While the Russians are insisting that U.S. President Donald Trump is serious about peace, the British are pushing in the opposite direction for war. Roland Oliphant, Chief Foreign Analyst of The Telegraph, claimed in a commentary yesterday that Russia has been “brazenly” testing NATO and that the alliance has failed miserably. The recent alleged airspace violations ‘were tests,” Oliphant claimed. “They were designed to confirm the hypothesis that NATO—in particular, its most important member, the United States—lacks the will to respond forcefully to violations of its airspace.”
“The big question is why test this hypothesis now?” Oliphant asks. “The answer is that Vladimir Putin and his allies judge that America is profoundly distracted. Donald Trump and those around him have already jettisoned the old Reaganite doctrine of American global dominance.
“Instead, the administration is split between ‘prioritisers’ who believe America must focus its limited resources on containing China in the Pacific, and ‘restrainers’ who are averse to American overseas entanglements anywhere at all.”
Oliphant did not go so far as to charge that the turmoil in the U.S. is the product of Russian “hybrid warfare” but that may be next.
What he does say is that Russia’s strategic goal in Europe is “to build what it calls a ‘new European security architecture’ by essentially, rewriting the post-Cold War settlement to restore Moscow’s dominance on at least part of the Continent.” This means “destroying Ukraine as a sovereign state, he writes. (Europe already did that with the Maidan coup but that can’t be said.—ed.) “But it also means dismantling NATO, and it may never get a better chance than the current Trump presidency.”
“This process of realignment has been super-charged by the dramatic events since the murder of Charlie Kirk,” Oliphant goes on.
“What is clear is the world’s superpower is preoccupied, and will continue to be for some time.” Therefore, “we must accept that our influence over the future of the Continent is directly proportional to our willingness to use force—and take risks—to defend it,” such as shooting down Russian drones in Ukrainian airspace.
