Netanyahu shows us how to win in Ukraine – hit your enemy ruthlessly

Zelensky and Netanyahu
Zelensky and Netanyahu

Whether you agree or don’t agree with the Israeli prime minister’s methods (I don’t), Israel is showing the world that UN talk and asking people nicely doesn’t work.

Benjamin Netanyahu is showing that if you want to see your plans through nothing beats determination and unilaterally sticking to national interest come what may. He knows that to achieve your aims you sometimes have to risk international popularity and not hide in the niceties of the diplomatic cocktail circuits.

Netanyahu knows many people and nations just want the current crisis to go away. I was always struck as defence secretary how many people would ask me, “When will it all be over?” – as if these conflicts were interrupting them watching their favourite soap opera.

I dislike Netanyahu for many reasons but the diplomatic blob seems to forget that in his eyes he is fighting for every dead concert goer, every hostage and every part of the Jewish community. He himself was once injured in Lebanon freeing hostages and his brother was killed on the Entebbe raid in 1976.

The Israeli prime minister means what he is doing and he knows the international community will take so long to actually do anything that he must just get on with it. For if he doesn’t, no one else will help protect Israel.

Our dear Foreign Office is perplexed why he hasn’t listened to calls for restraint from us and others. Bless them. They really haven’t a clue. So obsessed has the FCDO become on chairing sub committees at the UN that it can’t recognise the real world when it sees it.

One of the most important parts of a military plan is “the maintenance of the aim”. Stick to it. Drive it. Mean it.

It is why I have said in these pages before that Britain’s soft power must always be backed up by hard power. Ready, deployable and lethal.

Sadly amongst all the stories of the new PM’s suit collection and Beirut many would have missed the efforts in the US by the Ukrainian president to try and get the West to show strength towards Russia.

Volodymyr Zelensky came to the White House with a plan. I am not sure he left with anything other than more warm words.

All of us in the West have made strong and bold statements towards Russia. But the reality is we haven’t maintained our aim and the Western policy of incrementally helping Ukraine does not work.

Putin doesn’t think we mean it because he sees us wobble, hide in the “crowd” and deliberate while he sends more of his own into the meat grinder.

Putin has two trump cards. The first is he will send wave after wave of Russian citizens to their deaths knowing he is insulated from domestic rebellion.

The second is he doesn’t really believe we mean it when we say “he must fail and Ukraine must be victorious”.

Perhaps he is aware of the Foreign Office and Cabinet Office officials that lobby for Britain “not to get ahead of the pack”.

The Kremlin despot thinks right across Europe’s chancelleries, officials and politicians will soon be saying, “When will all this go away? How quickly can we return to a world where we can spend taxes on health services, benefits and public transport?”

Maybe he is right. But I believe there is a way to prove Putin wrong.

Yes, it takes leadership and unpopular decisions and yes, it takes risk as well. Ukraine can win and Putin can and indeed must fail.

That nasty little dictator using murder, invasion and threats can not win – for the sake of all our futures.

Both President Zelensky and the West have a role to play. It starts with Ukraine mobilising itself fully – as we did in 1939 and then again 1941.

The West can train them. Britain could train 100,000 alone if it wanted to.

Imagine what all of Europe could do. We can train them here, but we can also train them in Ukraine.

We should send troops to help train and maintain the Ukraine army. Not fighting, but enabling the rear echelons to help service the equipment we have all sent. Troops could help medically treat the injured.

And Britain should use its often paraded “leadership” to drive for agreement on Ukraine’s membership of Nato. There are plenty in Europe who will join us. Some already have.

Meaning what we say matters. It matters to Putin, Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah. It matters most to China.