Listen, I don’t box all that well — my dad used to try and get me to punch his nose, and I did glance off it occasionally, but I was six at the time.
The Russians are in a dilemma. They’re losing and don’t want to lose their lives. Now, some of them were probably lapping up the caviar as Ukrainians were being blasted to smithereens, just as they were at the UN — well, they are toothless, everyone says, so no toasties for them.
So, with no boxing gloves on, let’s try and sort this out by looking a bit at little things called laws and principles.
1) Estonia can decide for herself who she lets in. It’s a sovereign country and that’s what sovereignty means. The reason they do or do not let people in is up to them. They can exclude people with blue eyes if they want. That’s the law, if not much of a principle.
2) Principle: people in danger at home can ask other countries to take them in. When we say of Russian soldiers “Blast the buggers to hell,” then, even if there were de facto no danger, it certainly seems as if we wish there were. So, going to war is dangerous.
But the law says Russia can mobilise who it blooming well pleases. It’s their law. So, are Russian 18-year-olds being oppressed?
We rail at Russia for being an oppressive country with no freedom and then tell 18-year-old potential conscripts to “Go back and punch their noses.” There is — and I don’t like to be too controversial, but needs must — an argument to say that the people whose noses are in Moscow and need punching are only there because we cosied up to them for our own benefit and thought that doing that would make them into coy little liberals, and we were wrong. And so were Russia’s people wrong.
Why don’t we go and punch the noses of Moscow? Well, because we have quite a bit to lose if we do that: gas, and nuclear destruction. Do we imagine that 18-year-old conscripts have nothing to lose? And everything to gain? By laying down their lives in the name of a vain hope of liberalism? A liberalism that they’ve been learning to put down by indoctrination and having Kalashnikovs shoved into their hands for the past five years or more, in their school Youth Armies? It's not Ph.D. students that Putin’s sending to Ukraine — it's actually trained soldiers.
And they are now balking because the hour is nigh for putting their skills to work, and now their consciences are saying “It’s wrong;” either that or their feet are saying “Leg it — I want to be a Ph.D. student.”
We all wish Mr Putin would change his mind. But if his people do, that’s wrong, is it? We tell them, “Don't just change your mind, go and kill the bastard who won’t change his,” like someone changed JFK’s mind, into mush. Yes, the principle is exactly the same. Nice, the rule of law and principles.
Don’t tell me, “This is different.” Nothing is different to a law or a principle. Not one that’s worthy of the name, at least.