“The Red Army’s strength rests above all in the fact that it does not wage a predatory imperialistic war, but a patriotic war, a war of liberation, a just war. The Red Army's task is to liberate our Soviet territory from the German invaders, the residents of our towns and villages who, before the war, were free and lived like human beings and who are now oppressed and suffer pillage, subjection and famine – and lastly to liberate our women from the outrages to which they have been subjected by the Fascist fiends. The Red Army has to annihilate the German Fascist occupationists since they wish to enslave our Motherland, or when they are being surrounded refused to lay down their arms and surrender. The Red Army annihilates them because they seek to enslave our Motherland. The Red Army, like any army of any other people, is entitled to annihilate and bound to annihilate the enslavers of our Motherland.”

The end of a long windy speech by Stalin at a huge parade in Moscow on the 24th anniversary of the day the Red Army first went into battle (23 February 1918) quoted in Rupert Matthews Stalingrad: The Battle that Shattered Hitler’s Dream of World Domination [and absolutely characteristic of the rhetoric of totalitarians - one cannot imagine Churchill or Roosevelt talking in this way].

In my latest Loonie Politics column I ask why, if things are so bad in the United States, it remains the indispensable nation and why Donald Trump, for all his glaring defects, remains better than so many of his rivals and critics, including in apparently securing the control over Greenland everyone ridiculed him for.

“For the British the war was a practical necessity, a sentiment captured by the slogan ‘business as usual.’ As one soldier put it in a letter to his parents on October 1, 1914: ‘We are just at the beginning of the struggle I’m afraid, and every hour we should remind ourselves that it is our great privilege to save the traditions of all centuries behind us. It’s a grand opportunity, and we must spare no effort to use it, for if we fail we shall curse ourselves in bitterness every year that we live, and our children will despise our memory.’ For the Germans this was a war to change the world; for the British this was a war to preserve a world. The Germans were propelled by a vision, the British by a legacy. For the average British soldier there was no question of who was responsible for the war.”

Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era

“In foreign policy, as in many other areas, you must not allow the answer you intuit to the followup ‘What can we do?’ to interfere with clear analysis of the first question ‘Is there a problem and if so, what is it?’”

One of mine, from July 2002, re Iraq.

“Jerome K. Jerome, author of the enormously successful Three Men in a Boat, took the line that the sporting spirit was the essence of civilization and called on the Germans to treat the war as ‘The Greatest Game of All’: ‘Come, gentlemen, let us make an honorable contest of it, that shall leave as little bitterness behind it as may be. Let us see if we cannot make a fine game of it that we shall be all the better for having played out to the end. From which we shall all come back home cleaner minded, clearer seeing, made kinder to one another by suffering. Come, gentlemen, you believe that God has called upon you to spread German culture through the lands. You are ready to die for your faith. And we believe God has a use for the thing called England. Well, let us fight it out. There seems no other way. You for St. Michael and we for St. George; and God be with us both. But do not let us lose our common humanity in the struggle. That were the worst defeat of all: the only defeat that would really matter, that would really be really lasting. Let us call it a game. After all, what else is it?’”

Modris Eksteins Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Era

In my latest Loonie Politics column I argue that despite his recent byelection wins and high standing in the polls, Mark Carney is in fact already a failure because across the board his policies are achieving feeble or disastrous results, and even in Canadian politics reality matters eventually.

“One of two Victoria crosses awarded during the battle of Kohima went to Lance Corporal John Harmon of the Royal West Kents for his brave exploits. Sniper Harman – who spent much of his boyhood on the remote Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel owned by his millionaire father Martin – sprang into action when he spotted a Japanese light machine gun team taking over a nearby trench. Without hesitation he sprinted some 35 yards towards the trench, flung a grenade which killed the two Japanese inside and returned to his line bearing a captured gun. Two days later on 9 April in cold, wet weather he repeated this astonishing performance, only this time there were five men in the trench armed with automatic weapons and he himself used a fixed bayonet rather than a grenade. ‘When all the enemies were dead he walked back to his lines ignoring his comrades’ pleas to run for cover. He was killed by a burst of fire and died, saying “I've got to go. It was worth it – I got the lot.”’ His actions kept the hill in British hands for the time being at least.”

Karen Farrington Victory in the Pacific: Pearl Harbor to the Fall of Okinawa [she does not footnote this or any quotation].

“Our motive may be taken to be the desire to serve our day and generation in the way that seems nearest to our hand. The battle is not always to the strong nor the race to the swift. Victory in war cannot be counted upon but what can be counted upon is that we should go forward determined to do what we can to bring this war to the end which we believe best for our friends and comrades in arms, without boastfulness or forgetting our duty, resolved to do the right so far as we can see the right.”

Part of Orde Wingate’s words to the Chindits as they set out into Burma in February 1943, quoted in Karen Farrington Victory in the Pacific: Pearl Harbor to the Fall of Okinawa [and note the contrast with the tone and content of totalitarian wartime or for that matter peacetime rhetoric].