The UK, Russia and poor statesmanship
The ongoing and continuous carping against Russia by the UK is synonymous with an out-dated and dangerous stance, a disability to understand the Big Picture
British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt are by now infamous for their belligerent, displaced, unwelcome, unnecessary and warped opinions about Russia based upon fallacy number one: Russia is a hostile foreign nation. The entire foreign policy of the United Kingdom is based upon this premise.
The truth is, even as a part of the Soviet Union, Russia was never hostile towards Britain and Russian people in general reserve a fondness for British culture and literature, regard the language properly spoken as sacrosanct (meaning Gavin Williamson is not an authority on the language of Shakespeare because of his accent making it difficult to understand a word he says).
At most, the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact and Russia as part of these, constituted a strong counter-belance and a defensive counterweight to the belligerent organization called NATO whose real intentions are to cater for the interests of the military-industrial complex, run by the BARFFS, the $inister $ix $isters known as the Banking, Arms, eneRgy, Finance, Food and DrugS/PharmaceuticalS lobbies. These are the invisible powers, along with NATO, each and every one of them unelected, which dictate the foreign policies of NATO member states, which despite promises to the contrary, encroached upon Russia's borders.
Obviously, the Defense Secretary will be banging a belligerent drum trying to create imaginary enemies to justify continued spending on the military and needless to say, somewhere along the line, business and economic interests are involved, not necessarily for the Secretary himself. So however idiotic his comments "Frankly Russia should go away -it should shut up" was one of his gems, we can see where the MoD is coming from.
But today it was not the Defense Secretary, but rather his side-kick at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, waiting for a pat on the back on a visit to the United States of America for being best chichahua and doing his tricks obediently, arrogantly calling for increased sanctions against Russia from his EU partners on the eve of the UK doing a Brexit when the hearts and minds of most people in the EU are for better relations with Russia.
Perhaps if those in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Defense Ministry would consider whether anyone imposed sanctions on them over Iraq, when a country was invaded illegally disrespecting international law, breaching it and perpetrating war crimes, or over Libya when the UK was cavorting with terrorists on its own list of proscribed groups at the time, which I pointed out and which merited me my facebook account being taken over by one jooj30 at hotmail.com and I lost over a thousand contacts. It is called freedom of expression, or if you prefer, cyber terrorism.
Now that everyone knows that Russia was acting within the law in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, now that everyone knows that the Crimea question was a democratic exercise also within the law, and now that everyone knows the Kremlin was not and could not have been involved in the Salisbury poisoning cases, perhaps those who represent the UK abroad could make themselves look more statesmanlike by seeing the bigger picture and dropping this anti-Russia witch hunt just to create a THEM to justify the US? They do more harm than good to the cause of the United Kingdom.
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
Pravda.Ru
Twitter: @TimothyBHinchey
timothy.hinchey@gmail.com
*Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist, deputy editor, editor, chief editor, director, project manager, executive director, partner and owner of printed and online daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications, TV stations and media groups printed, aired and distributed in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, Mozambique and São Tomé and Principe Isles; the Russian Foreign Ministry publication Dialog and the Cuban Foreign Ministry Official Publications. He has spent the last two decades in humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and homophobia. A Vegan, he is also a Media Partner of Humane Society International, fighting for animal rights. He is Director and Chief Editor of the Portuguese version of Pravda.Ru.