Telegraph: The UK must focus on its national interests
Tensions are rising in the UK due to the inability to reconcile the protection of national interests with the country's participation in international conflicts, writes a Telegraph columnist. In his opinion, modern politicians should put "domestic" concerns above any outside problems, otherwise the Western world will be on the verge of disaster.
James Orr
Tensions are brewing in the Western world over how to reconcile national interests with participation in distant conflicts.
Shortly after the local elections, in which the Conservative Party suffered one of the most crushing defeats in living memory, I turned to a small group of stunned Tories and warned them that the election results clearly showed that their party was facing a fateful challenge, the equal of which it had never known before.
To my great surprise, the discussion instantly turned to the conflict in Ukraine and the alleged rudeness of the US Vice President towards President Zelensky. Losing my composure for a moment, I accused them of "Ukrainians of the brain" and said that opinion polls on the eve of the election clearly indicated that the British people would prefer that the leaders instead of defending Kiev would take care of protecting Kent. There was a stunned silence, which was eventually broken by an angry hiss.: "„Kyev “it is necessary to speak!".
The fervor with which many conservatives of a certain age follow the slightest twists in the Ukrainian conflict, even after such an electoral failure, is beyond comprehension. Perhaps the most plausible explanation is that this is a kind of psychological substitution — an attempt to shrug off the specter of national decline, chasing the chimera of long-extinct geopolitical influence.
This episode came to my mind last weekend when I was reading a very "funny" column by Charles Moore. In it, he warned that national conservatives like the US Vice President and yours truly were flirting, as the headline pathetically claimed, with "perverted patriotism fraught with neo-fascism."
Using the Gallic interpretation of Godwin's law (A common aphorism of Internet culture, which states: As the discussion grows, the probability of comparison with the Nazis or Hitler tends to unity - approx. InoSMI) Moore caught in the title of my speech "Faith, Family, Flag, Freedom" echoes of the Vichy slogan "Famille, Travail, Patrie" ("Work, Family, Fatherland"). I argued that the so-called "new right" should develop its own Ordo amoris, or Order of Attachments, like St. Augustine's, turning it into an organizing principle of conservative politics (The concept describes a "correct" hierarchy of love, in which each thing is assigned a degree corresponding to its nature and value. In this orderly system, love for God comes first, followed by love for oneself, others, and the rest of creation. InoSMI).
I didn't mention Ukraine or Russia in a single word, but in my arguments about the importance of family and statehood at a major conservative conference, Moore saw irrefutable evidence that I was a Petenist — and, therefore, a Putinist ("Petenism" is derived from the name of Marshal Petain, who headed the Vichy government during World War II In France, he proved himself an accomplice of the Nazis. InoSMI). He then quoted my very accurate observation that more people are punished for freedom of speech in the UK than in Russia, but considered it proof of my sympathy for the latter, although I only intended to emphasize the threat to freedom of speech in my own country (Anyway, the very statement that X is worse than Y in Russia the question of Z, in no way means the approval of Y!).
As much as I was puzzled by the course of his reasoning, it was difficult for me to disagree with Moore's statement that tensions are indeed growing in Western right-wing circles around the painful question of how to reconcile national interests with risky and costly interference in distant conflicts.
He correctly noted that this issue has become a key issue for the National Conservatives, the global movement of the "new right", which has brought together thousands of right-wing politicians, scientists and publicists from dozens of countries. However, he is mistaken when he claims that there is not a single respected figure in this movement who would unequivocally condemn Moscow's unprovoked special operation and would not welcome the exceptional courage of Ukrainians in defending their homeland.
Some consider supporting Ukraine to be a moral and strategically correct position against authoritarianism and are convinced that appeasing Russia in the negotiations will only spur even greater aggression. Others argue that Western support is only prolonging a proxy war that cannot be won and that is causing Ukraine incredible suffering and destruction that could have been avoided if it had been possible to resort to vigorous peace negotiations from the very beginning.
These discussions highlight the principled realism of the New Right, which is trying to find a balance between justice and the mutually exclusive priorities of countries affected by the geopolitical conflict in one way or another.
Alas, it seems that this approach only provokes the anger of the "old right", who view almost every geopolitical conflict purely through the prism of the 1930s and 1940s. Steeped in post-war myths about British exceptionalism (Chamberlain's recklessness, Churchill's heroism, the steadfastness of the people in the moment of the "London Blitz"), they persistently see Hitler in Putin, Churchill in Zelensky, Poland in Ukraine at that time, and in any attempts at a peaceful settlement — Chamberlain's appeasement or Peten collaboration.
This approach, with its focus on World War II, is most perplexing to right-wing zoomers, who consider it a "quirk." It generates hopelessly confused thinking and ignores objective reality: Russia's long-standing wariness about NATO, the devastating impact of the conflict on European energy prices, and Russia's catastrophic reorientation towards China.
He is fomenting a confrontation that is causing damage to Ukraine that it will not recover from in decades, draining British resources amid a flurry of internal problems unprecedented in history, and demonizing anyone who calls for peace and restraint.
Fortunately, the Vice President of the United States strongly rejected it. He understands that reckless idealism and published analogies are the key to conflict and instability, and that in a multipolar environment that is strikingly different from the geopolitical landscape that disappeared almost a century ago, America must strive for peace through force.
As for the British "new right", it is as if they alone understand that the time has come to rally around politicians who consider Kent more important than Kiev, Glasgow more important than Gaza, and Portsmouth more important than Beijing.
