Your editorials on foreign policy in Europe and the increasing barbarity of Vladimir Putin’s assault were both insightful and powerful. But they failed to address the roots of this catastrophic failure of so-called diplomacy.
Principled foreign policy has long been mocked by neoliberals and politicians of all stripes in favour of “interests”. We should now understand where interest-based foreign policy has brought us. What’s more, it is hypocritical and craven. Interests were sufficient to justify and fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a myriad of smaller regions, but now its hegemony has brought us Russian hubris and fatal prevarication in the face of Putin’s crystal clear intention.
Faced with this, European politicians succumbed to “motivated reasoning”, believing what their sclerotic diplomacy told them. What makes me despair is that even now there is an unwillingness to confront this. The opposite side of this counterfeit coin is the impotence of the UN and other multinational assemblies to confront unilateral transgressions. We have also contrived to bring this about through interests. We have looked away, offering only rhetoric where we calculated that our interests are more or less safe. Now that it’s in the heart of Europe, we cannot look away.
Furthermore, the climate and biodiversity catastrophe means that this luxury of looking over the wall has evaporated. Economic and political connectivity can be manipulated to protect our interests. That is not even a remote possibility in the face of ecosystem collapse. Europe does not need a new foreign policy – we need a new global constitution and contract.
Neil Blackshaw
Callian, Var, France
• The danger of enforcing a no-fly zone is, your editorial says, “both obvious and immense”. Failing to level up the playing field between Ukraine and Russia is equally dangerous. At some point, the threat will have to be faced. A no-fly zone, together with a threat to take out the column advancing on Kiev, could well be the least risky way forward. At least it may stiffen the sinews of Russia’s generals. Failure to counter nuclear blackmail will mean giving carte blanche to Vladimir Putin. An early display of military resolve may well reduce the risk rather than enhance it.
Roy Boffy
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands
• Some of your correspondents (Letters, 25 February) have a strange idea about the fall of communism and the roles of Nato and the EU. I don’t recall any “triumphalism” at the fall of communism – only a feeling of relief that the people of eastern Europe could have greater freedom. For me, it meant that my friends and relatives from former eastern bloc countries could now freely visit me and I could visit them. Individual members of Nato and the EU can be “triumphalist”, but the organisations themselves can only represent what their members want.
Blaming Nato and the EU for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is like blaming a child for a bully attacking him when the kid says he’d like to join his mates as a member of the local football club. The bully is entirely to blame for the unprovoked attack, just as Putin and his acolytes are entirely to blame for their unprovoked attack on Ukraine and, in the same way, Hitler and the Nazis were entirely to blame for their unprovoked attack on Poland.
Sally Churchill
Graigwen, Rhondda Cynon Taf
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