It is natural for us Brits to believe that we are pretty good throughout our history. Unfortunately, the record is not as good as we kid ourselves into thinking it is. In fact, the facts show that we have been much bigger aggressors for much longer than the Russians.
We also like, quite naturally, to think of other nations as worse than us, clean living, honest Brits. So we end up pointing a finger at others we consider for worse nations, like Russia and clean forget that three fingers are pointing back at us.
The BBC International Editor, Jeremy Bowen wrote,
"Western imperialists did not invent intervention but they perfected it."*1 That was particularly true of the English who had the biggest empire the world has ever known. That meant domination, control and forcing ourselves onto unwilling people for 400 years. Nothing to be proud of.
Our enemy throughout the Cold War was the USSR, with Russia at its heart. We deceive ourselves into thinking that we won and so crow about our victory. Our misplaced triumphalism and the wrong kind of economics, which we persuaded Russia to adopt throughout the 90s, were the breeding ground for Putin's bitterness and anger towards the West. It reinforced his Russian nationalism and distrust of the West. It led to the current war on Ukraine.*2
Russia invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s, so we started funding and arming the Mujahedin to see them off - in 1989. This was a repeat of the Great Game, fighting with Russia over control of Afghanistan in the 1800s. The Mujahedin went from our friend to our enemy and we ended up fighting them. The perverse Brits - "perfidious Albion". Why can't these pesky foreigners understand that when we invade it is always for their good! Full-scale war was launched on Afghanistan and the Mujahedin after 9/11 in 2001 because they hosted Osama bin Laden.
I've heard, so measured and fair, Jeremy Bowen call our intervention in both Afghanistan and Iraq "catastrophic" for their populations.
*1 'The Making of the Modern Middle East', p 18
*2 'Putin and the Return of History' by the Sixsmiths
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