In the famous anthem “Rule Britannia,” Britons have proudly sung for hundreds of years that they never will be slaves: But in his Nietzschian mad dreams, Boris Johnson is turning them into slapstick clowns.
“Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
I have never been an admirer of Friedrich Nietzsche or the grandiose, usually absurd and repulsive statements that pass for his so-called “thought.” (As the Irish political philosopher Conor Cruise O’Brien pointed out, if you think Nietzsche didn’t enthusiastically embrace and urge the extermination of “lesser” races like Slavs, think again).
But this remark, at least is an obvious truth — and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the rapidly disintegrating United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland has just proved it again.
You might have thought that a country in economic and political chaos with its second main national component (Scotland) heading at full speed towards secession and full independence had enough problems on its own doorstep without trying to pick a full-scale global conflict with the largest (Russia) and most populous (China) nations on earth.
You might have thought that, but think again.
You might have thought that pulling out of the ramshackle European Union and imagining the Brussels Bureaucrats would treat Britain well after Johnson spent a life time making cheap, ludicrous abusive and false insults at it (He is good at that) would lead to more conflict.
You might have thought that any prime minister with a brain larger than a pea would at least order a serious sustained planning effort to reorient a UK national economy and society that had been integrated into Europe for 47 years.
You might have thought that, but think again.
Instead, Johnson and what passes for his “government” have come up with the most imbecilic Grand Strategy in British history: Open hostility and hatred towards the European Union, Russia and China — at the same time!
Having boldly cut loose from the EU, Captain Boris wants his Bold Ship Britain to cling closer than ever to the United States according to his major policy review proclaiming the master plan for post-Brexit foreign policy, released on Tuesday, March 16.
Britain will turn its back on all of Europe 22 miles away across the Channel, Johnson and his government proudly proclaimed. Instead, his grand strategic vision is to stir up a new era of hostility towards both Russia and China half a world away!
The claim that Britain will position itself as America’s trusty loyal sidekick in confronting Russia and China on the global stage is particularly risible. For President Joe Biden does not want him, or Britain at all. And in less than three months in office so far, he has humiliated the Brits on every conceivable occasion.
Biden removed the bust of Winston Churchill that Donald Trump kept in the Oval Office and consigned it to oblivion. The very day after Johnson boldly proclaimed his “new” grand strategic masterstroke of being America’s Poodle, Biden issued a joint declaration with visiting Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheál Martin clearly rebuking Britain’s stand on the Irish border issue.
Biden’s Press Secretary Jen Psaki even went out of her way to praise the “courage” of Prince Harry and his wife, former US cable TV mini-star Meghan Markle for speaking out about their struggles with mental health after they enormously embarrassed Queen Elizabeth II. If that was not humiliatingly burning the tail of the proud and dignified Royal British Lion, what was?
Most tellingly of all, the Biden administration’s own foreign policy review emphasized the importance of restoring close ties with the European Union. Britain hardly rated more than a single sentence.
The one actual specific policy that Johnson spelled out in his foreign policy review was, of all things, wasting yet more of Britain’s overstretched defense budget on expanding its nuclear arsenal from 180 warheads to 260. Compared with the thousands of warheads that the United States deploys and Russia’s own arsenal, this is simply ludicrous: And southern England, with a population density cramming 50 million people into one of the most dense human concentrations on Earth has a vested obvious interest in reducing thermonuclear arsenals, not witlessly increasing them.
The 100-page report says little about cooperation on security with the European Union, which remains Britain’s largest trading partner and the 700 pound gorilla in its neighborhood. Since Britain’s Brexit withdrawal was finalized in January, relations between London and Brussels have gotten even worse.
The idea that China is a “systematic competitor” to tiny Britain is also insane. Britain these days is lucky to regard itself as a “systematic competitor” to Lithuania.
And of course the report reheats the unproven slander against Russia that Moscow was behind the poisoning of former Russian intelligence agent and British double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018.
Johnson has also sent the 60,000 ton aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth halfway round the world to the Indo-Pacific region apparently in the conviction that it will terrify leaders in Beijing rather than convulsing them in helpless laughter.
Johnson’s fantasies resolutely march on apace. He has now invited the leaders of Australia, India and South Korea to attend a meeting of the G7 which Britain is due to host in June.
It is all delusional, of course. The prime minister of Britain is in a fugue state while his country disintegrates around him. Even Washington, usually prepared to feed its tattered old British pet poodle a half-chewed bone or two, has given up on it.
In the famous anthem “Rule Britannia,” Britons have proudly sung for hundreds of years that they never will be slaves: But in his Nietzschian mad dreams, Boris Johnson is turning them into slapstick clowns.
