“War drives innovation and political change,” is the opening sentence of the April 3 op-ed published in London’s The Telegraph by former Chief of the U.K.’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Sir Richard Dearlove. Consider that a declaration of intent, the premise of British imperial policy.
Dearlove goes on to argue that “the longer the war [in Ukraine] goes on, the weaker Putin becomes.” So, if the Ukraine war goes on into next year, Vladimir Putin can be brought down, either by forces from the inside or through U.S. pressure, he writes. Therefore, “Trump should understand and accept his responsibility to the free world and not sell out Ukraine to Putin for the sake of a quick deal.… Strategic success so often boils down to the issue of timing. It is crucial that Trump should get his timing right—and should he do so the Nobel Peace Prize might then be his for the asking. Even his critics might celebrate the award.”
Dearlove fancies himself an expert “U.S. handler,” someone who has lived and worked in the U.S. a lot, he explained when he addressed an annual “economic forum” in Madrid called “Wake Up, Spain” (yes, in English), the same day (April 3). His interviewer was one Nicolás de Pedro, a Spaniard identified as a Senior Fellow at British intelligence’s Institute for Statecraft, who asked: Is Trump’s course irreversible? Is the trans-Atlantic system dead? How soon are the Russians coming for us?, etc.
Dearlove took aim at the U.S. history of what he calls “isolationism,” a policy streak in U.S. foreign policy which has never died, “which has strong historical roots,” but which Britain has managed to overcome before. “There has always been an allergy in the U.S. to European foreign wars…. It didn’t join the First World War until 1917; it joined the Second World War thanks partly to a British operation run out of New York.”
Will Trump’s administration wake up? Dearlove thinks it is too soon to tell. There are two versions of Trump, he answered. At the White House, “he is surrounded by very intelligent and capable people, some of whom I know very well,” he revealed. They say it is easier there to deal with “the complicated political problem” of Russia and trans-Atlantic relations. But when he is at Mar-a-Lago, very few of his advisors are there with him, and he is surrounded by the MAGA people. “People involved tell me this.” But, he went on, I am not totally pessimistic.
He followed his hopes of potentially controlling the administration he did everything in his power to keep from coming into office by lecturing Spaniards that Europe is in “an undeclared war” with Russia, a “gray war” to which they are not immune and must answer—rounded off by a warning that Chinese electric cars can be reprogrammed, and may not start or may drive in reverse in time of conflict!
