Rather, it will ramp up the risk of escalation by Russia, which has still not committed its forces to the fight in Ukraine, in any numbers. While there is clearly a need to investigate allegations of war crimes committed by Russian forces during the war, the west will struggle to deliver this, not least because of the inevitable pressure to consider allegations of war crimes committed by Ukrainian forces. And as neither Ukraine nor Russia are signatories to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, neither country would recognise the legitimacy of any investigation should it materialise. That would render the endeavour toothless in the absence of more coercive measures to hold either country to account under international law. So, Zelensky’s plan is nothing more than Ukraine’s maximalist position that will inevitably be bargained down in any future peace negotiations that take place with Russia. But, and here’s the rub, Russia hasn’t been invited to the Swiss Summit. The Swiss Government believes that Russia should be invited. The Swiss MFA website says “Switzerland is convinced that Russia must be involved in this (peace) process. A peace process without Russia is unthinkable.” But Zelensky clearly doesn’t agree. It has been an explicit aim of Ukrainian foreign policy to exclude Russia from any dialogue on a settlement of the conflict. Indeed, this mirrors long-standing UK policy of talking about Russia and not to Russia. Rather, and in a recent visit to Madrid, Zelensky encouraged western partners to force Russia to make peace. By that, he meant specifically to continue to provide Ukraine with offensive weapons that it can use to strike directly into Russia. Or force Russia into peace by continuing to make war, even though there is no evidence that NATO plans to join the fight in any decisive way. And just to be clear, on the summitry itself, Zelensky’s so-called Peace Formula isn’t a communique either as the Swiss are (or should be) holding the pen. The Swiss are shooting for peace. But, whenever Zelensky talks about peace, what he really means is ‘keep funding the war’. So this creates a recipe for diplomats finessing any public statements at the end of a Summit that will, most likely, achieve nothing. Since his unhelpful comments about China, Zelensky has also suggested that Donald Trump is a 'loser'. The event in Switzerland is shaping up to be another echo chamber for an increasingly boorish Zelensky to publicly hector countries that don’t agree with his deluded and completely unsupportable position. It’s time for real peace talks with Russia to begin. This article will be published on antiwar,org
- On the need for a negotiated settlement to an unwinnable war
I recently spoke with Dr Pascal Lottaz of the Neutrality Studies podcast, to discuss a range of topics related to the current stalemate in Ukraine, against the backdrop of a failure in western diplomacy. Both segments of the interview are below.
- Why sanctions and strategic ambiguity won't work
I joined Pelle Neroth-Taylor again on his show on TNT Radio Live, to talk about the effectiveness of sanctions and recent pronouncements by President Macron on deploying NATO troops to Ukraine. I argue again that sanctions against Russia have been an ineffective alternative to either making peace or making war with Russia. On Macron's recent statements about deploying NATO troops to Ukraine, I opine that only a more substantive threat of NATO deployment would alter the direction of the war which, at this stage, Ukraine seems unable to win on its own. But that a far less risky course would be to strike for peace. You can find my interview from 37:37 in the video.
- UK sanctions against Russia have failed
Dame Harriet Baldwin, the Chair of the UK Parliament’s Treasury select committee rightly recognises that UK sanctions are not working. She doesn’t seem to know that the majority of Russia-related sanctions imposed by Britain have no impact at all. In an interview with the Financial Times, she suggested the intent of sanctions ‘is to cause real problems for the Russian economy,’ but that the IMF is ‘forecasting it’s going to be one of the strongest economies this year.’ Her committee is midway through an inquiry into the effectiveness of the Russia sanctions regime, which is due to report in July. Treasury officials were quick to point out that since the start of the war, “the UK has sanctioned over 2,000 people and entities connected with Russia, with the OFSI significantly upscaling its resource at speed to support that robust response.” I take little pleasure in saying that I authorised a large proportion of those 2000 sanctions while at the Foreign Office; I also led on sanctions policy at the British Embassy in Moscow from 2014-2019. However, I also know that most of the individuals or entities that I sanctioned had no assets in the UK to freeze. For every sanction that I authorised, I had to review a detailed form which indicated whether the individual or entity had assets in the UK; the vast majority said nyet! I therefore asked HM Treasury recently to tell me the numbers of asset freezes where the individual or entity concern had actual assets frozen. They indicated that only 8% of individuals and 23% of entities sanctioned had assets frozen. In aggregate, that means almost 90% of UK sanctions have frozen nothing but thin air (NB: there are far more individuals sanctioned than entities). Bear in mind, too, that most of those individuals and entities sanctioned by Britain will also have been sanctioned by the US, Canada, EU, Switzerland, Japan and Australia. You don’t need razor sharp skills in maths to conclude that over 14000 of the 16000+ asset freezes imposed are of people and companies with no assets in the west. Because Russia banned state officials from banking in what it calls ‘unfriendly countries’ several years ago. So, most of the time, sanctioning a new set of individuals and entities is a completely meaningless gesture. I haven’t asked the Treasury, but I should imagine that the prison guards sanctioned over the recent death of Alexei Navalny had very little money anyway, let alone enough to deposit any in the City of London. So sanctioning them represents nothing more than vacuous virtue signaling. And of course, the sanctions process is not only meaningless but politically corrupt. Liz Truss seemingly wanted to sanction every Russian with a bit of cash in the UK while she was Foreign Secretary. Indeed, she is so dense that she even seemed to believe that Londongrad was a real suburb of London. I therefore suggested the UK sanction Elena Baturina. She was at one time Russia’s richest woman and is alleged to have gained her wealth through massive corruption, having been married to Moscow’s former (also extremely corrupt) Mayor. That prompted an anxious sucking of teeth in King Charles Street, given Baturina’s previous involvement in Sadiq Khan’s charity and her links with Hunter Biden. She wasn’t sanctioned. Foreign Office officials were in deep anxiety about upsetting the White House if the UK sanctioned Evraz, a company formerly linked to Roman Abramovich. Evraz had holdings in the US and Canada and employed several thousand personnel at steel mills there. Sensing a massive dollop of duplicity, I encouraged colleagues to stiffen their sinews and sanction Evraz anyway, just like we were sanctioning other companies. So the UK did eventually sanction Evraz two and a half months after the war started. However, the OFSI issued a licence to allow Evraz North America to continue its operations. I never really understand why the UK hasn’t sanctioned Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who despite successful efforts to rehabilitate himself as a paragon of western liberal capitalist virtue, originally gained his wealth, allegedly, through acts of the most egregious corruption. And yet we sanctioned Mikhail Fridman and Roman Abramovich who appeared well disposed to the UK (I’m not saying they are pure as the driven snow). Let’s be completely clear that Russia has undoubtedly endured economic pain since the Ukraine crisis started in 2014 because of sanctions. Financial sector sanctions in particular, led to a big, albeit fairly short-lived, shift in how investment works in Russia, with most of the pain felt in 2014-15. 2014 saw huge capital flight of over $130bn as foreign lending stopped completely in July of that year and Russian capital continued to flow out of the country, until the Central Bank hit the brakes. However, the inconvenient truth is that since 2015, the quest for ever more sanctions has represented a hunt for increasingly diminishing marginal returns. And Russia has had the same duo of Central Bank Governor and Finance Minister holding the reins of economic policy since that time. They have navigated through two oil price collapses and COVID, which were more damaging economically than sanctions. While there has never been a clear articulation of the purpose of sanctions, the Atlantic Council describes the aims of sanctions thus: Significantly reduce Russia’s revenues from commodities exports; Cripple Russia’s military capability and ability to pursue its war; Impose significant pain on the Russian economy. Even the Atlantic Council, one of the most hawkish commentators on Russia, accepts that limited progress has been made against each of these measures. For their part, Whitehall Officials will no doubt try to delude the Treasury select committee further that, with some tinkering and tightening up here and there, we can make sanctions more effective. But it is abundantly clear to me that sanctions against Russia have failed. And, of course, resentment about sanctions is now so high in Russia, that policy makers in Moscow will do anything to avoid making concessions to the west, including going to war. Which brings us back to the real foreign policy choice in Ukraine, which has always been whether to commit to war or peace with Russia. The eight Foreign Secretaries since 2014 have wanted neither. Dame Harriet undoubtedly wants to show she’s doing her bit to support Ukraine through her select committee’s work; she’ll more likely be fiddling while Kyiv burns.
- A Misfit in Moscow: secrets from a British diplomat
I recently appeared on Daniel Davis' Deep Dive podcast, to talk about my book - A Misfit in Moscow: How British diplomacy in Russia failed, 2014-2019 and to share my thoughts on the direction of the war in Ukraine.