The Moral Balance of Power

There is a logical fallacy that dominates European neoliberal "thinking" at the moment. It goes like this.

"Hitler had unlimited territorial ambition and proceeded to attempt conquest of all Europe after annexing the Sudetenland. Therefore Putin has unlimited territorial ambition and will proceed to attempt conquest of all Europe after annexing Eastern Ukraine."

This fallacious argument gives no evidence of Putin's further territorial ambition. For evidence of Putin's threat to the UK, Keir Starmer risibly refers to the Salisbury "novichok" affair, perhaps the most pathetic propaganda confection in history.

But even if you were to be so complacent as to accept the official version of events in Salisbury, does an assassination attempt on a double agent credibly indicate a desire by Putin to launch World War 3 or invade the UK?

Hitler's territorial ambitions were not hidden. His desire for lebensraum and, crucially, his view that the Germans were a superior race who should rule over the inferior races, was plain in print and in speeches.

There is simply no such evidence for wide territorial ambition by Putin. He is not pursuing a crazed Nazi ideology that drives to conquest - or for that matter a Marxist ideology that seeks to overthrow the established order around the world.

The economic alignment project of BRICS is not designed to promote an entirely different economic system, just to rebalance power and flows within the system, or at most to create a parallel system not skewed to the advantage of the United States.

Neither the end of capitalism nor territorial expansion is part of the BRICS project.

There is simply no evidence of Putin having territorial goals beyond Ukraine and the tiny enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It is perfectly fair to characterise Putin's territorial expansion over two decades as limited to the reincorporation of Russia threatened minority districts in ex-Soviet states.

That it is worth a world war and unlimited dead over who should be mayor of the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking city of Lugansk is not entirely plain to me.

The notion that Putin is about to attack Poland or Finland is utter nonsense. The idea that the Russian army, which has struggled to subdue small and corrupt, if Western-backed, Ukraine, has the ability to attack Western Europe itself is plainly impractical.

The internal human rights record of Putin's Russia is poor, but at this point it is marginally better than that of Zelensky's Ukraine. For example the opposition parties in Russia are at least allowed to contest elections, albeit on a heavily sloped playing field, whereas in Ukraine they are banned outright.

Still less convincing are the arguments that Russia's overseas political activities in third countries require massive western increases in armaments to prepare for war with Russia.

The plain truth is that the Western powers interfere far more in other countries than Russia does, through massive sponsorship of NGOs, journalists and politicians, much of which is open and some of which is covert.

I used to do this myself as a British diplomat. Revelations from USAid or the Integrity Initiative leaks give the public a glimpse into this world.

Yes, Russia does it too, but on a much smaller scale. That this kind of Russian activity indicates a desire for conquest or is a cause for war, is such a shallow argument it is hard to believe in the good faith of those promoting it.

I have also seen Russian military intervention in Syria put forward as evidence that Putin has plans of world conquest.

Russian intervention in Syria prevented for a time its destruction by the West in the same way that Iraq and Libya were destroyed by the West. Russia held back the coming to power of crazed Islamic terrorists, and the massacre of Syria's minority communities. Those horrors are now unfolding, in part because of the weakening of Russia through the Ukraine war.

But for those nations that destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya to argue that Russia's intervention in Syria shows Putin to be evil, is dishonesty of the highest degree. The United States has had a quarter of Syria under military occupation for