‘The Spectator’: The problem with John Healey’s tough talk on Russia

What are the odds that Vladimir Putin is going to be cowed when British Defence Secretary John Healey warns him ‘we see you. We see your activity over our cables and our pipelines, and you should know that any attempt to damage them will not be tolerated and will have serious consequences’? Pretty poor, it is safe to say. Yet what might seem like a harmless piece of political grandstanding actually carries serious risks for the UK, ‘The Spectator’ writes.

Healey was briefing on a recent operation to monitor two submarines from GUGI, the Russian Navy’s Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, which spent a month surveying undersea cables in and near Britain’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Extending 200 nautical miles from a country’s coastline, the EEZ is not the same as our territorial waters, which are only up to 12 nautical miles deep. Other countries’ ships can operate freely there, so long as they are not fishing or mining.

How long before voters tire of the ‘Russians are coming’ line?

The Russians do not seem all that impressed by Britain’s supposed show of strength

The presence, additionally, of an Akula-class nuclear-powered attack submarine as a decoy or escort was a concern, but the fact is that GUGI had every legal right to be there, even if Britain is naturally suspicious of their intent. It doesn’t mean that Moscow is imminently preparing to damage these cables carrying power and telecommunications traffic (many of the attacks in the Baltic Sea for which they were blamed have later been found to be accidents). However, it is almost certain that were open hostilities to break out – God forbid, they might – such survey missions are intended to ensure Russia is prepared.

In this context, Healey’s breast-beating, flag-flanked press conference rang rather hollow. The Russians, we were told, were mounting a ‘covert’ operation – was the Ministry of Defence (MoD) expecting an invitation? – but ‘retreated’ after a month’s activity. It sounds awfully as if they carried out their mission and then returned home, regardless of being ‘watched, monitored and tracked’ by a single Royal Navy frigate and a P8 reconnaissance aircraft.

The Russians do not seem all that impressed by Britain’s supposed show of strength, especially coming as it does after the safe transit of several of their ‘shadow fleet’ oil tankers through the Channel. Despite Keir Starmer’s promise of tougher action, the presence of the Russian frigate Admiral Grigorovich may have helped ensure their safe passage.

It was ‘a slap for Starmer’ for the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

There is no real evidence that the Russians are looking to extend their war in Ukraine into the rest of Europe

So far, so predictable. A British politician trying to sound tough on Russia to distract from the parlous state of the military and explain away the lack of any substantial commitment to the Middle East. Russian propagandists, meanwhile, happy to deride the UK as a has-been power.

Yet this kind of overblown rhetoric actually does matter, and in the worst ways. It widens the gulf between rhetoric and reality on defence and the alleged Russian threat in particular.

By contributing to a sense in Moscow that the UK and most of Europe are all mouth and no camouflage trousers, far from deterring Russia, rhetoric such as Healey’s risks the very opposite. There is no real evidence that the Russians are looking to extend their war in Ukraine into the rest of Europe.

How long before voters begin to tire of the ‘Russians are coming’ line in this era of attention deficit disorder politics? The risk is that people either then come to question this or demand tougher (and thus potentially escalatory) responses to the purported threat.

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