British Panicked Over the Implications of the McCarthy Affair

Oct. 4, 2023, (EIRNS)—A Financial Times Editorial Board statement Oct. 2, run under the headline “How To Lock In Support for Ukraine for the Long Haul” betrays London’s extreme distress over how things are spinning out of their control on the Ukraine war. The editorial was triggered by the vote that day in the U.S. House of Representatives to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, but their concern goes way beyond that.

“These are trying times for Ukraine,” the editorial began.

“Four months in, its counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion has not achieved the hoped-for breakthroughs. Support for Kyiv, meanwhile, is becoming a political football in some Western allies. The U.S. Congress at the weekend jettisoned $6 billion of aid to Kyiv to avert a government shutdown. In Slovakia, populist Robert Fico’s party won the highest vote in an election with an anti-Ukraine stance, days after Poland’s premier appeared to threaten a halt in weapons donations to Kyiv amid a dispute over grain exports. The conclusion is clear: Ukraine’s Western allies must find ways both to speed up support for Ukraine and to lock it in for the future, in what now seems set to be a multiyear war of attrition.”

The editorial commented that “the politics are tortuous” of getting U.S. aid to Ukraine at this point. “And the whole episode is a reminder that Donald Trump could yet be back as President in 16 months.”

Therefore, they argued, “support for Kyiv, then, must be future-proofed as far as possible.” The Financial Times editors didn’t really explain what that means or how to achieve it, other than the usual litany of

“providing more air defense systems to cities beyond Kyiv.... Supplying Ukraine with more anti-ship missiles.... Ukraine must be given vital tools—including F‑16 fighter jets and long-range missiles. Its military needs to be modernized and shifted more on to NATO-standard weaponry.” And of course, the upcoming “EU summit in December should commit to opening accession talks with Kyiv”

to let it into NATO.