Not so long ago – at least using the widest historical perspective – wars undertaken on foreign soil were sufficiently detached from home not merely in terms of geographical distance; prior to advances in communications it’s all-too easy to take for granted today, the latest news from the front might not reach those with an emotional investment in the outcome for weeks. We’ve all grown up with stories of WWII telegrams being delivered to doorsteps that informed a war bride her bridegroom was either missing in action or had been killed in conflict; but before the 20th century’s technological innovations, the lengthy wait for news must have made whichever war was being fought overseas seem as though it was taking place on another planet. Ironically, the advances the last century brought us didn’t just shorten the interminable gap between events on the battlefield and deliverance of reports to the housewife, but also served to bring the war to the streets of the nation waging it. Zeppelin raids on England during the First World War were a wake-up call that distance was no longer a hindrance to experiencing the horrors of war for those who hadn’t been called-up to fight it, and what followed a generation later shattered forever the comforting illusion of isolationist security that a bit of water engendered.
The USA certainly received such a wake-up call with Pearl Harbour in 1941 and was again shaken out of its torpor 60 years later in New York; but some had received it a little earlier, at a time when it was thousands of armed men rather than advanced technological hardware that presented citizens of a country engaged in a war abroad with the consequences of their nation’s actions. Napoleon’s ill-fated invasion of Russia in 1812 saw the Emperor overwhelmed by the vast landmass before him as well as the onset of winter – factors which also played into the demoralising defeat of another failed conqueror of Mother Russia 130 years after Bonaparte embarked upon his humiliating retreat back to the West. But whilst the sheer mind-boggling scale of Russia as a country may prove to be a deterrent to invading forces of flesh-and-blood, the 21st century doesn’t even require the manned aircraft that the previous century depended upon to bring the conflict closer to home.
Recent drone attacks on Moscow that the Kremlin credited to Kyiv have belatedly alerted many Russians that it no longer matters how far from the frontline they are. Explosions that rang through some of the Russian capital’s more exclusive gated communities – ones lined with expensive residential homes of the kind certain wealthy Russian exiles have bought up Monopoly-like in London – came hot on the heels of drone strikes on the Kremlin a few weeks ago, ones which Moscow claimed to be an attempt to assassinate Vlad himself. The latest drone assault last week was aimed at the suburb of Rublyovka, a neighbourhood that is home to some of the country’s most powerful political and business movers and shakers. Even Putin himself has a pad there. The Russian Ministry of Defence claimed more than half-a-dozen drones were either downed or intercepted via electronic jammers en route to Moscow, whilst media reports suggest upwards of 25 to 30 were involved in the attack. The Kremlin points the finger at Kyiv, and though Kyiv itself has denied any involvement in the attacks, one Ukrainian presidential aide found it hard to hide his pleasure. ‘Of course we are pleased to watch,’ said Mykhailo Podolyak, ‘but we have nothing directly to do with this.’
Reactions to a war instigated by Moscow suddenly encroaching into Moscow itself have been greeted by some residents of the affected neighbourhood with a weary resignation – one reported response was that the assault was ‘to be expected…what else were we waiting for?’ The solution from the hawk side of the argument is to hit Ukraine even harder, though considering the Russians bombarded Kyiv with its own drones and missiles on at least 17 separate occasions in May alone, the evidence hardly suggests Moscow is easing up. The pro-war factions have been critical of the Ministry of Defence for allowing the drones to breach Russian defences, and those actually engaged in the conflict on Ukrainian soil have been even more vocal. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the so-called Wagner mercenary group fighting in Eastern Ukraine, has repeatedly criticised the Russian military establishment for not providing his troops with adequate ammunition and support as well as decrying the ineptitude of their strategy; he laid the blame on last week’s drone attacks at the feet of the same out-of-touch military officials that reside there. ‘Why the f**k are you allowing these drones to fly to Moscow?’ he snarled. ‘Who gives a shit that they are flying to your homes on Rublyovka? Let your houses burn!’
There certainly appears to be a clear disconnect between those directing events on the ground from afar and those actually on the ground itself, though hasn’t this always been the case in warfare? We’re all aware of the gulf that existed between WWI generals stationed in grandiose mansions several miles from the trenches and the soldiers bogged-down in them, even if that awareness stems from ‘Blackadder Goes Fourth’; and support for Putin’s warmongering is far-from universal in Russia itself, something drone attacks on home soil will surely only intensify. Vlad’s appearance on state television in the wake of last week’s assault saw him railing against Kyiv and its attempts to ‘intimidate Russia and Russian citizens’ with such a ‘terrorist attack’, pointing out that the drones were aimed at residential rather than military targets, as though Ukraine (if it was indeed responsible) was somehow veering from the honourable rules of engagement; but anyone who has witnessed the aftermath of Russia’s own attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities will know Russia never honoured these rules in the first place.
Ukraine’s multiple allies in the West have observed events with caution though, as our very own Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said, ‘Ukraine does have the legitimate right to defend itself within its own borders, of course; but it does also have the right to project force beyond its borders to undermine Russia’s ability to project force into Ukraine itself.’ Washington, on the other hand, said it doesn’t support attacks inside Russia – officially, anyway. Given the convenience of today’s technology to wage war from a distance – even if boots are still being deployed on the ground – it’s no surprise the conflict will eventually be deposited on the doorsteps of those who launched it; every advance in the hardware of warfare – airships, fighter jets, drones – enables those engaged in war to inflict damage ever further from the frontline, and events in Moscow last week have demonstrated this yet again.
Incidentally, current reports of another troubled spot on the map – Sudan – suggesting historical artefacts are at risk from the bombardment of Khartoum, highlights the short-sighted idiocy of returning precious archaeological treasures to the country of their origin on ideological grounds; the reason so many have survived is precisely because they were dispatched to Western museums in the 19th century; the locations they were sourced from have been unstable regions for decades and the fact the latest conflict in Sudan is putting those that stayed put in danger shows up the fanatical determination of our museums to ‘decolonise’ their collections for being the futile moral crusade it is. The loss of such artefacts in Iraq and Syria in recent years should surely have served as a warning, though it’s almost as though brainwashed British curators are prepared to sacrifice the priceless objects in their possessions simply to secure their place on ‘the right side of history’. What’s happening in Sudan at the moment is an internal struggle, though one could say Russia sees the Ukraine issue in exactly the same way, a civil war in which neighbours sharing a common history are at each other’s throats just for a piece of bloody land and a bloody border. Maybe the war was on home soil all along.
© The Editor
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So, normal Eurovision service has been resumed. Sweden won it, and after finishing second-from-top last year, the UK is back in its rightful place on the board as second-from-bottom. Mind you, with no danger of a second consecutive win for Ukraine, the rest of Europe didn’t need Brits to foot the bill as surrogate host again and voted accordingly. Not that one was allowed to forget Ukraine, however; despite Liverpool’s best efforts to big itself up, the Contest was awash with that now very-familiar flag as well as numerous subtle and not-so-subtle expressions of solidarity with the under-fire nation on Putin’s doorstep; the show even opened with an interpretation of last year’s winning number performed by various artists in the manner of the 1998 BBC version of Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ – just in case anyone watching hadn’t got the message.
Before the name became synonymous with an earnest rock band whose ideological offspring have emasculated the genre beyond saving, U2 equated with a US spy plane of the original Cold War era. U2 went from being a mundane military term to a global buzzword in 1960 when the aircraft flown by American pilot Gary Powers was shot down in Soviet airspace during a clandestine surveillance mission. The plane was downed by a surface-to-air missile and the American authorities initially insisted the plane wasn’t a plane but was actually a weather research aircraft – perhaps a bit like those Chinese balloons spotted over the US a month or so ago. However, in one of the great propaganda coups of the period, the Russians paraded Powers (who had parachuted to safety) before the cameras and produced the aerial photographs of military bases the pilot had been dispatched to snap. An embarrassed America was forced to come clean just weeks before President Eisenhower was scheduled to meet Soviet Premier Khrushchev (a summit meeting which was cancelled as a consequence), despite rightly pointing out their tactics were hardly unique at the time – and indeed proved priceless when it came to Cuba a couple of years later; Powers was tried, found guilty of espionage and received a characteristically harsh seven-year sentence before returning home via a prisoner exchange in 1962.
2022 – yet another one of ‘those years’; yes, this glorious century hasn’t exactly been short on them, and if you, like me, had a fittingly crap Christmas then you won’t be sorry to see the back of 2022, even if 2023 is hardly loaded with optimistic anticipation. When a year is characterised by chaos, chances are the chaos is as prevalent at the top as it is at the bottom, and we certainly had that in abundance from our ‘betters’ this year. The fact that 2022 saw the UK led by three different Prime Ministers – including one who had the shortest run in the history of the office – suggests either those at the top are keeping up with the rest of us, or they’re largely responsible for the chaos, depending on how one apportions responsibility. But when one recalls the year began with the fall-out from the Partygate affair that eventually led to Boris’s premature exit, and that by the autumn his immediate successor managed to set off alarm bells in the City – provoking an even more premature exit – then looking to leaders for leadership proved an utterly futile exercise, fracturing even further the already fragile faith and trust in our elected representatives.
The absence of commemorative events marking the occasion could easily blind the ignorant to the fact October 1962 was something of a pivotal turning point in recent history. Yes, on the 5th of that month 60 years ago, two significant pop cultural events occurred that elevated Britain out of its post-colonial hangover and gave the nation – and eventually the whole Western world – the kiss of life: the simultaneous release of the first Beatles single, ‘Love Me Do’, and the first James Bond film, ‘Dr No’. But the importance of these releases in shaping the 60s wasn’t immediately apparent, what with global eyes distracted by an island 80 nautical miles off the coast of Florida. Mind you, Cuba had hogged its fair share of headlines since the overthrow of President Batista by Fidel Castro and his band of hairy revolutionaries in 1959; the Bay of Pigs fiasco had only taken place the year before 1962, of course, and when Cuba’s new regime found its Faustian pact with the USSR required setting aside land for Soviet missiles aimed at America, the US response to this encroachment on its doorstep was to blockade Cuba and mobilise its troops into war mode.
In the wake of other (somewhat distracting) events over the past seven days, footage that has snuck largely under the radar nevertheless glaringly highlights the contradiction in the narrative the Kremlin has been pedalling ever since the Russian military encroached into sovereign territory earlier this year. Fancy that! Yes, some may recall the fairy stories of ‘Far-Right Nazis’ running riot through the former Soviet outpost that the Ukrainian people begged to be liberated from (fairy stories served-up as one element of the justification for invasion), though the reaction of the Ukrainian people via videos posted on social media as Ukrainian forces stormed into town and retook territory didn’t necessarily portray a terrified populace bereft at losing their Russian liberators. In many respects, the footage evoked archive of the French people reacting to Allied Forces recapturing Paris in 1944 – with little old ladies in headscarves tearfully embracing Ukrainian troops and giving every impression they were actually pleased to see the ‘Nazis’ back in town.
It could be worse, I guess – we could be Germany; no, this isn’t anything to do with the War, not the 1939-’45 one, anyway. Events in Ukraine that have been in full swing for six months now have undoubtedly impacted on life in Western Europe, especially when it comes to the import & export trade, though Tsar Vlad’s invasion does provide politicians with a convenient get-out-of-jail card, one that serves to obscure their own failings over the past two or three years. Don’t blame it on the sunshine, don’t blame it on the moonlight, don’t blame it on the good times – blame it on Ukraine. Don’t blame it on the lockdown, don’t blame it on Covid, don’t blame it on Net Zero – blame it on Ukraine. Considering Germany’s somewhat…er…problematic history with Russia, perhaps Frau Merkel reckoned it was a nice reconciliatory gesture to entrust the old enemy with providing the majority of Germany’s gas imports. She obviously (not to say inexplicably) didn’t foresee a time when Comrade Putin might use this to his advantage; after all, it’s not as if he hasn’t sought to extend his nation’s current borders via military means in the past, is it?
Media types who weren’t even there have spent several months now banging on about how Britain is going ‘back to the 70s’ simply because they assume today’s perilous economic climate is somehow comparable to that of a decade they only know through endlessly recycled clichés of candlelit households, picket lines, and pavements piled high with rubbish. Ironically, however, whilst the hysterical heads on our news channels were promoting the cost-of-living crisis as the embodiment of this narrative, the summer’s premier sporting contest came close to experiencing a moment genuinely reminiscent of a 70s incident that almost caused its cancellation 49 years ago. Like Wimbledon 2022, Wimbledon 1973 saw a British man reach the semi-final of the singles’ tournament, yet the achievements of both Cameron Norrie and Roger Taylor were overshadowed by events off-court.
Almost 60 years ago, President Lyndon Johnson swore that his escalation of the US intervention in the distant Cold War battlefields of South-East Asia (which had been instigated by his prematurely-retired predecessor in the White House) was not one in which civilians were deliberately being targeted; LBJ claimed the upsurge in American bombing raids over North Vietnam was a calculated attempt to target industry and military installations, thus weakening the Soviet-backed Viet Cong. If the civilian population happened to get in the way, it was a pure accident and not intentional. Ever since, this has been the justification mantra of all Western leaders engaged in overseas conflicts whenever the subject of civilian casualties has been raised, though so successful has this tactic proven to be that even the likes of a world leader full of Eastern promise such as Vladimir Putin have adopted it as official protocol where opposition to foreign interventionism is concerned.
It wasn’t exactly the same as the sinister sabotage that prevented Cliff and ‘Congratulations’ from claiming the crown in 1968, though it did seem a tad unfair that a recent tweaking of the Eurovision voting system resulted in the UK’s first win for 25 years being downgraded at the eleventh hour. Having soared ahead on the jury vote – and the jury vote always used to be binding – ‘Space Man’ by the hirsute Sam Ryder topped the board once all the individual nations had had their say. Up until the last five or six years, that would’ve been enough and the embarrassing nul points and relegation zone finishes for virtually the whole of this century were poised to be swept aside by a surreal scenario few viewers in this country thought they’d ever see again. The 2003 invasion of Iraq and (even more so) Brexit hardly made us the most popular nation on the Continent, and our European neighbours seemed to relish inflicting an annual humiliation on us. We’d grown so accustomed to it that once Saturday’s votes began to be announced in the broken English of each country’s equivalent of a ‘One Show’ presenter, we expected the same old punishment.
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