So the Kremlin has decided to park a warship in the Channel, and Whitehall is clutching its pearls. A ‘reckless escalation’, they call it. How delightfully predictable.
The Russian vessel, likely the same rust-bucket that has been haunting our waters for years, makes a gesture, and we respond with a formal inquiry. Because nothing says ‘resolve’ like a committee meeting. This is not security policy.
This is a parody of sovereignty, performed by a nation that has forgotten what it means to be a great power. The Channel was once the moat of Christendom. Now it is a backdrop for geopolitical pantomime.
And the Government’s response, a probe, is the proof of our decay. We do not defend our borders anymore. We investigate them.
One can almost hear Gibbon chuckling in his grave. The Romans did not commission studies when barbarians crossed the Rhine. They sent legions.
We send lawyers. The real escalation is not in the Channel but in our collective amnesia, our refusal to admit that the post Cold War holiday from history is over. The Russian captain knows exactly what he is doing.
He is testing our nerve, our patience, our will. And we are failing, not with a bang but a bureaucratic whimper. The tragedy is that this is not an isolated incident.
It is a symptom of a deeper malady. Our intellectual elites, educated in the soft sciences of grievance and identity, cannot comprehend a world where power matters. They think a strongly worded letter and a probe will suffice.
They will not. The warship will return. The probes will gather dust.
And our children will inherit a Channel that is no longer ours. The question is not what the probe will find. The question is whether we still have the courage to be a nation of actors, not analysts.
We should not be investigating the Russians. They should be wondering what we plan to do next. But they know the answer.
Nothing. And that is the most reckless escalation of all.
