Once again I find myself writing about war, and once again I am sure that a lot of people will disagree with me. Some may even be offended, as if I care.
Jeremy Paxman has recently argued that our present society is too hedonistic for Britain to be able to mobilise the kind of army it sent to war in 1914. Doubtless there is something in that. Back in 1914 it was a different world. Pretty well everyone, including the upper classes, lived in poorly insulated homes, with the result that pretty well everyone froze in winter. Tough lives produced tough men. Nowadays it is easy to go jogging on a cold day, knowing that you have a nice warm home to return to. It is even easier to be a couch potato.
I like to think that Britain will never again go to war on the scale of some of our past wars, but at the same time I hope that Britain will never again take part in any war that does not concern us. The Great War and the Second World War did not concern us. We entered both wars without good reason. We were the aggressors.
Britain did not take part in the Franco-Prussian War. The death toll in that war nudged two hundred thousand, and yet the death toll in the Great War was approximately ONE HUNDRED TIMES GREATER. That difference is surely due in part to British involvement.
At the moment, Britain has no plans to go to war against Russia, and yet Max Hastings argues for an attitude of belligerence towards the government of Vlad Putin. I do not like Putin, but I will not condemn him for seeking to incorporate the Crimea into Russia. There has after all just been a referendum in the Crimea in which ordinary people voted for such an incorporation - or reincorporation, seeing as how the Crimea was part of Russia within living memory.
Hastings is doubtless right when he talks about the fragile state of our armed forces, but we should all be clear that our armed forces exist to defend us from aggression. They do not exist to take part in illegal wars for the benefit of global capitalism.
Related previous posts include:
A reasoned approach to war
Questions for the warmonger Gove
The west should stay out of Ukraine
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