This piece is one of several I've noticed lately in the British press [1, 2], preparing the country for a broader war.
I'm deeply fucking concerned, to be frank. I'm also upset that no major political actor seems to be putting their hand up and suggesting this might be a terrible idea.
Winter is coming.
[1] https://news.sky.com/story/army-chief-says-politicians-to-st...
Belgium is a buffer state that has a port. Ukraine is a breadbasket with lots of soviet era industry and critical accesses to the Black Sea.
Belgium was a speedbump for the Germans, just a way to get to the French and block off the British. Ukraine is the actual goal.
Both were about an outsider trying to rewrite the terms of system from which they felt excluded. WW1 was loosely states with an empire vs. those without.
Both have involved massive miscalculations on all parts as to how quickly and easily this will be over. Russia thought Ukraine would fold, NATO thought Russia would.
We need to be realistic here. This is bad and could get substantially worse.
Jeffrey Sachs has been shouting about this from the rooftops from day one, but the "Western Bloc" has been ignoring him at their own peril. It is almost as if they want to force a WWIII, nevermind the suffering of the Ukrainians!
There are plenty of Youtube videos of his speeches, a couple;
Jeffrey Sachs: Understanding the Ukraine conflict (minidoc) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiK6DijNLGE
Jeffrey Sachs Warns Europe About Its Dark Future - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqkyulCBcpY
PS: Also see my other comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50148581
leaked assessments from the beginning of the war showed that the CIA thought Ukraine would fall in < 1 year and would lead to an insurgency that would last a decade and bankrupt Russia while still having oodles of warcrimes.
warcrimes are still there but instead the AFU is causing serious infrastructure damage to to the Russians.
The comparison with WW1 is instructive in that regard. Then, the view that conflict with Germany was inevitable was surprisingly widespread - particularly in the wake of Agadir, though it had been steadily building over a couple of decades. It's just that the nature and scope of the conflict that caught them by surprise - a land war rather than being primarily naval.
Vast amounts of money had been poured into building up the navy (always controversial - Gladstone's final premiership was ended by his opposition to a 'vortex of militarism', and Lloyd George and Churchill made similar arguments 15 years later) but those very expensive warships spent most of the conflict at anchor. Most of the pre-war spending was essentially wasted.
If we were to double our defence spending today, we might well end up pissing it up the wall on the same old mix of Trident, aircraft carriers, helicopters, unworkable AFVs, and the most limited carrier variant of F35 when the actual threats are cyberattacks, disinformation, and a variety of hybrid attacks.
What is surprising about that? The Northcliffe propaganda press and writers such as H.G. Wells had been nurturing the idea of the inevitability of war with Germany for years, so, unless they really sucked at propaganda, at least some "positive effect" would be the expected outcome.
« It's just that the nature and scope of the conflict that caught them by surprise - a land war »
Maybe, in some respect. But they had factored in the armies of France and Russia, hadn't they (in 1904 and 1907 already), so they were certainly expecting some land war scenarios.
The reason they didn't tell their people they were willing to sacrifice them on the order of a couple hundred thousands may have had to do with the lack of popular support for such an honorable prospect.