OUT TO LUNCH
Well, I think we can all agree that after last Saturday’s attack by Hamas on Israel the war in Ukraine is highly likely to be relegated to the inner pages of the world’s newspapers. The problem with the Russia/Ukraine war is that it has become a big yawn and there is noticeable Ukraine fatigue emanating from NATO countries supportive of Ukraine.
When Russia first embarked on a ‘military exercise’ in late February of 2022 the whole show was supposed to last four days. That was the time the Kremlin reckoned it would take to get Ukraine back in line and showing due respect for Moscow. Now, twenty months later the conflict continues with no half-time score to tell us who might be winning. The short attention spans of the online generation need easy to digest facts and complex analysis of what is happening in Ukraine or who or who might not be winning doesn’t do it for them.
Then there’s the more important issue of military support. In this unusually strange conflict most NATO countries have been participating in a proxy war. So, while they may have weighed in on the Ukrainian side they haven’t actually committed their military personnel to that wonderfully euphemistic phrase “the theatre of war”. What they have done is collectively agreed that they are not under imminent threat of attack or invasion but since they do have plenty of tanks and armaments in reserve feel free to help yourself Mr Zelensky.
This was all fine and dandy in the early days but as the conflict has dragged on the demand for more and more weapons to repel Mr Putin has not only been ruinously costly for European economies which are also trying to support a tidal wave of illegal migrants but it has also depleted the weapon stocks available to NATO members to defend themselves should the need arise.
It’s just common sense isn’t it? If I lend my neighbour my lawn mower happy in the knowledge that I have a spare then there’s no problem. I have a happy neighbour and still have a mown lawn. But if the lawn mower I lent suddenly refuses to work and the neighbour asks to borrow my spare I have something of a dilemma. I want to be a good neighbour and he seems a decent chap so I lend my second lawn mower which accidentally catches fire in his garage. So now I have no lawn mower, an unruly back lawn and a degree of tension with my neighbour who hasn’t offered to replace either of my borrowed lawn mowers. That, in a nutshell, is what Ukraine is all about.