Never again and again and again 

Never again, was a command invoked to ensure that a second Holocaust of the Jews would never happen again. These two words were later to be embraced to cover all forms of genocide. Then again, the world stood by and witnessed the genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda, South Sudan, Syria,Myanmar, and now Ukraine. When you look at the inhumanity of our species sometimes it is hard to believe that we have evolved at all and being called an animal should no longer be regarded as a lower form of evolution.

How much longer can our democracies standby and watch the destruction of a nation, fearful of Putin’s nuclear arsenal. If that is the case what is the point of “Mutually assured Destruction” as a deterrent. We let Putin off in Syria, Crimea and Georgia and a victory in Ukraine will only embolden him further. Just as a matter-of-fact Putin’s rising popularity ratings are linked to his wars because he controls the media and if you control the media, you control the narrative, such as “denazification.”

Putin is not scared of NATO or for that matter its expansion, though its expansion has been partly due to his failure to understand his neighbourhood. He is clearly more worried about his neighbourhoods move towards becoming liberal democracies which is what will threaten his grip on power. He does not want the “democracy virus” to infect the Russian people, or he could end up being shot like the last Czar. So, having a compliant and undemocratic pro-Russian state on his border is vital, a sort of proxy USSR. This is the new cold war, authoritarianism versus democracies and the Dem’s cannot afford to lose. The EU cannot also be blind to the enemies within, such as the rise of the fascist right in Spain and the illiberal democracies in Poland and particularly Hungary. It is now time and I mean now, to throw the diplomatic, economic and military sink at Putin. A no-fly zone must be imposed, an accelerated supply of lethal hardware, a military strategy based on humanitarian intervention as in Kosovo and stopping the use of Russian fossil fuels as the economic sledgehammer. Here the West must put huge pressure on the tin pot dictatorship that is Saudi Arabia and its neighbours to increase oil and gas production both to reduce the impact of turning off Russian hydrocarbons and reduce prices. This may be difficult because of the arms that the authoritarian, execution loving and misogynistic Saudi’s buy from us and the yachts they commission.

Look, nobody wants war other than Putin and his former soviet acolytes but watching what happened in Bucha and the destruction of Mariupol, if Never Again is to mean anything, our democratic governments must act without delay.

Let us know what you think in the comments section👇