Strategic Culture

It is obvious that the US armed forces are gearing up for a summer of confronting China, and that this is going to be effected on land, by sea, and in the air. But provocation cannot be accepted indefinitely.

There is indication of realism in Germany, because although Berlin trots out the usual platitudes about supporting NATO, a recent Pew survey notes that 69 percent of Germans want greater cooperation with Russia.

The effects of Washington’s sanctions on its adversaries have been wide as well as selective. In the case of Turkey, what Pence calls the “reckless decision” to acquire S-400s has shown Ankara that America is not an ally and cannot be trusted.

The defences are up, while the excuses are being trotted out and counter-attacks are gaining momentum. And Washington’s powerful anti-Russia lobby is delighted that Cold War Two is heating up.

In the words of the US Administration, “space is now a warfighting domain just like the air, land and sea” so it’s goodbye to a future of harmonious exploration and scientific research in the regions beyond our globe.

The fact that NATO still exists after seventy years shows enormous dedication to maintenance of an organisation that should have been disbanded at the same time as the Warsaw Pact.

So long as Trump considers that “Make America Great Again” depends on demonstrating malice and arrogant superiority then his country will achieve neither trust nor cooperation world-wide.

Trump is not only narcissistic, blustering and foul-mouthed, he is a malevolent, poisonous posturer with a sense of neither decency nor moderation.

One can only hope that Trump might see the beckoning light of cooperation and prosperity rather than following the path of confrontation, but he seems to be at the mercy of the Military Industrial State.

Internationally, Britain is regarded with amused derision tempered by compassion for its dithering and inchoate approach to the Brexit fiasco. Domestically it is incapacitated.