Freud’s greatest contribution to psychology was, I think, the notion of “denialism” (
Verleugnung). He argued that when facts are too difficult or threatening to encompass, the human mind finds ever more intricate mechanisms to pretend they don’t exist or to explain them away. He often used this term in the context of things such as mortality and the infidelity of a romantic partner, but its implications for geopolitics are perhaps the most significant of all.
The most hackneyed example is still the most vivid, so forgive me for mentioning Chamberlain and Hitler. The British prime minister was a decent man who desperately wanted to avoid the bloodshed of another global conflict — and so he patiently avoided dealing with the truth that would have been obvious to any neutral observer. By the time it became too late, we were ill-prepared for war and the Nazis had gathered considerable momentum.
I hesitate to say this on a fine weekend, but I’d suggest that we have witnessed a similar scale of denialism over the past two decades. We now face a fully fledged authoritarian axis
led by China and encompassing Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Ayatollah Khamenei’s Iran and, to an extent, the captive population of Kim Jong-un’s
North Korea. Just yesterday, the puppet Belarusian state announced more details of its “all-weather strategic partnership” with China, building yet more connective tissue in this rising alliance. And make no mistake: this represents an existential threat to the West.
This is a stark truth, but it’s worth looking at the conflict in Ukraine through this lens. We are (rightly) providing munitions to our ally but we are simultaneously depleting our own stocks of ammunition and precision missiles. At the same time, our economies are struggling with the energy crisis and inflation, and China continues its rearmament programme while enjoying discounted oil from Russia, now dependent on its ally to the south and east. It raises the question of how we would cope if China launches an assault on Taiwan or Iran makes a serious move in the Middle East.
Niall Ferguson, the British historian, has argued that if one or both of these were to happen, we would, de facto, have entered a
Third World War. His point is that the Second World War can be seen as the agglomeration of conflicts in different regions that just happened to occur at the same time — and that we may be on the verge of the same pattern.
And, with our depleted armaments, he suggests we would struggle to cope in two, let alone three theatres. This is why we should have boosted military production years ago, and should escalate now. It is also why those calling for an explicit guarantee in support for Taiwan are putting the cart before the horse. What is the value of such a commitment if we lack the capacity to defend the island, a point of which China — whose surveillance of US capabilities has ramped up to the point of purchasing land around military sites — is aware.
What should we do, then? It is no good supposing that our nuclear weapons will deter further violations of global rules, for this hasn’t worked thus far. No, our only hope is to understand how we got here in the first place. Putin, we should remember, explicitly wrote down his ambition to create a Russian empire and systematically went about building it — invading South Ossetia and Abkhazia, fomenting division in Ukraine and annexing Crimea. All the while, the likes of David Cameron argued for appeasement, asserting that if we embraced Putin and his criminal retinue a little closer, they would come to absorb our values. Did the money flowing into Conservative coffers and the City of London cloud the Tories’ judgment?
It wasn’t just Britain. Angela Merkel was more than happy to increase German dependence on Russian gas, while Barack Obama pulled his punches even after the iniquities of Crimea and the Donbas (as he did after the use of chemical weapons in Syria). As
Peter Conradi put it in a superb commentary in The Sunday Times two weeks ago: “Despite the bloodshed, the American leader was reluctant to become too deeply involved . . . [a position] that goaded Putin to further excesses.”
At the time, most commentators joined in the chorus of denialism, acclaiming these leaders for their “grown-up approach” — for this is what they so desperately wanted to believe. Cameron was described as a sensible statesman; Obama was seen by many as a terrific president; Merkel was hailed as the most rational leader of the age. It was the geopolitical equivalent of a mass sociogenic delusion.
The same dance occurred with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — responsible for killing more people than Lenin and Stalin combined — which was invited into the rules-based order on the basis that it would come to respect these rules. Instead, the Chinese took the advantage of “most-favoured nation” status while loading on tariffs and violating international norms. Did we respond by laying down red lines and protecting our long-term interests? No, like a deranged gambler we threw more chips on the table, inviting them to join the WTO, even as their industrial espionage escalated. As late as 2015, George Osborne was gushing: “No economy in the world is as open to Chinese investment as the UK.” It took Donald Trump, awful in so many ways, to break the spell.
And so here we are. “Sensible” commentary continues to warn about the risks of escalation in Ukraine if we provide more weaponry, failing to see that if we don’t act now we merely delay the inevitable. If Putin wins in Ukraine, will he stop there? If he takes the Baltics, will he stop? If Taiwan falls, will the CCP — which explicitly plans a global autocratic hegemony — stop? Where will this leave Poland, Japan, South Korea? Permit me to join the dots: they will do a deal with their oppressors, recognising western pusillanimity knows no bounds.
I mean, have you seen the balance of the UN lately? Have you noticed large swathes of the democratic world have yet to condemn the attack on Ukraine, a point exemplified just last week in the general assembly? Some will say this is due to energy interests, or China’s Belt and Road initiative, but this is pure distraction. They are hedging. They have watched the West acquiesce in landgrabs and violations, and fear they will be next. They are acting deferentially to the autocratic axis because they think it will become the world’s dominant power as the West melts away. US congressmen and women and UK parliamentarians accuse these nations of cowardice, seemingly incapable of seeing the irony.
If this column sounds angry, forgive me. It is based not on hindsight bias but the pent-up frustration of more than a decade calling out our appeasement of Putin, the oligarchs and the CCP — and the way they’ve been allowed to corrupt our institutions. Today, we face a realistic prospect of global war and should act accordingly on defence spending, military hardware, chips, rare-earth metals, energy security and more. If we wish to save the free world, the time for Freudian denialism is over.
