NO HAPPY ENDINGS c rhetoric of Western statesmen at face value, we would have to conclude that Western adults are as neurotic and delusional as so many twentysomething Western youth appear to be.

Obsessed with social media, moral posturing and feelings, the West’s stated policies seem almost comically divorced from any serious assessment of national interests, capabilities and actual needs.

nuclear war-entailing obligation to defend her borders? Never mind what her borders will be, with what would we defend them?

The disconnect between the fantastic objectives of British foreign policy and the reality of Britain’s military enfeeblement is embarrassing. The current government has effectively mothballed the Royal Marines. Our carriers can’t sail for action in the Middle East because they lack escorts and

If only there was a “but actually the truth is ...” moment. But that’s not going to happen. Because the West is as bad as it looks, for the West acts openly. And our deeds are, if anything, worse than our words: being irresponsible, unworthy of our patrimony and inviting of disaster.

To see where we are we should see where we clearly are not. In the case of Ukraine we are not on the brink of disaster, however much Ukrainians might be. For we have to be realistic about the Russian threat. That, to us, was not terminal even when for nearly half a century Moscow’s rule reached halfway across Germany.

Just as it won’t be terminal should Russia somehow advance beyond the areas of Ukraine it has conquered and advance all the way west of Lviv to the border with NATO member, Poland. And it is risible to suggest that each Russian creep forward into some obscure and now ruined hamlet near the banks of the Dnieper is the end of the Western way of life. However brutal and ugly Russia’s assaults are, it is not.

, , went to Ukraine for a Boris Johnson-inpolitical-peril photo opportunity. He signed a sonorous agreement with President Zelenskyy and promised the Ukrainians more money. Arriving back home, Mr Sunak solemnly declared in the House of Commons that “Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO”. This is fantasy.

Britain’s latest gift to Ukraine is not of an order to shift realities on the ground. The money is a drop in the ocean even for Ukrainian finances, never mind British ones. And as for Ukraine being in NATO, is Mr Sunak serious in promoting a potential even one — just one — supply ship.

They can pose in northern waters near home, but the entire expeditionary posture of Britain’s armed forces can no longer work because this government hasn’t given them the men to do their actual job, never mind enable the make-believe promises for Ukraine.

, Mercer makes the case that we have seen the war in Ukraine wrongly from the start. That we rushed into a pleasing morality tale of our own making, ignoring the reality of Ukrainian politics since the déclassé Putin was of course distastefully so much worse.

We were distracted by and gained false over-confidence from Russia’s pitiful failure of arms in its advance on Kyiv at the start of the war, ignoring in the process the significant ground it won in the east and southeast of the country, not least along its coast.

More corrosively still, Colonel Mercer makes the point that, yet again this century, the NATO manual just hasn’t worked. Whether for ourselves or taught to others, our military doctrines have consistently failed in the field. However, it’s worse still for proponents of “Ukraine: our sword and shield”.

For if this rationale holds up, and we’ve hard-headedly backed a war waged by others in our self-interest, what have we done while our proxy bled? The answer

Destroyed Western-donated armoured vehicles of the Ukrainian armed forces

We should reflect on what Brita in’s wars of choice have done for this country, let a lone Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya lies plain enough in our tied-up assault ships: we have done and are doing nothing, save hobbling ourselves still further. And that’s just in Britain, easily as gung-ho a state as the West has left.

We’ve done nothing in the last two years to prepare for the threat we claimed justified coming to Ukraine’s aid. Mercer’s argument is that our worst sin has been to be weak, rather than merely to be wrong. However fanciful the Western boosterism — by some very usual suspects — was for Ukraine’s supposed road to victory, it is self-delusion which is going to come back

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THE CRITIC 2 FEB 2024