This article is taken from the December-January 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

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Choosing enemies wisely 

Brendan Simms [BOOKS, OCTOBER] states categorically that Putin must lose in Ukraine, otherwise the West will be threatened, and that Putin’s Russia is the primary threat to the West, not China.

This is patently wrong. After 32 months fighting, Russia has still not overwhelmed Ukraine and has even been obliged to call up more men just to maintain the struggle to control eastern Ukraine. Russia is manifestly not capable of replacing US dominance and “Pax Americana”.

The West failed to read the warning signs from Russia at the Munich security conference in 2007; Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022 after calling repeatedly for Ukrainian non-alignment. 

China, however, is looking to displace American hegemony. Unilateral appropriation of Hong Kong will undoubtedly be followed by absorbing Taiwan. Persistent military manoeuvres there and creation of naval bases around the South China Sea demonstrate this. China manifestly wishes to avenge her past humiliation at Western hands and remove all trace of previous Western domination. 

That done, she seeks to achieve world dominance. Buying influence, establishing military bases, trade routes, ports, giving financial credits and making self-serving trade agreements around the world all betray China’s ambitions.

Why, then, do so many experts in our leading universities take such an absurd line about a military threat from Russia? 

Because they approach the evidence with Western cultural assumptions and a sense of affront at Putin’s invasion. They therefore refuse to look beyond their outrage and find proper, historical and human explanations. If they care to read the assessments of experienced 20th-century American diplomats such as Henry Kissinger and George Kennan, they may begin to understand.

Graham R. Catlin

Kergrist-Moëlou, France

Truth and consequences 

William Atkinson’s mischievous call for a Thomas Cromwell-style dissolution of Britain’s universities [DISSOLVE THE HOTBEDS OF WOKERY, NOVEMBER] begs the question: if the quality of higher education at so many universities is so poor, both intellectually and in the ultimately minimal boost to graduate salaries, why don’t they go under?

Sure, as Atkinson says, the ready cash cow of foreign students and job credentialisation are factors. But isn’t the reality that universities are sustained by the worst sort of cod-marketisation? 

They’ve been freed to market themselves, expand as much as they like and charge fees (albeit not at the rates they would like) whilst knowing — implicitly, if not explicitly — that the government will not let them fail, no matter how shoddy their business plan or academic reputation. 

It is time the Government let higher education’s profligate underachievers go to the wall pour encourager les autres. Sadly, our campuses are allowed to inhabit a consequence-free environment due to Whitehall’s misguided belief that they are too important to fail.

Patrick Jarvis

Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Set the markets free

Sebastian Milbank’s complaint [“DON’T IDOLISE ROGER SCRUTON”, NOVEMBER] that “the free market is failing to deliver either greater equality or growth” seems to me unsustainable. We have not enjoyed anything like free markets since politicians recognised the benefits to them of globalisation and regulatory quangos.

Andrew Smith

Epping, Essex 

Amp Squib

Back in 2015, I noted that the price of photovoltaic panels was falling rapidly and expected government subsidies soon to follow suit. My Edwardian roof needed extensive repair, so I decided to have them installed concurrently. Any dreams of mitigating the energy apocalypse described by Andrew Orlowski [COUNTDOWN TO ENERGY APOCOLYPSE, NOVEMBER] were soon dashed, however. 

I am permitted to feed no more than 16 amps into the grid, which translates as roughly 3.75 kilowatts. The south-facing side of one gable extension generates the maximum on a sunny day. There is plenty of room for more capacity on the roof but not, alas, in the grid.

Dr Iain Salisbury

Edgbaston, Birmingham

Backing Boris

Robert Hutton criticises Boris Johnson for claiming in a previous book “that the Germans had succeeded in capturing Stalingrad” [BOOKS, NOVEMBER]. 

Yet the Germans did indeed capture Stalingrad, and Field Marshal von Paulus’ headquarters was located under the GUM store in the city centre there and can be visited today. The Battle of Stalingrad was the successful Russian attempt to re-capture the city.

Andrew Roberts

House of Lords