Former British NATO Secretary General Asserts, ‘We’ Are at War with Russia

Nov. 26, 2022 (EIRNS)—In his Nov. 18 opinion column in the City of London’s The Economist magazine, George Robertson, former U.K. Defense Secretary (1997-1999), NATO Secretary General (1999-2003), and active British policymaker since, chastised that “Russia is at war with us, why are we not defending our countries as if we were under attack?” Western support for Ukraine has only been defensive, “responding to warlike attacks with peacetime processes,” he complained.

With rhetorical flourish, he pronounced: “We need to recognize that either Mr. Putin is cowed, or we are.”

His demands for how “we” must put ourselves on a wartime footing are far from rhetorical, however. They include:

• Accelerate supplies of weapons and ammunition to the front line. More ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and other weapons and more training for Ukrainian forces.

• Stand up to Kremlin’s “dangerously loose talk” on using nuclear weapons (how not elaborated).

• “Permanently wean ourselves off” not merely Russian gas, but off Russian wheat, too. Here, he specifies by “we” he means “the world.” He insists “countries must seek alternative supplies” of wheat. Famine is spreading across the world, but Robertson acknowledges that what he is demanding, is that what today constitutes Russia’s “about a fifth of the world’s total exports of the stuff [sic!], some 38 million tonnes,” be cut off from the world.

• The Global South be reminded of that their border disputes—many created over centuries by British imperial machinations—could be revived, if those countries don’t join “our” war against Russia. “China and India, for example, share a border where flare-ups occasionally occur. How Russia fares in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine may be of enormous interest to both,” he writes.

• As for the Western countries themselves, a war footing is required “to shorten decision-making” and get around bureaucracies; “on a war footing, a few individuals are empowered to make choices rapidly. We should emulate such a system now. That would allow us to shore up our defenses against cyber-threats, too.” That war footing also requires that Western politicians “be brutally candid with our own people that their sacrifice—through the cost of living in particular—is in the defense of our own country. Political leaders need to assert why the sacrifices are necessary.... A relentless barrage of publicity is necessary.”