‘Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of war.’ – Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare fashioned these words for Mark Antony to incite the Roman populace to rise up and kill Julius Caesar’s assassins.
They leave no room for doubt about Mark Antony’s objective or that he intended that there would be no constraints on this plan.
The late American politician Hiram Johnson has been cited as observing that the first casualty of war is truth, and perhaps that is why other politicians have a tendency to couch war in anodyne euphemisms rather than face up to the cruel reality.
When the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) waged war against the British and then the Independent Republic of Malaya between 1947 to 1960, it was styled “The Malayan Emergency.”
Though it eventually developed into a guerrilla war, at the outset the MCP attacked in battalion-strength units.
Sukarno’s full-scale military attack on Borneo in 1963, born out of his opposition to the formation of the Malaysian Federation, was styled “confrontation.”
Indonesian Army units invaded Borneo, striking at both civilian and military units, but the combined British-Malaysian military were under a political prohibition from crossing into Indonesian territory.
Eventually, British-Malaysian Special Forces did make cross-border incursions under what was code-named “Operation Claret” to strike at strategic Indonesian positions.
However, these were covert operations designed so that they could not be attributed to the British-Malaysian military.
The absurdity was that the allied forces were constrained as to how to wage the war, whereas the Indonesians were not.
The thinking in London and Kuala Lumpur appears to have been that to wage war openly against the Indonesian aggressor would have opened the Malaysian mainland to retaliatory strikes by the Indonesian air force.
General Walter Walker, the director of operations in Borneo, was compelled, figuratively, to conduct his defense of Malaysia with one hand tied behind his back.
This artificial constraint resonates with the situation that the Ukraine found itself in, starting with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s flagrant lie about a “special military operation.”
Whereas Putin has been throwing every form of weaponry at Ukraine, the Western powers supporting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s defense of his homeland have been pussyfooting around on whether or not to supply him with the weaponry he needs to do so effectively.
First there was the hesitation over the supply of Leopard 2 battle tanks: Critical time was wasted while politicians agonized over whether this would escalate the war.
Plainly, it was argued, if NATO forces were deployed in the defense of Ukraine, that would give Putin the pseudo-justification he would need to deploy battlefield nuclear weapons.
Perhaps more important, it would provide the Russian dictator and his supporters with ex post facto proof of his argument that this had been the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s plan all along.
But how could the free world stand by as mere spectators watching a nuclear superpower crush the much smaller and conventionally armed Ukraine?
Current intelligence indicates that Putin plans to embark on an aerial bombardment by deploying his air force. Finally on December 22, 2022, he admitted he was at war with Ukraine.
Ukraine’s obvious defensive strategy against the anticipated aerial attack would be to destroy the aircraft while they are on the ground in Russia. But that would involve either missile strikes or Ukraine’s small air force.
One can almost hear the anxious voices in Washington, London and the European capitals agonizing over how Putin would react.
Yet the truth is that Ukraine, outmanned and outgunned, fighting for its very survival against an enemy wholly unconstrained by any recognizable morality, does not have the luxury of pondering over Putin’s next move.
The Western powers clearly regard it as a step too far to put boots on the ground, but it behoves them, in the name of humanity and every principle of known decency, to give the Ukrainians everything they need by way of arms, equipment and training in order to combat this evil.
The people of Ukraine are the vicarious defenders of liberal Western democracy; they cannot be allowed to fail.
The West must let slip the dogs of war.
Neville Sarony QC is a noted Hong Kong lawyer with more than 50 years at the Bar.