RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/04/putins-war-and-the-lessons-of-history/

The Hon. Tony Abbott was Prime Minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015

We who shrink from war because it’s morally wrong have to make others shrink from war because they’d likely lose. —Tony Abbott

In his prescient address to the Danube Institute in Budapest on February 21, Tony Abbott criticized Western democracies’ failure to boost their military capabilities and predicted the Russian invasion of Ukraine that took place just three days later. We print here the full text of his address, courtesy of Tony Abbott and John O’Sullivan, president of the Danube Institute and Quadrant’s international editor.

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SOME years ago, at an East Asia Summit in Burma, I found myself standing with Japan’s Shinzo Abe, plus China’s Le Keqiang and the Sultan of Brunei. China’s premier was upbraiding the prime minister over Japan’s war record, so to create a distraction, I grabbed the sultan and loudly told him that he must be very angry about British colonialism.

Having thus seized the antagonists’ attention, I observed to Le Keqiang that history was a good teacher but a bad master. So with that in mind, I’ve adjusted the topic of this talk from the revenge of history to the lessons of history, because history isn’t malicious, just instructive.

It tells us that progress isn’t inevitable; that justice isn’t always done; that good won’t always win; and that danger always lurks. Above all, it tells us that individual and collective choice matters: that our beliefs drive our actions, and that havoc can be wreaked, or stopped, because people decide to make a stand.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18395/eu-global-power-strategy

The goal is “strategic autonomy” — the ability for the EU to act independently of, and as a counterweight to, the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — in matters of defense and security.

The key component of the Strategic Compass is the development of a so-called EU Rapid Deployment Capacity (RDC), a military force able to intervene in “non-permissive environments” anywhere in the world.

The RDC is to become fully operational by 2025 and commanded by an institution called the “EU Military Planning and Conduct Capability.” (The term “capability” is a politically correct substitute for “headquarters,” as in “military headquarters.”)

The push for Europe to achieve strategic autonomy from the United States is being spearheaded by Macron, who, as part of his reelection campaign, apparently hopes to replace former German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the de facto leader of Europe.

The danger is that many of the pie-in-the-sky policy proposals in the Strategic Compass will divert and drain resources and finances from where they are actually needed: NATO.

A logical course of action would be for EU member states to honor past pledges to increase defense spending as part of their contribution to the transatlantic alliance. That, however, would fly in the face of the folie de grandeur — the delusions of grandeur — of European federalists who dream of transforming the EU into a geopolitical “great power.”

The European Union has published a new strategy aimed at transforming the 27-member bloc into an independent geopolitical actor on the world stage.

The long-awaited “Strategic Compass” lays out an ambitious ten-year plan for the EU to develop an autonomous European security architecture. The goal is “strategic autonomy” — the ability for the EU to act independently of, and as a counterweight to, the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — in matters of defense and security.