Peter Hitchens Fears Our Leaders May Plunge us into Another World War
Veteran journalist Peter Hitchens has a piece in the Mail warning that the mounting hysteria over an impending war with Russia (or whoever) will make the Covid lockdowns and restrictions on our lives look like a free-for-all at a hippy festival:
Generals and admirals warn we must live in a militarised society and prepare for what they think is an inevitable war against Russia. They could get their way. If you go on backing this policy, you could be condemning yourself, your children or grandchildren to a world of war, privation and perhaps conscription into some sort of military service.
Wars mean death and wounds. They mean shortages, rationing, electricity blackouts, travel restrictions, busybodies interfering in every bit of life, and with much more power. Not to mention danger – missiles have astonishing ranges these days. What exactly would this one be for?
Hitchens thinks part of the problem is that the grown-ups of the post-war generation who had seen the destructive effects of conflict have largely died out:
Our greatness ceased when bombastic moralising took over in 1914. We flung ourselves, supposedly nobly, into a Russo-German war. Within two years we were bankrupt, and bereft of the flower of our young manhood.
People still refuse to believe me when I say accurately that Britain has not paid off its huge 1914-18 war debts (now worth about £40 billion) to the USA. But I promise you it is true.
Four years of terrible loss left the Russo-German problem unsolved and we had to do it all again in 1939. After that we were even more bankrupt, and in 1946 had to ration bread, like some desperate People’s Republic. But for many years afterwards we were largely governed by grown-ups who had fought in actual wars and been wounded, and had seen death very near them, or endured bombing and a war economy. And so we largely stayed out of major foreign trouble. But those grown-ups retired and died, and a new generation, a sort of children’s crusade, took over instead. Oddly, they were not warlike in the traditional way.
The new breed of leaders, most of whom have never seen a gun, let alone fired one, have been enthusiastically involving us in unnecessary and misguided new wars, he says.
Ukraine is, in fact, a corrupt and ill-governed state, riven with incompetence and waste, with little political freedom, weak media and no real opposition. In this, it is very like Russia, except that Russia has oil and gas.
It has other faults I won’t dwell on here. And the war which (in my view) the USA provoked in this region has been a disaster for the Ukrainian people. This is brought home in a dispatch this weekend in the Left-wing and pro-war New Statesman.
The distinguished Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov has given a clearer and more truthful picture of the state of the country he plainly loves than I have seen from any Western reporter (Kurkov: “Around 700,000 Ukrainians liable for military service have crossed the border since the war began on February 24th 2022. This is more than the number of Ukrainian soldiers at the front.”) Mr Kurkov is a Ukrainian patriot, loyal to his nation. And this causes him to be honest.
The war which bankrupt Britain spends so much effort on keeping going has killed, maimed and disfigured unknown tens of thousands of young Ukrainian men (casualty figures are an official secret), devastated cities, and wrecked the Ukrainian economy.
I have never known what British interest this serves, and – perhaps even more important – I cannot see how Ukraine has benefited from it either.
Can nothing end this brainless march towards a new Great War?
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Writing in the Telegraph, Daniel Johnson says it may already be too late for the West to avoid a war with Russia.
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Who will fight for modern day Britain? Its Hindus, Muslims, Asians, Africans? Of course not. Will the working class Whites really offer themselves as fodder to save ‘democracy’ dressed up in the dirty whore outfits of trans-queer fascism, warmtarding, globalism, WEF diktats and UN demands? Or will the vast majority simply tell Fishy Knickknack and the other billionaires and millionaires – none of whom will find it necessary to join the fight – to sod off? I am guessing sod the hell off is the reply.
If they force conscription in this country, to provoke a 3rd world war, I would expect a general revolt. The hatred of the elite and our institutions is elevated and will only accelerate into an open rebellion. Ditto for Rona part 2 or the Climate Thingy future lockdown the little fascists have planned. Time for discourse was long over. The time for physical resistance is long overdue.
The disease and climate narratives are on shaky ground so time to pull out Old Faithful – the threat of nuclear war. It worked last time.
Precisely. It’s all about control and they’re trying to generate a “bigger fear.”
I expect the almost universal responses to the articles “would you fight for your country” have shaken them up a bit.
This is the Great Reset that Schwab and his acolytes are so keen on having.
I’m pretty sure the last thing Westminster wants is a horde of very angry armed natives, they might not get the result they imagine.
If you visit Rochester Cathedral you will not only visit a tranquil, holy, space but see a remarkable monument to soldiers who served in the British Empire’s colonial wars of the 19th century.
On one internal wall is a mosaic depicting the names of the local men who served and survived, and those who were injured or had died on campaign service. Added to them is a panel giving the names of men who were evidently Hindus or Muslims.
These men would have been either sepoys, or those who performed non-combatant duties for regiments, such as grooms, water carriers or even grass cutters. There was no obligation to include such men, especially in a Christian place of worship, one founded ages before when Rochester was part of the Kingdom of Kent.
But they are there. Perhaps a unique record. Perhaps the only public place where their existence is known. Still known more than a century later when all that they were, did or said has otherwise passed out of all memory.
“Can nothing end this brainless march towards a new Great War?”
As I suggested yesterday, the first action of a mobilised population should be to remove their own government.
Genuine question: does Mr Hitchens go beyond “I have never known what British interest this serves” and investigate to find out?
Here is a cynics view of the British/ EU Interest. You are bankrupt, have run out of ideas to keep the country going on the hand outs of bread and circuses, (benefits and home entertainment) so you start to create international tensions, invoke a war that you know you will loose, and then let the victorious nation(s) rebuild the country you previously destroyed. Simple.
This warmongering is not about going to war – we have neither the manpower nor the materiel – and unless an incident can be provoked nobody to go to war with. However, the threat that we might be on the verge of war does mean that all sorts of rights depriving measures need to be made available to those good people looking after us.
Obviously some form of ID would be essential and given the ability to track everything that would mean restrictions to 15 minute cities. The possibility of Disease X being unleashed by some bad actors would mean everyone should accept a jibby jab as a precaution against whatever might be unleashed and another jibby jab when Disease X has finally been identified and a booster a few months later to protect against variants.
A few bombs and random explosios should ramp up the fear, maybe even an odd suicide squad attack.
Top this off with a financial crash and bingo – jobs a good ‘un and CBDC’s.
OK warden, lock the gates.
Yes Bill. Sir.
Wasn’t it the repulsive Baby Bush who, before setting on his war on terror post 9/11, said something like “ You are going to have to give up a little of your freedom in exchange for your security”?
The words of Thomas Paine, I believe: ‘The duty of a true patriot is to protect its country from its government’.
WWIII, mega cyber-attack, disease X, power cuts. Surely not all of these? If I remember Peter Hitchens was wrong about Russia invading Ukraine, so he doesn’t get everything right.
Also not sure China will come to help. Something several people have said to me recently – not mentioned here- China is in economic meltdown at the moment.
Looking online, it seems China’s economic situation is not as bad as a meltdown. Just bumpy start to 2024.
I heard they have a crisis. lack of children being born. They should make their minds up from the one child policy pushed by Western Globalists. Then again, when you weld people into their apartments and almost starve them to death, their hope for the future which involves bring up kids is tainted.
That’s why so many of them want to come here – and have 2+ children. Close to where I live they are building houses on the floodplain and a high percentage of the new buyers are Chinese. Also, a new school there is largely composed of Chinese children. We natives are gradually being replaced, whether by design or not.
What British interest did ‘guaranteeing’ Polish borders serve in 1939?
In fact neither Britain nor France sent any military aid to Poland to help it and when the Germans crossed into the South, both Countries declared war on Germany – not the other way round it is to be noted – ill prepared and with disastrous consequences.
Then about a week later the USSR crossed into Poland occupying the North by arrangement with Germany, yet Britain and France did not declare war on the USSR.
Germany’s interest lay East, not West. Declaring war on it just drew its attention West. It had to engage to protect its rear.
By 1945 Poland was still occupied by a different Socialist regime and ghastly dictator – actually given away by the USA in return for a stalemate in Europe.
Britain was bankrupt, lost an empire, infrastructure destroyed, what was left out of date. And then in 1973, UK joined the very Continental centralised, German and/or French dominated power and economic structure it had spent the last 500 years and two World wars years preventing.
And here we are. Net Zero madness and invasion, the conclusion.
Present day Germany is the Rhenish/ West-German state closely intertwined with France Adenauer already desired to create after the first world war plus one of the three continental reservations for ethnic German created after 1945 added to it. If anything, the EU is French hegemonial project which worked sufficiently well that the Parisian muppet in lieu of his spouse could actually call up Johson at the height of Corona and essentially give instructions to him on threat of French sanctions.
There was a good article in The Light Newspaper this month talking about how around 800K German POWs were deliberately starved and the Red Cross stopped from entering the camps by the Yanks who controlled the media. Apparently General Pattern knew about this and was going to spill the beans. The claim is made that he may have been assassinated. Ernest Fisher, a retired colonel of the US Army, and war historian noted for his book, Cassino To The Alps.
Most males I see in England aged 15-35 are apathetic at best. Getting them to fight would be like trying to thread cold treacle through the eye of a needle.
They are however extremely susceptible to indoctrination through social media. Remember they don’t really need to fight for their country, just die for it
But why should they fight? Where’s the threat? Unless its on the southern border, here and in the USA.
That’s the most depressing thing – our leaders seem to have decided to have a war, but are not quite sure which enemy to choose.
Oh, they’ve chosen an enemy alright. Their war is against us. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.
May $deity save us from “pacifists enjoying boxing matches” (Jünger) with no idea about history and whose idea of sensible foreign policy is that it must not endanger their precious hide. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870/71 ended French hegemony in Europe and even stripped the robber baron state on the Seine from a failry small bit of German territory it had forcibly misappropriated about 300 years earlier at the end of the 30 years war. This left French foreign policy with a singular European goal — revanche. While Bismarck was still German chancellor, he managed to keep France isolated in Europe with an elaborate system of alliances. In the original form, this was the so-called Dreikaiservertrag (alliance of the three emperors) between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia. Mounting tension between the latter two because of the Balkans and Russia’s panslavist ambitions led to that being terminated. Bismarck then negotiated a separate treaty with Russia, the so-called Rückversicherungvertrag (difficult to translate, insurance treaty is probably closest) while still remaing allied to Austria-Hungary in the so-called Zweibund (confederation of two). In 1890, Bismarck was dismissed by the new emperor Wilhelm II. and his system of alliances crumbled because his immediate successor Leo v.… Read more »
Toby, take note, Hitchens is rarely wrong. A war deliberately
‘provoked by the USA’…..
for nefarious reasons, key amongst them the desire to weaken and dismantle Russia, so that its resources can be picked off by the global corporations (as has begun to happen in Ukraine). One of the few non-woke Christian countries left.
‘The West’ should be Putin’s best friend and ally – as indeed he wanted it to be, for the sake of peace and stability. What a tragedy that our leaders and media are so childish.
Peter Hitchens is a rare voice of sanity in the Western main stream media.
Although I dislike The Mail at least they give him and occasionally Peter Oborne the chance to educate people with the facts and not the usual lies, propaganda and omissions of truth.
“Government only gives the illusion of power, Opposition the illusion of hope or change! This goes way higher than any government, way higher…”
(Wumpty from Stourbridge comment in the Daily Mail)
Hitchen’s cannot see what British interest is being served because he males the mistake of thinking in terms of national interest.
There is no national interest. There is a massive discrepancy between the interests of different groups within out country.
The interests of our ruling bureaucracy are very different from the interests of ordinary people.
And within the ruling bureaucracy there are no doubt divergent interests.
The pursuit of conflict with Russia serves someone, that’s for sure. Not ordinary people but some group of people. Which exactly and how one can try to speculate.
My view is that our current world order is in the hands of an Anglo- American elite, imposed on us by its military and intelligence bureaucracy, funded and controlled by financial institutions under their control.
Their world order is being challenged and they will drag us all into war if need be to defend it.
I welcome challenges to my hypothesis.
It’s a bit too simplistic, because there’s also France which is allied with the NATO but not actually part of it and which still essentially controls all of ‘decolonized’ French northern Africa (via troop deployments for ‘support’ of the local governments and by controlling the currency in the region). Insofar the NATO proper goes, ie, the German vassal state and all the internationally completely impotent other European statelets, I think your assessment is essentially correct.
I concur. This morning, listening to Alaistair Crooke on Judging Freedom (YouTube, Rumble), he made the interesting observation that the term ‘rules based order’ had not been used for some time. The world outside the Western hegemony had seen through it due to the current actions of the Zionists in Israel.
Mr Hitchens makes no mention of the strong documentary evidence that Russia intends a new ‘Union State’ incorporating the Baltic States with a new iron curtain from Kaliningrad to Odesa via the Sowalki corridor and Moldova. That means war is highly likely within twenty years, or within ten years with Putin at the helm, whether we like it or not. Hitchens is clearly not a fan of the six Ps.
With regard to his statement: ‘Generals and admirals warn we must live in a militarised society and prepare for what they think is an inevitable war against Russia. They could get their way. If you go on backing this policy’, he should remind himself of his brother’s much quoted saying:
‘That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.’
In fact, the evidence is against him:
‘The UK has seen a relatively modest increase in defence spending, moving from $65.7 billion in 2014 to an estimated $65.8 billion in 2023, placing it third among NATO countries.’
Try fighting a war on that today, as the Royal Navy is discovering in the Red Sea………
Okay where is that evidence please. Thx.
As I have said, there is no evidence of any preparation in this country for a war against Russia.
The evidence, in fact, shows that Britain’s defence budget has declined in real terms 2014-2023 during which time Russia has invaded Ukraine twice.
“What exactly would this one be for?”
As Russia is neither communist anymore, nor imperial or threatening us:
More and constant money and controlling power for the MIC and all related and corrupted big egos.
Hyperinflation to get rid of government debt.
Depopulation.
Russia is certainly imperial. That is why Putin went into Ukraine – he wants to reassemble the Tsarist Russian Empire and be the Tsar before he dies.
As for not being communist – that is debatable. More fascist I think.
Wasn’t there a rock star who sang about giving peace a chance? If foreign policy is a product of domestic policy, what domestic policy does this call for conscription and an economy put on a war footing serve? In the same newspaper, the Foreign Secretary makes a progressive argument for a negotiated settlement of the Gazan war. Why not for the Ukraine war? Wars cost money. The UK already has a £2.4trn national debt. That alone is as if the country had fought a long war and just about survived. The straitjacket of other debt inhibits the good management of many services. The high streets of some provincial towns resemble economic dead zones. In his last report, the American Senior Inspector General Afghan Reconstruction announced that in the 20 years of involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan the USA spent $6.6trn. The period between 1815 and 1914, between the two Great Wars, was one where Britain became a great power by avoiding war with another major power. Such a war was possible in 1864 (with Prussia) and in 1895 (with the USA). Britain’s statesmen wisely chose other courses of action. In 1914 it was the Tory Party that was braying… Read more »
A war footing is yet another state of emergency designed to subvert normal democratic process and heighten public anxiety. Who still falls for these techniques? 77th brigade is losing its impact.
What ‘war footing’? We demonstrate almost every day that even our armed forces are unprepared for war.
Who, exactly, is ‘braying for war’?
Tory MP Tobias Ellwood, a lieutenant colonel in the 77th brigade, who was until recently a government minister and chair of the defence select committee has said ” We are now at WAR in Europe. We need to move to a war footing…We need to FACE RUSSIA DIRECTLY..rather than leaving Ukraine to do all the work”
https://maajidnawaz.substack.com/p/british-armys-77th-brigade-psychological
General Sir Patrick Sanders, Chief of the General Staff and Head of the British Army, has just called for an expansion in troop numbers to 120,000 within three years, including regular soldiers, reserves and a “strategic reserve” of retired military personnel. He said war against Russia could not be won based on the size of the UK regular army. He also called for conscription.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/01/25/lvbd-j25.html
Others have been equally bullish, but these two spring to mind.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear….
‘‘We may not want war, but war is heading to us in the next couple of decades.’
Ellwood 24 Jan 2024
‘In a speech at an armoured vehicle conference, Gen Sir Patrick was not making an argument for conscription – where men of fighting age are required to enlist in the military – but rather laying the foundations for a voluntary call up if war broke out.’
Gen Sanders 24 Jan 2024
I treasure Peter Hitchens clear thinking. I’m always struck by the war memorials in small towns in regional Australia. The list of names from WW1 is very long while at the time the Australian population was so small. I think of the mothers and fathers whose sons went to war and died or were crippled in such terrible circumstances. Just so happens an old friend has written a story today recounting the situation those young men faced in the trenches of Gallipolli An Enduring Classic: Ion Idriess and The Desert Column (forestleaves.blog)
Kipling’s famous quote comes to mind: ‘If any question why we died, tell them because our fathers lied’.
Ideal opportunity to bring about the great reset (Communism) the UN, WEF and the CCP must be over the moon. We can also abandon the elections for our leaders. Rather than fire a bullet why don’t they phone up Xi Jinping and just ask him to take over. Oh, too many people in the world. Silly me.