Putin is evil — like many others with whom we made peace

Once again we are filled with a feeding frenzy of denunciation about a political leader we don ’ t like. Vladimir Putin is variously described as a war criminal, a deranged dictator, a psychopath, a new Hitler, or consumed by face-lift drugs, as every tabloid clich é of obloquy is heaped upon his head by commentators and politicians.

He may indeed be all of these things and more. But the English belief that the louder the denunciations — whether of Napoleon, the Kaiser, Hitler, Stalin, Nasser, Ayatollah Khomenei and now Putin — the quicker they will be vanquished, is a comfort blanket which prevents proper analysis of what drives our enemies, what our foes’ priorities may be, and what will stop or alter their direction of travel.

The idea that anyone we see as a major threat and are prepared to use military force or major sanctions against has to be evil and irrational is a reflex, especially for editors.

But alas, in their own terms, in their own world outlook, in their own set of priorities, many of our worst enemies have been clever, thoughtful, industrious politicians who believe their decisions to be rational and in their nation ’ s interest — even if at the time their actions aroused furious denunciations.

The Second World War generation has mostly died out, but in France for many years after 1945 there was a vivid, livid hatred of Britain over the wanton killing of 1,297 defenceless French sailors early in July 1940, when the British sank French warships at their North African port near Oran, on the Algerian coast. The Royal Navy, on Churchill’s orders, did so to prevent any chance of the French fleet falling into German hands, despite the assurances of French naval commanders they would never side with the mutual enemies of Britain and France. History has decided the British were right — but few of the French linked to their navy consider the slaughter as anything other than l’Albion perfide at its very worst.

The White House has wisely “reinterpreted” President Biden’s words in Warsaw about Putin, calling for the “butcher” to be removed from power. These ad lib remarks were thrown out in passion during his visit to Poland, but also destined for Polish-Americans back home who will vote late this year in mid-term elections.

We can all cheer Boris Johnson ’ s bellicosity when he says “ Putin must fail and be seen to fail”, but there is little chance of the Russian leader negotiating anything if he assumes the man on the other side of the table wants his destruction.

There is nothing being said about Putin now that was not said about Stalin both during his lifetime and by endless authors since. But a new book, Stalin ’ s Library. A Dictator and His Books (Yale University Press) by the British historian, Geoffrey Roberts, long based at the University of Cork, reveals that whatever monstrous cruelties Stalin imposed on Russians, Ukrainians and others before 1941, his ruthless conduct of war, or his brutal colonisation of half of Europe after 1945, he was one of the best-read leaders of his era. He devoured books every day of his life and left behind a library of 25,000 books, all catalogued according to a system he invented.

Stalin was no great intellectual and only read Russian and his native Georgian, but how many of the Putin denouncers in London or Washington can read a word of a foreign language? They — we — have the advantage of a liberal education at school and university, whereas Stalin went to a narrowly religious school, where he got into trouble for stealing books from the library.

Lenin , Trotsky and other originators of Bolshevik terror — which to their minds differed little from Robespierre ’ s terror or Cromwell ’ s massacres of Catholics in Ireland, needed to secure the republic in France or the supremacy of Parliament over the autocracy of England ’ s Royalist Stuarts — were proper multi-lingual intellectuals. Stalin was not an original writer, but he was a superb editor   who worked for hours each day on the papers sent to him for approval, much as a British PM or minister has to plough through his or her red box every evening before going to sleep.

“ Stalin was no psychopath. Indeed, it was the power of his emotional attachment to deeply held beliefs that enabled him to sustain decades of brutal rule, ” writes Roberts. This is uncomfortable reading, yet just denouncing evil politics is neither policy not politics. No British Prime Minister was more condign than Margaret Thatcher in her condemnation of IRA terrorism. It served little purpose and just added to the loss of life in the 1980s. It needed a calmer John Major and a peace-making Tony Blair to end decades, if not centuries, of conflict between Britain and Ireland.

This culminated in the Queen shaking hands with an IRA “ killer ” — the Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister , Martin McGuinness, in 2012. It is certainly arguable that Tony Blair, George W . Bush and other Western leaders were too quick to roll out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin two decades ago. “ Si vis pacem, para bellum ” (if you want peace, prepare for war) is as true today as in Roman times.

The disarmament of the democratic world this century has seen the reduction of the British Army to its lowest level since 1714. We still refuse to create European programmes to build drones, tanks, warships and  missiles , with each country desperately clinging on to its tiny national arms industry. Nor did we learn from the wars in Chechnya, Georgia or Syria or Russian interference in the Balkans that Putin was not a man of peace. The warnings of journalists such as Anders Å usland, Edward Lucas or Roger Boyes have been ignored, highlighting the weakness of foreign policy thinking by our diplomats and generals.

Insulting Putin is no substitute for a concerted policy to push him out of Ukraine. And again the cold miserable fact will soon surface. You stop wars by talking to your enemy, not shaking fists and spluttering with your friends.

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