US President Trump’s aggression heralds new world order where invasions are acceptable – and takes us ‘towards the brink.’ Ex-spy reveals his chilling prediction of new threat to the UK.
In just over a month of chaos US President Donald Trump has done more to destabilise the West than the Kremlin has managed to do in 70 years.
His achievements are absolutely breathtaking: hugely emboldening Russia, declaring a trade war with China and desperately shaking NATO to its very core. Trump has trampled on years of choreographed global diplomacy, insulting a widely respected European wartime leader, his crass Vice President gobbing off against UK troops. And with his admiration for Russian despot Vladimir Putin and China’s autocratic President Xi Jinping he has opened the door for both to muscle-flex.
In plain sight his threats and actions are almost certainly clearing the way for a US split from NATO – a terrible move for Europe but also awful for the States too. And one former western intelligence officer warned me that he believes Russia’s threats towards NATO countries like the UK are about to become more overt. He said: “I believe the Russian air and sea incursions towards Britain are going to go on the increase and become more threatening to test Britain in particular. They will become increasingly erratic and aggressive, increasing the possibility of taking the West to the brink of some kind of conflict.
“What we are likely to see is Russia going more easy on the US with its illegal or threatening activity, whilst upping the pressure on the UK. It will serve further to drive a wedge between the US and its NATO allies and emphasise perhaps that the US is better off without us. And Trump’s repeated declarations about taking over other countries are making it seem invasions of sovereign territory are acceptable. It is a very worrying prospect.”
Today’s horror show that would not have happened without Trump consists of: Russian forces brandishing weapons aboard a warship in the English – and an unusually indiscreet China bursting out of the conflict closet and openly threatening “war.” A long period of so-called “grey-zone” conflict from NATO’s enemies that fall just below the threshold of all-out war, such as cyber attacks, is hurtling catastrophically to an end. The Russian assassinations, China’s cyber attacks, theft of billions of pounds worth of research and development from the west will continue, perhaps never going away.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “shadow fleet” is becoming increasingly active off Britain’s coast, lurking in UK waters, apparently searching for crucial undersea communications cables linking Europe and the UK to the United States. Submarines are suspected of doing the same and Moscow’s long-range bombers, acting as surveillance warplanes have to be shooed off regularly by UK Typhoon fighter jets.
Every day in this lightning-fast reshaping of the world and its loyalties Trump, far from stopping war, is bungling his way towards creating the conditions for war. In response to Trump’s slapping of trade tariffs on China, Beijing now warns it is primed and ready for “any type of war” with America. He has catapulted two conflicts, against Russia and China into the open.
It has shaken western militaries from a slumber brought on by the thought that we had a few years before we needed to worry. And behind the scenes intelligence agencies are scrambling to try and smooth over the rifts with the United States before it is too late. But with Trump at the helm a future escalation is looking increasingly likely and we already approaching that brink.
