HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL, WHEREVER YOU MAY BE
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL, WHEREVER YOU MAY BE
I avoid making New Year resolutions, on the grounds that I am unlikely to adhere to them, nor am I tempted to make predictions for the coming year, on the grounds that they will all be proved wrong, but one can hope that 2023 might be a rather better year than 2022 has been, at least for us in the United Kingdom. We have had three prime ministers, one a charlatan, one mad and finally at last a grown up. Boris got the politics more or less right but his personal behaviour was such that he had to go. Mrs Gusset exposed the fallacy of allowing party members (a handful, mainly doddering) to decide who the prime minister should be, and was rightly defenestrated having been in office for the shortest time since George Canning in 1827. At least Canning had the decency to die in office, which Mrs Gusset failed to do. We have suffered the unedifying spectacle of a B list, divorced, mixed race American actress convincing a perfectly decent, if a bit thick, young man that he is somehow a victim. I have listened to some of her podcasts, for which she/they have been paid millions. Puerile, self-seeking, totally unaware of anything except their own pathetic resentments and displaying an IQ slightly above that of a bumblebee who has had an accident at birth, only in America could she avoid being exposed as a complete poseur. At least Mrs Simpson kept her mouth shut. In September we lost a much-loved monarch. While we all knew that at 96 she could not go on for ever, it did come as a shock. I was fortunate in being able to get back to UK in time to join the queue for the lying in state, and for all our woes we did show the world that we know how to say goodbye to a queen.
So now for 2023. The war in Ukraine will soon be a year old, rather than the weekend effort that Putin obviously expected. Kherson was recaptured by the Ukrainians in November, the only regional capital that fell to the Russians, but is still coming under constant shelling from the east side of the Dnieper river and much of the population has been evacuated to the west. Russia has reverted to its historic strategy of massive artillery and missile attacks without deploying infantry or armour; the latter, one suspects, manned by increasingly unhappy and only partially trained conscripts. The deliberate targeting of civilian accomodation and infrastructure may well be a war crime as defined by the Geneva Convention, which, while accepting collateral casualties, prohibits the deliberate targeting of civilians. The USSR did not sign the convention until after the Second World War (1960) but agreed to subsequent protocols as the USSR and as the Russian Federation. Russia did, however, withdraw from Article 90 of Protocol 1 – which allows for an independent commission to investigate allegations of war crimes – in 2019. An accusation of criminal behaviour in attacking civilians could of course elicit a rebuttal, citing Bomber Command of the RAF’s and the German Luftwaffe’s deliberate bombing of civilian housing in the Second World War. That the technology to hit precision target did not exist, leaving the only way to strike being indiscriminate bombing, would doubtless lead to much legal argument. Russia’s aim in attacking Ukraine’s infrastructure is to sap morale and bring them to the negotiating table, but the reverse is much more likely. As I have often remarked, Ukraine does not have to win this war, it has to not lose it, and as long as we in the west remain firm in our commitment to assist with weaponry and training, they will not lose. Russia must be running short of artillery ammunition and missiles, and has lost huge numbers of armoured vehicles, without much sign of the arrival of the much vaunted T14, or even the T 90, and while we are in for a long haul, Russia does not appear to be capable of a victory of any significance.
As an historian who has served in what was left of the British Empire and who is proud of what it achieved, I do hope that in 2023 we can fight back against the spotty youths with pitchforks, and others with an agenda of distorting our history. While the British Empire did not get everything right it brought order where there was chaos, an incorruptible administration, a fair and impartial judicial system and non-partisan armed forces. That in many ex colonies that happy state did not long survive our departure is hardly our fault. Does anyone seriously believe that the average African in Zimbabwe is better off under Mugabe and his equally appalling successors than he was under British rule? On my first visit to India, some years ago, a professor at the university of New Delhi told me ‘There has always been corruption in India, but it stopped at the first Englishman. Now it goes all the way up to the Cabinet.’
In the meantime, good luck to you all, and may peace and justice prevail (it won’t, but one can at least hope).