Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Can anyone explain from where comes the staunch pro Ukraine, no compromise ever position of UK - I can understand the other players in this tragicomedy, but have absolutely no idea why UK believes and acts as it does?
The UK is defined by WW2 (and to a much lesser extent by WW1). Mythologically, we Said No to a European dictator. We stayed the course even when it looked absolutely hopeless, and then with the help of our allies we won and Europe was saved. (As with Napoleon).
Everyone pre-WW2 who argued for a realist foreign policy re: Hitler got egg on their faces. Neville Chamberlain signed an agreement and declared "peace in our time" and was hideously embarrassed when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia almost immediately; Lord Halifax argued for a negotiated surrender which would have lost us a war we were actually capable of winning.
Politically, you can't debate this history without being thought to be secretly on the Nazi side. So anything that looks like giving a European imperialist what he wants will be called appeasement and is an absolute no-no. Even believing what a foreign imperialist says about what he wants makes you a fool.
More intelligent Brits are aware that Ukraine is very unlikely to win but will couch their support in terms of 'Let's help the Ukranians give the Russians a bloody nose. If they can't win then let's at least make sure they take Russia with them'.
Also Litvinenko and Salisbury. Russia has attacked the UK with WMD twice - this makes "Russia is our enemy, so Russia's enemy is our friend" a much easier sell than in most other Western countries. Corbyn's apparent popularity ended with his pathetic response to Salisbury - suggesting that this attitude is bottom-up as well as top-down.
This is an interesting theory I hadn't really contemplated. Salisbury and Litvinenko aren't what comes up 'on the street' though - it's always "Putin is a tyrant and a bully and we know what happens when you try to appease those people; remember Munich?" so I'm skeptical that Salisbury is driving the difference.
IMO the difference comes from the fact that the mainland remembers wars on the continent as 'horrifying events they don't want to think about ever again' whereas Britain remembers war on the continent as 'hard but worthwhile and we always win'.
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