Britain is looking at the end of the Alliance if evangelicals vote Trump back into office – because they believe he is part of their End Time Prophecy – that Armstrong did not see coming. He was looking at his End Time Elijah prophecy.
John Presco
The ISW said that “a Russian conquest of all of Ukraine is by no means impossible if the United States cuts off all military assistance and Europe follows suit.”
The think tank published a series of maps showing how Europe would look if Russia wins its war in Ukraine. In the one where Russia achieves a full victory in Ukraine, Russian units appear at the border with Lithuania, Poland, Moldova, Slovakia and Romania.
The map assumes that the Russians would move to the NATO borders the two armies the Kremlin newly created for the current war, according to the ISW, “one of which is already designated to be stationed in Crimea, and two others that were deployed on the eastern borders of Ukraine and Belarus and whose stationing at those locations would lose its strategic purpose following a full Russian victory in Ukraine.”
The European Union had already concluded in the wake of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine that it needed to become a stronger and more credible security provider, with defence partners like the US and the UK but also without them when necessary. For that reason, EU countries are aiming at a common strategic vision for EU security and defence. Two weeks ago the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen went further by announcing that the European Union should strive towards a fully-fledged “European Defence Union”. Such a defence union was always at risk of being vetoed by Britain while we were EU members. The UK had a deep-seated fear of any institutional arrangement which might weaken or dilute Nato. The UK no longer has such veto power of course and, witness its joint project with Italy and Japan, is now prepared to look beyond Euro-Atlantic defence cooperation to the Euro-Pacific.
What has prompted this reappraisal on both sides of the Channel? It’s an assessment forced on Britain and European allies against as bleak a background of conflict on the international stage as we’ve seen in decades.
Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is going better for Putin than seemed likely four or five months ago. Back in June, he had to contend with the real prospect of a full-scale rebellion from Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group and a much-heralded counter-offensive from President Zelensky’s armed forces. Six months on, the counter-offensive has petered out, Prigozhin is dead after a suspicious air crash and Western support, financial, political and in material terms seems stymied by events in Washington and war fatigue in Europe. Putin in his press conference this week made play of what he argued was declining support for Ukraine. The [military] freebies from the West “are gradually running out”, he claimed.
In the Middle East, the remorselessly rising death toll in Gaza, despite pleading for restraint from President Biden, his Secretary of State and now his National Security Adviser may well lead to a reluctance in Washington to fund Israel’s war in Gaza and other far-off wars.
And that is before the very possible return of a Make America Great Again, isolationist Trump administration.
It is significant that Zelensky went to the inauguration of the new Argentinian president Javier Milei last Sunday, an opportunity for him to build up relations with other Western countries besides the US- and incidentally to confront Hungary’s premier Viktor Orban over his opposition to the EU opening accession negotiations with Ukraine. Zelensky critically needs Washington’s support but non-American relationships matter to him more than ever.
What matters to the Ukraine president also matters to Western Europe. American presidents of every hue have criticised the failure of their European partners in NATO to do more in terms of their defence commitment (the UK was one of only nine Nato countries in 2022 to meet the minimum 2 per cent target of GDP on defence to which all members subscribe). This presents the European members with a Morton’s fork dilemma. Increasing defence expenditure shows Europe is playing the role of a responsible ally and pulling its weight. In July the EU mobilised €500 million to ramp-up manufacturing capacity for the production of European ammunition production to the benefit of Ukraine and EU member states. And this was followed in October by new rules to boost common procurement in the EU defence industry. But the more Europe develops its defence expenditure, the more that feeds into a narrative that Europe doesn’t need the US.
Western countries are increasingly sensitive to and mobilising for the stark reality of what an isolationist America would mean for global security. Britain has been effective at building alliances beyond the US, which this latest development with Italy and Japan speaks to. It needs to maintain a careful balance: to avoid giving any encouragement to Trumpian isolationists in the US while cultivating more widely in the defence cooperation field against the possibility that a future White House may decline to lead the West.
Sir Ivor Roberts is a former British ambassador
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Roberts_(diplomat)
Sir Ivor Anthony Roberts KCMG FCIL (born 24 September 1946) is a retired British diplomat and the former President of Trinity College, Oxford. He was previously British Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Ireland, and Italy. He was knighted in 2000. In addition to his British citizenship, he is now an Irish citizen.[1]
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