Germany De-Industrialised, Britain Broken: The Real Cost of the Ukraine Gamble

by Jaffa

We are so shocked. The ordinary man is so shocked that Russia has won the war and nothing can be done, N. Perhaps he would not be shocked if the media had not spun a narrative. A vested interest had not given us this narrative, and the British public believed in this narrative, hook, line, and sinker. In fact, we began in the higher echelons of Whitehall, began to believe in our own false narratives, in our own propaganda. Hence it has come to this now. But the reality was always there for everybody to see.

The truth, however, was always visible. Russia was never going to tolerate NATO missile systems or foreign troops planted on its borders. Moscow made that clear in the 1990s, in 2007, and in 2008 when the United States tried to drag Ukraine and Georgia into NATO at Bucharest. The reality was reciprocity — the Monroe Doctrine in reverse. Washington would never accept Russian or Chinese bases in Mexico, yet demanded that Moscow accept Western encirclement in the Black Sea. To deny this basic symmetry was not just arrogant, it was reckless.

That recklessness metastasised into policy. Washington pushed NATO eastwards not because Ukraine’s security mattered to the United States, but because weakening Russia had become a strategic game. Zbigniew Brzezinski spelled it out as early as 1997: Ukraine was the lever to destabilise Russia, not to stabilise Europe. In this, the United States succeeded only in destabilising Europe itself. Energy costs soared, trade with Russia collapsed, and the supposed “gas station” has in fact outlasted and outproduced Europe’s sanctions regime.

For many British citizens the denouement feels shocking. That shock owes much to narrative management at home: the steady substitution of wishful framing for ground truth. Over time even parts of Whitehall appeared to accept their own talking points as reality while forgetting it was our own propaganda to build the narrative. When facts finally assert themselves, they do so bluntly. There is a parable here: those who repeat lies long enough end by believing them.

The media amplified this delusion. It incessantly spun hatred towards Russia, styling the war “unprovoked” while hiding the provocations. They told us Russia was nothing more than a gas station with nuclear weapons. Now, as events force acknowledgment of helplessness, Europe’s leaders are in panic. The colonists of Europe’s power are nowhere more evident than in the de-industrialisation of Germany (Financial Times, Reuters).

After this, one need only look at HS2. Over £100 billion has been sunk into a high-speed railway (BBC)—money enough to build a hundred hospitals—sheer waste. The destruction of Britain, which began under Margaret Thatcher, has now reached completion. We manufacture little, export less, and there is no lever left to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. It is a slow and painful decline.

Our energies, our cash, our diplomacy—all went towards the Ukraine war. And what has this exposed? Our own weakness. Britain once relied on American backing to punch above its weight. Without Washington, Britain is revealed as not merely lightweight but weightless. The British Army now numbers barely 73,000 troops (House of Commons Library), the smallest since the Napoleonic era.

Sir Keir Starmer, the current Prime Minister, postures on the global stage but neglects the home front. He should turn his attention to the British people: pensioners deprived of winter fuel payments (Guardian), households facing the highest electricity prices in Europe (Statista), a standard of living in relentless decline, uncontrolled immigration, and food bills that rise week by week. These are the true crises.

Instead, Starmer played his part in the theatre of European leaders—dismissed by George Galloway as “the seven dwarfs”—who flew to Washington and Alaska to posture over Ukraine. All this while their own nations edge toward the fate of Greece during its debt crisis (IMF, BBC): dependent, broken, and leaders sovereign states humiliated by Trump.