The leader
of the UK’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, called for a
“de-escalation” of tensions between NATO and Russia, adding in a
BBC interview on Thursday: “I want to see a de-militarisation of
the border between them.” Along with the U.S., the UK has been
rapidly building up its military presence in the Baltic region,
including states which border Russia, and is now about to send
another 800 troops to Estonia, 500 of which will be permanently
based.
In response,
Russia has moved its own troops within its country near those
borders, causing serious military tensions to rise among multiple
nuclear-armed powers. Throughout 2016, the Russian and U.S.
militaries have engaged in increasingly provocative and aggressive
maneuvers against one another. This week, the U.S. began deploying
4,000 troops to Poland, “the biggest deployment of US troops in
Europe since the end of the cold war.”
t was in
this context that Corbyn said it is “unfortunate that troops
have gone up to the border on both sides,” adding that “he
wanted to see better relations between Russia, NATO and the EU.”
The Labour leader explained that while Russia has engaged in serious
human rights abuses both domestically and in Syria, there must be a
“better relationships between both sides . . . there cannot be
a return to a Cold War mentality.”
The response
to Corbyn’s call for better relations and de-escalation of tensions
with Moscow was swift and predictable. The armed forces minister for
Britain’s right-wing government, Mike Penning, accused Corbyn of
being a collaborator with the Kremlin:
“These
comments suggest that the Labour leader would rather collaborate with
Russian aggression than mutually support Britain’s Nato allies. As
with Trident, everything Labour says and does shows that they cannot
be trusted with Britain’s national security.”
This is the
same propagandistic formulation that has been used for decades in the
west to equate opposition to militarism with some form of disloyalty
or treason: if you oppose military confrontation with a foreign
adversary or advocate better relations with it, then you are accused
of harboring secret sympathy and even support for those foreign
leaders, and are often suspected of being an active “collaborator”
with (or “stooge” for) them.
This lowly
smear tactic was, of course, deployed over and over during the Cold
War with regard to those who argued for improved relations or a
reduction of conflict with Moscow, but it has been repeatedly used
since then as well every time it comes time to confront a new Foreign
Villain (those opposed to the invasion of Iraq were pro-Saddam, those
who opposed intervention in Libya were Gaddafi apologists, those who
objected to War on Terror programs are terrorist-sympathizers, etc.
etc.).
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