So a block of flats in Romania gets pummelled by a drone. Not in Kyiv, not in Kharkiv, but a NATO member state. And what does His Majesty’s Government do?
Rush to pledge ‘advanced air defence systems’ to our allies. How very Victorian of us. We send a few gadgets and call it a day, while the real rot sets in.
Romania’s black sea coast, once a quaint holiday destination, is now a front line. The drone, presumably Russian, overshot its target or was shot down. It matters not.
What matters is the symbolism. The Eastern flank of NATO is now porous. And we, the West, respond with press releases.
This is the intellectual decadence I have warned about: we mistake hardware for strategy. We think a missile system can substitute for a spine. But the problem is not a lack of equipment.
It is a lack of will. We have the means to deter, but not the nerve to use them. Romania’s citizens deserve better than a pat on the head and a radar array.
They deserve a guarantee that their soil is inviolable. But we have lost the vocabulary of honour. We speak of ‘escalation management’ and ‘de-escalation’.
Rome did not fall because it ran out of catapults. It fell because it ran out of senators willing to die for the Republic. So here we are, in the autumn of 2024, promising air defences while the drones fly.
The parallels are too depressing to enumerate. But I shall anyway: compare this to the Sudetenland, to the appeasement of the 1930s. We think we are clever.
We are merely cleverer at fooling ourselves. The drone that struck that flat was not a mistake. It was a test.
And we failed.
