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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.

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.

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.

I recently wrote an article for Antiwar.org on why Ukraine's fundamental economic frailty, and the lack of action in tackling corruption and driving reform, will ultimately lose it the war with Russia. The text of the article is below, link at the foot of the page. In his recent article on attritional warfare, Alex Vershinin at the Royal United Services Institute remarked that ‘war is won by economies, not armies’. Put another way, the country that can outspend its rival in military endeavour will ultimately prevail. To defeat Russia, Ukraine would need economic resources that it does not have and will not be able to obtain. It isn’t just that Ukraine’s economy is now more than ten times smaller than Russia’s. The problem runs much deeper. Since the Ukraine crisis started in 2014, Ukraine has ducked opportunities to enact the structural reforms it needs to tackle deep-seated corruption and diversify/strengthen its economy. Ukraine needed either to set a course towards an economic model that exports and has spare capital to invest, including overseas, or towards an economic model that is comfortable to import and can attract foreign investment to offset the difference. At the moment, Ukraine is neither and it can’t make the cardinal shift while war is raging.  Real economic reform in Ukraine has therefore sat in the pending tray for a decade. Data from the National Bank of Ukraine shows that the country consistently imports more than it exports. Not since 2022. Since 2006, the year after the Orange revolution. While on average, Ukraine’s yearly trading shortfall was $11bn in the ten years before war broke out, that figure almost tripled to $31.6bn in 2022 and 2023.  Yes, exports of goods have fallen since war broke out, by 17% and 30% in 2022 and 2023 respectively compared to the average.  But, critically, imports of services have also doubled since 2021. Ukraine’s trading surplus in services amounted to $3bn p.a. between 2012 and 2021; since 2022 it has slumped to a deficit of $9.8bn. Service imports have in large part been driven by the large scale relocation of Ukrainians to other countries. Ukrainian people spending Ukrainian money in other countries counts as an import, just as spending by foreign tourists in London counts as a service export for Britain. For Ukraine, that imbalance won’t be resolved until war ends and its citizens return en masse. Why does this matter? When a country imports more than it exports, it burns up supplies of foreign currency. If it runs out of foreign currency, then it can’t pay for imports and external debt.  Just look at what happened in Sri Lanka in 2022, which ran out of reserves and defaulted for the first time in its history. Functional economies avoid this trap by attracting foreign investment, look at the US and the UK for example, which consistently run deficits but maintain healthy foreign exchange reserves. Ukraine, however, isn’t a functional economy.  Few foreign companies are making productive investments in Ukraine, and this challenge dates back to 2014, and the onset of the Ukraine crisis.  Foreign investment into Ukraine’s private sector since then has averaged a paltry $2.2bn p.a. compared to $15.6bn p.a. from 2010 to 2013.  That’s mostly because investors generally avoid zones of conflict and war.  But it is also partly driven by the power vertical in Ukraine in which a handful of Oligarchs maintain an iron grip on business interests across the country. The war hasn’t changed and won’t change that fundamentally negative economic picture. Ukraine can’t attract significant foreign capital while at war.  And efforts to boost its exports have run into headwinds, particularly in Europe, with EU farmers rebelling against the flood of cheap imports from Ukraine. So Ukraine needs to depend on a friendly lender of last resort. In the Soviet Union, that would have been Russia.  Today, it is western donor nations. Look at Ukraine’s balance of payments and you’d see that it received on average $5bn p.a. in secondary income between 2010 and 2021; largely hand-outs from other governments. In 2022 and 2023 respectively it received massive inflows of $28bn and $24bn, to help stabilise its current account and prevent a collapse in foreign exchange reserves. More concerning, with Kyiv now spending an astonishing half of its ballooning budget on defence it has been forced to go to the lenders as well, borrowing a staggering $40bn in the two years since 2022, or almost one quarter of its current GDP.  That’s a 2000% increase in central government borrowing compared to the average in the ten years prior to war.  After much huffing and puffing, Victor Orban reluctantly agreed the EU’s most recent programme of support to Ukraine, amounting to 50bn Euro which runs to 2027.  But 33bn Euro of this is loans, equating to another 19.9% of Ukraine’s current GDP. Today, Ukraine’s gross external debt is already around 90% of GDP.  In a downside scenario, the EU has predicted that Ukrainian debt could hit 140% of GDP as early as 2026.  If that doesn’t worry you, it should. With war widening Ukraine’s current account deficit, western nations will need to provide ever greater amounts of macro-financial assistance just to prop up the country’s reserves.  Because if Ukraine ran out of reserves and had to devalue the Hryvnia, then it would simply not be able to service its debt and would go into economic meltdown, requiring even greater western assistance. Across the line of contact, much boiler plate analysis is churned out daily about Russia’s putative economic woes, but what does the data from Russia’s Central Bank tell us? Despite the structural challenges it faces, and notwithstanding the legally questionable freezing of $300bn (or around half) of its foreign exchange reserves, Russia is anything but short of liquidity. With western journalists blowing a collective raspberry at the rouble’s collapse after war broke out, Russia nevertheless brought in a staggeringly large current account surplus of £238bn in 2022.  That’s more than Ukraine’s pre-war yearly economic output, and over two times the value of western financial and military assistance to Ukraine in 2022. It is almost four times larger than Russia’s average current account surplus in the ten preceding years.  Russia’s current account surplus stabilised to $50bn in 2023, which is consistent with the long-term trend, and from the first two months of data, may come in slightly higher in 2024. The Russian economy is trimmed to export and reinvest earnings. The country hasn’t run a yearly current account deficit since 1998, the year it defaulted.  Largely because of this, Russia has very low external debt, at less than 20% of GDP.  Russia’s military spending could rise to 10% of GDP this year, with defence spending comfortably outstripping Ukraine’s by three times.  It doesn’t need to borrow significantly and has enough liquidity left in the tank to fund huge social programmes, which mean consumer spending in the economy remains strong. Russia’s current economic model brings downside risks in terms of the country’s inability to diversify into new, more value-adding sectors of industry.  These risks have been acknowledged by Putin but are too long-term to affect decision making on Ukraine. For now, Russia holds a significantly better economic hand in prosecuting an attritional war. No credible western military analyst now predicts a complete victory by Ukraine in this war that would push Russia back to its pre-war (let alone pre-2014) lines. But, in any case, it is clear that victory hinges on the balance sheet, more than on the battlefield. Ukraine will never have the economic resources it needs to out gun Russia. So, setting aside issues of weapons’ supplies to Ukraine and, indeed, who will pay the reconstruction bill when war ends, how long are western powers prepared to keep plying Ukraine with more debt as it prosecutes an unwinnable war? The economic policy no-mans-land that Ukraine has chosen to occupy didn’t start in 2022, but rather in 2014, when the Ukraine crisis began. We were told that Ukraine wanted to make a ‘European choice’ and cast off the rusted-over shackles of Soviet era mismanagement. It is therefore an irony that western assistance has not prompted a genuine and meaningful effort at reform in Ukraine that would speed the process towards eventual EU membership.  Rather, it has created and will continue to solidify a state of truculent dependence which weakens Ukraine economically and leaves it as ungrateful for western support as it was for Russian. Ukraine could still make its European choice. But first that would require painful political choices.  A choice to end the war through negotiations and a choice, for the first time, to face down vested interests and undertake meaningful reform in Ukraine. It’s far from clear to me that Zelensky has the power to make either choice. For now, and to paraphrase from the movie Top Gun, I fear Zelensky’s ego is writing cheques his country can’t cash. Ukraine's Economy Will, Ultimately, Lose It the War - Antiwar.com

I recently participated in an interview with Glenn Diesen and Alexander Mercouris. You can watch it here.

Below a copy of an article I recently placed on the Brave New Europe website. Diplomats should be remembered for preventing or ending wars.  Victoria Nuland will be remembered for her role in starting a war in Ukraine.  Nuland’s early retirement from the US Foreign Service allows us to reflect on how badly off-track western diplomacy with Russia has drifted over the past decade. At best, Nuland was guilty of cutting across EU efforts towards a peaceful resolution to the Maidan protests which started in late 2013, plotting the removal of Russia-leaning President Yanukovych, and choosing who should govern Ukraine after he was gone.  Russia believes she, and the machinery of the US state arrayed behind her, directly orchestrated Yanukovych’s ouster on 22 February, which to this day they describe as an illegal coup d’etat. However you interpret her involvement, Nuland epitomised the contradiction in western diplomacy towards Russia which prompted the eight-year slide towards eventual war in 2022; she neither wanted western powers to go to war with Russia nor did she want to live at peace with Russia.  Between these two points of duplicity, a mire of twisted tanks and grey-faced legions of the dead, upon which Ukraine now lays broken and betrayed. Ukraine has no chance of escape from this devastation until western powers choose between War and Peace.  Ukraine’s current leadership is set on war and western leaders have urged them on in this endeavour. But the west itself has never wanted a war with Russia over Ukraine.  It didn’t in 2014 and it doesn’t now.   Right from the start of the Ukraine crisis, western policy makers whispered behind closed doors, including in London, that the annexation of Crimea by Russia was irreversible and that we would not deploy NATO troops to seize it back. I’m not saying that’s right, but that was the prevailing Realpolitik at the time (and that position has not changed). The Donbass insurgency was put in a diplomatic pending tray, with Germany and France mediating with Russia and Ukraine on a resolution using the Minsk II agreement as the foundation. But these efforts ultimately collapsed, in part because western powers were unwilling to urge Ukraine to meet its obligations on some form of decentralisation. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, NATO leaders held up their hands and were sorry that they could not close the skies over Ukraine as Russian troops bore down on Kyiv.  One of the first announcements made by the UK Government – which was the most ardent in urging Ukraine to bear up to Russia - was to ban serving British military personnel from joining the fight. Emmanuel Macron’s recent bid to secure consensus for the ‘declared’ deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine met with a collective sucking of teeth, in the ethereal corridors of the Elysee Palace. It’s easy to talk a good fight from a distance of 2000 kilometres, while Russian and Ukraine troops are locked in bitter face to face combat.  Easier still to send weapons and wash our hands of the fighting. So why the reluctance to fight? In a conventional war, NATO would arrive at the battlefield with an overwhelming military advantage over Russia in manpower, equipment and reserves. Even though I believe NATO would prevail over Russia in a conventional war, no plan survives contact with the enemy.  With Russia undoubtedly moving to a full mobilisation, we can’t assume that any war would result in a quick victory. War would mean heavy NATO, including UK, casualties. While I was posted to Helmand Province in 2010, working alongside the British Army and the US Marine Corps, the UK was losing 4-5 service personnel each week. People who remember the dignified return of the British fallen through Royal Wootton Bassett, should expect to see a far higher coffin count in any war with Russia. Arguably, the time for NATO to intervene and restore Ukraine’s territorial boundaries was in 2014.  Russia’s annexation of the four oblasts in southern Ukraine in September 2022 served in part to give the Kremlin a legally trumped-up pretext to deploy tactical nuclear weapons should NATO push into what they (wrongly) now consider sovereign Russian territory.  So a hard fought, high casualty NATO battle with Russia might at best serve to solidify a line of contact in Ukraine that exists today. I also judge it highly unlikely that a conventional war wouldn’t result in Russian missiles targeting European cities in some way.   While from the comfort of our homes, we have been shocked by scenes of devastation in Ukrainian cities, European public support for war would crumple as soon as European citizens were killed by stray missiles.  Because people would ask why we are not suing for peace? And in the UK, at least, no one in Whitehall would have an answer. So, while I am pleased that we have stayed out of a direct conflict with Russia, the question remains why we haven’t pursued a path to peace in Ukraine since 2014?  The UK abandoned efforts to search for peace with Russia in 2014 when Phillip Hammond became Foreign Secretary and cut all high-level dialogue with Russia. That position hardened when Theresa May became Prime Minister in 2016 and remains practically unchanged to this day. Events in Crimea and the Donbass were considered an affront to the newly labelled Rules Based International Order, and engagement with Moscow would imply endorsement. “No return to business as usual!” became the propaganda slogan of choice. We’d do our talking via strategic communications campaigns, virtue signaling to a generally receptive, overwhelmingly hawkish, UK media audience.  We’d apply pressure via sanctions and the politicisation of everything to exclude Russia from international sport, Eurovision and many other things besides.  We’d talk about Russia, rather than talking to Russia.  Not talking is now the prevailing tenet of British diplomacy and our Embassy in Moscow is a Potemkin House with a cardboard cutout Ambassador. Post-Brexit, we took back control of our foreign and security policy from Brussels and immediately handed the keys to decision makers in Washington DC.   Before Trump was elected President and Nuland was shoved to one side for four years, London colleagues regularly gushed about the latest Russia read-out they’d received from ‘Toria’ (Nuland) and Dan (Fried) another hard-boiled neo-con who set up the Russia Sanctions taskforce at the start if the Ukraine crisis. In the same way that Nuland’s toxic clique was pulling the strings in Kyiv, they were doing so in Whitehall and undoubtedly in other European capitals too.  And the lines were simple. It’s not up to Russia to decide which countries join NATO and Russia has no right to raise its concerns about the expansion of the world’s biggest military alliance into its back yard.  If they don’t like it, then “Fuck E-you!” Refusing to engage substantively with Russian concerns over NATO was not only bad statecraft, but it was incredibly foolish, given events that happened in Georgia in 2008.  Everything that Russia has done in Ukraine was predictable, signalled for years before the war started and therefore avoidable. However, after Biden was elected US President, Nuland was quickly reinstated and another member of her clique, Jake Sullivan – now National Security Adviser – wrapped their warm hands around the unattractive hairy balls of America’s Russia policy once more.  Open war between Ukraine and Russia became inevitable as soon as the Forty-Sixth President laid his frail and forgetful hand on the bible on Capitol Hill in January 2021.  And it was clear that theUK would blindly follow any hair-brained US approach to Ukraine, come what may.  Boris Johnson as Prime Minister and Liz Truss as Foreign Secretary actively discouraged Ukraine from settling for a peace deal in March/April 2022. The likes of Johnson and Truss, like Nuland, now sit in the indignant comfort of their ivory towers watching the muzzle flashes and fighting in Ukraine from afar. Ukraine is expected to beat Russia on the battlefield with insufficient men (and women) and materiel, before the NATO military alliance considers offering their shattered country Article 5 protection at an unspecified later date. But anyone who believes Ukraine can beat Russia on its own is deluded and not looking at the evidence.  All the fraternal hugs, (clearly, now, disingenuous) offers of support for ‘as long as it takes’, and big-screen appearances at Glastonbury by Zelensky have brought their country no closer to NATO membership. Jens Stoltenburg pontificates that Ukraine is nevertheless a member of the NATO family.  But when I was growing up, my older siblings would step in if I was getting beaten up by a bigger kid. To save Ukraine from complete destruction, the West must now get off the fence and choose between War and Peace and consult their citizens on which approach to take. Choosing peace means a difficult conversation with Zelensky in which western leaders are clear that his country won’t receive further aid unless it meets Russia at the negotiating table to agree a ceasefire and start a long and painful process of peace talks.    This will be difficult. The US and UK in particular have spent so many years telling Ukraine that their posture towards Russia is right and just, that its leaders no longer listen to anyone (including the Pope) who points to looming disaster and suggests a change of tack. Choosing war means an honest discussion with citizens about the direct consequences for large numbers of NATO personnel who may make the ultimate sacrifice and the feeling of safety in western cities for a mission that may deliver, at best, only marginal gains.  There would also be another, I assess more grinding, global economic shock which cast more Europeans into poverty. If western politicians are finally honest with their citizens about the stark choices available, it’s my belief that most people would insist on peace. https://braveneweurope.com/ian-proud-why-the-west-must-choose-between-war-and-peace-with-russia-and-be-honest-with-its-citizens

Below the text of an article that I recently published in Brave New Europe Website When Donald Trump invited Russia to invade ‘delinquent’ European NATO members who weren’t spending 2% of their GDP on defence, the liberal media went into a collectively indignant cringe. NATO potentate, Jens Stoltenburg, jumped on the bandwagon, accusing Trump of “endangering American and European soldiers”. Dutch General Rob Bauer, Head of NATO’s Military Committee, had already warned in January of the risk of eventual war with Russia within twenty years. European leaders from Tallinn to Berlin then fell over themselves conjuring up even more terrifying and imminent doomsday scenarios, to the point where we might expect the Katyusha rockets to start falling on us as soon as next year.  Keen not to be outdone, Britain’s Chief of the General Staff hinted at our possible conscription into a modern day Dad’s Army; don’t panic! This two month period of hysteria all adds to a state of fear the securocrats want us to live in each day that Russian tanks – probably rusted T-55 tanks, as we are also told that Russia’s new tanks have all been destroyed by Javelin missiles – will soon roll into Estonia/ Lithuania/ Latvia/ Poland (pick any from the list). This is utter balderdash of the most self-serving kind, intended only to line to coffers of western arms manufacturers. Just look at the numbers! NATO’s own statistics [1] show that the military alliance spends almost $1.3 trillion every year on defence at today’s prices. If NATO was a country, it would find itself the seventeenth most powerful in the world, on the basis of its yearly output.  Imagine, then, Jens Stoltenburg’s surprise at a G20 Summit in discovering that, of the Heads of the 16 states larger than his, the only other leader voted in by a murky, democratically unaccountable backroom process, was Xi Jinping. $1.3 trillion each year is more defence spending than the rest of the world[2], combined.  That’s over four times more than China (“that’ll piss Xi off, for sure”, smirks Jens), considered by many a bigger global threat to peace and security than Russia.  Even when Russia increases its defence spending in 2024 to $109 billion – still a shockingly high number - it will spend almost twelve times less on defence than NATO from an economy over twenty-two times smaller. Of course, the US alone accounts for two-thirds of all NATO, and 39% of global, defence spending.  So it’s easy to whip up resentment about European decision makers, slurping on moules frites and Pouilly-Fumé in the Grand Place and not having enough spare change to defend their eastern flank. A paltry 2% of GDP sounds an entirely reasonable and easy-to-achieve, target after all. Just look at what’s happening in Ukraine, the foreign policy herd would moo anxiously, brass alarm bells jangling at their necks.  If Putin is allowed to win in Ukraine, then he will attack NATO next! But having worked on Russia for a decade as a British diplomat, it is blindingly obvious, at least to me, that Russia would not launch a pre-emptive invasion of a superior military alliance, which outguns it in economic reserves, active military personnel, equipment and spending.  Indeed, Putin has pointed this out on several occasions. While Putin undoubtedly hates NATO, he is not completely stupid, and knows that an attack by Russia would have catastrophic consequences for him, the political system he has built, and for his country.  Put simply, it would be an act of political and literal suicide.  Even the UK’s Chief of the Defence Staff recognised this in a recent speech at Chatham House[3].   Stand down then, lads and lasses; no need to report to Captain Mainwaring at the village hall in Walmington-on-Sea. So what’s this hysteria about 2% of GDP all about then? European countries already outspend Russia on defence by almost four times (3.7 to be precise) with over one and a half times the number of active military personnel.  Dig a little deeper into NATO’s data and you’d see that meeting the 2% commitment would add a whopping 20% to their defence spending, or around $80.6bn ($71bn in real terms[4]) widening the gap to Russia still further. On average, NATO countries spend around 30% of the defence budgets on equipment.   So, for non-US NATO members, that amounts to around $120bn every single year in defence equipment production, more than Russia’s total yearly military spending. Look at which NATO members export the most defence equipment, you’d find – a desperately unsurprising fact, for which I apologise – that the US accounts for around 57% of the market.  That means Uncle Sam already cashes in $68,4 billion each year from its NATO allies.  Trump’s 2% simply means 20% more defence spending for Europe and $20bn more each year in defence sales for US firms. Ker-ching, ka-boom! Admittedly, non-US NATO members have so far donated around $61bn [5] in military equipment to Ukraine, in the two years since war broke out. On paper, that amounts to around one quarter of their total spending on military equipment.  However, some of the kit supplied, dusted off and dragged out of long-forgotten warehouses, has been old, out of date [6] and/or broken. So don’t buy into the baloney (perhaps, bratwurst?) that European countries are running out of military stocks. Even with supplies to Ukraine, they continue vastly to outspend Russia on arms manufacturing. When the head of Germany’s biggest defence contractor Rheinmetall said recently [7]that Europe will need ten years to rebuild its weapons’ stocks, what he was really saying, with the same emotional vigour as Bob Geldof in the Eighties, was “give us your money”.  The only difference was that he was choosing guns over butter. For ordinary Ukrainians, there appears no end in sight to the misery of war that has long moved off the front pages of western journals. Russia’s war aims since February 2022 have been limited, although continue to creep as Zelenskiy stubbornly holds out against a negotiated settlement.  Even the most optimistic military pundits in the west are now retrofitting their narratives to accept that Ukraine cannot score a decisive military victory on its own without direct NATO military engagement.  And we have always known (and have known since 2014, in fact) that that isn’t going to happen. So, rather than whipping everyone in Europe into a lather with fantastical predictions lifted straight from the pages of a dodgy spy thriller, it’s time we got back to searching for an end to this needless war.  Pumping ever more billions into the gluttonous mouths of the military industrial fat cats is not making us more safe. I’d suggest quite the opposite. [1] NATO - News: Defence Expenditures of NATO Countries (2014-2023), 07-Jul.-2023 [2] Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2022 (sipri.org) [3] Nato would crush weak Russia and Putin knows it, says UK defence chief | Evening Standard [4] NATO publishes data in today’s prices, and in real terms, using 2015 prices as a benchmark. [5] Total bilateral aid to Ukraine by donor & type 2024 | Statista [6] In Rush to Arm Ukraine, Weapons Are Bought but Not Delivered, or Too Broken to Use - The New York Times (nytimes.com) [7] Europe needs a decade to build up arms stocks, says defence firm boss - BBC News Ian Proud - It’s time to put an end to the hysteria about European defence spending - Brave New Europe

I recently spoke with Oksana Boyko on her World's Apart show on why the UK and Russia have such a difficult relationship. It's clear to me that there is deep-rooted enmity on both sides and that a decade of refusing to engage at a political level - i.e. since the start of the Ukraine crisis in 2014 - has made matters worse. I also spoke about the UK's inevitable drift towards closer alignment with the US after Brexit. I argue that the tendency of both partners in the "special relationship" to pick sides in global conflicts, including in Gaza and in Ukraine, reduces the credibility of our statecraft and weakens efforts to find long-term solutions. Tune in to the attached video to hear more.

Lord Cameron, the eighth Foreign Secretary in nine years, was quick to visit Kyiv after his anointment.  If Britain’s diplomatic efforts were judged by our relationship with Zelensky, then we’d score A+.  We have positioned ourselves as Ukraine’s most steadfast ally.  Streets in Ukraine have been named after Boris Johnson. But is unequivocal support enough to end a war that in almost two years has killed – even by the most conservative estimates - as many people as during the ten years of the Balkans conflict? The short answer is no. While our influence in Kyiv is sky high, we have no influence in Moscow. Philip Hammond insisted that there should be no Ministerial ‘business as usual’ with Russia, a position that didn’t change under the six Foreign Secretaries that followed him. Ministerial cancellation became diplomatic.  Russia’s Ambassador Andrei Keilin enjoys scant access in Whitehall and is barked at by the likes of Laura Kuennsberg on the BBC. So, the British Ambassador has no access either and is often harassed in public by rent-a-mobs working for Russian intelligence.  On Russia’s state-owned TV, Vladimir Solovyov threatens to sink Britain under nuclear tidal waves. With government Ministers drip-fed opinions by ‘advisers’ who regard public servants as pillocks, investment in Russia expertise at the Foreign Office has been in decline for decades.  Young diplomats arrive at the Embassy and tremble inside, scared to venture out because they haven’t passed their Russian exams.  Diplomatic reports are often press cuttings regurgitated through Google translate. The accomplished Diplomat due to become British Ambassador this year was told by Liz Truss that they would not be going to Russia, as it would not be a good use of their skills. Our current man in Moscow is a cardboard cutout in a Potemkin Embassy on Smolenskaya Embankment. So, Russia has far more, well-trained diplomats (and therefore spies) in our country than we have in theirs.  Despite Bo-Jo’s bravado, the UK got a much bloodier nose from the diplomatic tit-for-tat that followed the Salisbury nerve agent attack.  I should know; I was in Moscow at the time. Britain’s biggest putative achievement - western unity on economic sanctions - has only stiffened Putin’s resolve.  Nevertheless, Westminster politicians, pundits and the armchair intelligentsia are utterly convinced our Russia strategy is working. Keep calm and cancel on. However, the political and logistical sands of western policy towards Ukraine are shifting, with fatigue, as focus drifts to other conflicts, including Gaza, and as allies struggle to meet supply targets.  At best, Ukraine will receive from western allies as much military equipment in 2024 as it received in 2023.  More likely, it will receive less. Zelensky vocally rejects suggestions that he should cut a deal. We have spent two years telling him that Britain and other western allies will send weapons ‘for as long as it takes’.  After a summer offensive that has delivered little, the line of contact in Ukraine between Russian and Ukrainian forces is unlikely to move much over the coming year. So, no one knows how long it will take. Russia seems content to maintain a high-intensity stalemate on the battlefield knowing the pressure that is putting on Ukraine’s allies.  As battlefield realities bite deeper, the obvious need for a diplomatic solution will grow. Because the Foreign Office knows Russia has the resources to keep fighting for another two years, at least.  And we can’t fill the gap if American supplies to Ukraine trail off: the UK has committed the billions we saved by cutting overseas aid in 2020 on weapons and, to quote Liam Byrne, “I’m afraid there is no money”. The only positive difference we can make is in Kyiv. In April 2022, Liz Truss – then Foreign Secretary number six - encouraged Ukraine not only to retake land taken by Russia after war broke out but, through military means, retake Crimea and the parts of the Donbass occupied by Russian separatists in 2014. This was trademark Truss, showing a point of difference in the Tory party with an idiotic policy punt that was utterly disconnected from reality.  Ukraine agreed, widened its war aims and since April of 2022 has refused to budge. David Cameron – Foreign Secretary number eight – is a different political animal and after the disaster of Brexit, is on the comeback trail. He needs proper advice from the few Russia experts left in Whitehall to see, through the waves of self-congratulation, that UK policy is failing Ukraine.  He should encourage Zelensky to put his suit back on and negotiate a ceasefire. Ian Proud was a British Diplomat from 1999 to 2023.  He served at the British Embassy in Moscow from 2014-2019 and has authorised a significant chunk of the UK sanctions imposed on Russia.

My first living memory is of Germany where my dad served in the British Army.  As a child I was fascinated by being a foreigner in a much bigger, European, universe outside of the camp.  Some weekends, we would go shopping in the nearby Netherlands (when border checkpoints still existed). Holidays often consisted of camping in Austria or Italy. As a family of five we didn’t have much money but living overseas enriched me in so many ways. Returning to England with schoolboy German, I was annoyed to discover I’d need to wait a few years to study foreign languages at secondary school.  My first new friend – with whom I remain close – was an immigrant from Kenya.  I’d walk to his house before school and his mum would feed me puris and teach me basic Gujurati phrases in her kitchen while he got ready. While I am Proud (literally) to be British, I’m relentlessly curious about people of different nationalities, faiths and cultures.  That’s one big reason why I became a British diplomat. There are many urban myths about what diplomats do, some of them involving Ferrero Rocher, dastardly plots and seductive spies. I like chocolate as much as the next person, but diplomats exist to improve relations between countries in the interest of peace. The ’how’ rests on two critical activities. First, gathering insight into what is happening in the countries where we serve so that we can give good advice to government Ministers on policy without guesswork and/or reporting what the newspapers say.   Second, influencing decision makers in those countries in the interests of finding common ground - especially on areas of disagreement - and mitigating risks of escalation.  To be good at both, it’s vital that you can speak persuasively in the ‘host’ language. Anyone who has ever travelled abroad – even to a safe and pretty European country – would acknowledge that each country is different, linguistically, culturally, politically, and they don’t always act in predictable ways.  In the here and now, we stare across the channel from foggy Albion and ask how immigrant-bashing Geert Wilders won the biggest share of votes in the moderate Netherlands?  To what end is Victor Orban is blocking Ukraine’s EU membership bid?  Why does Vladimir Putin still seem so popular in Russia? The answers to these and many other questions are complex, and you need to be in those countries to make sense of them.  Sitting out in cafes, passively dialling in to the conversations around you.  Watching the news and chat shows.  Taking up pastimes that are popular, observing local religious and cultural celebrations. Building relationships with people who, over time, are willing to discuss more than pleasantries. Having formal meetings with Government officials who may genuinely think the UK hates their country (memories of Moscow come flooding back). In twenty four years as a diplomat all of my best relationships were built face to face, over time, speaking their language. Walking into the office of the Deputy Commissioner of Police in Bangkok for an impromptu lunch to discuss golf, karaoke and the murder of British backpackers. Or asking a sceptical Rector to let Boris Johnson (as Foreign Secretary) make a speech to impressionable students at his University in Moscow. Diplomacy is a people business. Making sense of when “yes” means “no” and when “no” means “maybe”.  Knowing when to ask for a favour (influence) and knowing how to offer a favour in return to keep the conversation flowing (insight).  Cancelling people whose views are unacceptable to you is the quickest way to lose all the insight and influence you have.  So you have to find a comfort and moral accommodation with difference, while remaining focussed on your core purpose; promoting British interests. The challenge today is that British influence globally is in decline following Brexit, and our diplomats need to work harder than ever to have an impact.  With war raging in Ukraine and tensions between the world’s biggest powers at their highest this century, we need more diplomats who speak the languages of those countries with whom we have the most troubled relationships. The Foreign Office disinvested in Russia-specific knowledge after the Soviet Union collapsed and has never recovered that deficit. And this erosion of language capability has taken place against a depressing backdrop of a long-term decline in the study of foreign languages in Britain. So, more than ever before, the UK needs its best foreign language students at University to think about pursuing a career in diplomacy.  If, like me, you are concerned by world events, fascinated by difference and diversity, and desperate to build greater mutual understanding, then Britain needs you! Ian Proud was a member of HM Diplomatic Service from 1999 to 2023, having joined under the graduate FastStream entry programme. He served overseas in Thailand, Afghanistan and Russia, is fluent in Thai, has C1 Russian and a smattering of other languages at varying levels. His final role was Vice Principal of the International Academy, responsible among other things for the Foreign Office’s extensive foreign languages teaching programme.