Aprime time current affairs programme; a discussion about Donald Trump’s handling of the war in Ukraine. “He’s doing excellent things,” says a firebrand politician on the panel, before listing White House actions that have belittled Volodymyr Zelenskyy and weakened his battlefield position – military aid suspended; satellite communications obstructed; intelligence withheld. “Do we support this?” It is a rhetorical question.
“We support it all. Absolutely,” the celebrity host responds. “We are thrilled by everything Trump is doing.”
Such approval might not be out of place on polemical rightwing channels in the US, but these exchanges weren’t broadcast to American audiences. The show’s anchor is Olga Skabeyeva, one of Vladimir Putin’s most dependable propagandists. To hear the highest pitch of praise for Trump’s bullying of Ukraine you need to watch Russia’s state-controlled Channel One.
When Russian and US delegations met in Saudi Arabia last month to discuss a resolution to the war in Ukraine, the most revealing feature of the conversation was the exclusion of any Ukrainians.
Less discussed, but still significant, was the inclusion in Putin’s delegation of Kirill Dmitriev, an alumnus of Stanford University, McKinsey and Goldman Sachs, now head of the Russian state investment fund. His pitch was that US businesses have foregone billions of dollars in profits by quitting Russia. Sanctions against Moscow are presented as another way that Ukraine and its European accomplices are ripping off America. Shortly after the Saudi meeting, Dmitriev was formally appointed Putin’s “special representative for investment and economic partnership with overseas countries”, with a mandate covering deals with the US.
Russia takes Ukraine, the US takes Canada. Everyone else stand back or else.
Exactly, it’s the tried and true method of appeasement that has made Chamberlain synonymous with effective diplomacy. Nothing can go wrong.
Chamberlain has gotten a bum rap from history - he did not think that appeasing Hitler was anything other than a temporary expedient to buy time. The British government at the time (not just Neville himself) felt that Germany’s modern air force was powerful enough to destroy them on its own and that they couldn’t challenge Hitler until they had enough modern fighters (Hurricanes and Spitfires) to defend themselves. In additional fact, the only reason Britain had these fighters in the pipeline at all was because Chamberlain had resisted the entreaties of Britain’s own “bomber mafia”, a group of RAF officers and industrialists who wanted Britain to build their own massive bomber fleet for offensive action in lieu of defensive fighters.
In retrospect, the impact of the bomber was vastly overestimated in the 1930s, as evidenced by the fact that Germany ended up suffering a much more massive assault at the hands of British and American bomber fleets later in the war while continuing to increase military production all the while. Britain under Chamberlain should have stood up to Hitler much earlier, but this was an error of judgement and not an act of capitulation.
It’s also worth noting that he fell on his own sword, politically. He knew that Briton needed a strong leader, with the people unified behind them. Churchill could do this, he couldn’t. He took the blame to keep the rest of the party clean.