Labour's slavish obedience to international legalism prevents us from defeating Putin

Yahoo

a day ago

Don't you know there's a war on?' This challenge, usually directed at someone who was being selfish and demanding, was frequently thrown at people during the Second World War.
I want to ask the same question today, the war being that in Ukraine. It needs to be asked of all Nato countries, both in Europe and North America.
Once again, it is, sort of, a rhetorical question. Almost everyone knows there's a big war on. Nobody can state accurately how many people have died in the Ukraine war, but if you guessed more than 250,000 dead, most would say you were underestimating. Russia has invaded, massacred and tortured. It has repeatedly and deliberately bombed civilians and abducted about 20,000 children.
Although the Balkan wars of the 1990s were grim, with more than 100,00 people dying, the invasion of Ukraine is much the largest and most serious war in modern Europe. It was started by a great European power. In this, it is unique since 1939. Not only is it the engine of death and destruction; it is also a massive, deliberate violation of the entire post-1945 legal, political and military European peace which was designed to prevent the alteration of borders by force.
We know this, and most of us, in Britain at least, hate it. Polls show popular support for Ukraine remains very high. But there is an unresolved question about how much we believe it involves us.
Shortly before he went off to appease Hitler at Munich in September 1938, Neville Chamberlain self-contradicted on precisely this point.
He acknowledged Britain's responsibility for ensuring peace, yet he also lamented being dragged toward war 'because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.' His word 'quarrel' implied equal fault on both sides rather than identifying one side's aggression.
Such what's-it-got-to-do-with-us? ideas lurk somewhere in our collective psyche about Ukraine, even though part of the answer hit us directly in 2022 when energy prices exploded. In Donald Trump's America, there is a disturbing strand which thinks the conflict was got up by President Zelensky to get the United States to pay. That mode of thought leads to dreams of some quick deal about material advantages rather than a just – and therefore lasting – peace.
Even when President Trump this week rounded on Putin for bombing Ukrainian cities more heavily than ever, his tone was not that of a man repelled by wickedness, but of an exasperated friend: 'I don't know what the hell happened to Putin. I've known him a long time.' He distributed blame equally between Putin, Zelensky and Joe Biden. Why the surprise? Russia's attempt to flatten every Ukrainian city is horribly consistent with Putin's declared war aims.
Our current Labour Government, like our previous Conservative one, has not fallen into the Chamberlain/Trump trap. It is clear about the central issue. Putin is the aggressor, says Sir Keir Starmer. Britain can accept no deal which does not satisfy the people of Ukraine. We will do – the phrase endlessly repeated – 'whatever it takes'.
This is not insincere, and there are some in the Government, notably the Defence Secretary, John Healey, who are really working for Ukraine to prevail. Nevertheless, if the Government believes it is doing 'whatever it takes', it has not plumbed the depth of the problem.
This was brought home to me on Thursday when I attended a conference organised by Policy Exchange about the Law of Armed Conflict. Under the Ottawa Treaty, the signatories are forbidden to use anti-personnel mines. A comparable convention also restricts the use of cluster munitions. The conference, partly private, was addressed by the leading retired US general David Petraeus, by political and military leaders from frontline states such as Poland, Estonia and Finland, and by many of our own top brass and legal experts.
The consensus was that these agreements, forged in the piping time of peace, now seriously disadvantage all Nato signatories. Russia ignores all such rules and tries to cover Ukraine with landmines. It was its vast use of mines which stalled the Ukrainian counter-offensive planned for late summer 2023.
If Ukraine had not responded in kind, including not only landmines but its effective use of cluster munitions against Russian tanks, it would by now have been overrun.
Those Nato frontline states countries with the most vivid and direct experience of Russian attitudes and tactics are now withdrawing from the relevant agreements. They know it is illegal to do so once a war has started: they think a Russian attack is likely, so they are withdrawing now. Yet Britain, though their most significantly engaged European defender, still purses its lips and reiterates its support for the treaties. This is what General Petraeus characterised as 'legal freeloading'. The need to repudiate Ottawa is, as he puts it, a 'no-brainer'.
At the very same time as this highly practical, war-focussed and well-informed gathering, elsewhere in Westminster, the Attorney General, Lord Hermer, was addressing the Royal United Services Institute. Although he made much of the need to counter Putin in Ukraine, he spoke as if it would be international law, rather than allied political, economic and military strength, which would do the trick. Recalling his visit to Bucha, scene of Putin's worst massacre, he seemed to see the solution in the hope that international justice would hold the guilty to account.
One shares that hope, but what Lord Hermer did not acknowledge was that Putin has so far got away with these horrors precisely because the rules-based international order, which includes Nato, has let him do so.
As in the 1930s, we are acting as if we do not fully accept that there is a war on. Indeed, we have even less excuse than did the Western democracies then. When Chamberlain flew to Munich, he was talking to a man who, clearly evil though his intentions were, had not yet waged aggressive war. Putin has done so for more than three years, arguably for 11 years, and still we have not concerted to stop him.
Lord Hermer says he wants to 'depolarise' our disputes in this country about international law and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Even he now dimly senses that his absolutism and that of his chief legal and political patron, Sir Keir, on this point, is divisive and unpopular. Nevertheless, the strongest focus of attack in his RUSI lecture was not on warmongers abroad, such as Putin, but on what he called the 'pseudo-realists' at home.
These wicked people are those Conservatives and Reform supporters who think we should leave the ECHR. Such persons, says Lord Hermer, may have patriotic motives, but are falling for the trap of the Nazi legal thinker, Carl Schmitt, who invented spurious philosophical justification for the exercise of 'raw power'.
This incendiary comparison is unworthy of the sober-sided role of a law officer. It shows how the mind of the human-rights extremist – the school of thought in which Sir Keir spent his whole professional life – works. The people who disagree with you are Nazis. The threat from the true 'raw power' merchants of the modern world – Putin, Hamas, North Korea – is sidelined.
Surely at the top the hierarchy of wrongs which international law is designed to prevent is aggressive war. Rules which prevent allies resisting aggression with the necessary weapons objectively assist the aggressor. There is just such a war on. If, like Lord Hermer, we apply self-righteous legalism to the problem, we cannot win it.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.