Shadow Warrior | Britain’s outsized, malign role in global chaos

Being a keen observer of the United Kingdom, I have lately noticed a few apparently unconnected events with dismay. If I were to connect the dots, it begins to appear that Britain has had an outsize influence on international affairs. Maybe the James Bond meme isn’t a total fantasy as I had assumed it was: a juvenile wet dream about nubile maidens and irresistible heroes bumping off sundry villains.

The reality appears to be quite impressive. This tiny, rainy island off Northwest Europe has been running quite a number of worldwide schemes. Its administrative centre, Whitehall, manages a global web of intrigue and narrative-building and has created a number of ‘imperial fortresses’, thus punching above its weight class.

One of their principal assets in gaslighting others is the BBC (not to mention their plummy accents that, for example, make Americans just melt). The BBC has a sterling reputation which does not seem well-deserved. There have been many instances of motivated bias (e.g., in their Brexit or India coverage), lack of integrity (e.g., sexual transgressions by senior staff), and so on. In reality, it is about as unabashed at pushing its agenda as Al Jazeera is about its own.

Admittedly, Britain has made one major blunder along the way, though: Brexit, which left them in trisanku mode, sort of adrift mid-Atlantic. They were distancing themselves from the European Union, counting on their so-called ‘special relationship’ with the US to sustain them, away from what they perceived, correctly, as a declining and disunited Europe. They also thought they could dominate their former colonies again (see the frantic pursuit of a Free Trade Agreement with India?) without onerous EU rules. Sadly, none of this quite worked out.

The reason is a fundamental problem: there is not much of a market for British goods anymore. Indians once coveted British products as status symbols, but today, with the possible exceptions of Rolls Royce cars and single-malt whiskey, there’s very little anybody wants from them. They still do good research and development, make aircraft engines (India could use that technology), and their apparently for-hire journalism is well-known, but that’s about it.

On the other hand, they have managed to stay entrenched in the international financial system, starting with colonial loot, especially the $45 trillion they are believed to have taken from India. It is rumoured that they used stolen Indian gold to buy distressed assets in the US after the Civil War. It is possible they had the same game plan for Ukraine: acquire rich agricultural land and mineral deposits at distressed prices. Some point to the port of Odessa as another target.

Ukraine: A bad faith actor?

It is remarkable how Boris Johnson, then PM of the UK, is alleged to have single-handedly ruined the chance of a ceasefire in April 2022 during his visit to Kyiv in the early days of the Ukraine war, when there was a chance of a negotiated cessation of hostilities with all parties adhering to the Minsk 1 and 2 agreements.

In January, just before President Donald Trump took office, UK PM Keir Starmer signed a minerals agreement with Ukraine as part of a “100-Year Partnership” that appears to pre-emptively undercut Trump’s proposed $500 billion US deal. That lends credence to allegations about the UK’s coveting minerals, as well as its not being interested in ending the tragic war.

Gold: Is it all there?

The UK does have a thing for tangible assets, including gold. A lot of the world’s gold (5,000 metric tonnes) is supposedly held in secure custody in London. But there are fears that this may not physically be there in the vaults of the Bank of England any more. They may have indulged in ‘gold leasing’, where the actual gold ends up being replaced by paper promises after it is lent out to bullion banks, from where it may be moved around and be inaccessible.

Extraordinary delays in gold deliveries in 2025 (on withdrawals to New York triggered by tariff fears) increase this concern. There is a lack of transparency in transactions in the metal in the UK. Spooked, many countries are taking their gold back. India repatriated 200+ tonnes of its own gold from London in 2024. Venezuela is fighting a court battle to get its gold back.

Then there are concerns raised by the arguably unfair freezing of Russian assets held abroad as part of Ukraine war sanctions: Starmer recently promised to give Ukraine $2 billion, basically the interest generated by those assets. This doesn’t sound quite right and has dented the image of London as a reliable financial hub. Brexit was a blow; the rise of Dubai, Singapore, Shanghai and Zurich all threaten the City of London, but it is second only to New York still.

Imperial fortresses galore

Another win for the British was the selection of Mark Carney, a former Bank of England governor, as the Prime Minister of Canada. The Anglosphere continues to be dominated by the UK, although the Commonwealth is a club that serves no particular purpose anymore, except as a curious relic of the British Empire.

This highlights the concept of ‘imperial fortresses’: far-flung outposts that have helped sustain British military power and diplomatic clout despite the loss of empire. Traditionally, these were naval bases/garrisons such as those in Malta, Gibraltar, Bermuda, etc. that allowed the British to keep an eye on the ‘restless natives’. However, I contend that the entire Anglosphere has been treated as an imperial fortress by them.

Canada, Australia and New Zealand still continue to have the British King as their head of state, which is astonishing for supposedly sovereign nations. But it’s far more interesting that, in effect, the US has been treated as another vassal by the Brits, pillow-talked into doing things that are generally only in the interests of Britain. All that pomp and circumstance has beguiled poor Americans. Whitehall, I assert, have been Svengalis to Foggy Bottom.

Master Blaster blowback?

The other metaphor is from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), where “Master Blaster” is a literal duo: Master, a cunning dwarf, and Blaster, his brawny, enforcer bodyguard. The Americans unwittingly have provided the muscle to the calculating dwarf’s machinations, which generally end up mostly benefiting the latter.

But there is yet another imperial fortress that we should consider: Pakistan. It was created expressly to be a geographically well-placed client state for the Brits to continue their 19th-century Great Game from afar to checkmate Russia and, incidentally, to contain India. From that point of view, Pakistan has been a successful imperial outpost, notwithstanding the fact that it, despite decades of US largesse, is a failing state (see the Baloch train hijack or the attack on the military convoy in Balochistan recently).

This is part of the reason why Americans have a hard time explaining why they get involved in Pakistan and Afghanistan again and again to their ultimate regret, with painful exits. They have been induced to do this by the clever Brits, who, quite evidently, sided with Muslims against Hindus in the subcontinent, for instance, in the British-led merger of Gilgit-Baltistan into Pakistan, contrary to the Instrument of Accession.

There is considerable irony in all this, because one could argue that Pakistani-origin Brits have now done a ‘reverse master-blaster’ to the Brits. That sounds eerily like the ‘reverse-Kissinger’ that Trump is supposed to be doing. Or maybe it is a ‘recursive master-blaster’, although the mind boggles at that.

Consider the facts: UK rape gangs are almost entirely of Pakistani origin; several current mayors (including Sadiq Khan in London) and past mayors are of that ethnicity, indicating a powerful vote bank; they have at least 15 MPs and a large number of councillors.

There’s Pakistani-origin Sir Mufti Hamid Patel, the chair of the Office of Standards in Education; Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary; Humza Yusuf, the former First Minister of Scotland. This imperial fortress is fighting back, indeed, and winning. The UK may not have quite anticipated this outcome.

The American vassal state is also beginning to rebel. Trump was personally incensed by the fact that Starmer sent 50 Labour operatives to work against him in the 2024 US elections: their interactions have been a bit cold.

Khalil, an embedded asset?

Then there is the case of a current cause celebre in the US, Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent. He has been accused of leading violent anti-Israel protests at Columbia University and detained on that count. Interestingly, he had a security clearance from the UK and was part of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, living in Beirut and leading a scholarship programme for Syrians. Yes, Syria.

And then Khalil suddenly showed up with a green card (not a student visa), got married to a US citizen named Noor Abdalla, finished his programme at Columbia, and so on. To me, all this sounds like it was facilitated and that he has certain powerful foreign friends. No prizes for guessing who they were.

Iraq, Libya and Syria: Humanitarian crises

Speaking of Syria, Whitehall spent at least 350 million pounds sterling between 2011 and 2024 on regime-change activities targeting the Assad government, according to Declassified UK in 2021.

The UK’s meddling in the Middle East, going back to the Sykes-Picot carving up of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and mandates in Palestine and Iraq, and even earlier to the antics of T E Lawrence, were clearly intended to advance and sustain British interests in and influence on the region. Which is not unreasonable.

The sad fact, though, is that it appears the British have actively fomented, or been deeply involved in, a lot of the military misadventures that have turned the region into a mess of human misery. To take relatively recent history, the invasions of Iraq, Libya, and now Syria were arguably dreamt up or at least actively supported by Britain.

The invasion of Iraq was certainly endorsed by Tony Blair’s infamous September 2002 dossier about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which turned out to be imaginary, but then, lol! Saddam Hussein was overthrown and killed.

The invasion of Libya saw Britain take on an even more active role. David Cameron and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy in effect prodded a somewhat reluctant Barack Obama to invade, even co-drafting the UN Security Council Resolution 1973 in 2011 that was the formal permission for the war. The net result was the killing of Muammar Gaddafi.

In the case of Syria, Britain began covert operations in 2012, with MI6 allegedly organising arms shipments, training and coordination of groups opposed to the Assad regime. The sudden fall of Assad in December 2024, driven by groups like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that Britain indirectly supported, underscores the successful outcomes of this policy.

In all three cases, a secular dictatorship was overthrown and religious extremists took over. Earlier, civilians had reasonably prosperous lives; women were generally educated and present in the workforce. After the regime changes, all three are bombed-out hellholes, with no rights for women or religious minorities. In particular, the latter have been consistently subjected to massacres, as in the recent large-scale executions of Alawites in Syria.

Even though Americans were the principal players in all these cases, the impression is that British Whitehall’s gaslighting of their US counterparts in Foggy Bottom could well have tipped the scales and turned skirmishes into outright war and disaster.

Thus it is clear that Britain is still a formidable player in the world of international relations, despite the loss of empire and relative decline. It is unfortunate, however, that the net result of its actions is to add to entropy and chaos and the loss of human lives and rights. Perfidious Albion it still is.

The writer has been a conservative columnist for over 25 years. His academic interest is innovation. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.