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Tanks, tanks, tanks! Western policy towards the conflict in Ukraine lapses into escalatory madness
The clamour to escalate rather than de-escalate the conflict in Ukraine rather has reached the status of a fine madness in staterooms and the corridors of power in the West. The result is that never has the world come this close to nuclear armageddon since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when during those critical thirteen days humanity stood on the brink.
Now the question has become not whether to send the Ukrainians tanks to help prolong what is clearly by now a losing struggle, but instead how many? In this regard London has already decided to send Kiev a token number of its vaunted Challenger-2 tanks, while Poland has received from Bonn permission to hand over some its own German Leopard-2 tanks. The German government at time of writing, meanwhile, is itself close to agreeing to send Zelensky’s forces a batch of Leopard-2 tanks of its own, but only on the proviso that the US supply the Ukrainians with its Abrams main battle tank.
The symbolism here is significant, when you consider that the last time German tanks went into conflict against Russian forces was during World War II, when Hitler’s hordes poured across the then Soviet border from Poland. It is symbolism that will not be lost in Russia either — to the extent that it will increase support…
