Nato

Not for the first time in her political career, Diane Abbott is getting a lot of flak online. She’s being trolled, heckled and denounced as an enemy of the United Kingdom. Only this time Ms Abbott is being hauled over the coals not for saying something silly, but for saying something sensible. Something true. Something fundamentally correct. Namely, that Nato bears a great deal of responsibility for the current crisis in Ukraine. Browsing the Abbott-bashing headlines you could be forgiven for thinking she had upped sticks, flown to Moscow, and sworn lifelong allegiance to Vladimir Putin. ‘Diane Abbott backs Russia!’, says the Express. In its regular feature on mad things

The forming of the Australia-UK-US (Aukus) military alliance in the Pacific shows how everything Trump can say, Biden can do. The problem is, Biden isn’t doing it very well. Biden’s administration, like Trump’s, is committed to building its Pacific alliances while sustaining Nato. Yet on Australia as in Afghanistan, the Biden team are doing exactly what they accused Trump of: unpicking the frayed bonds of Nato without a clear idea of what might replace it. The government has three tasks: to keep American workers at work, win contracts for American exports, and secure America’s interests overseas. Two cheers for Biden for getting the Trump memo on the first two points.

When military personnel talk of ‘theatres’ they mean a zone of conflict. Moscow seems to take the term increasingly literally, though, regarding spin as an essential tool of martial statecraft. This was especially visible in yesterday’s claims that its Border Guard ships fired warning shots and Black Sea Fleet Su-24 bombers dropped OFAB-250 fragmentation bombs because the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender ‘intruded’ onto Russia’s ‘territorial waters.’ After which, Moscow smugly noted, Defender ‘left’ those waters. Except that very little of that seems to be true. First of all, the waters in question were off Cape Fiolent, at the southern tip of the Crimean peninsula. By international law, the waters

It is becoming harder and harder to ignore China’s aggressive behaviour. As I say in the magazine this week, China wants to pick off its opponents. Only a unified western response can stop this, but all too often that has been lacking. New Zealand was strikingly absent from the statement issued by 14 countries When Beijing turned on Australia for suggesting that there should be an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus, there was a shocking lack of solidarity from New Zealand. Wellington’s trade minister, while negotiating an upgrade to its trade deal with China, suggested Australia should ‘show respect’ to China. New Zealand now exports almost half its

Nigel’s nakedness Sir: Rod Liddle is right to be wary of the hubris that Nigel Farage, the Brexit party leader, is beginning to show (‘The Brexit party delusion’, 18 May). His wish to smash the mould of British politics clearly shows that he expects his disciples to follow him into the promised land. The Andrew Marr interview and a recent Question Time appearance showed that under close questioning Farage gets rattled and resorts to dismissing his opponents and shouting them down. When will the public realise that this emperor has no clothes? Stan Labovitch Windsor, Berks Nato expansion Sir: Alan Judd writes of the ‘allegedly broken promise not to enlarge

Britain’s imperial past distorts the debate about our place in the world, but not in the way that is commonly assumed. It is often asserted that claims about this country’s international importance are a form of nostalgia. It would be more accurate to say that Britain tends to underestimate its power because it is no longer the global hegemon. Britain might not be, in 1066 and All That terms, ‘top nation’ any more. On any objective reading, however, the United Kingdom is still an influential global player. It is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the sixth largest economy in the world, a nuclear weapons state, a member