Watch Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn refuse to say whether he would abide by one of the UK’s (and one the world’s) key treaty relationships, namely the North Atlantic Treaty that created NATO:

The generally understood key idea of the North Atlantic Treaty is that ‘an attack on one is an attack on all’, ie that NATO allies are committed to fight back militarily any armed aggression against one of the treaty signatory nations. This, needless to say, is not what the treaty provides in its famous Article V:

Article 5

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

In other words, if a NATO member is attacked its allies shall ‘consider’ (sic) that attack to be an attack on themselves too. Hence they each will have their usual options of individual or collective self-defence and they each will do what they each deem necessary to help the attacked partner, including using armed force.

Thus there is no obligation to use force – it’s just one of the available options. But it’s also a damn powerful option: who including any errant aggressor knows what will happen if ‘limited’ military responses to an act of aggression somehow go wrong? Or if things just go wrong anyway?

J Corbyn may or may not have given much thought to these subtleties. Had he done so he might have answered the question thusly:

“It’s quite clear that under the NATO treaty we have the right to use force to support a NATO ally that’s being attacked. It’s also clear that we are not obliged to do so.

How we would in fact respond to an open act of armed aggression against a NATO ally would be worked out urgently with our NATO allies. Armed force might not be the wisest or even most effective option. But it would be one very real option, as anyone out there who might be contemplating attacking a NATO member will well understand!

I won’t focus on NATO for solving Europe’s problems. There are many other diplomatic fora including OSCE that need to be used much more actively to promote peaceful cooperation in ways all our partners including Russia can accept…”

But J Corbyn did not say anything as subtle or even as cunning as that. Instead he gave away the shop, refusing to offer even any theoretical use of force as an option:

“I don’t wish to go to war … I want to achieve a world in which we don’t need to go to war – that can be done.”

Lo! Simon Jenkins finds this a step too far:

Now he appears to have lurched instead against Nato. That is a different matter. It has nothing to do with nuclear deterrence, unless Corbyn’s policy is to abandon Nato and rely instead on Britain’s nuclear force to defend his country. If so, the Kremlin must be weeping with joy.

Corbyn could sensibly have questioned Nato’s current purpose, not least its inexcusable support for America’s retaliatory war in Afghanistan. He could have warned against giving defensive assurances to non-Nato states along Russia’s borders. He could even have questioned the whole purpose of an alliance forged in the cold war, perhaps one that is no longer fit for purpose.

He did none of this. He implied that Britain’s central alliance is not an alliance, that Britain’s word was not its bond. That is wild.

Why exactly is Jeremy Corbyn saying something wildly stupid?

Let’s assume that he indeed wants to achieve a world or at least a Europe where everyone just … gets along. No nasty threats or aggression or military sabre-rattling. Hullo clouds, hullo sky!

The way to getting there is not blocked by Nice Guys. It’s blocked by Bad Guys: certain leaders and brutish advisers and huge complex greedy interests all of which don’t much favour blandly ‘getting along’ even as a utopian goal. Rather they prefer projecting strength and crushing weakness, maybe up to and including grabbing other countries’ land and resources if they think they can get away with it. They are people who just think differently. People with values that are not ours. See eg ISIS. And, perhaps, President Putin.

So the absolute overriding objective of any serious security policy is not to project weakness and above all not to make unilateral concessions. On the contrary, it means projecting strength both individually and with allies, as only strength will catch the attention of Bad Guys and give them a reason to talk to you and take you seriously. If they have to consider that you may hit them back hard if they hit you or someone else, that complicates their calculations. It gives them reason to pause and mull over different, less aggressive ways to behave.

Once they are in mulling mode, you can propose talking seriously about wholesale defence reductions and mutual confidence-building measures. You can offer to discuss new rules, along with the transparency needed to assure everyone’s honesty in upholding them.

This is how international negotiation works. It can be highly effective if leaders on all sides are smart and determined – and strong.

The Corbyn approach of giving every impression of the UK under his leadership renouncing armed force even as an option is therefore utterly stupid, including in terms of the lofty goals Corbyn himself sets. Why should bullies talk to sissies? Especially when a sissy makes unilateral concessions. Who knows? Glare at them for a bit longer and maybe they’ll give away even more, when you’re giving away precisely nothing!

Worse than that. Corbyn actually weakens us! For if we Brits start to give the impression that we rule out armed force a priori to support our allies despite our international obligations, they will have no reason to defend us should we somehow get attacked. And as we are one of the few NATO members with any significant military capability, the whole NATO structure will risk unraveling.

It’s the credibility of all the options under Article V including armed force that has sheltered Europe from war for decades and allowed so much prosperity to grow here and around the planet. Everyone has invested for growth, as war was ruled out. It really is wild if not deranged to throw out silly local crowd-pleasing teasers that hint at abandoning that fundamental principle unilaterally.

Corbyn is nothing but consistent. When it comes to any policy choice that might cause us to consider doing something Moscow does not like, he unerringly opts for the option Moscow is most likely to favour. It’s best to leave it to the cool privacy of a psychiatrist’s couch to try to work out why someone who has railed against ‘imperialism’ for decades should fail to see that Moscow is still grappling to hold together the Tsarist empire and maybe even to re-expand it.

The rest of us can marvel at the way the Labour Party is succumbing to a primitive naive ignorant Russiaphilic junk Leftism that leaves it heading for something close to electoral obliteration next time round. In normal circumstances these useless Corbyn answers would be a serious news story. But the cynical newsmongers know that Corbyn is now so absurd that no-one cares any more.