'Military idiot and bar'

It is tempting to think that retired army officers are stupid. The ones who become British Conservative MPs, for example, or the ones who write for the papers. The explanation for the things they say must be more nuanced, that they are trained to be soldiers not geopolitical analysts. 

Colonel Richard Kemp was in charge of the British troops we sent to Afghanistan (why didn't we know better, after losing three Afghan wars?) and writes in the Daily Telegraph  In February of last year he hoped that Ukraine could take back the territory lost to Russia the previous year and part of Crimea, 'but only with our support'.

A total Russian collapse is surprisingly close

Ukraine can retake Crimea and bring about the total implosion of Putin’s forces, but only with our support

I hoped he was right but did not believe it. Many people thought the same in the defence establishment but people high up in Whitehall feared Russian victory, as did people kept off the mainstream media like Professor John Mearsheimer or retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor. The latter has said so all along and sympathises with Vladimir Putin, as do other podcasters.

Colonel Kemp on April Fool's Day last year.

Today Colonel Kemp thinks 

I do not sympathise with Putin (though I see that his fear of American expansion is genuine, and even reasonable, not a pretext for invasion) but I do not think Ukraine could have won last year. 

I think that what was necessary then was a ceasefire, as now. The idea of accepting that the territory that Russia has captured is lost is something people like Colonel Kemp can't bear to accept, not for military reasons but because it would be 1938 again. 

For people like them and most people in the US defence establishment it is always 1938. 

You will not be surprised to learn that he thinks Israel is fighting on behalf of the west. 

But he is a soldier trained to command men, not to understand politics, especially complicated foreign politics

History teaches us to learn from the mistakes of the past how to make new mistakes.