N. Peter Kramer’s Weekly Column
Boris Johnson is in big troubles, not only with his voters, but also in the UK Parliament with the opposition and with MP’s of his own Conservative party. But Prime Minister Johnson is a learned Oxford historian and so he remembered one of his predecessors, Margaret Thatcher, who saved her political skin as UK Prime Minister with a war, the Falklands War in 1982, when the Argentinean Junta occupied these British islands. Nothing boosts a politician’s image better than posturing as a leader during times of war, as every historian knows.
As Johnson’s approval rating sinks to an all-time low over several ‘clandestine’ parties during the lockdown period at his official residence in Downing Street (‘partygate’), it looks like the Ukraine crisis has thrown him a lifeline. He is positioning himself now as a defender of the free world, is going to visit Ukraine, announcing ‘The toughest sanctions ever’ against Russia, offering to dispatch fighter jets to Bulgaria and Romania and warships to the Black Sea, and orders President Putin to ‘step back from the brink of war’. In the Parliament the Prime Minister has claimed he is ‘bringing the West together’ to deter Russian aggression, telling the opposition to focus on the Ukraine crisis and not on the ‘partygate’ scandal.
May be Boris Johnson had no other choice than a Thatcher-like ‘war-approach’ at such a difficult political moment. But there is a huge difference between then and now. Then, an enemy occupied British territory, so a British leader had to decide how to answer. Now, the enemy says it does not plan to invade and does not want war. The war-like rhetoric on the other side comes not from one country, but from a collective, NATO including the US and UK!, stirred up by some former Soviet satellites.
The situation is changing. Even Ukraine has suggested a Russian attack is not imminent. The Ukrainian President even accused the West of causing ‘panic’. De-escalation is on the way. French President Macron and German Chancellor Scholz are expected to resuscitate the Minsk process, to return Donbas under Kyiv’s control, in exchange for autonomy. It is waiting for Russia’s response.
And then what, Boris?
