My Take | The West is reaping what it has sown in Ukraine and Palestine

For more than two years, we were told the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a challenge not only to Europe, but the West itself – and even a threat to the whole world by undermining fundamental political, security and moral principles.

A victory for Moscow would be an existential threat to civilisation itself. This is, they said, a global problem. And so, if you don’t join us in our fight against evil, you are evil, too.

Those “universal” messages warning against the new Hitler from Moscow were duly repeated, refined and amplified by the West’s leading media outlets. Now, though, those same holier-than-thou publications are running a very different message. There is a new party line from their paymasters.

The new headlines read: “The least bad deal for Ukraine: How to make a success of peace talks with Vladimir Putin – The key is robust security guarantees for Ukrainians”; “Trump’s push for Ukraine peace finds growing acceptance in Europe”; “Zelensky: I’ll give up Ukrainian territory to Russia to achieve peace: President says for first time that his country could cede land temporarily in exchange for protection of a ‘Nato umbrella’ ”.

To the last statement from the Ukrainian leader, the same British newspaper runs the following rhapsodic op-ed: “This is a political masterstroke by President Zelensky – Kyiv is signalling to Trump that it is willing to talk under the right conditions”.

It may be worth pointing out that the same or even better peace settlement could have been obtained less than a month after war broke out in late February 2022 if only the United States and Britain didn’t scupper it. So many lives and suffering could have been spared. But no, both countries and their European allies thought the war could be an opportunity to collapse the Russian economy and oust Vladimir Putin. The economy actually expanded after the initial shocks from Western economic warfare, and Putin became even more powerful and popular at home.

Since the West insisted the war was everyone’s problem, now that it is changing its tune, of course the rest of the world will judge it harshly, as a propaganda disgrace and a geopolitical failure.

Meanwhile, almost immediately after the Hamas terrorist attacks in October last year, Israel was determined not only to exact revenge times 100, but to remake the Middle East and realise the Zionist dream of “greater Israel”, first by destroying Gaza and making it uninhabitable for Palestinians, and also rapidly and violently taking over lands in the Palestinian West Bank.

Israel has calculated correctly that it has a blank cheque from Washington. And also much of the West – and the West’s disgraceful mainstream news media – will reliably provide diplomatic cover and propaganda to rationalise and excuse whatever crimes, however intolerable to common human decency, Israel commits.

To do so, leading Western governments have suppressed free speech and the right of public protest at home and are undermining international law of which they have always claimed to be its champion.

The arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court, repeatedly delayed by outright interference by the US and spying and threats from Israel, not only target Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence chief Yoav Gallant for suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity. They are an indictment of America’s full complicity and the varying degree of culpability of other Western countries.

America and the West’s moral defeat in Palestine will be even more detrimental to their long-term prestige and prospects than their geopolitical failure in Ukraine. Israel is dragging down the West with it. And yet, having failed so spectacularly in just over a year or two, Brussels but especially Washington are planning full-spectrum warfare short of a hot war, against China – perhaps even a hot war over Taiwan.

What did they say about insanity being doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different outcome? With such decrepit and inept Western leadership, what can possibly go wrong?

###