Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. It’s one of the oldest pieces of homespun wisdom in the book, but rarely is it practised. History is littered with examples of failure to prepare. Instead, we are much more likely simply to hope for the best. Sometimes it works out; often it doesn’t.
Nobody can say they weren’t warned. Donald Trump has never made any secret of his sympathies for Vladimir Putin. Settling the war in Ukraine was one of his promises while campaigning to be US president, and he has long warned fellow members of Nato that they need to stop sponging off America and take better care of their own defences.
And yet the spectacle of Trump actually doing what he said he was going to do has still taken European leaders entirely by surprise. They’ve been caught with their trousers down, woefully unprepared for the extreme security challenges that Trump’s actions pose. Having shamelessly milked the post-Cold War “peace dividend”, they find themselves naked before the storm.
To the delight of the Kremlin, Trump’s America has switched sides. The traditional ties of the Western alliance have all but been abandoned in favour of selling Ukraine down the river.
Meanwhile, Trump spouts Russian propaganda – that Volodymyr Zelensky is a dictator with only 4pc popular support, that America gives a lot more military aid to Ukraine than Europe, and so on – as if it’s God’s own truth. Assuming he means what he says, we are in for one of the biggest geopolitical upsets of the modern age, with a dramatic shift away from the prevailing, post-war settlement.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. It’s one of the oldest pieces of homespun wisdom in the book, but rarely is it practised. History is littered with examples of failure to prepare. Instead, we are much more likely simply to hope for the best. Sometimes it works out; often it doesn’t.
Nobody can say they weren’t warned. Donald Trump has never made any secret of his sympathies for Vladimir Putin. Settling the war in Ukraine was one of his promises while campaigning to be US president, and he has long warned fellow members of Nato that they need to stop sponging off America and take better care of their own defences.
And yet the spectacle of Trump actually doing what he said he was going to do has still taken European leaders entirely by surprise. They’ve been caught with their trousers down, woefully unprepared for the extreme security challenges that Trump’s actions pose. Having shamelessly milked the post-Cold War “peace dividend”, they find themselves naked before the storm.
To the delight of the Kremlin, Trump’s America has switched sides. The traditional ties of the Western alliance have all but been abandoned in favour of selling Ukraine down the river.
Meanwhile, Trump spouts Russian propaganda – that Volodymyr Zelensky is a dictator with only 4pc popular support, that America gives a lot more military aid to Ukraine than Europe, and so on – as if it’s God’s own truth. Assuming he means what he says, we are in for one of the biggest geopolitical upsets of the modern age, with a dramatic shift away from the prevailing, post-war settlement.