Putin exploits West’s new religion to cover his own weakness

Vladimir Putin is exposing the West’s new climate activist religion as a security weakness. Picture: AFP

Ancient Greek historian Thucydides determined the strong exact what they can and the weak concede what they must while questions of justice between states only arise when there is equal power to compel.

Power to compel relies on the critical theme of our generation, security. Instead, we are witnessing the limits of Western liberal democracy as political elites, globalist organisations and corporates addicted to taxpayer subsidies erode our security.

Security relies on strong defence, utilising all available sources of energy, means of production and supply, secure borders and a population culturally sure of itself. All within a people’s control. Security ensures nations can survive on their terms.

Right now, power is consolidated in the few who are eroding security for the many. Food, fuel and financial security for the average person are being smashed while Western culture and history are trashed.

When it comes to Ukraine, not only should we be mad at Vladimir Putin, we should be furious with Western leaders for getting us into this mess.

First, Putin is exposing the West’s new climate-activist religion as a security weakness. Despite the prospect of the lights going out in energy-rich Europe this winter, and power bills at record highs in Australia, we are told its Putin’s fault. No, this is self-inflicted.

Second, so obsessed with saving the planet where even my steak needs to be carbon neutral, they missed the obvious. Like all bullies, Putin hides his own fears. His partial mobilisation risks exposing what he has been trying to hide, the frailty of the Russia he built.

We also forgot you can have all the military hardware but it’s what you’re fighting for that matters. Instead everything that has made the West great since Enlightenment is being torn down. The US is struggling to recruit for its armed forces and will be tens of thousands short by 2023. There is no Pericles, Churchill, Thatcher or Reagan to use fear, self-interest and honour to inspire. Instead, these greatest of human motives are being used to weaken and divide us. If you think this has nothing to do with security, name a single culturally weak nation that successfully defended itself against the strong. Even the illiterate sandal-wearing Taliban demonstrated what can be achieved when you believe.

Ironically, Ukraine, an Eastern European nation, is teaching Western Europeans, that borders, and national identity are worth defending. Perhaps new Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni can become that bright light of Western democratic realism, but like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who stands up for national citizenship, language, family, culture and sovereignty, she will not be tolerated.

Since Ukraine was first invaded in 2014, up until 2022, four thousand Ukrainian soldiers and over 13,000 civilians died. During that time, led by then German chancellor Angela Merkel, the EU eroded its energy, military, border and cultural security. As the Europeans made themselves dependent on Putin’s fossil fuels, they berated Australia for using ours. Western leaders reinforced Putin’s audacity with weakness, not power. He was never given a reason to forgo his ambitions.

For a generation, political elites and globalists have disregarded the grubby truth that their ideals rely on the security provided by realists. This infected our political class, which thought the West could be secured through virtue. That’s why the outpouring of support for the Queen by hardworking, patriotic people really frightened the establishment. In his memoirs Churchill laments the fatal fallacies that beset the West during the interwar period; when politicians delighted in smooth-sounding platitudes, refusing to face unpleasant facts, the interests of the state traded for popularity and electoral success. And, like many of our political class today, a picture of fatuity and fickleness that though devoid of guile, was not devoid of guilt, and though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world the horrors and miseries, beyond comparison in human experience.

The realist view accepts the evolving competition of nations, the dangers of weak men like Putin, and recognises certain ideologies refuse to be at peace. Yet, if your grandfather was like mine, proud or their nation and culture, they knew what they were fighting for – just like the people of Ukraine.

Jason Thomas is the director of Frontier Assessments