Scaredy dogs - or dangerous dogs of war?

Have you noticed that dogs usually bark, growl and bare their teeth when they are frightened? That, I imagine, is why so many small canines are so yappy and aggressive. They hope that by getting in the first yap or nip they'll scare off what they see a big threatening hulk of a beast. It's apparently what tourists are recommended to do when confronted with a tiger defending her young - not the nipping, just making a loud noise. It's certainly what we were told to do in the Mount Kenya forest if we encountered elephants or, worse, buffaloes. So there was the occasional clashing of pangas on our way up. 

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I wonder if this is the reason for the continual shouting about China and Russia indulged in by our government and our large friend across the pond. We're like a Jack Russell terrier and a stout Rottweiler seeing an Afghan hound and a Great Dane in the park. If we had any self-confidence, we'd not bother to see sinister intent whenever they looked at us. Instead we snarl that one looks messy and the other leaves larger deposits than other dogs.

Or maybe we're like street gangs. I gather that often the motive for carrying knives is fear. If I'm threatened, I'll get in first with my weapon, and so we brandish our verbal aggression to forestall a perceived threat. However, what if the threat is imagined but not real? Our politicians and the media whom they feed are busy creating a narrative of threat, which may or may not be real. Certainly China is a major player now in terms of global economic power, and by our standards is among the most repressive states in the world. Russia, geographically huge, was once our ally in fighting the greatest scourge of the last century, but is now a declining economic force.

I don't pretend to know the facts and fiction of all the anti-Russia stories we're fed. (Nor the ones about China, or Iran.) There are a lot of puzzling elements in accounts which go apparently unquestioned. For example, why in a time of supposed international transparency and cooperation should a state bother to hack vaccine research, especially when it had made a deal with Astra Zeneca for the leading contender in the field? Or why should it send two incompetent spies on a plane together in an attempt to bump off another one in a CCTV-abundant country? 

Clearly the government would prefer us not to know as, according to the ISC report, it didn't ask the security services to investigate any potential interference with elections or referendums in the UK, thus leaving it able to say with a straight face, "See, the report found no evidence of Russian interference." Of course, if you don't look for something, you won't find it. (Sadly now it appears that even the Opposition has entered the anti-Russia game questioning the right of RT to broadcast here.)

If a government is in trouble, the traditional way out was to find a war to fight and call the country to unite against a common foe, whether Argentina or Iraq. Failing that, the current policy is to wage a war of words, to create a phoney enemy and maintain a barrage of propaganda, in cooperation with the media - which on the whole your country will believe. The trouble with this policy is that it does not tend towards peace. It tends to real war, economic or physical. And the people who suffer in war are the ordinary citizens. You have only to look at the effects of the United States' sanctions on countries such as Russia or Iran. Personally I don't wish to be part of a nation of self-righteous warmongerers. it may make us feel great, but it doesn't hide the fact that we have feet of fear. 

However, it's reasonable to ask, in what way can our government possibly be "in trouble" with its landslide majority in Parliament? Primarily because it is presiding over a country both divided and economically threatened by Brexit. The more the headlines are dominated by pandemic stories, or failing that Russia and China stories, the less notice journalists will take of the surrender of our EU-won protections (for example of food standards and the environment) and the loss of Parliamentary oversight of our national interest (for example of the NHS). Ironically even the Dominic Cummings' story would have served as a welcome distraction, because there was no way that he would have had to resign. The first "enemy" that presented itself was the Covid-19 pandemic, which our Prime Minister faced with Churchillian bravado. Sadly, although the country was remarkably united in defensive measures, the victory hasn't been won, and if and when it is, it will prove to have been terribly Pyrrhic. And so instead we have let slip the dogs of hostility on our ever useful bogeymen with a succession of stories fed to the horse-leech media.

Or maybe the "trouble" is merely a matter of Mr Johnson's and Mr Trump's approval ratings, which are disturbingly (for them) low.

In the words of the nineteenth-century poem:
"O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing." Or, in other words, "Shut up, you warmongers - and give peace a chance!"