Is everyone fighting Britain's proxy wars?

Key Markets report for Friday, 30 May 2025

Over the past four or five years, Britain has been increasingly assertive in global geopolitics, where its role and influence seem disproportionate to its military and economic power. It is one of those things which, once you become aware of it, you find that it’s actually pervasive and the evidence of it pops up again and again. It gave me the impression that the “special relationship” between the US and UK was very different from the way it is conventionally understood. I first articulated this my 27 Oct. 2021 article, “The Fall of Global Britain:”

The “special relationship” between the US and Britain has been something like the Master-Blaster combination [from the Mad Max 3 film]. … Master is an old, decrepit dwarf propped up on the back of the “Blaster,” a powerful, muscular giant. The Master manipulates Blaster to fight his fights and subdue his enemies. … This metaphor could well be fitting of today’s geopolitics.

Announcing war, dashing peace

This may appear unlikely at first blush, but the idea is well corroborated. For example, former British Foreign Minister and later Prime Minister Boris Johnson effectively pre-announced the war in Ukraine: in November 2019 in a speech to the dignitaries at the City of London, Johnson issued a warning to European governments:

"We hope that our friends [in Europe] may recognize that a choice is shortly coming between mainlining ever more Russian hydrocarbons in giant new pipelines and sticking up for Ukraine and championing the cause of peace and stability."

At that time, the White House was still occupied by Donald Trump who wasn't keen on waging war against Russia, by proxy or otherwise. Before the war started and with no prodding from the US, Britain’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter stated that the UK military would have to be ready for war with Russia. Former Defense Minister, Sir Gerald Howarth said, in an interview with Sky News that, NATO should go into Ukraine, "boots on the ground," because Ukraine must win the war.

A few months later, when peace was close to breaking out in Ukraine through direct negotiations between Moscow and Kiev, it was again Boris Johnson who flew down to Kiev unannounced, to persuade President Zelensky to abandon peace negotiations and to continue fighting.

How about a game of nuclear chicken?

Later in 2022, Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), which is Britain's oldest and most prestigious think-tank proposed that the West should engage Russia in a game of nuclear chicken and the then newly revised Mutual Defense Agreement (MDA) between the UK and USA favored this strategy. Chalmers thought that the new MDA a victory for the UK and state that, "It is good news for the UK that it doesn't need to worry about a future US administration using a future renewal [of the MDA] as leverage."

In plain English: we can stir the pot and if things get ugly, the Americans will have to come to our rescue. Another example came courtesy of the British military-intelligence operative Chris Donnelly who had been busy organizing and training Ukrainian special forces since 2014. In 2022, he was working with Ukrainian Security Services on training up a commando unit in Ukraine, with the objective of conducting sabotage and surveillance operations against targets in Crimea.

Like many other British officials, Donnelly was anxious about the Americans’ wobbly commitment to Project Ukraine. In a message circulated to his collaborators on 21 September 2022, Donnelly expressed frustration with Biden administration’s cautious approach. Citing public statements by officials in Washington who were hoping for a negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia, Donnelly blasted their approach as, “so unwise as to beggar belief…” In another communique, he asserts that “This US position must be challenged, firmly and at once.”

Stiffening the US resolve through pressure

In December 2022, the BBC cited British officials who were intensely worried about the “innate caution” of Joe Biden, “who is concerned about provoking a wider global conflict.” An unnamed British official explained how London had, “stiffened the US resolve at all levels,” through “pressure.”

In 2023, after the International Criminal Court in the Hague accused Vladimir Putin for war crimes, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown penned an OpEd for The Guardian where he wrote: “We are closer than ever to arresting Putin, but the US must plan its part.” In January of 2024, then Defence Minister Grant Shapps bragged about the UK taking the lead in the war against Russia and added that, “[It] is very important that the United States follows the UK’s Lead.”

Ukraine’s own Winston Churchill, president Zelensky agreed wholeheartedly, stating at last Summer’s gathering of the European Political Community in the UK that, the UK had been, “one step ahead in its determination to support Ukraine. … This is the kind of resolve we need…” Shortly after that event, held in July 2024, Ukraine launched an incursion into Russia proper, in its southwest Kursk region.

Involvement on scale matched by no other country

American officials, who got wind of the preparations for Kursk incursion already in March 2024, confronted General Kyrylo Budanov about it, and warned him explicitly against crossing into Russia. Well… you’re not the boss of me, Budanov must have thought, and on 6 August 2024 Ukrainian troops did exactly what the Americans told him not to do. US officials were kept entirely out of the loop and considered this to be a major breach of trust. As it later turned out, that operation was entirely British-planned, as the Times of London reported:

“Unseen by the world, British equipment, including drones, have played a central role in Ukraine’s new offensive and British personnel have been closely advising the Ukrainian military… on a scale matched by no other country.”

On 29 March this year, the New York Times ran a scathing expose reaching the conclusion that the whole proxy war in Ukraine has been primarily of British concoction and design. Last weekend, we had this corroborated by none other than Britain’s opposition leader (and former banker), Kemi Badenoch. In an interview at “Sunday Morning with Trevor Philips,” she stated, among other things, that “Israel is fighting a proxy war on behalf of the UK, just like Ukraine is…”

And there you have it. Wars, as they say, are great revealers and Ukraine war has revealed much about the way things really are in the world. And it’s not only Ukraine: in most crisis flashpoints around the world, we find the same actors always stirring the pot.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking with Vanessa Beeley, veteran reporter from Syria and Lebanon. Ever since I mentioned to her the “Master Blaster” arrangement between the UK and the USA, she said she’s finding it consistent with what she’s witnessed on the ground. In yesterday’s discussion, she said that British are now largely in control of Damascus (“every single 4-star hotel in Damascus is jam-packed full of Brits,” and “Gaziantep in Turkey [just across the border from Aleppo] is MI6 Central…”] You can find our full discussion on Vanessa’s Substack below:

Unmasking Syria’s War—Truth, Propaganda & Power Games

The silver lining in all this is that once we can identify the arsonists behind many of the world’s dramas, we can also discern their agenda and their strategy, bringing the world an important step closer to transcending centuries of almost nonstop warfare over resources, trade routes and colonies.

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