By Antony LOEWENSTEIN, Peter CRONAU

Australia’s independence from Britain has been contested ground since the nation’s birth in 1901 — the first real test being Australia’s decision to send troops to Europe for Britain’s war with Germany in 1914.

Two bitterly fought referenda to allow military conscription were narrowly defeated — Australia’s contribution to the Great War was to remain a voluntary one.

Move forward to 2021 and the relationship is no less controversial. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and U.S. President Joe Biden announced a new Indo-Pacific military alliance with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in September and awkwardly titled it AUKUS (which as one nave noted, sounds better than USUKA).

In announcing AUKUS, the three leaders loftily claimed to be “guided by our enduring ideals and shared commitment to the international rules-based order.”

The U.K. in July signaled its re-emergence as a Pacific Ocean force when it announced the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth would lead a fleet of U.K. navy ships to join with the U.S. Navy in leading a flotilla of warships including Australian and Japanese vessels through the South China Sea.

The Australian Defence Department would neither confirm nor deny the precise nature of the maritime exercise. However, on this occasion the fleet kept a wary distance from Chinese-claimed territory.

The U.S. may brandish the world’s most powerful military but it is turning towards its traditional friends as it readies for confrontation, and perhaps conflict, with the rising economic and military powerhouse of China.

The AUKUS treaty saw Australia spectacularly dump its $90 billion contract with France to build Australia’s new submarine fleet, instead announcing a deal to buy U.S. and U.K. technology and build nuclear-powered submarines in Australia.

Although not nuclear armed (yet), the first of the new nuclear submarines will not be ready until as late as 2040. Other elements of the treaty, however, will come into play much sooner. Australia will spend $30 billion on new weaponry, including a suite of long-range missiles for its navy and air force, as well as land-based precision strike missiles, largely sourced or developed in conjunction with the U.K. and U.S.

Britain’s resurgent interest in the Pacific region as a part of its “increased international activism” was announced in March with Johnson stating the strategy will “tilt to the Indo-Pacific, increasingly the geopolitical centre of the world.”

Together with the U.S. “pivot to Asia” outlined by U.S. President Barack Obama in 2011, Australia is becoming a focus of a rapid military build-up.

Australia is in a precarious position as the “tilt” and “pivot” of these major powers’ international activism plays out on the strategic balance in the Indo-Pacific. Australia is hoping it is more than a mere “suitable piece of real estate” adrift in the South Pacific.

The world may have got some insight into the true closeness of the new AUKUS relationship when in a September press conference Boris Johnson referred to Scott Morrison as “prime minister Morris” and Biden forgot his name entirely, referring to him instead as “uh, that fella down under.”

Joint Work on New Weapons

In the 1950s and 60s Britain convinced Canberra to allow it to test its prototype nuclear bombs in South Australia. With a nuclear ascendant U.S., Britain was racing to keep a seat at the nuclear table. Australia on the other hand was hoping that helping Britain would ensure them a “nuclear guarantee”.

Described as safe, the bombs’ fallout from the Maralinga and Emu Field tests contaminated livestock and humans, and fallout carried by winds was detected as far away as Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide.

British disinterest saw a Royal Commission in 1985 that led to Australia embarrassing the U.K. into helping fund an attempted clean-up of the sites, with works ending in 2000.

As well as nuclear weapons testing, the Australian desert lands of the Anangu indigenous peoples have for 60 years also hosted other weapons development projects, rocket firings and missile tests at the RAAF Woomera Range Complex, near Maralinga.

It was only in 1994 that the Anangu received compensation for injury and damages of the nuclear testing.

Both Britain and the U.S. are now working on new generation nuclear-capable hypersonic missile projects in Australia — Britain’s BAE Systems has Project Javelin and the U.S. is developing SCIFiRE with arms manufacturers Raytheon, Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

The RAAF Woomera Range has been the site of BAE Systems development work on its Taranis supersonic stealth bomber drone, though the project has stalled, and on the Mantis, a long-endurance drone.

Airbus is also using Australia in developing the Zephyr solar-powered high-altitude long-endurance pseudo-satellite surveillance drone, designed to supply live vision of combat for up to 40 hours from 20 kms high.

It’s been undergoing test flights in the calm air above Wyndham in Western Australia but has suffered several crashes. The U.K. Ministry of Defence is one of the main customers, if not the only customer, for the Zephyr.

While Australia awaits its own fleet of 12 armed Reaper drones, Britain has been making use of RAAF drone pilots embedded with the RAF conducting missions over Iraq and Syria, piloted from the RAF base at Waddington in Lincolnshire.

Australian pilots began training on Reaper drones in 2015 in the U.S. and flew operational missions for the USAF in its war over Iraq and Syria.

Pine Gap

However, it is the top secret Pine Gap satellite surveillance base — officially titled “Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap” (JDFPG, but known generally to the 800 staff as “the base”) – that is Australia’s greatest contribution to the Five Eyes alliance that also includes Canada and New Zealand.

Located near Alice Springs, it’s a base for the C.I.A., National Security Agency and National Reconnaissance Office and collects signals and other data from an array of satellites snooping on military, commercial and private communication systems.

Mirrored with the N.S.A.’s base at  RAF Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, it forms a global surveillance net.

Battlefield intelligence used by the U.S. in its “war on terror” has been gathered and analyzed at Pine Gap for use by the U.S. military including in potentially illegal drone strikes in the Middle East that have killed thousands of civilians.

Gough Whitlam giving a speech during the 1972 election campaign. (National Archives of Australia, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Last year, research by professor Jenny Hocking revealed confidential documents from the Australian National Archive that showed the advance notice that Queen Elizabeth had of the plotting by the governor general. The documents also showed a level of encouragement from senior staff of the Palace in the dismissal of the democratically elected prime minister.Pine Gap first attracted public disquiet in 1975 when the then Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam threatened to reveal the names of C.I.A. agents involved. He was controversially dismissed by the Queen’s representative in Australia, Governor General John Kerr, on November 11, 1975.

At the time of the public and political controversy over Pine Gap, the site hosted just eight satellite dishes. Today, the base is quietly undergoing a new expansion with six new dishes being constructed, bringing the total now to 39.

The new dishes, most likely aimed at detecting missile launches, will boost the U.S.’s planning to fight a nuclear war with China.

Australia is tumbling headlong in accepting the rotational basing of U.S. Marines in Darwin — presently 2,500, soon expected to be 5,000 personnel. South of Darwin, near Katherine, the Tindal RAAF base is undergoing a major upgrade of refueling capability and armaments storage, to allow it to host an expanded range of allied military aircraft, including the U.S.’s long-range B-52 bombers.

Nuclear Proliferation

Australia prides itself on being a member of the “rules-based international order,” however it is cooperating with two nuclear weapons states that are breaching the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Britain has announced it is to increase the number of nuclear warheads it has for its Trident submarines, and together with the U.S. is developing new generation hypersonic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads anywhere on the globe.

Along with the U.K. and U.S., Australia is a holdout from signing or ratifying the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear War. This treaty would prohibit Australia from “provision of assistance to any State” conducting activities ranging from producing, possessing and stockpiling of nuclear weapons, through to possessing the threat to use nuclear weapons.

The Treaty requirements “to prevent and suppress” prohibited activity “on territory under its jurisdiction or control” would see a range of necessary limitations placed on Australia — including, most importantly, a review of the nuclear war-supporting functions of the Pine Gap satellite surveillance base.

War Crimes in Afghanistan

Australian soldiers on foot patrol in Uruzgan, Afghanistan, Aug. 16, 2008. (ISAF, John Collins, U.S. Navy)

The U.K. and Australia have played a key partnership role since the 9/11 attacks but have dealt with the fallout slightly differently. When the Brereton Report, an Australian-government led investigation into alleged war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan, released its findings in November 2020 the results were devastating.

A four-year inquiry found that 39 Afghan civilians were murdered by Australian forces in 23 incidents in 2009, 2012 and 2013. The Kabul-based Australian photojournalist Andrew Quilty uncovered countless more killings by Australian soldiers that went unmentioned in the Brereton Report.

According to the Australian government, the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan may potentially hinder ongoing investigations into war crimes though the country is at its most relatively peaceful for decades. It’s hard not to conclude that Australian officials view the Taliban government as a convenient impediment to progressing with any prosecutions.

Nonetheless, the Brereton Report is one of the more comprehensive examinations of any Western army that occupied Afghanistan after October 2001. None of this is to defend the Australian government’s response to the report, which is filled with obfuscation, denial and willful blindness, but it’s still superior to many other comparable nations.

This is despite both Canada and New Zealand having uncovered hard evidence of their own forces committing abuses in Afghanistan and the U.S. escaping scrutiny after pressuring the International Criminal Court for years to only investigate the Taliban and ISIS.

U.S. President Donald Trump granted clemency to U.S. military personnel who killed Afghans. Fox News had encouraged Trump to pardon these men accused of war crimes.

The seriousness of the Brereton Report was reflected in comments by the Afghan-based Independent Human Rights Commission. Its chairperson, Shaharzad Akbar, said that the Australian investigation should push the U.K., U.S. and other occupation forces to examine their role in the death of civilians since 2001.

She particularly stressed that the U.K. “open an independent inquiry to review and investigate the allegation of unlawful killings by U.K. special forces.”

Instead, the British Ministry of Defence said that its “armed forces are held to the highest standards, and the Service Police have carried out extensive and independent investigations into alleged misconduct of U.K. forces in Afghanistan. As of today, none of the historical allegations under Operation Northmoor have led to prosecutions.”

Despite claiming that it was investigating serious allegations of war crimes in both Iraq and Afghanistan, Britain failed to find anyone senior worth prosecuting despite mountains of evidence. One soldier was jailed for stabbing a 10-year-old Afghan boy.

Nonetheless, cover-ups and lies were central to Whitehall’s response.

The murder of Afghan civilians was not deemed important enough nor the dogged pursuit by Saiffulah Yar who accused U.K. forces of killing four members of his family in Helmand Province in 2011.

There was important reporting by BBC Panorama and BBC Newsnight though overall the Western media has not covered itself in glory reporting the Afghan war, usually preferring government and military sources to Afghans.

Despite the Chilcot inquiry, with its damning assessment of how former Prime Minister Tony Blair pushed his country into war with Iraq, nobody has been seriously held to account for Britain’s failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The fear remains that Australia, despite the Office of the Special Investigator still investigating human rights breaches in Afghanistan, will follow London’s lead and bury or indefinitely delay any potential war crimes trials.

Elite soldier Ben Roberts-Smith is accused of killing Afghan civilians and is currently suing major Australian media reports for daring to report it. The trial has become a proxy war crimes trial while masquerading as a defamation case. It may be the only such trial in the foreseeable future.

Militarized Immigration Policy

Australia’s Manus Island regional immigration processing facility, 2012. (Flickr, DIAC, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

It’s the militarized immigration policy where Canberra arguably inspires London the most. Australia’s immigration policy is known for its brutal disregard for human rights and sending refugees to remote Pacific Islands for processing. The policy has deep roots in Australia’s settler colonial history.

The so-called Pacific Solution began in 2001 and quickly received bi-partisan support in the Federal Parliament. Forcibly placing vulnerable refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Myanmar, Sri Lanka or elsewhere in overcrowded, hot and dangerous locations was a cruelly effective method of dehumanizing and silencing people, many of whom were escaping wars in countries that Australia was supposedly trying to liberate through occupation.

Despite protests from the European Union and many other liberals around the world, Australia’s refugee policy has become a model for the EU and Britain under the Conservative government.

Christmas Island Immigration Detention Centre, Dec. 7, 2008. (Flickr, DIAC, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, a right-wing climate denier, set the tone in a 2015 speech when delivering the Margaret Thatcher lecture in London by arguing that Europe should shut its borders completely. “The Australian experience proves that the only way to dissuade people seeking to come from afar is not to let them in,” he said.

The U.K. Conservatives listened and agreed. In 2020, U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel reportedly examined the viability of constructing an asylum seeker detention facility 6,000 kilometers away from Britain, in Ascension Island or St. Helena in the South Atlantic, but eventually decided it was logistically too challenging.

Instead, in 2021 Patel announced that Britain would forcibly push back refugee boats crossing the English Channel, a carbon copy of Australia’s boat turn-back policy which the U.N. estimated in July had resulted in 800 people on 31 boats since 2013 being towed back to potential danger, sinking or death.

In some cases, Australia is credibly accused of covering up actions that led to hundreds of deaths at sea. Australia also stands accused of paying Indonesian people smugglers to keep boats out of Australian waters.

Australia and Britain share a political, ideological and military partnership that transcends partisan bickering. As journalists who have investigated this relationship for years, it’s revealing how little scrutiny is given to it by the establishment media and political elites.

declassifieduk.org

One of the slogans used during the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union — the Brexit operation — was “take back control”, by which Prime Minister Boris Johnson meant, as demonstrated in a speech of December 2016 when he was foreign minister, “taking back control of its democratic institutions.” But it was nonsense for him to say that as a member of the EU the United Kingdom did not have control of its governance, because although membership entailed abiding by EU regulations (to which Britain had agreed) there were no dramatic or harmful instances of crumbling democracy. It was just another slogan, but it appealed greatly to those many Brits who espouse nationalism to an unhealthy degree.

Johnson’s mishandling and misrepresentation of the Brexit process is indicative of his overall unsuitability to be leader of the country. As Patrick Cockburn pointed out on September 28, he is what Isaiah Berlin called a “charlatan” who deceives and manipulates all the time, being “a prime example of Berlin’s rare breed, who does just that with his boosterism, false promises and lying”.

A few days before Cockburn’s stinging commentary appeared, the British government website carried a piece of bureaucratically-produced gobbledygook titled “Global Britain: delivering on our international ambition” in which it was stated that “Global Britain is about reinvesting in our relationships, championing the rules-based international order and demonstrating that the UK is open, outward-looking and confident on the world stage” thus following Johnson’s declaration that “It is in the interests of global order that we are at the centre of a network of relationships and alliances that span the world. It is one of the great achievements of British diplomacy in the 20^th century that — together with others — we effectively changed the basis and assumptions on which those relationships work.”

Concurrent with speeches and other harangues about “global Britain” the government in Westminster ordered a Royal Navy warship to sail through the Strait of Taiwan, continued to conduct military exercises with the HMS Queen Elizabeth Carrier Strike Group in the Pacific and Far Eastern waters, and had the country’s senior military commander, General Sir Nick Carter, give an interview to CBC News in which he said Britain wanted to “co-operate in terms of helping Canada do what Canada needs to do as an Arctic country” and that “we have military capabilities, certainly in the maritime domain and in terms of our science that would be useful to Canada and I think operating alongside Canada in that regard is going to be clearly good for both countries.”

None of these performances produced anything that can be regarded as even remotely positive or productive in economic or strategic terms. The naval deployments in the Far East have engendered only exasperation on the part of China which declared the Taiwan Strait frolic to be ridiculous, which it undoubtedly was. The UK’s defence ministry riposted that “The UK has a range of enduring security interests in the Indo-Pacific and many important bilateral defence relationships, this deployment is a sign of our commitment to regional security,” but it is difficult to see how a deliberate insult to Beijing can be considered a positive contribution to security.

The speech by General Carter was a follow-on from his declaration last December that the “posture for our armed forces also addresses state threats. The most serious of these in the Euro Atlantic area is of course Russia and we have seen recently that Moscow is determined to test Britain and our NATO allies. The Russian regime’s increasingly assertive activity is almost certainly influenced by problems at home.” In fact, Russia’s reactive policy has been taken in response to enlargement of the so-called “enhanced forward presence” adopted by the U.S.-Nato military alliance around Russia’s borders.

Britain’s global aspirations rely not only on absurd gestures like sending a warship to try to irritate China and trying to whip up anti-Russia enmity but also on the quaint notions, as noted by a contributor to Carnegie Europe, “that the UK really does have a special relationship with the United States and that Brexit would enhance prosperity at home and Britain’s influence abroad.”

The “special relationship” supposedly existing between the United Kingdom and the United States has not existed since 1956 when President Eisenhower refused to support Britain’s illegal invasion of Egypt to try to wrench back control of the Suez Canal. The outcome of the UK’s absurd fandango was crippling both economically and strategically, and the “special relationship” fantasy completely disappeared in the 1960s when Britain refused entreaties by President Johnson to contribute military forces to the U.S. war in Vietnam.

As winter approaches in the northern hemisphere the British prime minister has more to worry about than the dissolved “special relationship” because his country is fast approaching economic disaster, some of it caused by the pandemic, but largely stemming from the decision to quit the European Union. As the New York Times has noted, “Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks of creating a more agile ‘Global Britain,’ with stronger ties to the United States and other democracies, like Australia, India and South Korea . . . But most benefits of a Global Britain so far remain theoretical. The Office for Budget Responsibility has said it expects little effect from new trade deals . . .” In starker terms, the United Kingdom is suffering severe problems of its own making. And in the middle of the plunge to crisis, the prime minister lowered the tone of international diplomacy in a most regrettable and undignified manner.

The NYT explains that “A British agreement alongside the United States in September to help Australia deploy nuclear submarines was hailed by Brexit supporters as a success for the new approach, especially because it upset an Australian defence deal with France.” This was not only a major international disagreement between ostensible allies, but was laughed about by Prime Minister Johnson who tried to make fun of the French President on September 23 by joking in French-English to reporters in Washington that “I just think it’s time for some of our dearest friends around the world to, you know, ‘prenez un grip’ about all this and ‘donnez-moi un break,’ because this is fundamentally a great step forward for global security.”

Not only did Johnson totally trivialise the international impact of a broken contract worth over forty billion dollars and alienate a long-standing and most important ally, but he destroyed the claim that he was aiming for a “Global Britain” by behaving immaturely and insultingly. At the time his country is suffering from extremely serious economic problems, Prime Minister Johnson wants to strut the world stage as a global statesman. But he is failing dismally and displaying a lack of leadership that could bring his country to its knees and cause enormous suffering.

In one telling disproof of the claim that leaving the European Union has had nothing but economic benefit for the United Kingdom, Johnson has had to agree to immigration of some 5,000 haulage drivers from Europe because the dearth of lorry drivers is disrupting the national economy. Further, as Reuters reported on October 1, “Britain’s pig farmers on Friday warned of a pork crisis unless the government urgently eased an acute shortage of abattoir workers and butchers that has left up to 150,000 pigs backed up on farms and facing a costly cull.” As known by most observers, the vast majority of these workers, like goods vehicle drivers and fruit-pickers and hospitality-industry staffs, came from mainland Europe and had to go back to their own countries when glorious Brexit was achieved.

Britain isn’t flourishing, to put it mildly, and Johnson’s silly pretensions in that regard are only lowering the UK’s standing even further — all round the globe. The best thing that British citizens could do is to take back control and get rid of this conceited lightweight, thereby encouraging movement to international diplomacy and development of economic cooperation.

Time was when Britain’s mighty fleets ruled a quarter of the earth’s surface. I’ve been savoring the names of its dreadnaughts and battle cruisers like George V, Prince of Wales, Hood, Princess Royal, Iron Duke and scores of other renowned warships.

Last week, the imperial British lion made a last, feeble roar by sending one of its new anti-aircraft destroyers, ‘Defender,’ to annoy the Russians by patrolling off the south-western coast of Crimea.

Russia and Ukraine both claim Crimea, which had been Russian since 1783. After a drunken dinner, the late Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, ‘gave’ the Crimean SSR to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.

Russia reoccupied Crimea, one of Russia’s most important naval bases, after a US-led coup overthrew Ukraine’s pro-Russian government in 2014. The UK, US and rest of NATO insist Crimea belongs to Ukraine. Of course they do. They engineered it.

HMS ‘Defender’s’ baiting the Russian bear took place while NATO naval and air forces were holding threatening war games over the southern Black Sea to intimidate Russia and embolden allies like Romania, Bulgaria and Poland, the three weak sisters of Eastern Europe.

This tempest in a teapot suddenly became a farce after a stack of soggy secret British naval documents was found behind a park bench in Kent. ‘Defender’s’ mission was discussed in them, Russia’s possible response, and, of all crazy things, potential new British operations in Afghanistan. All to please Uncle Sam, of course.

These embarrassing documents caused an uproar in Britain, made the government look like fools, and put the lie to Whitehall’s claims that the naval operation was only an innocent patrol. Britons are very intelligent people but tend to be sloppy and poorly organized. Britain has been a happy hunting ground for Soviet/Russian spies since the war.

Small wonder the French call Britain ‘perfide Albion.’ The Brits are masters at intrigue, double-dealing and propaganda. British propaganda drew the United States into two world wars. In our era, Britain has assumed leadership of western propaganda efforts against Russia and its allies.

Most Russians, who tend to be well-educated, are well aware of Great Britain’s 1853 invasion of Crimea, in league with France, the Ottoman Empire, and the then kingdom of Sardinia. The Crimean War was a bloody, three-year war designed to wrest the strategic peninsula from Tsarist control and thwart Russia’s expansion into the Balkans.

This nasty war saw the British finally storm fortress Sevastopol and temporarily reduce Russia’s influence in the Black Sea and Balkans. For France, the war was a thrilling return to military victories after the dark years of the Napoleonic wars. For Britain, it was also a triumph in spite of the disaster at Balaclava and heavy casualties due to disease. But, in the end, the war proved a stalemate: the foreign powers withdrew from Crimea and left Russia to lick it wounds.

The next serious invasion came from Germany and Romania in 1941, led by the great German general, Erich von Manstein. The second siege of Sevastopol lasted 250 days. I’ve walked over many of the old Soviet forts that so long resisted German attacks. Crimea was one of the hardest fought campaigns of WWII. Sevastopol was named one of the Soviet Union’s ‘hero cities’ for its legendary resistance.

No one who knows history should be surprised that western moves on Sevastopol and Crimea produced such a strong Russian reaction. Imagine how the US would react to a Russian naval squadron staging war games in the Gulf of Mexico or off New York City.

The point of the ‘Defender’ exercise was to humiliate Russia and show off its weakness, all part of the longer-term US/British/NATO strategy to splinter the remaining Russian Federation in a similar manner that the old Soviet Union was torn apart. That’s what the big NATO Black Sea exercise is about. There will be many more.

ericmargolis.com

As the U.S.-NATO military alliance retreats from its failure to overcome a few thousand raggy-baggy militants in Afghanistan and regroups in the Persian Gulf with 5,000 troops in Iraq on a so-called training mission, it continues deployment of troops, surveillance systems, combat ships and strike aircraft along Russia’s borders in order to provoke reaction that it considers will justify its existence.

On June 28, while the evacuation of Afghanistan gathered pace, the U.S. carried out airstrikes in Syria and Iraq on what were claimed to be bases of “Iranian-backed militias”. Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi condemned the raids as a “blatant and unacceptable violation of Iraqi sovereignty and Iraqi national security” but he was wasting his time, because this sort of protest has no effect whatever on Washington which had not even informed the Iraqi government of its intentions.

It was possibly coincidental that on the same day that that the U.S. Air Force was rocketing and bombing targets in Iraq and Syria, a chain of U.S.-NATO military manoeuvres called “Sea Breeze” began some 1000 km to the north.

Reuters reported that “Ukraine and the United States will start a military exercise involving more than 30 countries in the Black Sea and southern Ukraine on Monday, despite Russian calls to cancel the drills” and Deutsche Welle detailed that “a total of 32 ships, 40 aircraft and helicopters and 5,000 soldiers from 24 countries are taking part in the exercises, which last through July 10. Participating countries include the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, Turkey, Israel, Morocco, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Germany, which has been involved in the past, is not taking part this year. It’s the largest manoeuvres in decades, after last year’s drills were shortened due to the pandemic. Various exercises are planned at sea, on land and in the air with the goal of bringing Ukraine up to NATO standards.”

It is obvious that this sort of military roaring and splashing along Russia’s borders is infantile and deliberately confrontational, and the tone was set five days before Sea Breeze began when there was an incident involving the British destroyer HMS Defender which had been ordered to conduct manoeuvres in the Black Sea specifically in order to provoke Russian reaction.

Russian forces intercepted the British warship and the BBC’s correspondent “who had been invited on board the ship before the incident happened, saw more than 20 aircraft overhead and two Russian coastguard boats which at times were just 100 m (328 ft) away. This is at odds with statements from both the British prime minister’s office and defence ministry, which denied any confrontation.” Of course they denied confrontation, because the automatic response of the Johnson government in London is to tell lies when faced with an embarrassing or otherwise awkward situation. But it goes further than that, because classified documents relating to the Black Sea fandangos were found by a member of the public in England and made known to the media which promptly published details of what was really behind the British government’s attempts to provoke Russia to react.

The BBC lived up to its reputation for factual and objective reportage and blew the lid off the government’s attempts to mislead British citizens (and the world) which won’t do it any good and will have the effect of hardening the ruling Conservative Party’s determination to neutralise and if possible privatise it to become Britain’s equivalent of the United States’ pantomime Fox News channel.

It noted that the documents, many relating to power-point presentations given to government representatives, “show that a mission described by the Ministry of Defence as an ‘innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters’, with guns covered and the ship’s helicopter stowed in its hangar, was conducted in the expectation that Russia might respond aggressively” [emphasis added]. The documents indicated that there was no military requirement to send the warship so close to Crimea and that “an alternative route was considered, which would have kept HMS Defender well away from contested waters. This would have avoided confrontation, the presentation noted, but ran the risk of being portrayed by Russia as evidence of ‘the UK being scared/running away’, allowing Russia to claim that the UK had belatedly accepted Moscow’s claim to Crimean territorial waters.” And that’s where the emphasis lies.

The British government refuses to acknowledge that the people of Crimea prefer to be part of the Russian Federation rather than of Ukraine, as pointed out by a commentator in the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper, Peter Hitchens, who wrote that “in 1991 the people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly (93 per cent of an 80 per cent turnout) for Crimean autonomy — that is, separating the peninsula from the direct authority of Ukraine . . . In December 1991, Ukraine voted in a referendum to leave the Russian empire. Moscow rightly accepted this. The leaders of Ukraine were happy to win their own freedom by such a vote. But there was one rule for them and another for the Crimea . . . Ukraine could vote itself out of Russia, but Crimea was not allowed to vote itself out of Ukraine. Do you think that fair or right? I don’t.”

But the British government wants to ramp up the country’s international profile, and the fact that Britain has no commercial or strategic interests in or associated with Ukraine, Crimea or the Black Sea is irrelevant to what passes for analysis in London. National policy and military posture are focused on Prime Minister Johnson’s declaration that he seeks to “make the United Kingdom stronger, safer and more prosperous, while standing up for our values.” What he does not understand is that national leaders do not make their citizens safer by indulging in confrontational antics specifically designed to provoke another country to take military action.

The London Times newspaper reported that “the head of the armed forces has said that incidents such as this week’s Black Sea confrontation with Russia are giving him sleepless nights. General Sir Nick Carter said that the conflict between the British destroyer HMS Defender and Russian forces in contested waters off the Crimea coast was an example of where a miscalculation could come from ‘unwarranted escalation’.” But the sensible voice of the most senior officer of the British armed services was not heeded, and it is intriguing, even bizarre, that he was not consulted before the government decided to commit forces to engage in military action that could indeed lead to “unwarranted escalation.”

Prime Minister Johnson desperately wants to develop “Global Britain”, and is using compliant NATO to help him in his attempts to cavort on the world stage. He won’t achieve “Global Britain” by ordering military confrontation, but he may well achieve military escalation, which is not the route to safety and prosperity. He is playing with fire.

(Click on the image to enlarge)

Russian patrol vessels fired warning shots at an armed British warship after it breached Russian territorial waters this week. Then a SU-24 fighter jet dropped bombs in the path of the British destroyer apparently forcing it out of Russian waters.

It sounds almost incredible that a war situation was only a shot away in such a grim face-off between NATO member Britain and Russia.

But what’s also condemnable is that the incendiary incident was a deliberate provocation by Britain. Russia has warned Britain not to provoke it again in the Black Sea. And Moscow accused London of telling barefaced lies.

The British government and its Ministry of Defense were quick to play down the incident, claiming that there were no warning shots fired on the Royal Navy guided-missile destroyer. London accused Russia of “disinformation” and maintained that HMS Defender was engaged in “innocent passage” through international waters in the Black Sea.

However, the official British version is contradicted by a BBC correspondent who was on board HMS Defender.

Jonathan Beale reported: “I am on board the warship in the Black Sea.The crew were already at action stations as they approached the southern tip of Russian-occupied [sic] Crimea. Weapons systems on board the Royal Navy destroyer had already been loaded.

This would be a deliberate move to make a point to Russia. HMS Defender was going to sail within the 12 mile (19km) limit of Crimea’s territorial waters. The captain insisted he was only seeking safe passage through an internationally recognized shipping lane.”

Thus, according to the BBC’s account, a fully armed and cocked warship deliberately entered territorial waters claimed by Russia (since Crimea joined the Russian Federation by a referendum in 2014). The crew were at action stations on their approach “to make a point to Russia”.

Such conduct by the British is nothing less than a wanton provocation to Russia. The BBC version concurs with Russia’s account of the circumstances, including the sound of warning shots.

One question is: why did the British government and MoD seek to immediately play down the incident, purporting to say that nothing had happened? London claimed that the warship was merely in the vicinity of Russian “gunnery exercises” as if it was all coincidence and that Moscow was engaging in disinformation about warding off the Royal Navy vessel.

Another question is: why was the BBC correspondent invited to take part in the Black Sea voyage of HMS Defender from the Ukrainian port of Odessa to Georgia skirting the Crimea Peninsula? It seems like the British may have been expecting their “point to Russia” would have been met with a passive response. And so the British would have been able to spin that their plucky navy was able to stick it to the Russians. Turns out though that the BBC man unhelpfully contradicted the military planners in London.

Britain was obliged to deny the military encounter because it knows full well that it was a provocative show of aggression by its warship. If the shots had escalated it could have been an act of war that Britain had instigated. Aggression is the supreme war crime as defined by the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders.

Russia has condemned the British action, saying HMS Defender should be renamed HMS Aggressor or HMS Provocateur.

It is also reported that on Tuesday, the day before the skirmish, Ukrainian military chiefs were hosted onboard HMS Destroyer while docked in Odessa where they signed new military contracts with the British on naval cooperation. That the Brits then sailed the next day straight into Russian waters suggests that the maneuver was a calculated show of naval power in support of Ukraine’s claims of “fighting against Russian aggression”.

As far back as April, the British had given notice that they were intending to dispatch warships to the Black Sea “in support of Ukraine”. Russia responded angrily and warned Britain and other NATO members to stay away from its territory. Russia subsequently has deployed larger military forces in its Black Sea territory, including around the Crimea Peninsula.

That the British went ahead with their plans to send warships into disputed waters is further sign that London was deliberately goading Moscow.

What the Brits were not expecting, it seems, was the way Russia rapidly deployed firepower this week to underscore its warnings to back off.

This is the context for why international “stability talks” between the United States and Russia are an urgent matter. It remains to be seen if the American Biden administration genuinely responds to Moscow’s appeals for earnest negotiations to stabilize relations. NATO so far seems to be indifferent to Russian proposals for cooperating on forming new security mechanisms in Europe.

The deterioration in relations between Russia and the United States and other NATO members has reached a dangerous flashpoint. The arming by the U.S. and NATO of the anti-Russia regime in Kiev is fueling the potential for all-out conflict between nuclear powers. Western indulgence of Kiev’s reckless claims of “Russian aggression” is further insanity.

And amid the treacherous conditions, the British send a guided-missile destroyer into Russian waters in defiance of reasonable warnings. That’s just a shot away from disaster.

Incredibly, this is all happening on the 80th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa when Nazi Germany launched its war against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a stern warning to countries trying to provoke military tensions, saying that his nation is drawing up red lines for defense.

Putin delivered the sharp remarks during his annual state-of-the-nation address to lawmakers from both chambers of the Russian parliament. The stark warning comes amid spiraling tensions over Ukraine between Western supporters of the Kiev regime and Russia.

Specifically, days before Putin’s set-piece speech, British media reported that Britain’s Royal Navy is planning to deploy two warships to the Black Sea: a Type-45 destroyer armed with anti-aircraft missiles; and a frigate for hunting submarines. A British ministry of defense spokesman is quoted as saying the move was a sign of “unwavering support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity” in the face of alleged Russian aggression.

The British deployment is planned to take place in the coming weeks. The two warships will transit Turkey’s Bosphorus Strait to enter the Black Sea. International shipping is permitted under the Montreux Convention. However, the British plan seems far from an innocent passage, and a rather more calculated provocation.

The two ships will be part of a bigger battle group, the newly launched HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier which will station in the East Mediterranean. The battle group will be able to supply F-35B Lightning fighter jets and Merlin helicopters with submarine-hunting missiles. All in all, it is a pretty audacious attempt by the British to raise tensions with Russia.

It is notable that the United States last week abruptly cancelled sending two of its guided-missile destroyers to the Black Sea after Russia mobilized its own fleet in the region and warned the Americans to “stay away”. Days later, the British seem to have stepped into the breach with their proposed Black Sea operation. Did the Biden administration ask London to step up to the plate and to show “solidarity”, or is the British maneuver a gambit to curry favor with Washington by flexing AngloSaxon muscles for Uncle Sam?

In any case, London’s move comes on the back of an already brazen buildup of British military forces in the Black Sea. Britain has previously sent naval personnel and equipment to train Ukrainian warships. The Royal Air Force has also dispatched a squadron of Typhoon fighter jets to patrol the Black Sea in support of the Kiev regime and its claim to take back control of the Crimean Peninsula. The Peninsula voted in a referendum in March 2014 to join the Russian Federation after a NATO-backed coup d’état in Kiev the previous month which ushered in an anti-Russian regime.

The Kiev regime has also been stepping up its violations of the ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine where ethnic Russian populations have declared breakaway republics in defiance of the 2014 NATO-backed coup. Civilian centers in Donetsk and Luhansk are being shelled on a daily basis. This is clearly a cynical attempt by the Kiev regime to escalate the civil war in such a way as to drag NATO further into the conflict. Russia has mobilized sizable army divisions on the border with Ukraine in what Moscow says is a matter of national self-defense. Yet, ironically, the United States, Britain, and other NATO powers are demanding Russia to “de-escalate” tensions.

NATO’s very public backing for the Kiev regime and the supply of American lethal weaponry is no doubt emboldening the regime to step up its offensive fire on Eastern Ukraine and making menacing moves towards Crimea.

The British are in particular giving the Kiev regime a dangerous sense of military license for its bravado towards Moscow.

The situation is an extremely dangerous powder-keg. One wrong move, even unintended, could spark off a wider war involving the NATO powers and Russia.

In this highly combustible context, Russia is right to close off areas in the Black Sea that encompass its territorial waters. Those areas include the coastal waters off the Crimean Peninsula.

NATO powers sending warships into the region is the height of criminal folly. If Britain and other members of the U.S.-led alliance contend that they are “defending Ukraine’s territorial integrity” then the logic of that position dictates that they will attempt to make an incursion into Crimean coastal water since they don’t recognize Russia’s sovereignty. In that event, a military confrontation is bound to happen.

President Putin’s declaration of red lines is not so much a rhetorical putting it up to the West. It is a responsible position to prevent a war from breaking out.

The British are being told that they cannot just sail their warships into the Black Sea and rattle their sabers in Russia’s face. Putin is telling the Brits and anyone else not to even think about getting that close.

It must be made clear that there was no possibility this officer or any other single person could in some way commit the submarine to despatch of its weapons. It simply could not happen. But the squalid little incident did draw attention to the fact that a British nuclear submarine was in the United States for some reason and although the UK’s over-staffed and infamously incompetent Ministry of Defence condescendingly announced that “the Royal Navy does not comment on matters related to submarine operations” it was apparent that the boat was in port at the U.S. submarine base in Kings Bay, Georgia, probably to update and recalibrate technical devices and to load a number of Trident II D5 nuclear missiles.

The UK keeps insisting it has an independent nuclear weapons capability, so it has to be asked why the Royal Navy needs to send submarines to the U.S. to pick up missiles. But as with so many defence matters the government tries to keep the British public in the dark as much as possible. According to the U.S. Naval Institute, “Vigilant is one of four U.K. Vanguard-class boomers that the Royal Navy maintains as part of the British nuclear deterrent force. While the MoD maintains its own nuclear warheads, British and U.S. submarines share a common stockpile of Trident II D5 missiles stored at Kings Bay.”

It can also be asked why the United Kingdom government thinks the country needs nuclear weapons at all.

London’s reluctance to provide information to the public about nuclear weapons is likely based on the government’s desire to disguise the vast expenditure involved. When it is demanded by law that information be provided, it is released on a carefully timed basis. The public relations operators have it all planned, and choose a day when more exciting news can be either expected or manipulated, rather like the FBI’s notification of the preposterous allegations that “Iran and Russia Seek to Influence Election in Final Days” that — surprise, surprise! — were headlines on the same day that former President Obama gave a speech in support of presidential candidate Joe Biden.

But the Brits didn’t succeed in one particular case concerning vast expenditure on systems to replace the existing Trident nuclear missiles on its four submarines. It had been stated in the annual update to Parliament by the Ministry of Defence in December last year that “Work also continues to develop the evidence to support a government decision when replacing the warhead” and there matters rested — until in February Admiral Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, “told the Senate defence committee that there was a requirement for a new warhead, which would be called the W93 or Mk7. Richard said ‘This effort will also support a parallel replacement warhead programme in the United Kingdom’.”

The disclosure forced the underhand of the UK government, and on February 25 Defence News reported Defence Secretary Ben Wallace as stating that “To ensure the Government maintains an effective deterrent throughout the commission of the Dreadnought Class ballistic missile submarine we are replacing our existing nuclear warhead to respond to future threats and the security environment” which is a weasel-worded admission that did not mention the colossal sums of money involved.

(But then, Ben Wallace is no stranger to large sums of money, and during the 2009 revelations by the UK’s Daily Telegraph concerning fiddling and greed on the part of politicians it was revealed that in 2008 he had the fourth highest expenses of any Member of Parliament, claiming £175,523 (on top of his £63,000 salary), including £29,000 a year to employ his wife as a part-time research assistant.)

The cost of replacing Trident missiles by the “life extension programme” of the warheads is not known, as the only estimate available, given in a 2006 government paper on ‘The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent’, is £250 million which is obviously a small fraction of the true amount.

Not only is the UK committing massive sums to replace the weapons systems of existing nuclear submarines, it has embarked on an enormous programme to build four new ones to replace the Vanguard class vessels. A House of Commons research briefing of June 2020 (produced by the House Library whose researchers are not influenced by sleazy political fandangos) states that the programme involves “design, development and manufacture of four new Dreadnought class ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) that will maintain the UK’s nuclear posture of Continuous at Sea Deterrence” and that “the cost of the programme has been estimated at £31 billion, including defence inflation over the life of the programme.”

The United Kingdom is in a parlous economic state. The International Monetary Fund assesses that the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic will hit Britain’s economy much harder than much of the rest of the world, and while nobody can forecast what will befall the UK if it abandons trade negotiations with the European Union, it is certain that there can be no economic benefit from its current policies.

The last thing the UK needs to do is to commit billions of pounds to nuclear weapons. (Although its Members of Parliament do count the pennies on occasions. They’ve just been told they are to get a pay increase of over 3,000 pounds a year, and on October 21 voted overwhelmingly to reject a plan for poor children to receive midday school meals during school holidays in this period of extreme financial insecurity. They’re all heart.)

At the moment, UK nuclear policy is that “we are committed to maintaining the minimum amount of destructive power needed to deter any aggressor” and as noted by Scientists for Global Responsibility, “The UK’s nuclear warheads are carried on Trident missiles – leased from the USA – in nuclear-powered submarines. Currently, eight missiles can be fired, carrying 40 x 100kT warheads, with a few hours’ notice from a submerged submarine. The UK’s total nuclear weapons arsenal consists of 195 warheads.”

There is no doubt that 195 warheads would destroy enormous areas, but there is no point in going into detail, because if the submarines fired off any nuclear weapons at Russia (the only conceivable target), retaliation would ensure that the UK would cease to exist.

Just who does London imagine is being deterred by its expensive nuclear missiles? America is the only western country that would commit to firing nuclear weapons, and there is no possibility that Washington would consult London about its decision. Once Washington went to nuclear war, all that the UK could do would be to pop off its missiles to pile destruction on destruction. That’s not deterrence, and Britain would be well advised to refrain from spending countless billions on a new set of nuclear toys and commit its resources to betterment of its citizens.

Beijing has already warned London that any deployment of forces in the contested sea will be viewed as a “hostile act”. Britain appears to be pushing ahead regardless, according to a report this week in the London Times, which cites plans by military chiefs to send the aircraft carriers to the region starting early next year.

HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales are the largest aircraft carriers ever built by Britain. Both have been designed to integrate with U.S. forces, specifically to carry F-35 fighter jets and Apache helicopters.

Given the recent buildup of American warships and warplanes in the Pacific conducting provocative “freedom of navigation operations” in the South China Sea, Beijing can only but view the reported British moves as further deliberate ratcheting up of war tensions.

Earlier this month, two U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups conducted joint maneuvers in the South China Sea, reportedly the first time such drills have been carried out since 2014 and only the second time since 2001.

The timing of Washington and London’s convergence could not be more incendiary. Washington and London have been blaming China over the global coronavirus pandemic on top of a long-running trade dispute with the Trump administration. The Anglo-American duo have also been winding up tensions with Beijing over Taiwan and Hong Kong undermining China’s sovereignty claims. The Americans have also piled pressure on Britain to scrap plans for Chinese telecom giant Huawei to take part in mobile phone modernization.

This week the U.S. State Department raised the stakes even higher over South China Sea territorial disputes by declaring that Beijing’s claims to waters and islands to be “completely illegal”. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated the U.S. would not “allow China to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire”.

This designation by the State Department of alleged Chinese “illegality” marks a serious escalation. Up to now Washington has refrained from using that incriminating term, preferring to characterize China’s territorial claims as “destabilizing”. Pundits in Washington are quoted as saying approvingly that the new formulation gives the U.S. a “legal” basis upon which to confront Beijing over South China Sea disputes.

John Bolton, the hawkish former national security advisor to Trump, has commented: “It’s time to move beyond freedom of navigation exercises to oppose China’s coercive behavior in the region.”

That implies Washington will seek to polarize tensions even further between China and other Asian neighbors which the U.S. claims to be allied with. Ultimately, the U.S. is finessing a casus belli.

China condemned the State Department’s latest intervention as “distorting” relations between Beijing and neighboring countries belonging to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). China said it is Washington that is fueling tensions in the region.

A Global Times noted noted: “Peace and stability in the South China Sea concerns ASEAN’s fundamental interests. But the U.S., driven by its own interests, is shaping this regional situation in the opposite way.”

Reports that London is planning to send its new flagship aircraft carriers to the region to join with American, Japanese and possibly Australian naval forces can only be perceived as an attempt by a Washington-led “coalition of the willing” to intimidate Beijing.

In a 21st century version of gunboat diplomacy, Washington is gambling that Beijing will buckle under pressure to cede to demands over trade and other strategic interests. America’s waning capitalist power can no longer compete economically, therefore it is reverting to brute military force along with a coterie of press-ganged vassals, including Britain.

There is, however, a discernible lack of credibility in this “coalition of shilling” for Uncle Sam.

News that Britain is sending HMS Queen Elizabeth, a $4-billion aircraft carrier, followed by HMS Prince of Wales at a later date, to “rule the waves” more than 10,000 kilometers from London doesn’t just sound corny, it sounds obscene given the public health disaster facing Britain over its gross mishandling of the coronavirus disease. Chief medical experts are warning that Britain may see 120,000 more deaths later this year – on top of the 43,000 already – due to clapped-out health services.

British elites have really lost the plot. Britannia no longer can afford the pretense of ruling the seas, never mind serving as cannon fodder for Uncle Sam in a reckless imperialist showdown.

China is reckoned to have a formidable arsenal of anti-ship missiles known as “carrier killers”. So, let doughty Britain row in behind Uncle Sam’s pirates, and the British will soon find they may as well be sailing in giant sieves. Billions of dollars sent to a watery grave in an instant while millions of Britons fight for their lives in underfunded hospital corridors.

Beijing rapped London further, telling it to dump its “colonial attitude” with regard to Hong Kong. However, the ultimate leverage, was the caustic reminder to Britain that if it wants to trade with China in the future, then it better mind its manners.

Given the deepening turmoil over Brexit and the uncertain economic prospects once Britain quits the European Union, the British government is going to need every trading opportunity around the world it can muster. Keeping on good terms with China, the globe’s second-biggest national economy, will therefore be crucial for Britain’s post-Brexit survival.

Since taking office in July, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been quick to talk up a future golden era of bilateral trade relations with Beijing. He has expressed an interest in China’s Belt and Road Initiative for global trade, and he has even dared to ruffle US President Donald Trump by calling for an end to the tariffs and trade war with Beijing, thus implying the White House’s hardball policy is wrongheaded.

But here’s the tricky balancing act facing Britain. In trying to ingratiate itself with both Washington and Beijing for future trade deals, London is caught in an awkward contradiction. To do Washington’s bidding, Britain will be obliged to join forces for fomenting aggression against China.

China this week preempted that development by telling Britain in no uncertain terms that it can’t afford to antagonize Beijing without foregoing future trade and investment. In short, London has to make a decision: does it want war, or peace and prosperity with China?

The rebuke from Beijing followed a visit to London last week by US Secretary of State Mike Esper. During a major set-piece speech, Esper called on Britain and other European states to focus on confronting China and Russia, whom he accused of posing as aggressors.

“It is increasingly clear that Russia and China want to disrupt the international order by gaining a veto over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions,” Esper said, seemingly unaware of the absurd hypocrisy of his words.

There have also been suggestions that Britain’s warships will be joining with US forces in so-called “freedom of navigation” patrols in the South China Sea. The recently launched super aircraft carrier, Queen Elizabeth, is designed to be capable of hosting up to 70 US F-35 fighter jets. The temptation for London will be to join Esper’s rallying call because of the need to pander to Washington for future trade favors.

China’s ambassador to Britain, Liu Xiaoming, told media that if Britain embarks on such missions anywhere near islands claimed as Chinese territory, especially if the British are seen to be liaising with the Americans, then it will be viewed as “hostile”. The diplomat said such a development will be met with a military response.

He warned London not do America’s “dirty work” and rebuffed claims about “freedom of navigation” concerns as a cynical pretext for provocation.

Ambassador Liu said: “The South China Sea is a vast ocean, it is three million square kilometers wide. We have no objection to people sailing around there but do not enter Chinese territorial waters within twelve nautical miles. If you don’t do that, there shouldn’t be a problem. The South China Sea is wide enough to have free navigation of shipping.”

Major General Su Guanghui, the Chinese defense attaché in London, said that his country will continue to take a combative stance in what it considers to be incursions into its territories: “If the US and UK join hands in a challenge or violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China, that would be hostile action.”

Last year, Britain sent a warship HMS Albion near Chinese-claimed territory in the South China Sea, which led to a naval confrontation and break down in bilateral relations. That maneuver was under the watch of former Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson who habitually used bellicose rhetoric describing China (and Russia) as global threats.

China’s ambassador to Britain categorically stated that there can be no repeat of this British naval conduct near Chinese-claimed territory. Don’t even think about it, was the tone.

Nevertheless, the diplomat said that China wants to develop cooperative relations with Britain to boost trade and investment. He said that Britain would lose out massively from new telecoms infrastructure development if a proposed partnership with Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is jettisoned – under American pressure.

Thus, Britain has a simple choice really. It can either continue to serve as a henchman for Washington by offending China’s sovereign rights, or London can wise up and ditch its pretensions of colonial-era gunboat diplomacy. That means treating Beijing with the basic respect consistent with international norms.

It seems the days of British subterfuge and aggression on behalf of Uncle Sam are over. It’s totally unacceptable for such presumed privilege to wield aggression with impunity. And it is especially unviable when post-Brexit Britain is shaping up to be scuttling around the globe with a begging bowl for trade deals.