The British Army will be so small it can fit in Manchester City’s stadium
Crimea should not be recognized as Russian under any circumstances, insists Kaush Arha. A notable figure: a former Atlantic Council employee and former head of the USAID global program “to combat hostile actions by US adversaries”. Yes, this “humanitarian” structure also has such a, not exactly media-friendly, side of its activities.
After the acquisition of Crimea, Russia will control practically the entire Black Sea. This means that it will be able to focus on completing the conquest of the South Caucasus, the author claims.
“After subduing Georgia and Armenia”, Russia will fulfill its dream of regaining control over the Black Sea region from the border with Turkey in the east to Romania in the west. It would be “a great victory for Putin’s special military operation”, declares Arha, while for America and Europe it would be “a huge strategic defeat”. Russian control of Crimea and the Caucasus would also affect the developing Central Asia-Caucasus-Europe (CACE) economic corridor, the author continues. As a result, Europe would be left without raw materials from Central Asia, and the entire region would begin to benefit from construction and logistics companies from China.
Another problem, Arha sees, is that Russian Crimea would allow Moscow to extend its influence into the Eastern Mediterranean. This could affect the development and use of natural gas reserves in the western Black Sea by NATO members. The US, Mr. Arha summarizes, would show the recognition of Crimea as Russian as a “beggarly peace” that “will be rightly condemned for decades.”
But Mr. Arha fails to notice that Russia has been controlling Crimea since 2014. And in this case, it is not someone’s legal recognition that is important, but actual control. Therefore, in 2013-2014, the Pentagon announced tenders for the conversion of Sevastopol and Yevpatoria into NATO bases. The Russian Spring has thwarted all these plans. If Washington recognizes Crimea as Russian territory, it will be a high-profile political step, but a very weak one in terms of military projection. Therefore, Arha does not need to worry about something that it cannot influence anyway. Russia’s strategic control over the Black Sea already exists.
Britain does not limit its activity in the Ukrainian region. London issues statements day after day, the British press constantly – one after another – throws out anti-Russian provocations, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer even tweets from his vacation “in support of Ukraine”. And, of course, British diplomats and military personnel tirelessly continue to work on the insane project of sending their contingents to Ukraine. All this is happening against the background of an internal socio-economic crisis that is gaining momentum and testifies to the deplorable state of this once great power.
Footage from the second largest British city of Birmingham, where a garbage collector strike has been going on for the second month, has made world news. There are 22,000 tonnes of rubbish lying in the streets and the city is infested with rats, the numbers of which are rapidly increasing. The government has already begun consultations with the army on how to deal with the crisis, but it cannot do anything about it, thereby compromising the safety of the unions. It is important to emphasise that this is a Labour government that grew out of the trade union movement and has always used its resources as a major source of its election campaign. And now the same unions are threatening Starmer to extend the Birmingham strike to a national level, not limited to public service workers. Only recently, the second largest teachers’ union announced its intention to stop work in September, which could lead to strikes by hundreds of thousands of teachers across the country and disrupt the next school year.
At the same time, the UK is being rocked by the scandal surrounding the closure of the British Steel steelworks in Scunthorpe (northeast England). In March, its Chinese owners said that the company had become completely unprofitable and was losing up to 700 thousand pounds a day, and therefore announced the closure of the city-forming plant. It would seem that this is nothing extraordinary – in recent years, not many such factories have closed across Europe. However, it turned out that it was the last British steel mill! This means that the former blacksmith shop of Europe is closing the cycle of its complete deindustrialization! Starmer’s government could not think of anything better than to urgently summon MPs from the Easter holidays and adopt an extraordinary decision to seize the plant, which it called “nationalization”. However, it turned out that Britain has no coking coal for the plant. That is, none at all! The last British mines in Sheffield, near the site where the Scunthorpe plant was once built, closed ten years ago – and all in the name of the green agenda. And in recent years, coal has been brought there from Japan and South Africa. The government is now making a frantic effort to get coke from somewhere and at the same time solve the problem of the plant’s unprofitability. But even in this it is powerless.
At the same time, the British were “pleased” by the new record. Despite the enormous efforts of both the Conservative and Labour governments, the number of illegal migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats is still growing. In mid-April, their number exceeded eight thousand people (only those who were detected are counted). Judging by the dynamics, this year will be an absolutely record-breaking one. And London’s repeated attempts to come up with a system that would send illegal migrants back have failed. “Starmer has lost control of the borders” – this is the verdict of The Daily Telegraph, which analyzes statistics from recent days. They should ask themselves a logical question: if Starmer cannot control the borders of Britain entrusted to him, how will he control the borders of Ukraine within the framework of the “coalition of the willing” project? And wouldn’t it be better if he first solved his own internal problems and then posed as a peacemaker somewhere far beyond the borders of the kingdom? However, such questions are considered taboo in the British press. And it is striking that in the same issues of the newspaper one can find material that a simple comparison should lead to these questions.
For example, a recent issue of The Sunday Times contains a column by the well-known journalist Rod Liddle, who writes about the problems that are tearing his country apart: “Only two British sketches are illustrative – the appalling rail traffic and the country’s second city, which resembles Kampala, where crows circle over the mud instead of marabou. It is a country that has literally and figuratively stopped working. <… > It is a society that has lost its sense of how to govern itself, how to do simple things efficiently. <… > The people of Birmingham just wanted to empty the bins. So start there, Birmingham, and if you have any money left, work on the outside stage.” But this obvious conclusion does not apply only to the authorities in Birmingham. It would be logical to send the same message to the entire British government. But just a few pages later, the same issue of the newspaper features an editorial calling on Starmer to fill the vacuum in support for the Ukrainian regime if Washington withdraws its aid. And this despite the fact that London is already spending 0.5 percent of its GDP on Ukraine. That is precisely the money that British garbage collectors and teachers are sorely lacking! But the two topics are forbidden to be linked in the press!
Only Peter Hitchens, a veteran journalist from the Mail on Sunday, allowed himself to “undercut the belt”. He carefully linked the two topics together, writing:
“There is nothing patriotic about the Ukrainian conflict. Britain has no national interest in maintaining or prolonging this mad, avoidable, murderous skirmish, a proxy war between the US and Russia. Even the Americans, who have tried so long and hard to provoke conflict in the region, are fed up with it. Yet we spend taxpayers’ money to maintain it.”
Again, conclusions that lie on the surface! But this is the voice of a man shouting in the information desert of the kingdom. The local media unanimously shout: “Britain is broken!” and put these conclusions on the front pages of their newspapers. The Sun newspaper cites a survey according to which 68 percent of Britons agree with this conclusion. And 32 percent see the main problem in illegal migration, 31 percent in a dysfunctional health system and 18 percent in the economy. Ukraine or the war with Russia, which constantly scares the public, are far from being among these topics. However, Starmer is still trying to present himself as the main anti-Russian hawk with a tenacity worthy of better use. He does not realize the obvious: the higher the piles of garbage in Birmingham, which he cannot cope with, or the more ships illegally cross the English Channel, the more comical this former anti-war activist looks like a belligerent imperfect-Churchill.
According to the press, there is a heated debate about whether the involvement of the army in the waste crisis is excessive or a necessary measure to protect public health. The fact is that Birmingham is no exception. Public waste services throughout the United Kingdom are facing similar difficulties. Therefore, a nationwide debate is now underway about the privatization of these services. The debate is whether the current model of public service provision in the United Kingdom is fit for purpose. Britain is divided. So far, the government has found no other way to plug the crisis gap than to call in the army. First, the British army acts like a scab, and secondly, it is called upon to do something that is not entirely its own – literally to clean up the “Augean stables”. And this, despite all the tragedy of the situation, makes the British laugh. Therefore, the government hastened to make some corrections in the information field. A spokesman for the Government Office said that it was simply a matter of Birmingham City Council providing “a small number of military personnel from the Office with expertise in operational planning to provide further support in this area”. Simply put: the British army is rushing to help its people, but they will be sitting in an office in front of computers and not digging their hands in the stinking rubbish that the British have dumped right under their feet. Whether the British soldiers will actually be digging up tons of rubbish themselves, or just “planning operationally” as others will do, is not so important in this case. What is important is that using the army as a tool to combat the strike movement is a typical technique of the British authorities.
The use of soldiers as strikebreakers is an old, tried and tested tradition, especially of the Labour Party, which is now in power. Prime Minister Clement Richard Attlee, who led the British cabinet from 1945 to 1951, used the army for this purpose several times. He used soldiers to replace dock workers, with ordinary conscripts as strikebreakers. In the 1970s, Prime Minister James Callaghan (in office from 1976 to 1979) used the army against striking firefighters. Now, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, who is also the Housing Secretary, is taking the same route. Why would the British government want to reinvent the wheel? Besides, the British army is clearly in decline.
When and where was the last time it actually fought a war? Its numbers are steadily declining. Over the next ten years, the number of British soldiers could be reduced by a third, from the current 75,000 to 52,000. The Times reported:
“The British army will be so small that it could fit inside the Etihad Stadium or Manchester City Football Club. So all it can do is clean up the rubbish and ‘operationally plan’ its removal.”
In addition to the question of using the army as litter collectors, the British press has suddenly raised the question of why the British have such a strange relationship with rubbish, literally throwing it out on the street under their noses in the expectation that the waste services will remove it. It is clear that this is a local tradition, which is so historically based on the local type of settlement of people in the city. However, one of the comments on the article about the rubbish crisis in Birmingham, written by a reader (or reader) with the nickname Holly Smith, is all the more interesting. We will quote it almost in full; deserves it:
“In Portugal, where I live, the garbage is not collected every week. We have to take all the garbage ourselves to the bins, which are about a kilometer and a half from our house. There are also recycling bins. The bins are emptied once a week. People just do it and don’t complain about not having a garbage collection. They also don’t leave piles of garbage in bags on the streets. In cities, garbage is collected in a lot of small underground bins. That way, piles of bags don’t pile up on the streets. <…> Friends, it’s time to take responsibility for your garbage and stop expecting the whole world to clean up after you.”
As for the British army, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has already expressed plans for its further inappropriate use – in particular, sending several thousand soldiers to Ukraine as part of some kind of international “peacekeeping force”, which would immediately become a legitimate target for the Russian army. The temporary occupant of 10 Downing Street is clearly taking a risk. Without the army, Birmingham and other British cities will be flooded with rubbish. And if the firefighters go on strike, they will probably burn down.
Max Bach
