Skip to main content

Not the Actions of a Friendly Nation

Picture: MOD
The picture is a recent one and shows an RAF Typhoon intercepting a Russian Tu-95 Bomber, NATO designation "BEAR". This is skirting British air space after having overflown Norway. It is a deliberate military incursion by the Russian Air Force: it is an entirely hostile act.
It is also far from unique. According to the House of Commons Defence select committee there have been at least 18 such unauthorised military incursions into British air space in the past two years.
The point of the RAF releasing this photograph is, however a pointed one. The Tupolev 95 may not be as primitive as it looks, it has turbo prop- not piston- engines and a very long range. However the weapons systems on the Typhoon could have shot down the Russian craft well before the Russians were even aware that a Typhoon was in the area- after all the Typhoon only came into service less than two years ago and carries highly advanced systems. Comparing the 1960s era Bomber and the latest fighter underlines that Russia's challenge to the West lacks a certainly level of credibility.
However it also underlines the fact that Russia- through its own choice- has returned to being a hostile power. As the Defence committee points out these are "not the actions of a friendly power".
As even IKEA chooses to abandon its plans to invest in Russia and the level of corruption under Vladimir Putin reaches utterly incredible levels, Russia is retreating into poverty and isolation- and deep hostility. The criminally corrupt cabal that controls the Kremlin is using pride in its military as a rallying cry to turn the growing unrest in the country outwards.
The poor, isolated and paranoid bear still has the capacity to create murder and mayhem on its borders: as the people of Georgia know only too well. As the defence committee says: the time has come to be much more robust in dealing with Putin. Holding the line now may prove a good deal safer than when Russia has decided to make a direct military threat to NATO.
Labels:

Comments

Peter Mc said…
The Russians got one of their Tupolevs very close to the East Coast a couple of years ago and the RAF missed it until it was well with nuclear mayhem range. Those Bears are old airframes and my worry would be that one just falls out of the sky an causes an incident: a colleague bought a former Warsaw Pact shipyard and inherited a load of Naval maintenance records. Eyewateringly bad.
5:34 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Waiting for the Barbarians

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today. Why isn’t anything going on in the senate? Why are the senators sitting there without legislating? Because the barbarians are coming today. What’s the point of senators making laws now? Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating. Why did our emperor get up so early, and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate, in state, wearing the crown? Because the barbarians are coming today and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader. He’s even got a scroll to give him, loaded with titles, with imposing names. Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? Why are they carrying elegant canes beautifully worked in silver and gold? Because the barbarians are coming today and things like that dazzle the barbarians. Why don’t our distingui...
Post a Comment
Read more

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...
20 comments
Read more

Lib Dem v. Tory (Round 2)

The Liberal Democrats stand for a distinct political ideology. It is an ideology built around both socially and economically liberal precepts. In as far as our ruling Labour government can be said to have an ideology at all, it coincides with Liberalism only incidentally. Labour stands for pragmatism, and where it does not there is still a core of values that are collectivist and not individual. Sometimes people are prepared to claim the moral high ground for policies of social solidarity and redistribution of wealth. Liberals may argue in favour of equality of opportunity, we can not argue in favour- as Socialists do- of "and equal society". The reason is simple: Socialism does not work. If one places equality above freedom, then eventually we get tyranny. This is why, while we may argue in favour of a more equal society as being a stronger society, the tools that we may use to gain -in our view- socially desirable outcomes must rest upon freedom above all else. As PJ O'...
14 comments
Read more