Kelly’s Eye

AS RUSSIA invaded Ukraine last week, the United Nations SecretaryGeneral António Guterres concluded his instantly ignored Security Council speech with the words: “Give peace a chance.”

Nothing better summed up the emptiness of theWest’s initial response toVladimir Putin’s aggression – except perhaps the startling admission by the head of Germany’s army that his forces aren’t presently up to anything much military-related, let alone fighting.

Give Peace A Chance remains what it always was: a tiresome, plaintive dirge (hard to reconcile with the thrilling charge of its writer’s earlier songs) that is hardly going to give MadVlad any sleepless Moscow nights.

It’s a performance piece favoured by the sort of middle-class conscience which, for instance, regards that originator of so much 20th century misery – Lenin – as a “pretty cool lawyer” (stand up and take a bow, Labour’s Emily Thornberry). Or that has cheered and demanded the relentless diminution of our defence spending over decades.

It is then perhaps scarcely surprising if, having conveyed the impression that we’re these days far too sophisticated for armed force and that nasty sort of thing, that eventually someone like Putin (or Xi Jinping, or the mullahs in Tehran) will take us at our word.

We have spent the past 30 years over-indulging that most compulsive human trait: the wish to parade one’s self as compassionate and caring, an instinct never pursued with such ease, theatricality, or to a wider audience, than since the advent of social media.

I’ve previously quoted the following lines of the late Clive James, but they have never seemed as apposite as now: “Unarmed goodwill is useless against armed malice... peace is not a principle, it is only a desirable state of affairs and can’t be obtained without a capacity for violence at least equal to the violence of the threat.”

Otherwise, you’re ultimately left with little more than – all together now – “All we are saying...”.