David Cameron has that rarest of political opportunities – a second chance to write some of his international legacy. Brexit weakened our ability to shape Europe, which in turn limited our leverage to align the US and the EU.
As prime minister, Cameron was also part of a generation that believed doing more business with Russia – and China – would secure peace and profit, an idea that in retrospect seems dangerously naive. Now, as a foreign minister focused on supporting Ukraine and restraining Russia, he has nine months to put some of that right – and can help reimagine how democracies can compete in a vicious 21st century.
He faces two immediate aims: one is to undermine Russia’s war machine, the other to arm Ukraine. Both will require quick tactical fixes, but are also a part of a much bigger, strategic story.
Vladimir Putin has put Russia on a war economy footing. Its factories are cranking out missiles, armed drones and tanks at unprecedented rates. Sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers to their deaths has proved no big impediment to Putin. Russian TV propaganda is sneering again, full of menacing jokes about how the country’s unstoppable army will march on to Poland and whether it’s worth taking Lisbon.With military production increasing, it can seem like sanctions designed to undermine these supply chains have failed. The truth is they have never been used as a focused weapon.
Take, for example, CNCs – computer numerical control machine tools – which are essential to all of Russia’s military production. Western companies such as DMG Mori have been told to stop selling these machines to Russia since 2022. But that isn’t enough to undermine their functioning, as many of the machines are already in Russia and they are still able to get hold of new ones and spare parts through intermediaries.
For sanctions to be effective, you also need to sanction every component and intermediary on the way, and then use all the other means that governments have – from cyber to sabotage – to stop such machines functioning. And the same needs to be done for all the other technology Russia is critically dependent on.
In the words of Kristofer Harrison, a former US state department and defence official who now leads the Dekleptocracy Project, a counter-corruption NGO: “US policymakers created sanctions as a foreign policy tool, but then never bothered to examine the policy execution. There isn’t even a dedicated team to enforce sanctions against Russia at the US Treasury – the same body that does licensing also has to cover sanctions for the world.”
Britain should lead in creating a coordinated sanctions and military supply chain unit that brings together UK, US and EU efforts. This would map the complex Russian military supply chains at every step of their way, define their choke points and combine resources to disrupt them using the full range of tools – law enforcement, diplomacy, overt and covert actions.
Britain can also help take the lead on helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s genocidal aggression. With US military support held hostage by internal politics, and possibly disappearing, Europe needs to hurry. If we don’t have a clear plan to catch Russian arms production rates in the next few months, thenit will become hard to ever catch up.
Ukrainian forces are already rationing ammo on the frontlines. As Jack Watling of Royal United Services Institute has darkly noted: a stalemate in a war is just the pause before one side takes the upper hand.
This summer, European Nato countries promised to increase arms production. But delivery on those promises has stalled, partly because defence companies need long-term pledges about orders if they are to invest in production. Britain can help lead to break this impasse and broker a new deal for a new European security.
Not only will it help stabilise the continent, save Ukraine and constrain Russia, it will also be good for jobs. Moreover, it will help quell the argument many American isolationists make that Europe doesn’t pull its military weight.
Leading on a common plan to undermine Russian supply chains, along with investment in European security, will show that Britain can still be an active player in unifying transatlantic alliances. And such initiatives are part of a deeper shift.
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Cameron’s time as prime minister came in the dying days of an ideology that claimed integrating our economies with authoritarian regimes would bring peace; that unfettered, globalised capitalism would make us all wealthier. In fact the murky globalisation of deregulation and offshore tax havens – described with dark brilliance in Oliver Bullough’s Moneyland – allowed Kremlin kleptocrats to enrich themselves and entrench their power, and allowed bosses and companies in democracies to avoid taxes and move money away from the communities where it was made.
Cameron’s final years as prime minister saw that old ideology destroyed. Russia thought that interconnection gave it leverage over the west and felt emboldened to invade Ukraine in 2014. Cameron lost the Brexit vote partly because the leave campaign could exploit how globalisation was only working for a small slice of the country.
To be fair, his government was more cognisant of the Russian threat after the 2014 invasion than, say, Germany’s, which rewarded Putin’s aggression by building huge oil pipelines with Russia. And Cameron actually passed the first good laws on clamping down on non-transparent money flows.
Now we need to go further and reorientate critical parts of our economy. It should no longer be normal to make money arming countries that wish us ill, and the financial networks that make that possible should be disabled. Economic policy needs to be wedded to security, should integrate us with other democracies, and many more of its profits should remain here.
Indeed, the social unity that comes from a more equal economy is itself part of the resilience Britain will need, as the Russias of this world will do all they can to subvert and divide us. Economic equality is also part of security.
Peter Pomerantsev is the author of Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia
David Cameron has a chance at redemption by delivering crucial weapons to Ukraine
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24.12.2023
David Cameron has that rarest of political opportunities – a second chance to write some of his international legacy. Brexit weakened our ability to shape Europe, which in turn limited our leverage to align the US and the EU.
As prime minister, Cameron was also part of a generation that believed doing more business with Russia – and China – would secure peace and profit, an idea that in retrospect seems dangerously naive. Now, as a foreign minister focused on supporting Ukraine and restraining Russia, he has nine months to put some of that right – and can help reimagine how democracies can compete in a vicious 21st century.
He faces two immediate aims: one is to undermine Russia’s war machine, the other to arm Ukraine. Both will require quick tactical fixes, but are also a part of a much bigger, strategic story.
Vladimir Putin has put Russia on a war economy footing. Its factories are cranking out missiles, armed drones and tanks at unprecedented rates. Sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers to their deaths has proved no big impediment to Putin. Russian TV propaganda is sneering again, full of menacing jokes about how the country’s unstoppable army will march on to Poland and whether it’s worth taking Lisbon.With military production increasing, it can seem like sanctions designed to undermine these supply chains have failed. The truth is they have never been used as a focused weapon.
Take, for example, CNCs – computer numerical control machine tools – which are essential to all of Russia’s military production. Western companies such as DMG Mori have been told to stop selling........
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