Category Archives: News

Russian President Vladimir Putin may not have actively colluded with Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential campaigns. He may not have plotted with the Brexiteers in the referendum vote of the same year. But he has certainly benefited from the results—BIG TIME

Those results are an erratic president dividing America and angering European allies.  On the other side of the Atlantic it is a Britain hopelessly split over membership of the EU. The turmoil in both countries is proof that even the darkest clouds contain a silver lining for someone somewhere. In this case the main beneficiary is Russia.

Russia is Britain and America’s main foreign adversary. It is in the interests of President Putin that the Anglo-Saxon world’s two main pillars are distracted by domestic divisions so that he is free to conduct an increasingly authoritarian and repressive domestic agenda and pursue foreign adventures abroad.

The end of the Cold War saw an initial change in Moscow’s attitude towards the EU and NATO. But Vladimir Putin has reversed that. He clearly wants to re-establish Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe. The EU and NATO block that ambition. A second Cold War looms if it is not already upon us. But Washington and London are too distracted to notice or do anything about it

Many in the Trump Administration argue that China is the bigger threat. But little is being done about the growing influence of the Eastern giant other than slapping a blanket of tariffs on Chinese goods which only rebounds on the US and world economy. In the meantime China continues to establish its hold on the South China Sea; develop its Belt/Road Initiative; suppress human rights, block the internet and gun down demonstrators in Hong Kong.

The two wannabe super powers are not the only problems. North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them, despite President Trump’s “great relationship” with hereditary communist dictator Kim Jong-un. The American president wasn’t bothered by short-range missile tests—and tweeted accordingly. They couldn’t reach the American mainland. But this week Kim launched a missile from a submarine. This means he now has the capability to move the launch pads for his nuclear weapons to within easy range of American cities. There has been no response from a White House under congressional siege.