Anybody who looks at the Ukrainian conflict will see a plan to ‘weaken’ Russia by extending NATO. The plan flowed from the doctrine developed by Halford Makinder, which saw control of the ‘Eurasia heartlands’ as being decisive in the battle for global dominance. The British intelligence establishment is still stubbornly wedded to it and was a prime mover behind the Ukraine war.

The aim in Ukraine was to weaken Russia by provoking a conflict to disrupt any effective China/Russia alliance. The result is the reverse of what was intended. Russia and China have had to deepen their alliance for mutual protection.

With the development of technology, domination of Eurasia is now both more difficult and less necessary as it was in the past and so the Makinder approach of total global domination by securing Eurasia is of decreasing strategic importance. An effective intelligence service should have concluded this before now.

It failed to and now we see the failure of ‘the west’ in Ukraine with the USA wanting out. This is a product of a fundamental defeat – NOT simply a change in US policy. The war was unnecessary and has backfired. The US now sees it as a waste of blood and treasure.

We need to reconstruct the intelligence services with an emphasis on building effective partnerships around the world based not on redundant geo-political theories, espionage and war, but on intensive practical diplomacy – as the Chinese do.

Most ‘intelligence’ information these days is from open sources gathered by GCHQ. MI6 is the ‘active arm’ that interferes subversively in the affairs of other countries. This includes espionage. It is a dangerous liability.

While there is an Intelligence Oversight Committee in Parliament, there is little awareness among members of Parliament about MI6 activity. Most information is gleaned from reports given to the press by the Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee. This evolved out of the ‘D’ notice system by which Governments could forbid media revealing information believed to endanger ‘national security’. Google the DSMA and see its terms of reference. Anyone with the slightest experience of government bureaucracy will find it amusing.

All mainstream media outlets sit on this committee and receive briefings from the ‘intelligence’ services as to how information should be ‘presented’ (ie spun) to their readers. As a result, there is overwhelming consensus in the national media and very little effort by journalists to really investigate what is going on – although there are exceptions in the non-mainstream media such as ‘Declassified UK’.

The only success of the intelligence and defence establishments is the degree to which their propaganda has been retailed through the media and kept the public ‘onside’ (ie brainwashed). That will end as the military defeat in Ukraine unfolds.

Ukraine is a failure because it was founded on a fanciful and fictional James Bond world past its sell-by date. Open-source considered intelligence and high-tech surveillance with coordinated diplomacy is the future, not espionage. We need more GCHQ and less MI6.