Zarah Sultana’s name for Britain to withdraw from NATO is the most recent instance of ethical outrage turning into strategic confusion.
In a tweet this week, the Labour MP wrote: “NATO isn’t about ‘peace’ or ‘safety’. It’s an imperialist conflict machine. Simply take a look at Afghanistan and Libya… We should withdraw from NATO instantly.”
It’s a sweeping denunciation that matches comfortably inside a sure left-wing custom of anti-imperialist politics. However whenever you learn it alongside Sultana’s personal phrases from the early weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it makes little sense.
On 24 February 2022, the day of the invasion, she tweeted: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is deplorable. Putin should instantly withdraw Russian forces and stop his bombardment.” Two days later she praised “extremely brave anti-war protestors in Russia who’re risking repression to face up for peace and towards Putin’s invasion.”
These have been clear statements of solidarity with a folks underneath assault and a recognition of who was accountable. But the place she takes at the moment, treating NATO because the true supply of world instability, sits awkwardly beside that earlier readability.
The uncomfortable fact is that the one purpose Ukraine’s neighbours haven’t shared its destiny is as a result of they’re a part of the alliance Sultana desires Britain to go away. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have been safe as a result of NATO’s collective defence assure deters invasion. Nations exterior that protect, resembling Georgia and Ukraine, haven’t been so fortunate. The distinction just isn’t theoretical; it’s seen on the map.
To know how she arrived at this contradiction, it helps to recall that in February 2022 Sultana was one in every of eleven Labour MPs who signed an announcement by the Cease the Conflict Coalition. That assertion questioned NATO’s legitimacy and recommended that the alliance’s “eastward growth” had contributed to the tensions resulting in the conflict. The Labour management instantly warned that any MP who continued to again it could lose the whip. Sultana and the others withdrew their signatures inside hours.
She has by no means herself stated that NATO provoked the invasion. However by endorsing after which retracting an announcement that made that argument, she positioned herself briefly on the facet of those that see Western energy as the principle driver of battle quite than the Russian regime that launched it. Her present name for withdrawal from NATO repeats that very same one-sided framing, stripped of any recognition of what deterrence truly does.
Her home argument fares no higher. “Wages, not weapons. Welfare, not warfare,” she wrote this week. It’s a catchy slogan however a deceptive one. Britain’s defence price range is round two per cent of GDP. Even when it have been reduce dramatically, it could not come near fixing the structural issues of the NHS or reversing little one poverty. The concept that disarming would in some way fund social justice is politically handy however economically shallow.
Final yr Sultana laid a wreath in Coventry’s Conflict Memorial Park “in reminiscence of all these from Coventry and world wide who’ve died within the horrors of conflict.” Her intuition to hunt peace is honest, however peace just isn’t secured by hope alone. It will depend on the power to discourage those that use drive to realize their objectives. NATO, for all its flaws and misjudgments, has offered that deterrence for 3 generations.
When Sultana denounces the alliance as imperialist whereas condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she finally ends up attacking the very construction that retains most of Europe secure from comparable aggression. It’s not a place grounded in realism or proof. It’s a ethical gesture that collapses underneath scrutiny.
In my opinion, the entire thing is baffling. You can’t demand solidarity with Ukrainians combating for survival after which name for Britain to go away the alliance that forestalls such invasions elsewhere. It’s incoherent, indifferent from actuality and, frankly, actually unusual.
She condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “deplorable” and expressed solidarity with Ukrainians underneath assault. But she now calls for that Britain withdraw from NATO, the one establishment that has efficiently deterred additional Russian aggression in Europe. If NATO have been dismantled or if Britain left it, states like Poland and the Baltic nations would develop into much more susceptible. In impact, her coverage would make the form of invasion she condemns extra seemingly. That may be a basic contradiction.