April 10, 2024 - 7:00am
Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron said the war in Ukraine was good value for money during a joint statement made on Tuesday with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Cameron made the case for further American support for the war effort, focusing not only on the moral side of the conflict but also the financial side, though he repeatedly said he didn’t intend to lecture American lawmakers.
“I argue that it is extremely good value for money for the United States and for others,” Cameron said. “Perhaps for about five or 10% of your defence budget, almost half of Russia’s pre-war military equipment has been destroyed without the loss of a single American life. This is an investment in United States security.”
As of February, 31,000 Ukrainians have died in the war since Russia’s 2022 invasion. Congress approved $112 billion for the country in 2022, and the Biden administration has been advocating for another $24 billion in supplemental funding, which has been stalled in Congress since October.
“To get Nato in its strongest possible shape for its 75th anniversary, and getting everyone up to 2%, having the new members joining, Sweden and Finland, having the strongest possible alliance, that’s the best thing we can do on Ukraine,” Cameron said. “The best thing we can do this year is to help keep the Ukrainians in this fight. They’re fighting so bravely — they’re not going to lose for want of morale. The danger is we don’t give them the support that they need. And I make that argument to anyone who will listen to me.”
Cameron took meetings on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to call for further financial support for Ukraine. A day earlier, he visited Donald Trump in Florida — the former president’s first visit with a British official since leaving office — though Cameron declined to publicly discuss their conversations.
The Foreign Secretary previously likened some Americans’ scepticism of further Ukraine funding to the appeasement of Hitler, angering some in the non-interventionist wing of the GOP. Earlier this year, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene told a reporter that Cameron could “kiss my ass”.
Congress approved $300 million for Ukraine in late March — money that had already been spent in November — but legislators are still warring over the push for tens of billions more in funding. Much hangs in the balance as the US approach elections in November that could not only change the presidency but both houses of Congress too.
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SubscribeCameron is absolutely correct. Ukraine is doing the “heavy lifting” in something that benefits the West as a whole (taking down Russia). The least the West can do is provide funding for that.
Or maybe we could press for a peace deal.
….which Putin will utterly ignore as soon as it suits him to do so.
So you do a deal that Vladimir Putin cannot ignore.
You are suggesting a deal of the “If you breach this, we nuke Moscow” variety? I’m sure he can ignore anything else.
Not that, of course, but something like that. Agreements like this are hard to craft, but not impossible. Trust is not essential. The important thing is to start talking.
Ok, how about this one: Ukraine cedes some territory to Russia, but (the remainder of) Ukraine then joins NATO?
Ukraine would certainly need to be protected in any peace settlement. The problem with Ukraine joining NATO is that NATO would then put bases in Ukraine. A better solution would be security guarantees that if Russia attacked Ukraine the countries of NATO would come to its defense. Maybe there could be a UN Security Council resolution that says the UN would support Ukraine as well.
Many think Ukraine should never cede any territory to Russia, but Crimea is better in Russia’s hands than returning to Ukraine. If after 10 years of bloody war Ukraine took over Crimea again it would be brutal. Crimea was already an autonomous republic in 2014. It’s best Russian.
The Donbas, on the other hand, should stay Ukrainian. That might be in name only, but name is important.
I think it is delusional to think that “if Russia attacked Ukraine the countries of NATO would come to its defense”. This is exactly the reason why Ukraine will never be a NATO member. No NATO country cares enough about Ukraine to send troops to defend it. For NATO countries, the death of hundreds of thousands Ukrainians is only “good value for money”. This is US and British foreign policy.
Are you suggesting that NATO wouldn’t come to the aid of the Baltic States if they were to be attacked?
The Baltic States are NATO members, so hopefully NATO would come to their aid (though honestly, I think there is a huge question mark there). However, no NATO country ever wants to defend Ukraine with its own soldiers (as we can see right now), so there will be no NATO membership for Ukraine. Any other “security guarantee” is meaningless in my opinion.
Problems with your solution are many:
1) Ukraine already had security guarantees through Budapest memorandum. It did not help.
2) Your “defended by NATO but not in NATO” idea is another wishful thinking. How is it different from current situation? NATO could had supported Ukraine better now but it doesn’t.
3) I have no idea if you read Russian and understand real Russian history. This war is not about Crimea, Russia already had Crimea since 2014. It is about subjugation of Ukraine and genociding Ukrainians like previously happened in 1930s.
4) Russia is the last colonial power. They believe that they can subjugate smaller nations. It is no different from what former European colonial power believed in till 1960s.
1) In the Budapest memorandum, the US, the UK and Russia agreed not to invade Ukraine, not to defend it against invasion. Russia breached that agreement. The US and the UK have done everything they promised to do by not invading themselves.
2) Defended by NATO but not in NATO means no NATO bases in Ukraine unless Russia starts a war, in which case NATO will declare war on Russia. That’s what’s different, and it’s a big difference. Huge.
3) I don’t read Russian, and I’m not an expert on Russian history. But I do know that what Russia is doing today is nothing like the horror of the Holodomor of the 1930s. Russia does not have the ability to subjugate Ukraine, and in my opinion, doesn’t have the desire. I think Russia could live with the Donbas going back to Ukraine, as long as it was autonomous.
But I do know that what Russia is doing today is nothing like the horror of the Holodomor of the 1930s.
Probably true. I guess Russia is currently only raping, torturing and murdering relatively small numbers of people by historical standards.
“A Security Council resolution that says the UN would support Ukraine”? Good thinking! I can’t imagine that Ukraine would have any problem with that! Anyway, it is now clear that Putin has no problem with the expansion of NATO. After all, it was his personal intervention that ensured Finland and Sweden joined.
“So you do a deal that Vladimir Putin cannot ignore.”
That’s called “war”.
Certainly the threat of war should hang over Vladimir Putin’s head as part of any peace settlement. And this time it should be NATO countries at war with Russia, not just Ukraine. (Though Ukraine should not be a member of NATO, it should have the same sort of security guarantee.)
What you say is complete contradiction in terms.
How can you have the same security guarantees if you are not NATO member?
By treaty.
Any peace deal will be focused on autonomy for the Donbas republics which will effectively mean they remain a part of the Russian Federation. I suppose they will award the same status to Crimea too via diplomatic maneouvres.
There are no “Donbas republics” !
But yes, a settlement on the pre-Feb 2022 borders would probably be the best and most sustainable outcome now (with people allowed to move freely from Russian territory to Ukraine and vice versa so minority populations are reduced). Russia would get the bill for rebuilding those areas. Autonomy wouldn’t work – they must be either in Russia or Ukraine.
A settlement on the pre-Feb 2022 borders would have been viable pre-Feb 2022. That ship is gone now, I do not think Russia would agree to anything like your proposal.
Claims about Donbas and Luhansk regions are based on lies of Russian propaganda.
In Ukrainian independence referendum in 1991, both regions voted over 83% to be part of Ukraine.
Even Crimea voted 54% for the same.
So why tiny minority should decide that they want to be part of Russia when huge majority wants to be part of Ukraine?
So, by “autonomy”, you mean “under the Russian yoke”?
And the normal way to do this is to craft a deal that it would be in his interests to keep. People (an Putin is no outlier here) do not normally stick to deals that are not in their overall interests.
So deals need to include carrots as well as sticks.
“Accept a situation contrary to your interests (NATO on your doorstep) or we nuke you” is a stupid deal because it offers no active upside and the sanction is not credible (Putin has nukes too – precisely in order to neutralise that threat).
“End this war on terms you can live with and we will all trade together and get rich and fat and here is a framework for enforcing the agreed terms” is a much better structure.
It is, of course, the basic structure of that deeply flawed institution, the EU. Say what you like about the EU, but it is a deeply unmartial institution.
Cameron is never correct.
He’s on the right side here, but making completely the wrong arguments for the case and undermining it as a result.
Our interest is in European security and the defence and integrity of nation states. That does not necessarily require “taking down Russia” – that’s a possible outcome (which Russia may bring on itself), but not the primary objective.
He truly is the “heir to Blair” he always wanted to be. The reputations of both have continued to decline ever since they left office. Both have shamelessly merched off their past office – Blair far more successfully – Cameron’s disastrous judgement with Greensill Capital. Neither are trusted (or trustworthy).
We are not “taking down” Russia.
Russia’s economy is humming along nicely despite sanctions because Russia has been able to pivot to China – thus cementing an alignment that the West has long sought to avoid. Own goal. This alignment has also strengthened BRICS+ as a counterweight to US domination. Own goal. And forcing Germany to go cold turkey off Russian gas has hobbled their economy and thus further enfeebled Europe as a power in global affairs. Own goal.
To the extent that anyone can tell, Putin is more popular in Russia than he was prior to the war. He is not about to be ousted and, even if he were to die tomorrow, it is vanishingly unlikely that his replacement would be a peace candidate committed to NATO in Ukraine and Crimea going back to the Ukrainians.
Whatever you think about the “morality” of the matter, the Ukraine conflict has exposed the limits of US and Eurpoean power. As such, it has weakened the broad, democratic “west” or “global north” or whatever you want to call “our” side.
The leaders who brought us to this pass know this. But they hope to forestall accountability for it (as they have for all of their other foreign policy calamities this century) and the only way they know to do so is simply to pretend that they are winning.
Tragically, the evidence suggests that they will be able to keep this up for some time. How many times were we told that Afghanistan was going to turn out OK? Or Iraq? Or that we were moving towards a solution to the Israel Paestine problem? Etc
BRICS is a fiction. Russia, China and India are not natural allies (China has boundary disputes with both Russia and India; India is in the “quad” opposing Chinese expansion in the South China Sea). South Africa doesn’t matter. China has already peaked and is in rapid, terminal demographic decline (as is Russia).
The “decline of the West” narrative is as false as it was 100 years ago when Oswald Spengler wrote the book.
Not natural allies, no but rashly pushed closer together by the actions of a Western political class that would be better off if they were further apart.
I would remiand you that nations of western europe were not natural allies in the middle of the 20th century. Belgium and West Germany had recently had something of a “boundary dispute,” France was experiencing the previously unthinkable collapse of its empire and Italy was teetering on the edge of communism and shot through with gangsterism.
And yet, in 1951, they formed the European Coal and Steel Community and I think that you will agree that the EU is by no means fictitious.
Speaking of terminal demographic decline, have you seen the birthrate here recently? Or in Italy? Or, you know, Japan?
As to the irrellevance of South Africa. Time will tell, but I wonder whether they’d have had the political courage to take Israel to the ICJ without its BRICS membership. That might seem irrellevant from London or Washington but from what I read, most countries around the world see that as a challenge to the hypocrisy of the West.
FWIW, I don’t think that the West is going to collapse, I’m saying that its repeated bungling of foreign wars is doing it no favours. Can we agree on that?
Yes, agree on the last point – and some of the rest.
Agree that the West is bungling the execution of its foreign policy. Though for me, much of the policy is correct – I’m more concerned that the clowns in charge aren’t up to the job (or even capable of sticking to a job).
Demographic decline is widespread. But we should distinguish between the really severe cases (South Korea, Japan, Russia, China, Italy, etc.) where there is very rapid population decline and the more moderate cases (UK, France, USA) where the populations are still rising and forecast to continue rising. The populations of France and the UK will likely overtake Germany within the next 30 years (I’m not saying this is good, merely that it’s likely).
Sotuh Africa’s a terminal basket case while the ANC remains in power. A case study in how to wreck a relatively developed and wealthy country. Does anyone seriously think they’re setting an example that deserves to be copied ? Internayional political posturing costs nothing and is irrelevant. It’s just displacement activity to avoid dealing with their own, very real problems (corruption being one of the main ones – and a common, unifying feature of the BRICS countries – and which is why they’ll never succeed).
South Africa may not matter, but Saudi Arabia does. And it has just joined BRICS.
BRICS is not an alliance in the military or diplomatic sense, but has serious economic clout which it can wield to detriment of the current dollar-based economic order. That is where the US has shot itself in the foot. If you need any more proof look at the massive purchases of gold in recent months by BRICS central banks. They know a great reset is coming…and it isn’t of the WEF variety.
There is no “great reset”. Yet more wishful thinking.
But Saudis only matter if West doesn’t move away from fossil fuels.
Which we should not, but based on current policies, Saudi will be irrelevant.
Would anyone care about Middle East if it was not full of oil?
‘Taking down Russia’
Not so. Ukraine conflict has turbo charged Russian military might. Put Russian munitions production onto a round the clock war footing, allowed Putin to divert huge amounts of ‘Public’ money into armaments programs, increased tech etc.
The idiot squad on both sides of the Atlantic allowed this regretable conflict to happen in the first place and are now, in classic ‘Regime change’ fashion, losing interest and will inevitably leave Ukraine and it’s beleaguered citizens in the brown stuff as per – But not before some sh*thouse operation in the US buys all the agricultural land.
Cameron perfectly personifies the know-nothing spivs & chancers in Westminster and Washington who cause these disasters year on year.
Your suggestion that the idiot squad “allowed” this is very generous.
The truth is surely that they saw this as the very limited downside of an extremely risky policy of inviting Ukraine into NATO.
Heads, we box in the bear without a fight. Tails, we all get rich selling arms to the Ukrainians for as long as it lasts and then take a huge slice of the reconstruction action when it finally blows over.
That’s what “value for money” means
Never thought much of Marjorie Taylor Green but her response to Cameron seems pretty spot on. He has destroyed almost everything he has touched so sensible people should steer well clear of this clown.
If he wants to help Ukraine he could grab a gun and get over there as they seem a little short of manpower at the moment.
Never thought much of Marjorie Taylor Green, and don’t now. The woman is clearly mad. If you don’t think so, tell me how you otherwise explain her view that US wildfires were caused by “Jewish space lasers”.
Think your quote is wrong. She never said that.
It seems to be quoted that way in the mainstream media.
Marjorie Greene didn’t say anything about Jewish space lasers. It’s not so nutty when you read what she really said. A little nutty, but certainly within normal parameters of nuttiness for an American politician:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/greene-jewish-lasers-wildfires/
To be fair what she actually said is still pretty nutty. The fact that a comment such as that does seem to be within normal parameters for politicians these days is also pretty nutty.
Is there seriously a poster on here who believes what they read in the MSM?
Well, that should have given you reason enough to know it was a complete lie. Just as Sarah Palin never said “I can see Russia from my house”. Why would anyone believe anything purported by government-owned media?
It seems to be quoted that way in the mainstream media.
That could be a clue.
Having read the deleted post it is clear that MTG is prone to indulge in fairly wacky speculation but she clearly did not say what seems to have been reported by the MSM. The conclusion must be that while MTG may not be a very reliable source of fact the MSM is undoubtedly a source of outright and clear misinformation. At least snopes seems to try to report accurately despite its own biases.
Ukraine is Americas responsibility. You cannot hide from the fact you did a fair bit of sh*t stirring over there yourselves.
Abandoning a war part the way through is very American though. I don’t suppose we should have expected anything different.
Ukraine will need weapons until serious negotiations can be held. Which America will likely have to be part of. If you want America in a strong negotiating position it would be wise to ensure that Ukraine doesn’t loose anymore territory don’t you think? Really, to be in a strong negotiating position, they need to make gains. The likely hood of which is now highly debatable.
Trigger warning: Explicit content detected.
I recently saw a small video of a middle aged Ukrainian soldier crying, when interviewed by a reporter. He said, that he saw “so many young lives being wiped out in this meat grinder of a war and for what”? I am sure he will be satisfied to hear from the mouth of the great Lord C. the devastating answer, that his cause is “good value for money”, because he is doing “the heavy lifting for the West” destroying pre-war Russian equipment…
There will be NO victory over Russia and hopefully peace talks will start rather sooner than later.
It is possible to lament the cost of war without denying the need for it. I’m sure soldiers who fought in it lamented the cost of WW2 without denying the need to fight it. Hitler had to be fought then, and Putin has to be fought now. There can be a victory over Russia if the West as a whole commits to achieving one. If it doesn’t, Russia will continue in its role as a “forever enemy”.
I think some of the Western Elite want a ‘forever enemy’ and have thus excluded Russia and manipulated events to make it the current one.
To the extent that one needs a “forever enemy”, Russia is perfect. The only odd thing about the situation is that Britain and the US were allied with Russia in WW2 (it was an uneasy alliance even then though).
But Cameron isn’t lamenting the cost of war. He is saying what excellent value for money it all is. This is the diametric opposite of lamenting the cost.
I believe Martin is referring to the human cost.
Martin is. Cameron is not.
Which is my point
Please define what ‘a victory over Russia’ looks like.
Russian army out of Ukraine.
I bet they will leave as soon as a peace plan is in place. How that might look? Maybe a neutral state like Switzerland between East and West, a neutral zone along the Russian border or certain NATO missiles removed from neighbouring countries etc.
A solution was found in the Cuban Missile crisis and I am sure there will be a peace deal possible this time…
There is no “need” to fight Putin the way there was a definite need to fight Hitler. This war could have been avoided if the West had not so flagrantly antagonized Russia after the fall of the USSR. Russia was very unhappy with the continued eastward expansion of NATO – too bad, the peoples formerly under the yoke of tzarist Russia then the USSR wanted it, but some kind of a smarter approach, employing carrots besides the sticks could have avoided this bloodshed. Wouldn’t it have been better to have Russia as an ally when the conflict with China erupts?
It is indeed excellent value for money. The purpose of defence spending is to prevent or limit war. Our spending in Ukraine is preventing Putin from extending his aggression into the Baltic States, Moldova and Armenia, and limiting his activities elsewhere. There’s nothing immoral about this approach – proxy wars have existed since the dawn of time.
On the other hand, it is immoral to try to make the Ukranians sue for peace just so we can feel better about how peaceloving we are. We should support the Ukranians for as long as they want to fight on.
Putin has been in power for more than 20 years and has yet to extend into the places you cite. People in the West have a greater Russian conquest fantasy than he does.
Indeed. Even if Putin has long term designs on the Baltic states and Poland, for example, it would take years for the Russian military to rebuild to be in any position to act offensively. And those are NATO members.
Idk where the author of this piece gets the figure of only 31,000 Ukrainians killed but the non-MSM sources I’ve read estimate far higher, Uke and Russian casualties in the hundreds of thousands, not including the mass emigration from Ukraine. The eastern front has become a 21st century Verdun, and given Russian artillery strength it is doubtful that Ukraine could break through even with NATO ground forces supporting them.
Russia, for all its weaknesses, has far more reserves to draw from than Ukraine. How much longer until Ukraine is bled white? Or does Lord Cameron propose committing NATO forces to a shooting war against Russia? Quite a value for the money.
This war could easily have been avoided and is totally unnecessary. There was actually an agreement between Putin and Zelensky that had been concluded in March 2022. Until Boris rushed across and convinced Zelensky to not sign and said that the West would give all the support needed to Ukraine. The USA (and the military-industrial complex) wants it ”forever war” and wants to expand NATO members as that is how they generate their wealth.
If you believe that, I have the proverbial bridge to sell you.
What you say can be true in general but isn’t here.
What happened here was that an attempt to move an officially neutral nation into the allies column ended up proving a hostile nation into doing the very thing we claimed not to want. Spending creates war. Bad VfM.
This was foreseeable inasmuch as not invading would involve Russian acquiescence to a hostile military alliance chokng off it’s access to the black sea.
Would the US accept that? Would we? Just a reminder that we went to war over the blinking Falklands.
The usual nonsense from the clown who did Hillary’s bidding in Libya and unleashed this enormous migrant crisis on Europe.
If we just keep giving Ukraine more money, will that allow them to win? Not likely. More and more men get chewed up in battle but they don’t gain any ground. Ukraine suffers a lot more than Russia does.
The good thing in the Russia-Ukraine war is that we have the outlines of a solution, and have had for several years, as hashed out in the Minsk agreements. Crimea stays Russian, the Donbas stays Ukrainian but is largely autonomous, Ukraine stays neutral but the West gives it security guarantees. Russia was largely okay with that, it was Ukraine that balked.
Too many people say that Vladimir Putin would never agree to terms that Ukraine would accept. How would they know? The point of negotiations is to explore possibilities and be creative. You need to talk to do that.
There’s no doubt that both Donald Trump and Joe Biden want Ukraine to emerge from this war as whole and as strong as possible. We all do. Unfortunately, on that score, intentions matter little compared to what happens on the battlefield. If Ukraine keeps trying to win the war it will probably end up losing it.
While the two leaders don’t differ much on outcome, they differ greatly on the process they use to try to achieve it. Donald Trump says he would use the power of the American presidency to meet with Vladimir Putin and with Volodymyr Zelensky, balance their strengths and weaknesses, and find a settlement within 24 hours that stops the dying. That’s hyperbole, in part, but the process is sound.
What is Joe Biden’s process? In the two years since the invasion of Ukraine he has not spoken with Vladimir Putin once. In his interview with Tucker Carlson, Vladimir Putin said he is waiting for a call from Western leaders. His phone doesn’t ring. That process is unsound.
That’s the big difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Donald Trump knows how to get things done. You don’t do it by following the “waterfall method” of planning, where you wait for things to happen and then take the next step. You follow the “agile method”, where you quickly respond to developments and try out new ideas.
History shows us how the process should work. You talk. And as Israeli general Moshe Dayan said: “If you want peace you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.”
Netflix has a great show called The Diplomat that in its season-ending episode has a speech given by fictional ambassador Hal Wyler, who says (in part), “one of the boneheaded truisms of foreign policy is that talking to your enemies legitimizes them. Talk to everyone! Talk to the dictator and the war criminal. Talk to terrorists. Talk to everyone!”
Instead of fundraising to continue a war now in its eleventh year, ought not David Cameron be trying to end it? Instead of talking to American leaders, ought not David Cameron be talking to Russian leaders?
The Minsk ship has sailed – in fact it has been sunk by the comments of Hollande, Merkel & Porshenko that it was always just a holding exercise to buy time to allow the Ukrainians to get tooled up to re-take Crimea – somethign they were planning to do in massive numbers when the Russians lauched their “uprovoked” invasion.
Truthfully, it was sunk by the fact that the western parties to it never meant to uphold it – rather than by their admission that this was so.
And yet, it is apparently Russia that is so untrustworthy that we cannot even meet with them.
Note to the idiot Cameron: you do not fight wars because they are “value for money”. Nor is our national interest based purely on economic calculations.
There’s a good case to be made for supporting Ukraine (which I happen to agree with), but it certainly isn’t based on “value for money” calculations. Cameron is doing Ukraine no favours by promoting this as a primary reason to be involved.
Nor should he be bragging about “almost half of Russia’s pre-war military equipment has been destroyed without the loss of a single American life”. That’s not the reason to support Ukraine either.
Trust Cameron not to understand that there are more fundamental matters of principle and European security at stake here.
The man’s every bit as bad as Blair.
I disagree about the existence of a case for fighting this war instead of seeking to end it as soon as possible.
But I agree with you about the rest. If you start thinking about wars in value for money terms, you’re halfway lost. But it’s only value for money if you can point to what you’re getting for that money. The collapse of the Putin regime? Not happening and not even a (declared) objective. Ukrainian security? There’s no pathway towards any version of it that could not have been more easily reached through diplomacy. Which is why we’re left with degradation of Russian military stockpiles as a supposed war objective.
As if these people actually believed that wars are won by one side destroying the kit the other started with. They aren’t.They are won by the people who can keep putting new resources on the front line.
Without the loss of a single American life. That statement alone defines the neocons’ proxy war, which they will fight to the death of the last Ukrainian.
That may all be true, yet the neocons (as I understood it people like John Bolton and Condoleezza Rice) aren’t actually in control right now. So while aspects of this may going they way they might hope, that’s not at all the same thing as them actually directing events.
So I suspect you’re mixing correlation with causation here.
People often claim that their opponents are both a) incompetent and b) behind cunning conspiracy theories. And yet it’s hard to imagine incompetent people competently doing all this very complex and difficult stuff – and keeping it all larlgey out of our view.
Ukraine war funding “Good value”: for whom? As far as I can see it is nothing short of tax-money-laundering to fund a bloated (and now largely ineffective) U.S. arms industry. The war has not exactly been a good advertisement for U.S. military hardware.
As for Putin: the Hitlerian analogy was never correct.
I do see analogies between the Western manipulations and broken promises to Russia of the 2000s and similar bad faith to the bear over the Balkans in the decades prior to 1914. Is poking the bear really a good idea?
It was just as delusional to imagine Putin could be restrained from his ultimate objective in Ukraine by making “promises” as it was to imagine the Kaiser could be diverted from his chosen path of war in the run up to 1914.
The broken promises to Russia in our era concerned
the eastward expansion of NATOThe CIA-inspired 1914 Ukraine coupThe Minsk Accords re DonbassEven after Putin’s invasion in 2022, the war could have ended with a largely intact Ukraine had BJ (at USA behest?) not interfered. Now, it is questionable. I could easily see Eastern Ukraine annexed to Russia and a Western Ukraine rump Ruthenian state or annexed to Poland.
The 31K Ukrainian dead figure is a massive under-estimate – David CAmeron should be in prison.
“Cameron is a slick but profoundly superficial operator.” [Tim Black, Sp!ked]
This is an investment in United States security.
If you believe that, I have some fine oceanfront property in the state of Indiana that you might like. US security faces far more challenges from internal actors who allow things like the non-existent border while arming the Taliban by abandoning equipment than it does from Vladimir Putin.
The man has been in office for more than two decades and not once has he attacked us. Cameron’s mentality is on par with those who gave us the Christopher Steele fabrication that the Clinton mob used to make false claims. The former PM is starting to sound like one of those public health officials who still insist the vaccine saved lives.
As a Brit I have to admit that Cameron is an embarrassment to our country. But since he was a contemporary of Boris in the Bullingdon Club at Oxford that should not come as a surprise to anyone. He was bad enough first time around but his reincarnation as Foreign Secretary must have the likes of Lord Palmerston turning in his grave.
Too many comments below inspired by (an understandable) dislike of Cameron rather than by an analysis of his remarks. He put the moral argument for supporting Ukraine first but the value of fighting a war by proxy rather than in person is a completely valid point.
Putin didn’t stop after his intervention in Georgia, he didn’t stop after Crimea and he won’t stop after the Donbas, as that armoured column at the gates of Kiev should have made obvious.
Reality is that you are not going to persuade pro Russian clowns on this forum or others like Spectator.
Of course killing as many Russians as possible and destroying their equipment without actually putting NATO boots on the ground is great value for money.
They are the same people who were claiming 2 years ago that Putin will never invade Ukraine.
Now they are claiming that if we gave up Ukraine, he will stop there.
It is effectively the same logic which was used to appease Hitler.
Do not object to him starting rearming, do not object to him taking Ruehr back, give him back Sudetenland, then whole of Czechoslovakia, then do nothing when he invaded Poland.
This strategy worked out really well, didn’t it?
The path forward was shown by Regan:
rearm and bring Russia to its knees.
That happened with Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact.
Scumlands of Moscovy are third world shithole with nukes.
If you outcompete them military like Regan did, they will fold like a cheap suit.
Problem is that West has no will after years of appeasing Moscow by idiots like Merkel and Macron.
And weak internally by pursuing mad woke, green policies.
Shame David Cameron is such poor value for money
Something we can all agree on. I’ll be astonished if you gets any downvotes for that !
What an absolute clown.
Every time that man opens his mouth the west quakes , the east laughs and says ‘is that the best you’ve got?’ .
It is just pathetic. 500,000 killed comes closer to reality. When will he send his sons to the frontlines to destroy Russian military equipment? David Cameron is parroting Kajsa Ollogren who was parroting Mitt Romney. Utterly immoral. How do they think the rest of the world will judge these comments? I prefer the reason given by Annalena Baerbock for this war. This war is about defending trans rights. There is no limit to human stupidity according to Einstein.