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Tag Archives: donald trump

Observations of an Expat: Surviving Iran

By Tom Arms | Sat 20th June 2026 - 9:23 am

America will survive the Iran War. It has survived worse. Israel may not be so fortunate. Superpowers can afford mistakes. Small countries living in dangerous neighbourhoods cannot.

People have been predicting the decline of American power since Vietnam. America lost in Vietnam, failed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and suffered humiliation in Somalia. Yet the United States remains the world’s dominant military and financial power. Superpowers can absorb defeats. They possess strategic depth.

Of course, the same may not be said about individual politicians. Donald Trump has been seriously weakened inside and outside MAGA world. So have the Republican politicians who have hitched themselves to the Trumpian star.

But in the case of Israel, there is more at stake than a few right-wing security-minded politician. Israel is a country of fewer than ten million in a hostile region. Its security rests on three pillars: military superiority, American support and deterrence—the belief among its enemies that resistance is futile.

If the Iran War has weakened any of those pillars, the consequences for Israel are potentially much greater than for the United States. America’s allies may doubt Washington’s judgment, but they are unlikely to abandon the dollar or NATO. Israel, by contrast faces increased diplomatic isolation; reduced confidence in US support; strengthened adversaries convinced that Israel’s power has limits; domestic political divisions and—most important of all—the end of the aura of invincibility that has been central to Israeli strategy since 1967.

In Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu thought he had found a kindred spirit who believed in solving problems through the barrel of a gun with a few dollars thrown in for good measure. In Gaza he humbled Hamas with American help. It cost 73,000 Palestinian lives and a great deal of international support. Americans, for the first time, began to question their unquestioning support for Israel.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged benjamin netanyahu, iran and israel | 5 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 7th June 2026 - 10:04 am

AI

Sitting next to Pope Leo XIV when he launched his controversial encyclical on AI was Chris Olah—co-founder of the AI company Anthropic.

His presence was no accident. The Pope’s 235 page “Magnifica Humanitas” calls for regulation of technology to protect the dignity of humankind.

Olah’s position is the same and he has made a name for himself by refusing to allow the Trump Administration to use Anthropic for military and intelligence purposes.

Olah is on one side of a technologically-driven political divide in Silicon Valley. On the other side are figures such as Marc Andreesen, who has been involved with many of the tech industry’s leading brands and Peter Thiel, CEO of the AI company Palantir.

Thiel and Andreesen far-right libertarians who want to avoid regulation. They see technological development as essential and that the controllers of technology should also control the politics for the benefit of all. Both men are big contributors to Donald Trump and conservative causes.

The debate goes beyond Silicon Valley to the international political stage. The Trump Administration big concern is winning the AI race with China. Donald Trump recently signed an Executive Order allow government oversight to prevent cyber-attacks. But he did so reluctantly. He wants to keep regulation to a minimum; encourage private investment in AI and then use the product as an instrument of national power.

The EU wants AI to grow. It wants investment in European AI companies but they view government’s role as a partner and referee rather than spectator.

To put it simply: Trump wants to win the race. Brussels—and the pope-want to control AI. Britain wants to win the race safely.

The difficulty for Britain is that middle positions become harder to maintain as technologies mature. During the early nuclear age, Britain initially tried to bridge Washington and continental Europe. Eventually it had to choose where to place its strategic weight.

AI may force a similar decision. If the next decade brings increasingly powerful AI systems, the central geopolitical question may not be US versus China but whether the Western world adopts the American model of strategic competition or the European model of precautionary governance

Donald Trump and the liberal consensus

The Trump administration has always been an alliance of groups and people that oppose the so-called liberal consensus: the idea that the U.S. government should regulate business, provide social welfare programs, promote infrastructure projects, protect civil rights, and support a rules-based international order.

Since the 1980s Republicans accepted many of the institutional pillars of the post-war order—especially free trade, alliances and global leadership—even while seeking to reduce regulation and constrain the growth of government.

Trump upended that system, promising to dismantle the federal government built around the liberal consensus, the government his voters thought they hated because they thought its protection of equality before the law gave Black Americans, Brown Americans, women, and gender or religious minorities a leg up on white Christian men.

This racist lobby combined with a growing number concerned about immigration, cultural change, distrust of elites, de-industrialisation and globalisation. Or they thought funding for science wasted their money on the research that right-wing influencers mocked for wasting their money and intruding on their freedom. Or they thought the U.S. contribution to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and U.S. participation in alliances did not put “America First.”

In 2024, Trump cobbled together enough groups who thought that way to win the White House, and as soon as he took power, he set out to destroy the liberal consensus government with the help of loyalists he installed in key positions.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged AI and iran war | 1 Comment

Observations of an Expat: NATO Irony

By Tom Arms | Sat 6th June 2026 - 8:58 am

Marco Rubio says the next month’s NATO summit will be one of the most consequential in history. He is right—but not for the reasons he imagines.

President Trump has spent years demanding that Europe take responsibility for its own defence. The Europeans have finally agreed. The problem is that they have also concluded that they cannot rely entirely on Washington.

That realisation is likely to dominate the summit. The immediate result will be more defence spending. The long-term result may be the emergence of a European military-industrial complex capable of challenging America’s dominance of the global arms market.

If so, future historians may conclude that Donald Trump did more than persuade Europe to rearm. He persuaded it to compete.

It will not be a happy group when the 32 NATO leaders gather in Ankara on 7-8 July. The 30 European members are still angry about Donald Trump’s designs on Greenland; statements about “European civilisational decline” and his failure to consult allies before starting a war with Iran. Trump is angry that Denmark won’t handover Greenland; NATO restrictions on US airbases during the Iran War and the Alliance’s failure to join the Israeli-American war on Iran.

But at the top of the agenda will be the Ukraine War and European re-armament. The Trump Administration has successfully shifted the cost of arming Ukraine from American to European shoulders with the PURL (Prioritised Ukrainian Requirements List) programme. Trump plus the Ukraine War and the growing Russian threat has prompted Europe that it needs more weapons now. It takes time to build the factories and shipyards to make them so they are by buying more from America.

The Russian threat is bonanza for the US defence industry. Between 2021 and 2015 European arms imports increased 217 percent over the previous five-year period. The estimated amount is $220 billion. European NATO is rushing to fill its defence gaps with off-the-shelf F-35s, Patriot Missile Systems, HIMARS, Apache helicopters and munitions.

But while shelling out billions to America, Europeans are also building the factories and shipyards that will build the weapons that will in the long-term replace American imports.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged NATO | 9 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 24th May 2026 - 10:23 am

The Thucydides Trap

There has been much talk recently about the “Thucydides Trap”. China’s President Xi Jinping is reported to have warned Donald Trump during his recent trip to Beijing that China and America were heading straight for the “Thucydides Trap.”

So what is it? It is a term coined by the diplomatic historian Graham Alison in his book “Destined for War.” Allison uses Thucydides’ history of the disastrous Peloponnesian War between Sparta (the established power) and Athens (the rising power) to argue that when one power becomes to challenge the hegemony of an existing power then war is inevitable.

It is not quite. In the 1920s the American military was drawing up plans for a war against Britain. The plan was called War Red. The plan involved a major land invasion across the border into Canada and a naval attack on British colonies in the Caribbean.

Britain had a counter-attack plan, but its plan was not as comprehensive. Fairly early on it realised that its war-ravaged economy could not win a war against the rising American industrial giant. There were other important factors. These included the two countries’ shared experience of World War I. There was also the fact that a 300-year-old shared cultural experience and perspective outweighed the competitive aspects of the relationship. The British increasingly saw themselves as the Greeks to America’s Rome, as Harold Macmillan later put it.

“War Plan Red was one of the rare cases where strategic rivalry did not culminate in war. Alison gives 12 examples of how countries became victims of the Thucydides Trap. They include the Crusades, the Franco-Prussian War, World War One and World War Two. War Red is listed—along with three others—as the exceptions that prove the rule.

Cultural links ensured that War Red did not become a disastrous reality. But China and America lack the deep cultural, linguistic and historical ties that softened the transfer of power from Britain to the United States.

Ebola

Ebola is a terrible disease. It attacks your internal organs. You bleed from the inside out. Death is painful and quick.

In much of Africa it is customary to wash the bodies of corpses before burial. The practice can be fatal as the disease is spread through contact with infected bodily fluids. They remain contagious long after death.

In the last outbreak, 2014-2016, 11,300 people died. The epidemic was contained to West Africa because Britain and America flooded the region with health workers and soldiers. The UK committed more than $500 million to fight the epidemic. America sent 3,000 people to fight the disease.

It worked. The doctors and nurses won. Not only that but systems were put in place to effectively detect and fight any further outbreaks. Then came Trump in America and Boris Johnson in Britain. Aid budgets were slashed. Three thousand staff were cut from America’s Centre for Disease Control. The biggest axe fell on the departments involved in fighting overseas epidemics. The situation was almost as bad in Britain.

The epidemic fighting network that was established a decade ago was badly weakened. Especially hard hit were the surveillance systems which are designed to detect the first signs of the disease, contain it and treat it. Britain has so far committed only $30 million to fighting the latest outbreak. America has made promises but little has materialised. Oxfam says that coordination meetings now produce “blank stares” when money is requested.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged china and ebola | 7 Comments

Observations of an expat: Dangerous diplomatic chess

By Tom Arms | Sat 23rd May 2026 - 10:15 am

In the wake of his Beijing sojourn, Donald Trump is embarking on a dangerous and complex game of diplomatic chess with Taiwan as the piece most likely to be sacrificed for the greater American good.

While in China, Trump became convinced what the rest of the world has known for some time. China cannot be bullied. Threats of escalating tariffs and civilisational extinction just roll off the Chinese political back. They have been around a long time and have seen it all.

Next, China is as much of a superpower as the United States. And, if he is going to avoid an Armageddon-like nuclear war, he has to learn to live on the same planet with Beijing instead of baiting and containing it.

Finally, the American president is almost certainly convinced that Xi Jinping is sincere when he says that China wants Taiwan and any American attempt to block a Chinese takeover could easily lead to a Sino-American “clashes and even conflict.”

The three-way dilemma of China-US-Taiwan dates back to before President Nixon’s historic visit to China. It has been resolved with the famous “strategic ambiguity” which was designed to deter war by making the Chinese uncertain about US intervention.

Trump doesn’t do ambiguity. He does transactions. The Taiwan issue presents him with an opportunity to use his much-hyped negotiating skills to pull off one of the great transactions of all time. A tempting prospect which ego would find difficult to resist.

But with whom and how?

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged china | 2 Comments

Tom Arm’s World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 3rd May 2026 - 9:46 am

Ukraine

Robots are the future face of war. And Ukraine’s dominance in the production of drones and unmanned boats and ground vehicles means that it is well on its way to becoming a defense industry superpower.

Drone production is up from 800,000 a year three years ago to seven million in 2025. They enjoy a three to one advantage over the Russians over the top of the range First Person View (FPV) drones. These are drones fitted with a camera which allows the operator to see in real time everything the drone sees. Ukraine is also producing 1,000 fixed wing drones a day. These can travel up to 1,500 miles into Russian territory.

Ukraine’s success with unmanned boats and submarines has given it dominance in the Black Sea. But its latest success has been with a variety of Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs). They are used primarily to deliver supplies to front line troops, but they have also been used to lay mines and rescue soldiers trapped behind enemy lines. The latest versions are also used as launching pads for armed drones.

Ukraine has 2,500 companies involved in the development and production of drones and unmanned vehicles which, according to President Volodomyr Zelensky, have conducted 22,000 missions in the first three months of this year.

Russia is, of course, also stepping up production of drones and unmanned vehicles. Early in the war Moscow had the advantage. But Ukraine adopted an entrepreneurial approach to production which has overtaken and streaked ahead of Russian manufacturing whose rigid production base is heavily centralised Soviet-style.

Which brings us to Ukraine’s future as a defense industry superpower. Most of the country’s unmanned weaponry is fully utilised fighting the Russian behemoth. But Ukrainians are starting to sell to other countries a limited surplus and—more importantly their expertise– to help pay for the war. And when the fighting finally stops, Ukraine’s lead in the field will play a major part in financing the country’s reconstruction.

Recently President Volodomyr Zelensky made an unscheduled trip to the United Arab Emirates to talk to them about drone defenses for protection against Iranian missiles. The Gulf States are already well-equipped with American-made Patriot missiles and THAAD (The High-Altitude Air Defense) systems. But these cost up to a $1million per fired missiles whereas Ukrainian drones range from $2,500 to $25,000.

So far Kyiv has concluded deals—or is the final stages of negotiations with the following countries: Germany, Britain, Norway, the Netherlands, Romania, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Japan, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Syria. Defense experts estimate that sales of equipment and know could be worth $8billion this year, rising to $22 billion-plus in 2028. This means a substantial contribution to Ukraine’s defense budget of $80 billion. However, it is a drop in the ocean when one considers the estimated $500 billion in reconstruction costs.

The success of Ukraine’s drone industry has a wider financial impact than immediate cash revenue. It enables the country to project itself as an industrial power for decades to come which improves its ability to borrow on the international bond markets to pay for both the war and reconstruction.

The King and Trump

One does not discuss private conversations with the monarch. That is the convention—in fact, the rule—when talking with the British king.

There is an exceptionally good reason for this rule/convention. The king must be seen to be above politics. He must be to appoint prime ministers based on the wishes of the electorate rather than his own personal prejudices.

That does not mean that the king cannot discuss politics with politicians. And because he has been involved at the top end of the political process his entire life, he is well-placed to give advice. And he does. To political leaders around the world. He just does it PRIVATELY.

That is why eyebrows were raised when Trump revealed the contents of a private Oval Office conversation with King Charles when he told the world that the king is opposed to Iran having nuclear weapons. “Even more than I do,” he quipped.

The president’s comment was no great revelation. Of course, King Charles III is opposed to nuclear proliferation as Buckingham Palace made clear with a slightly raised eyebrow. That is the British government position, and the king supports the government of the day.

The king’s views on the subject are less important than the fact that – once again—Donald Trump has proven that he cannot be trusted to abide by the normal rules and conventions.

Iran

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged iran, King Charles III and ukraine | 2 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 19th April 2026 - 11:44 am

China

The invisible hand of Beijing has been busily pulling the backstage strings to try and organise Iran War peace talks.

Pakistan—which has been the lead country in mediation country—is a close ally of China and is clearly coordinating Its honest broker activities with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi who prefers to remain in the shadows.

Economically China desperately needs an end to Trump’s War. Ninety percent of its oil comes from Iran and, as the world’s second largest economy, China needs global stability to maintain growth.

At the same time, Chinese President Xi Jinping must be smiling to himself as Donald Trump entangles himself in a needless Middle East war which distracts him away from the Chinese priorities of Taiwan, the Philippines and the South China Sea. It also enables him to project China as a nation of calm reasonableness compared to an America run by an erratic president committed to riding roughshod over international law and conventions.

But what China does not want to do is be seen to be actively involved in discussions about the Iran War. This week a host of visitors including the Spanish prime minister and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi visited Beijing to try to persuade Xi Jinping to offer direct mediation.

Tehran, for its part, has called on China to guarantee its security. The Chinese have the facilities to do the job. They have a naval base around the corner in Djibouti on the Red Sea. Even closer is their port of Gwadar near in Pakistan near the Iranian border. It is currently used exclusively for commercial purposes, but it could be quickly adapted to military use.

But China’s rulers have looked at the sad experiences of the US and concluded that they have little desire to commit their military to the risk of being dragged into a costly war that will undermine their own strength and brand.

Behind the scenes, backstage, quiet diplomacy—yes. Anything more, No, for fear of being blamed for any failure. And where the Middle East is concerned, failure is the name of the game.

Hungary

It is now time for the big Hungarian clean-up. The new prime minister, Peter Magyar has promised just that, and he has a comfortable super majority to achieve it.

But it will not be easy, Orban has packed the media, industry and academia with his cronies. They have all said they would construct legal obstacles to dislodge them, and the courts have also been filled with Fidesz supporters.

From a foreign perspective Magyar’s biggest challenge will be clawing back funding for the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC). The MCC poses as an educational institute but in reality, is the main financial vehicle for funding an international far-right network of institutions, political parties, pressure groups and think tanks.

The funds for MCC come from shares in Hungary’s massive state-owned energy company MOL. Orban organised a transfer of a large bloc of MOL shares to MCC. They in turn have sent funds to the Reform Party in UK, AfD in Germany, the National Rally in France and Vox in Spain. MCC also helps to finance the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC)

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged china, hungary, pope leo xiv and the vatican | 1 Comment

Observations of an Expat: The Cost

By Tom Arms | Sat 18th April 2026 - 9:43 am

Trump’s War against Iran has upended the world economy. And it has only just begun. As one economist said: “At the moment things are bad. They are going to get worse and they could become catastrophic.”

At the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) spring meeting of world finance ministers the IMF revised down world economic growth for 2026 from 3.3 percent to 3.1 percent. It then went on to warn that if the Iran War continued much longer there was a real risk of a global recession.

Of the world’s advanced economies, the UK is the hardest hit according to both the IMF and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Predicted growth in the UK is 0.8 percent for 2026, down from 1.3 percent.

Even harder hit are the Asia Pacific countries who are dependent on the Persian Gulf for their gas and oil-based energy. Asia is also the most populous continent and accounts for more than half of global manufacturing which means that economic hits to that region have major global impact. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) reckons that the war has already cost Asia-Pacific countries $300 billion.

Fossil fuels are not the only vital commodity exported from the Persian Gulf. The region is the world’s major source of urea which is a derivative of natural gas and a major component of fertiliser. There is a real danger that the lack of fertiliser will hit global crop yields.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned that forty-five million people could be pushed into “food insecurity” and that food shortages could reach “catastrophic levels.”

The Eurozone has also been hit. IMF growth predictions for the Eurozone have been revised down from 1.3 percent to 1.1 percent and inflation is expected to go up from 2.1 percent to 2.6 percent. Trump’s war has made it unlikely that the European Central Bank can cut interest rates. In fact, they may have to raise them. This view is being echoed by central banks around the world.

Germany is the hardest hit of the Eurozone countries. This is because its economy is heavily geared towards manufacturing which in turn is fuelled by oil and gas. Because France derives a large part of its energy from nuclear power plants it will escape a lot of the pain, but the French finance minister has warned about inflation and supply chain risks.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged iran | 9 Comments

Updated: Should Lib Dems change our line on Trump?

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 8th April 2026 - 9:25 am

So, we can breathe again. For a few days at least.

But it’s more likely than not that we will be back up at the top of this hill again in a fortnight.

And if Trump’s behaviour over the tariffs is repeated, he’ll up the ante with even more offensive language and we’ll go from deadline to deadline.

To see the leader of the free world openly threatening genocide (“A civilisation will die tonight”) and war crimes attacking civilian infrastructure was horrifying.

The bit that made me gulp was when the White House denied that he was planning to use nuclear weapons. I lived through a fair chunk of the Cold War. I was too young for the existential terror of the Cuban Missile Crisis but I never felt that we were likely to experience the Four Minute Warning imminently however frightening the Protect and Survive videos were.

I’m wondering if the Lib Dems should develop what we are saying in response to a President who is threatening the unthinkable. Ed Davey could never be accused of being timid on Trump but our response to his expletive laden rant on Easter Sunday was two days late and issued at pretty much the same time as the Labour Government announced it would do as we were asking.

UPDATE: I have had my wrist slapped for the above for missing Ed’s comment put out on social media on Sunday evening so it is only fair to add it in here.

Should we be calling for the US Ambassador to be dragged in to Downing Street and given an absolute carpetting? Should we not be calling for the UK Government to introduce a whole list of sanctions, in concert with our European partners, if Trump goes any further? The US is a rogue state now and should be treated like one.

We should certainly renew our calls for the King’s State visit to the States at the end of this month to be at the very least postponed. It would not be a good look for our head of state to be receiving hospitality at potentially the same time as Trump is threatening or even committing war crimes?

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Posted in News | Also tagged ed davey, international, iran and us | 10 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 5th April 2026 - 10:07 am

Sir Keir Starmer should be Britain’s Foreign Secretary. His handling of foreign policy is first-class.

Unfortunately, for a country’s foreign policy to be effective, it needs a strong economic and political base and Sir Keir — as Prime Minister — has failed to produce that.

But the world economic crisis created by Trump’s attack on Iran and Iran’s closure of the Straits of Hormuz means that the British Prime Minister now must focus on world affairs.

He has decided that he — along with French President Emmanuel Macron — should take the lead in trying to find a diplomatic solution that would re-open the Straits of Hormuz.

This is right. Britain and France are — after the United States — the two biggest Western powers in the Gulf Region. But it is difficult to see how they can achieve their goal.

For a start there is a war and Trump could escalate or declare victory and suddenly pull out. It is almost impossible to predict what this mercurial Sir Keir Starmer should be Britain’s Foreign Secretary. His handling of foreign policy is first-class.

Unfortunately, for a country’s foreign policy to be effective it needs a strong economic and political base and Sir Keir—as prime minister—has failed to produce that.

But the world economic crisis created by Trump’s attack on Iran and Iran’s closure of the Straits of Hormuz means that the British Prime Minister now must focus on world affairs.

He has decided that he—along with French President Emmanuel Macron—should take the lead in trying to find a diplomatic solution that would re-open the Straits of Hormuz.

This is right. Britain and France are—after the United States—the two biggest Western powers in the Gulf Region. But it is difficult to see how they can achieve their goal.

For a start there is a war and Trump could escalate or declare victory and suddenly pull out. It is almost impossible to predict what this mercurial President will do next.

Next, in the closure of the Straits of Hormuz, Iran has discovered a new political weapon with which to beat the West and at the same time create an attractive revenue stream. It has declared the 20-mile-wide maritime chokepoint Iranian waters and says it will close it at will and/or levy toll charges on the oil tankers that pass through every day.

To prevent such a move Sir Keir and President Macron are talking about sanctions and everything short of Trump’s insistence that other western powers despatch warships to replace the American Navy and take control of the Straits of Hormuz.

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Posted in Europe / International | Also tagged birthright citizenship, hungarian election 2026, us attack on iran and Viktor Orban | 15 Comments

Observations of an Expat: Nuclear Questions

By Tom Arms | Sat 4th April 2026 - 9:55 am

The nuclear deterrent must be at the centre of Europe’s security policy. For nearly 80 years that deterrent has been in the hands of the US through its membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

Britain and France have also had nuclear arsenals. But they do not come close to countering the stockpile of Russian weapons. Their purpose is to give heft to the political power of the two former European colonial powers.

That is changing. It must change. Trump’s repeated threats to withdraw have made it necessary. The most recent is the most worrying. The US president went to war without consulting his NATO allies and without a clear goal or exit strategy. He inevitably ran into difficulties and called upon his NATO allies to extricate him from what looks like an unwinnable conflict. Not wanting to be dragged into a “forever war” in the powder keg Middle East, the NATO allies refused. Trump responded by heaping insult on insult and issuing his clearest threat yet to withdraw from the “most successful military alliance in world history.”

Of course, a Trumpian withdrawal from NATO would not be a simple matter of signing an Executive Order. Marco Rubio saw to that shortly before he was appointed Trump’s Secretary of State. While still in the Senate he co-sponsored a bill which requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate for US withdrawal from the NATO Treaty.

Trump has a one-seat majority in the Senate. But even if it were larger, it is unlikely that he could twist enough Senate arms to secure a two-thirds majority. Fourteen Republican senators — including his sycophantic ally Lindsey Graham — have said they would vote to stay in the alliance. So that route appears blocked.

But the president could still severely damage the alliance. As commander-in-chief he has operational control over all military units so he could simply order the 70,000 US troops in Europe to come home. It would be a stupid move and put him on a collision course with his party in the Senate, but it is just the sort of thing Trump would do.

Such a move would immediately put a big question mark over whether America’s nuclear umbrella would stay in place. Which is why the European members of the alliance are discussing how they could replace the American deterrent.

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Posted in Europe / International | Also tagged NATO and nuclear deterrent | 23 Comments

Trump has shown us who he is. It’s time Britain started acting like it.

By Mo Waqas | Thu 2nd April 2026 - 12:35 pm

Let me be blunt. Donald Trump wants to pull America out of NATO. And my honest reaction? Let him.

I’m not saying it doesn’t matter. I’m saying we need to stop acting like heartbroken teenagers waiting for Washington to text back. The special relationship is dead. It’s been dead for a while. Trump just had the decency to say it out loud.

So what now? We do what Britain has always done when its back is against the wall. We get serious. We get moving. And we stop relying on people who have made it crystal clear they don’t care whether we sink or swim.

Britain needs to re-industrialise, and I mean urgently not as some vague manifesto pledge buried on page forty-seven, but as a national mission. We need to open arms factories. We need to build capacity to manufacture what we need to defend ourselves and our allies, on our own soil, with our own workers. If we cannot produce the steel, the ships, the ammunition, and the technology to keep this country safe, then we are not a sovereign nation. We are a theme park with a nuclear deterrent.

And yes, I said steel. We need a nationalised steel sector. I know that makes some in our party uncomfortable. Good. Comfort is what got us here. Thirty years of comfortable orthodoxy, comfortable assumptions about the end of history, comfortable faith that the Americans would always be there and the markets would always provide. The peace dividend has been spent. Every last penny. It’s time to invest again, and if the private sector won’t do it, then the state must.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged brexit and NATO | 17 Comments

Observations of an Expat: War Powers

By Tom Arms | Sat 28th March 2026 - 9:37 am

America’s NATO allies are—according to Donald Trump—”cowards” for failing to join his war in Iran. He later added that the US would “never forget” the position of the Europeans at this “critical juncture” in world history.

Trump’s anti- NATO rants reveal an astonishing ignorance of the legal and political obstacles facing other world leaders who want to wage an ill- conceived and poorly executed war which threatens to escalate and plunge the world into economic depression.

It is not entirely clear how, but Trump alone of the world’s democracies appears to ride roughshod over international and domestic laws to wage a dangerous war.

America’s Founding Fathers foresaw the possibility that a dangerously hubristic individual might one day occupy the White House. That is why Article One of the US constitution gives Congress – not the president—the power to declare war.

There are, however, get-outs for a belligerent president to respond quickly to sudden attacks. For a start the Founding Fathers changed the wording of Article One from “make war” to “declare war.” The change was meant to allow the president to respond to a sudden attack—but not to initiate.

In the wake of the Vietnam War, the president’s war powers were restricted further with the 1973 War Powers Act. This legislation instructs the president to inform Congress within 48 hours of the start of military action. If Congress fails to approve the action then troops have to be withdrawn 60 days. There is room for a further 30-day extension if required—but that’s it.

Congress also has the power of the purse which means that it can simply refuse funds to finance the fighting. The Iran War is costing $1 billion a day which is coming out of the existing defense budget. Tump, however, is said to be planning to ask Congress for an additional $200 billion.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged iran and observations of an ex pat | 4 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 1st March 2026 - 10:55 am

State of the Union

What a politician omits to say is often more important than what he says. There were two significant omissions during President Trump’s record-breaking State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

The first concerned Ukraine and the second Iran. Tuesday was also the day that Ukraine marked the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of their country. Notables from around the world gathered in Kyiv’s Maidan square to mark the occasion. Every Western country was represented – except the United States.

There was no American diplomat, politician or Trump-appointed delegate at this important and moving ceremony. The United States was conspicuous by its absence.

The Ukrainians were also hoping that somewhere in Trump’s speech there would be some mention of support for the Ukrainian cause. There was none. The only mention of Ukraine was in the context of negotiations which repeatedly fail because Trump insists on backing Russian proposals. These include the resignation of Volodomyr Zalensky; the ceding to Russia of all land that Russia currently occupies and more; the neutering of the Ukrainian military and a pledge that Ukraine never join NATO. In short, total surrender.

Iran was mentioned in Tump’s nearly two-hour speech. But what was not mentioned was Trump’s intentions towards Iran. At the moment the largest concentration of US naval firepower since the 2003 Iraq War is gathered off the coast of Iran. It includes two aircraft carrier groups which are comprised of two aircraft carriers, each with 75 fighter bombers and a complement of 7,000 personnel. Each aircraft carrier is supported by cruisers and destroyers, supply vessels, support ships and submarines. The cost to the US taxpayer is tens of millions per day.

Why they are there was omitted from Trump’s speech. Are they off the coast of Iran to threaten to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. The ones that were “obliterated” earlier this year. Or are they in Middle Eastern waters to protect Iranian protesters—tens of thousands of whom have been slaughtered by their own government. Or are they there to demand the destruction of Iran’s missile programme. Or, is Trump demanding a regime change and a combination of all of the above.

The fact is that Trump has no clear plan and that is how countries become embroiled in “forever wars.”

Ukraine

How do you calculate a nation’s war morale? Its willingness to fight. Its resilience and ability to absorb blow after blow and retain an air of optimism.

The analysts at the CIA, Royal Services Institute (RUSI) and the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) as well as military attaches are experts at counting men, missiles, tanks and planes. They factor in population sizes and supporting economies; place them on the military/diplomatic scales and come up with what is called the “strategic balance.”

But what they fail to include—what they cannot include—is a calculation that represents a country’s willingness to fight.

At the start of the Ukraine War the Russian military was 4.5 times bigger than Ukraine’s. Its economy was nine times larger, and its population was 3.5 times bigger. As Trump would say: The Russians had all the cards.

Or so it would seem. After four years the Ukrainians fought mighty Russia to a standstill. Putin’s economy appears to be faltering and there are reports of Russian officers forcing their troops at a gunpoint into suicide assaults.

On Tuesday the Ukrainians marked the fourth anniversary of the start of Putin’s War with a moving ceremony in Kyiv. It appeared to reveal that the Ukrainians are as determined to drive Putin’s men from their homes as they were four years ago.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged france and ukraine | 4 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 15th February 2026 - 9:13 am

Endangerment Finding

It is true that, as President Trump says, that ending the 2009 “Endangerment Finding” of the Obama Era will be a major boost for the American car industry. It will probably help the Europeans as well.

It is also true that it will save car buyers more. Trump is on the money when he says that the move will knock $2,800 off the price tag of every new car that rolls off a Detroit assembly line.

It is also a gold-plated economic fact that the deregulation will put billions of dollars in the pockets of fossil fuel companies and their shareholders.

The 2009 “Endangerment Finding” is the foundation stone upon which a a big chunk of subsequent climate change legislation is based. It basically says that fossil fuel emissions—especially those from cars– are a danger to public health and should be regulated.

Any cyclist, motorcyclist or pedestrian that has stood behind a car for more than half a minute knows for a fact that breathing in car fumes is bad for you. But Trump—and the oil executives and manufacturers of petrol-driven cars—have decided that anyone who thinks so is peddling a “green scam.”

But cyclists are not alone. The UN has reviewed over 10,000 research papers on climate change and spoken with more than 10,000 climate change scientists. 97.1 percent of them say that our planet is warming. That this is a bad thing and cars are a major cause of the problem.

In 2024 greenhouse gases reached 424 parts per million, the highest ever in recorded history and 152 percent above pre-industrial era levels.

In the United States, cars, trucks and buses account for about 29% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Since Trump took office America’s fossil fuel emissions have grown by 1.9 percent.

But petrol and diesel are not the only polluters. Coal produces almost double the amount of greenhouse gas emissions as the transport industry, and the latest developments in renewable technology means that renewable energy is now about half the cost of coal in both building and maintenance terms.

On the same day that Trump announced the end of the 2009 Endangerment Findings, the American coal industry presented him with a trophy and bestowed on him the title of “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal.”

The Washington Post

My first news story was published in “The Washington Post.” I was a 13-year-old boy scout, and I wrote a 500-word article on badge-swapping at the Scout World Jamboree. It actually appeared on the front page with my byline. I was quite chuffed.

So, for me, the rapid decline of “The Post” has a personal element. It is even more personal one-third of the Post’s staff who were recently laid off. They are the victims of a changing media-scape and Donald Trump’s attack on the free press.

When the founder of Amazon, billionaire Jeff Bezos, bought the Post in 2013 for $250 million everyone heaved a sigh of relief. The Post had been struggling for years against the onslaught of the internet. If it was going to survive and prosper it needed an owner with deep pockets who believed in its mission and was prepared to inject millions—billions if necessary—to maintain the Post’s position in the pantheon of the great world newspapers.

Bezos promised to do just that. The local subscriber base had been shrinking as more and more readers switched to social media. So Bezos’s plan was to increase the subscriber base by going global. Which he did.

For about seven years, the Post thrived. And one of the reasons was that Bezos remembered the paper’s left of centre roots. Every editor must know what his readers want to read and produce articles that meet that demand. The Post’s readers are left of centre. They are mainly Democrats. During Trump’s first term Bezos kept to the paper’s traditional editorial line and it became a major thorn in the side of President Trump.

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Posted in News | Also tagged endangerment finding, haiti and washington post | 19 Comments

Observations of an Expat: Panic

By Tom Arms | Sat 14th February 2026 - 10:02 am

Trump is panicking. He knows that come November the Republicans are highly likely to lose control of the House of Representatives. They may also lose control of the Senate, but it would take an electoral miracle for the Democrats to win the two-thirds majority necessary to boot Trump out of the White House.

But loss of the lower house would be bad enough. It is the lower house that could impeach him for the third time. Democrat-control of the House of Representatives, can, make it very difficult for Trump to continue to implement his far-right agenda. They can investigate all of the actions of his first two years and block, impede and obstruct anything he has planned for the final two years.

The multi-million dollar jet given to the future Trump presidential library by Qatar will come under scrutiny. The same goes for all the business deals struck by his family and friends and the bitcoins the family have floated. The politicisation of the civil service; tariffs; weaponisation of the Department of Justice to attack his political opponents; pardons for the Capitol Hill rioters and various cronies; misuse of emergency powers; questionable expansion of presidential powers and, of course, the Epstein files, will all come under a Democrat-controlled political microscope.

For the past 18 months the public have been asking: Where are the Democrats? Well, they have been they have been collecting evidence and biding their time. In a radically divisive America, they had little room for manoeuvre without a majority in either of Congress’s two houses. Every time the Democrats tried to act, they were blocked by Trump’s congressional lapdog, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

That will change dramatically if – as expected—the Democrats win control of the House of Representatives in November.

Which is why Trump is panicking. And he is panicking now because he needs to start employing every clean and dirty political trick to prevent a Democrat win.

The president has already tried gerrymandering—the redrawing of electoral boundaries to ensure the desired result. This backfired. Republican Texas complied with presidential wishes, but their moves were made redundant by counter gerrymandering by Democrat-controlled California.

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Posted in Op-eds | 14 Comments

Securing the United Kingdom in a changing world: Why Mark Carney was right at Davos.

By Edward Marsh | Wed 28th January 2026 - 11:10 am

In a world still reeling from rapid geopolitical shifts, the question of national security and strategic autonomy has never been more pressing for the United Kingdom. The post-Second World War era of a relatively stable, rules-based international order – underpinned by multilateral institutions, shared norms, and strong Western alliances – is being challenged on multiple fronts. Nowhere was this tension clearer than in Mark Carney’s landmark address at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, where he delivered a stark analysis of the changing global order and what it means for middle powers like the UK.

Carney’s central thesis was that the international system is not merely evolving – it is rupturing. For decades, the UK, alongside its allies, benefited from what was labelled a rules-based order: predictable trade, collective security, open sea-lanes, and multilateral dispute resolution. But that era is increasingly giving way to a world dominated by great power rivalry and economic coercion. According to Carney, we are now in “the midst of a rupture, not a transition” – a point that resonates as global leaders grapple with the reality of a more volatile geopolitical landscape.

This rupture is characterised by powerful states leveraging economic integration as a strategic tool and weapon — using tariffs, supply-chain dependencies, financial infrastructure, and energy ties to bend smaller partners to their aims. Carney warned that continuing to rely on outdated assumptions of mutual benefit is no longer tenable when integration itself can become a source of subordination.

Much of the backdrop to Carney’s analysis is the reality of the international leadership exerted by the United States under President Donald Trump, whose policies have unsettled long-standing diplomatic norms. Trump’s aggressive trade stance – including tariff threats tied to strategic interests such as Greenland – and his readiness to prioritise unilateral action over multilateral cooperation have highlighted the fragility of previous assumptions about Western unity.

While Carney refrained from naming Trump directly in his speech, the subtext was unmistakable: the security environment that the UK has long relied upon – anchored by predictable American leadership – is no longer guaranteed. The UK can no longer take for granted that allies will act within established norms or that economic integration will safeguard its interests.

What this means for the UK and for us as Liberal Democrats

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Posted in News | Also tagged canada, europe, international and mark carney | 1 Comment

The World Cup and the Olympics should not be showcases for Trumpism or America First

By Samuel Jackson | Fri 23rd January 2026 - 2:00 pm

In January of this year alone, Donald Trump has undermined the international rule of law and the postwar global order, all in the name of ‘Making America Great Again’. He ordered the capture of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela to combat America’s drug problem and potentially to access Venezuelan oil and raised the prospect of an intra-NATO war to obtain Greenland.

While I and others are grateful that UK and European leaders have been able to stand up to Trump and get him to back down over Greenland, the wider international community needs to be more assertive. This year, the United States will host the FIFA Men’s World Cup in tandem with Canada and Mexico, while in 2028 Los Angeles is scheduled to host the Olympics for a third time. In light of the Trump administration’s actions, there is a case that the US should not host either event and that they should be relocated. While it would only make sense for the World Cup fixtures to be hosted by another CONCACAF member, we should not argue that Britain is the only possible alternative for the Olympics.

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

A cross-party group of MPs including Liberal Democrats has proposed that the US be expelled from FIFA over American actions in Venezuela. While perfectly understandable, I fear that this course of action may unduly punish a future America that has managed to shake off Trump and Trumpism. Relocating sporting fixtures to be held in his America would be the more direct and proportionate response. With both England and Scotland taking part in the World Cup, I am inclined to ask who would support both teams boycotting the tournament?

Recent American immigration policy has shown no regard for the wellbeing of American citizens, let alone foreign nationals. Trump has pushed for the revocation of birthright citizenship – a right enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment as part of the abolition of slavery – and aggressive immigration enforcement has led to the deportation and bodily harm of Americans and the death of the blameless Renee Nicole Good.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged 2026 world cup and olympics | 9 Comments

Trump the Trickster: A teachable moment

By Roz Savage MP | Fri 23rd January 2026 - 11:51 am

Let’s imagine for a moment that Trump’s second presidency is a teachable moment. Instead of clutching our pearls, rolling our eyes, and denouncing his bully-boy belligerence, let’s look at him through a different lens. For all the tantrums and tumult, turmoil and toxicity, let’s ask ourselves: if Trump is here to inadvertently serve some higher purpose, what might that purpose be?

Across many cultures, there is a recurring figure in myth and psychology: the Trickster. The Trickster disrupts, breaks taboos, thumbs its nose at authority and exposes uncomfortable truths. They are rarely admirable, often infuriating, and sometimes dangerous. Yet their function is not simply to cause chaos. It is to reveal where systems are brittle, where assumptions are lazy, and where power has grown complacent.

Seen through this lens, Donald Trump is still deeply unadmirable. But he may be performing the archetypal role of the Trickster on the global stage, holding up a distorted mirror in which our vulnerabilities are thrown into sharp relief.

Sir Ed Davey has been robust in his attitude towards Trump, boycotting his state dinner and warning about the threat Trump poses to NATO, to the rule of law, and to the international cooperation on which Britain’s security and prosperity depend. That clarity matters. But beyond the immediate political response, there is a deeper question. What is this disruption revealing about the world we thought we lived in?

Three lessons stand out.

First, that Britain and Europe have been too comfortable in their reliance on the United States.

For decades, we have assumed that the US would always be a stable, values-aligned guarantor of global security. Trump’s transactional view of alliances, and his willingness to treat collective defence as a bargaining chip, shatters that assumption.

The lesson is not that the transatlantic relationship is unimportant. It is that strategic maturity means never putting all our eggs in one American basket. A Europe that invests seriously in its own security, energy resilience, technological capability and diplomatic reach is not turning its back on America. It is recognising that partnership is strongest when it is balanced, not dependent.

Trump the Trickster exposes the danger of complacency. He reminds us that alliances based on tradition rather than genuine partnership can quickly become fragile.

Second, that the rules-based international order only exists if we actively defend it.

Trump’s disdain for multilateral institutions, his enthusiasm for strongman politics, and his casual attitude to international law reveal an uncomfortable truth. The global system we describe as “rules-based” is not self-enforcing. It rests on shared norms and political will.

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Posted in Op-eds | 5 Comments

Rules without enforcement are just wishes

By Jack Meredith | Fri 23rd January 2026 - 9:31 am

Donald Trump’s administration has taken another step towards authoritarianism.

Trump-backed Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, has openly backed calls for federal judges who rule against the President to be impeached. This escalates Johnson’s rhetoric; he had previously called for funding cuts to judges who rule against Trump in place of impeachment.

The point of a federal judge, as with all judges, is not to agree with the President simply for loyalty’s sake. Their job is to interpret and apply the Constitution and federal law, including striking down executive orders as unconstitutional or ruling that government agencies have exceeded their legal authority.

Donald Trump is weaponising the status and influence afforded to him as President, and encouraging his supporters to lean on judges with threats to their careers, simply for doing their jobs properly.

And it is not happening in isolation. He has threatened Greenland’s sovereignty, first by force and now by “immediate negotiations”. He has also threatened tariffs against allies, which he now claims to be stepping back from.

For those who have not seen or heard Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos, do so. What he said should transcend political boundaries and force us all to wake up and realise the truth: the international rules-based order was only ever real when it benefited us. American hegemony kept the illusion alive. President Trump has not only shown us how the trick was done, but has also ensured it can never be performed again.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged mark carney | 2 Comments

Europe knows Trump’s game. Because Europe invented it.

By Tom Reeve | Thu 22nd January 2026 - 7:32 pm

Donald Trump came to Europe expecting to dominate it. Instead, he was sent away with a flea in his ear.

Like many people watching this drama unfold, I was preparing myself for the worst. A new generation of gunboat diplomacy, the dissolution of Nato and the fracturing of the rules-based order.

However, the row over Greenland tells us something important about the world we are now living in – something to give us hope. Trump arrived armed with threats, tariffs and performative bluster, assuming that European countries could be picked off one by one. He assumed that pressure would fracture solidarity, that intimidation would produce concessions, and Europe would blink.

It didn’t. Europe closed ranks.

What Trump discovered is that Europe recognised his playbook because it has lived it, refined it, and ultimately abandoned it.

Europe invented coercive power politics. For centuries, European states built empires through a ruthless blend of military force, trade pressure, legal fictions and strategic intimidation. They perfected the art of getting what they wanted without always firing a shot. They learned how to extract concessions, how to divide opponents, how to cloak power in respectability.

Europe knows exactly how coercion works because it once ruled much of the world through it.

But Europe also learned something else, the hard way. When empires collapse and there are no weaker territories left to dominate, coercion between peers does not produce stability. It produces catastrophe.

Twice in the twentieth century, European states tore themselves apart in wars of unprecedented scale. Those wars were not accidents. They were the logical endpoint of unrestrained power politics between economically, militarily and organisationally comparable nations. By 1945, the lesson was unavoidable. Among equals, intimidation does not deliver lasting advantage. It delivers ruin.

That is why post-war Europe rebuilt itself on alliances, law and economic interdependence. Not out of sentimentality, but out of survival. Institutions were not designed to express virtue – they are the bedrock of the bloc. They were designed to prevent a return to the world that had nearly destroyed the continent.

This is the context that Trump, who has an instinctive hatred for strong institutions, misread in respect of Greenland.

When he threatened tariffs to force European acquiescence, he expected compliance. Instead, European leaders treated the threat as what it was: an attempt at coercive bargaining. They responded collectively, legally and calmly. The result was telling. The tariffs were shelved. Sovereignty was upheld. Trump was left claiming a vague “framework” and a promise to talk, more or less the outcome he would have achieved had he asked nicely in the first place… and with far less damage to his own credibility.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged europe and greenland | 1 Comment

Ed Davey: Trump is acting like an international gangster

By The Voice | Wed 21st January 2026 - 9:30 am

Ed Davey had a right go at Donald Trump’s latest antics in the House of Commons this week.

In an email to party members and supporters, he said that Keir Starmer must do more to stand up to Trump’s antics:

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Posted in News | Also tagged ed davey | 22 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 18th January 2026 - 10:30 am

Nuclear weapons

In a few weeks—on 5 February 2026, to be exact—the 2010 New START Treaty will expire. For the first time since the early days of the Cold War, the world will be without a binding agreement limiting the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals.

The main reason for the treaty’s impending expiration is that neither the US nor Russia trusts the other. All such treaties rely on inspections to verify that signatories are upholding their end of the bargain. START inspections have ceased.

Washington and Moscow agreed to a mutual suspension of inspections in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, before the health crisis ended, Russia invaded Ukraine and the US imposed sanctions and travel restrictions. Moscow argued that these measures made inspections impossible and in August 2022 blocked US inspections. In February 2023, Russia formally suspended its participation in New START, effectively rendering the treaty unenforceable.

Both sides will soon be legally free to expand and deploy additional nuclear weapons. This includes the option to increase the number of warheads deployed on existing delivery systems, although it should be noted that New START already allowed multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) within overall limits.

There are no restrictions on missile defense systems under New START, so the treaty’s expiration does not remove any formal limits in this area. However, the absence of arms control constraints may encourage renewed emphasis on missile defense projects, including Donald Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome.” Vladimir Putin is also free to expand deployment of Russia’s S-500 Prometheus air- and missile-defense system, which focuses on protecting key installations rather than national coverage.

The treaty did place limits on delivery systems and deployed warheads, which indirectly constrained the deployment of emerging technologies. While hypersonic glide vehicles are not explicitly banned, they are counted under New START limits when mounted on intercontinental ballistic missiles. Their speed is meant to render missile defense systems redundant.

The New START Treaty was imperfect. It needed—and still needs—to be renegotiated to account for new technologies such as cyber warfare, space-based systems, and novel delivery vehicles. Nevertheless, its existence provided an element of stability and transparency that helped restrain the dynamics of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) that once dominated nuclear strategy. MAD rules again.

Climate change

Slipping under the geopolitical radar at the start of 2026 was another major blow to climate change activists.

Venezuela, Epstein, Minneapolis and Iran meant that few noticed when Donald Trump signed a batch of 60 Executive Orders which included US withdrawal from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC).

The UNFCC was adopted in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit. It commits the signatories to limiting greenhouse gas emissions; introducing measures to adapt to climate change; sharing data and technology and meeting regularly.

But perhaps most importantly, the UNFCC is the umbrella treaty under which all subsequent agreements are designed to sit. American withdrawal ensures non-US compliance in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Climate Change Accord.

Trump’s edirective, however, may not be the end of the matter. US law requires a one-year’s cooling off period before Congress approves withdrawal. Before the year is up the US will have held mid-term elections and the political complexion of Congress is likely to have changed.

By the way, the batch of 60 Executive Orders included issues related climate change, biodiversity, migration, fender, development and population changes.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged climate change, cuba and nuclear weapons | 4 Comments

Iran: no more excuses

By Jack Meredith | Thu 15th January 2026 - 1:28 pm

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s theocratic dictatorship has, so far, murdered at least 2,400 protestors. That is the latest report from human rights groups monitoring the situation. This is on top of the expected execution of 26-year-old Erfan Soltani for the crime of exercising his right to protest peacefully.

As previously stated in my piece, “In praise of destabilising tyranny“, it has been incredibly encouraging to see and hear Ed Davey be so vocal about his support for the Iranian protestors, as well as hearing the UK government voice its support and Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, too. This is an issue that transcends political boundaries and strikes at the heart of our principles: democracy, human rights, and freedom.

It is with that same sentiment that I believe, on the matter of Iran, Donald Trump is right to strongarm the theocratic regime into backing down on executing citizens, and openly supporting Iranian citizens.

A jarring statement, for sure. There is so much that Trump has done and is doing that is beyond contempt, and he is by no means a good man. But multiple moralities can co-exist in the same space: Trump is wrong for his desire to capture Greenland, his isolationist approach to handling Venezuela, his appeasement of Russia, his multiple felonies, on top of literally everything else he has said and done. But on this particular issue, when it comes to tackling the Ayatollah’s dictatorship, he is right, and we would be right to stand with him.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged iran | 3 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 11th January 2026 - 9:38 am

USA – Minneapolis

The shooting of young mother Renee Good this week in Minneapolis has further exposed the divisions in a fractured American society and President Trump’s determination to exacerbate rather than heal them.

Anyone who watches one of the many videos—or reads the eyewitness accounts—can only conclude that Ms Good was murdered by an ICE agent.

She was clearly driving away from a confrontation with the agents who were in Minneapolis as part of a politically motivated round-up of ethnic Somalis. As she was turning away from the armed agents, one of them fired through the car window and shot Ms Good in the head. A doctor then rushed forward to try and administer first aid but was blocked by the agents.

President Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kirsti Noem, Vice President J.D. Vance and Attorney General Pam Bondi have rushed forward to claim that the agent fired in self-defense because Ms Good was trying to run him over. They have also claimed—without any evidence—that Ms Good was a professional left-wing agitator. Vice President Vance has gone so far as to falsely claim that the ICE agents are protected by absolute immunity because they are federal agents.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt increased the attack on Good even more by telling White House correspondents: “The deadly incident that took place in Minnesota yesterday occurred as a result of a larger, sinister left-wing movement that has spread across our country, where our brave men and women of federal law enforcement are under organized attack.”

The administration’s line has been picked up and repeated parrot-fashion by Fox News and the Republicans in Congress. Democrats and the bulk of the rest of the media have attacked ICE and the administration. The people of Minneapolis have taken to the streets in their thousands. Their action is being mirrored in other US cities. In Portland, Oregon two more people have been wounded.

President Trump had a personal message for ICE agents in the wake of the shootings: “It’s time to get rough.”

Iran

The Iranian authorities have shut down the country’s internet. The reason is quite simple: they don’t want people—inside and outside Iran—to know how many protesters they are about to kill.

And they are killing them. After protests in 2019 several hundred protesters ended up in their coffins. Human rights organisations reckon that 40 were killed before the internet was shut. The BBC has confirmed 20 of the deaths.

The country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameinei, has said that the thousands who have taken to the streets of Tehran, and at least 50 other towns and cities, are a “bunch of vandals” trying “to please” the US.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged iran and United states of America | 33 Comments

Observations of an Expat: What’s Next

By Tom Arms | Sat 10th January 2026 - 10:07 am

The rules-based world order has been the cornerstone of international diplomacy since the end of World War Two. It is surviving by the friction of inertia alone, and many argue that we have already slipped into the abyss of the unknown.

The ancien régime depended heavily on American support and direction. Donald Trump has indicated that providing that support is no longer in America’s interests. According to Stephen Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff in the White House and a Key Trump adviser, what counts now is not law, but raw power.

As he told CNN: “We live in a world… that is governed by strength. That is governed by force. That is governed by power.”

In early January, Trump demonstrated this approach when he effectively kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and announced the takeover of the country’s oil reserves for the “foreseeable future.” In a separate move, he appears to be moving quickly to gain control of Greenland.

This coming week Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to fly to Copenhagen with a firm offer to buy Greenland. Trump has made it clear that if the Danes refuse to cooperate, he might consider “military intervention,” raising the prospect of conflict with a fellow member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Greenland is a self-governing territory of Denmark, which retains responsibility for Greenland’s defense and foreign affairs. The Danish government has emphasized that any decision regarding U.S. ownership would ultimately rest with Greenland’s 57,000 residents. The mainly Inuit population has said that it wants nothing to do with America and, in fact, seeks independence from Denmark. However, a country with such a small population would face significant challenges in defending itself.

A U.S. invasion of Greenland would be a serious blow to the international order. One of NATO’s fundamental principles is that allies respect each other’s territorial integrity. They certainly do not attack one another. An attack on, or annexation of, Greenland—a territory of NATO ally Denmark—would seriously undermine the credibility of the alliance. Since the end of World War Two, American leadership of NATO has helped sustain one of the longest periods of relative peace and prosperity in modern history. Peace in Europe has spread ripple-like throughout the rest of the world.

Oddly enough, there is no need for a clash over Greenland. Under the 1951 U.S.-Danish Defense Agreement, the United States can base as many troops as needed in Greenland, and Denmark has indicated it may also allow American access to Greenland’s mineral resources, although this could face resistance from environmentally-conscious Greenlanders.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged greenland and Venezuela | 4 Comments

Vince Cable writes….Tech and Trump

By Vince Cable | Wed 7th January 2026 - 11:55 am

The British government has been scrambling to keep up with the outrageous behaviour of the rogue superstate which happens to be our main ally and with which we claim to have a ‘special relationship’. Keir Starmer says that he had no warning of the attack on Venezuela which suggests that he has clean hands but no influence.

A subject much closer to Britain’s long term vital interests are forthcoming negotiations with the Trump Administration on technology. These talks will determine whether Britain is to be a digital and AI colony or retains some vestiges of sovereignty.

They affect our freedom to levy taxes. They affect our freedom to manage the flow of sewage contained in social media content being defended as ‘free speech’. They complicate any move to realign regulations with the EU. Furthermore, the allegiance of the leading tech companies to the Trump Administration makes any commercial deal highly political. And geo-political too since we are being pressed to choose between the two superpowers.

The pending negotiations build on the Economic Prosperity Deal under which the USA agreed to reduce Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs to the baseline 10% (rather than the EU’s 15%) in return for various UK concessions. One concession was accepting a ‘poison pill’ limiting agreements with ‘non-market’ economies (ie China).

The next stage is a Technology Prosperity Deal which promises more digital infrastructure investment in the UK in return for more UK concessions on policy. The USA objects to the UK 2% digital sales tax and to the UK On-line Safety Act which is said unfairly to constrain US AI companies. Other irritants have included British demands under the Investigatory Powers Act, for Apple to break its end-to-end encryption.

Britain has a high dependence on US tech companies. Britain’s digital economy accounts for around 13% of GDP (manufacturing is around 9%). The digital economy in turn depends largely on the platforms and services of US tech companies. The new growth area is AI where US companies also dominate.

Dependence stems from the power of the algorithms used by the tech companies which can be manipulated to slant output to serve the interests of owners or the ideological prejudices of the Trump administration. The opaque decision-making processes of AI make subtle manipulation easier. The sheer complexity of AI also makes it easier to lock users into platforms which then become embedded and difficult to replace.

In principle, users have the option of using competitive alternatives which, in practice, are Chinese: platforms like Alibaba or Deep Seek for AI. But Chinese companies have difficulty meeting privacy regulations; and there are security and geo-political concerns. In any event the UK has already conceded to the USA an effective veto over Chinese involvement.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured, international, technology and trade | 4 Comments

Observations of an Expat: MAGA Conned

By Tom Arms | Sat 6th December 2025 - 10:10 am

MAGA is waking up to the fact that it has been conned. Almost everyone else knew years ago that Donal J. Tump is a con artist whose talent lies in feeding prejudices with lies that people want to believe.

But in America—as in most countries—there is a socially conservative and fiscally liberal base of voters who are frightened of change while anxious about their bank balances. The Democrats and old school Republicans had failed them. Trump convinced them that he had the answer with his “Make America Great Again” campaign.

Proof of the MAGA’s disillusionment came this week in the form of a special election for a congressional seat in the deeply conservative state of Tennessee. The Republicans held it, but dropped nine points compared to the 2024 poll. If this result is reflected in next year’s mid-term elections then the Democrats will win up to 30 seats in the House of Representatives and possibly half a dozen in the Senate.

This would give the Democrats control of both houses of Congress and guarantee a third impeachment for Donald Trump. On top of that, recent polls indicate that up to 18 Republican senators are prepared to break with the president. That would be enough to impeach, convict and remove Trump from the White House.

The causes of the disillusionment are many and varied. Top of the list is what has been termed the “affordability crisis.” For some reason, Trump insists that “the word affordability is a con job by the Democrats” and that prices are actually “way down.”

For any American who walks down a super market aisle this is an obvious porky pie (rhyming cockney slang for lie) that insults the intelligence of even the most loyal MAGA voter.

Inflation is not the only problem. MAGA is delighted at the dramatic drop in people attempting to cross America’s southern border. In 2022 they reached an historic high of 2.2 million apprehensions. In June 2025 they fell to an historic low of 6,000.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged MAGA | 3 Comments

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 16th November 2025 - 10:28 am

United States

The Epstein Files story is reaching a climax. Emails released by the estate of paedophile and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein have mentioned Donald Trump’s name, but little more than that.

However, the pathway to the more extensive FBI files on Epstein is now clear. Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva was sworn in this week and immediately cast the deciding vote in favour of releasing the Epstein files. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson now has seven legislative days to “ripen” the issue. He then has an additional two days to schedule the vote.

The necessary legislation will have no problem passing the lower house. A simple majority is needed and it is reckoned that up to 100 Republican congressmen will vote in favour of release.

Many of them are facing constituents who voted for Trump in the belief that he would release the files as promised. They are angry that there appears to be a cover-up in the service of rich elites. Other representatives do not want to be seen as participating in a cover-up, especially with the threat of even more damaging information to come.

If it passes the House then it goes to the Senate. There may be a problem there as it needs 60 out of the 100 votes to pass. Senators are not as vulnerable to the whims of the electorate as they face re-election every six years whereas those in the House of Representatives go before the electorate every two.

The final hurdle is the president. He can veto the release of the files. But if he did it would be tantamount to an admission of guilt and would almost certainly be overturned by a two-thirds vote in Congress.

China

In the past six weeks Xi Jinping has purged China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of nine senior generals and admirals and several handfuls of lower officer ranks.

The stated reason is corruption. And there is no doubt that China has a problem with senior military figures on the take. It has had the problem for years with officers being purged after police raided their homes to discover refrigerators and microwaves stuffed with cash, jewels and valuable works of art.

But the quantity and quality of the latest purge victims indicates that at least in some cases the corruption charge could be a cover for political disloyalty.

General He Weidong, for instance, was not just a general. He was also vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission and a member of the ruling Politburo. The charges against him were corruption and “loss of chastity.”

The latter phrase has nothing to do with celibacy—or lack thereof—but political chastity or loyalty to the Party line.

In today’s China the interests of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are being increasingly conflated with the interests of Xi Jinping. Thus lack of loyalty to Xi is the same as disloyalty to the Party and disloyalty to the Party is disloyalty to the country.

The CCP has long operated on the principle that “the Party commands the gun”. Xi seems deeply concerned that the military remain absolutely loyal to him and the CCP, not just as an institution. Corruption purges within the PLA have been driven not just by efficiency concerns but by loyalty/political control.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged china, COP30 and united states | 9 Comments

Observations of an Expat: Court with a Backbone

By Tom Arms | Sat 8th November 2025 - 10:19 am

It has been a bad week for President Donald J. Trump. He was overwhelmingly trounced in every election held this week. The Democrats exceeded all expectations.

Then Pope Leo criticised his human rights record. A former chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court said that his missile attacks on Venezuelan boats were a “crime against humanity”. The government shutdown entered a record week and Transport Secretary Sean Duffy warned that he would have to start cancelling flights.

But perhaps the most impactful event occurred not at the polling stations but in the dusty and cerebral corridors of the US Supreme Court. It was there that the nine Justices appeared to find their collective backbone and do the job for which they were intended—preventing over-reach by the executive branch of the US government.

Before the court was the issue of Trump’s tariffs. And the court was faced with two main questions: Did the president abuse his power by imposing tariffs without congressional approval and is there an economic emergency that justifies him in using his powers?

We won’t know for some months—possibly not until June—the court’s ruling on these issues. But on Wednesday we were provided with an inkling of the Justices’ thinking based on the rather pointed the questions that they were asking the president’s legal team.

Amy Coney Barrett, is a Trump-appointed Justice who has supported the president on almost every contentious issue. She asked Solicitor-General John Sauer: “And so it is your contention that every country needed to be tariffed because of threats to the defense and industrial base? I mean, Spain? France? Italy? I could see it with some countries, but explain to me why as many countries needed to be subjected to reciprocal tariffs as are.”

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Posted in Op-eds | 6 Comments

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Op-eds

Why did the Welsh Liberal Democrats underperform? (Elsie Jones)
The next General Election Manifesto should commit to joining the EU (Nick Hopkinson)
Tom Arms’ World Review (Tom Arms)
Ministerial hand-wringing over Palestine continues (John Kelly)
At war with Chinese windmills (Vince Cable)

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