THE drums of war are beating. Vladimir Putin is threatening to incinerate all of us in a nuclear conflagration.
In response, the feeble, cash-strapped European Union is struggling to raise an army after decades of feasting on an imaginary peace dividend.
GettyDonald Trump wants to turn the world order on its head[/caption]
GettyUkraine’s war is now unwinnable for President Volodymyr Zelensky[/caption]
ReutersEven Mad Vlad Putin is not mad enough to go nuclear[/caption]
Alarm bells are sounding for the first time since the Cold War as Ukraine unleashes UK and US missiles deep inside Russia, raising the risk of pan-European conflict.
Scary times.
But are we really facing World War Three?
To quote Dad’s Army’s Lance Corporal Jones: “Don’t panic!”
At least, not yet.
Still, frontline states such as Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland are taking the threat seriously.
Peacenik Germany has finally woken up to the Russian menace and invited 800,000 Nato troops to carry out war games on its soil.
In America, you can buy “affordable bunkers to survive the apocalypse now — fallout shelters that won’t break the bank” — at $140,000 a pop.
Here in Britain, an online newspaper captures the mood with survival tips such as: “How to stop your skin melting” and “Why you should keep your mouth open so your eardrums don’t burst . . .”
One misstep away from global conflict
Nothing sells better than a horror story.
The truth is that the world is paying dearly for the absurd 76-day power gap between Donald Trump’s election as US President on November 5 and his inauguration on January 20.
The vacuum is being filled by sabre-rattling as both sides in the Ukraine conflict strive to make irreversible gains before Trump enters the White House.
The crisis has been stoked by doddery Joe Biden, who belatedly handed Ukraine the long-range missiles it might have previously used to end the war.
Instead, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s attacks deep inside Russia have provoked the Kremlin into threatening nuclear retaliation.
On Thursday, after hitting the Ukrainian city of Dnipro with a nuke-capable hypersonic Oreshnik missile, Putin declared the UK and US could now be targets for Russia.
We need to calm down.
Even Mad Vlad is not crazy enough to nuke the West.
And if he were, China wouldn’t let him.
Moscow and Beijing may be joined at the hip in seeking to hobble the mighty American colossus.
But Beijing dictator Xi Jinping intends to achieve this by stealth and coercion — not by letting his junior partner unleash Apocalypse Now.
This is not to understate the unnervingly sinister risk to world peace.
We have learned from two catastrophic world wars — and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — that we are always just one hideous misstep away from global conflict.
Amid this crisis, we find ourselves in the hands of the most unpredictable and erratic world leader of modern times.
Donald Trump has stoked tensions by threatening to turn the world’s economic, diplomatic and military order on its head.
AFPBeijing dictator Xi Jinping wants to KO the US by stealth and coercion[/caption]
GettyDoddery Joe Biden took too long to OK the missiles to Ukraine[/caption]
Why is Sir Keir Starmer axing defence projects?PA
He is ready to crack heads together in the Middle East, sink China’s exports and launch trade wars with Europe.
But first up, Ukraine. The 47th President-elect is ready to walk away from a European conflict which he insists has absolutely nothing to do with the US.
Yet while European Union leaders have dithered and wrung their hands, American taxpayers forked out £140BILLION in aid and arms to Ukraine.
Enough is enough, says Trump.
This might be a bluff by the world’s biggest bluffer. But only a fool would call it.
Which explains why Kyiv leader Zelensky is grabbing every weapon he can lay hands on to beat off the Russian bear while he still has time.
They include the long-range American ATACMS and, thanks to PM Keir Starmer, Britain’s lethal Storm Shadow cruise missiles, already deployed with devastating effect this week.
And yet, admirable as this may be in defence of brave Ukraine, it merely prolongs an unwinnable war.
Putin, himself a formidable negotiator, has raised the stakes by insisting foreign-made weapons used against Russia are grounds for nuclear retaliation.
This leaves the EU dangerously exposed. Despite the overlapping membership of Nato, the EU’s 27 member states have become flabbily impotent.
For half a century, taxpayers’ trillions have been lavished on social-welfare spending while mere pennies have been set aside for the military.
Armies are depleted while naval and air defences are running on fumes.
In the face of the biggest threat to peace since World War Two, Europe today stands effectively defenceless.
During his first term of office, President Trump put a bomb under EU leaders, making them cough up more cash for military spending. But not enough.
Germany, which once armed its troops with broomsticks instead of rifles, is the worst culprit.
Despite its role as the EU’s economic dynamo, the Ukraine conflict has shown it was totally dependent on Russian oil and gas.
Now, with the heat on, Berlin is offering to host 800,000 Nato troops on its soil to defend the Fatherland if Russia invades Finland or the Baltic states.
Under Article 51 of the Nato alliance, an attack on any of its 32 member nations is deemed an attack on all.
Formerly pacifist regimes now understand the only way to preserve peace is to prepare for war.
In 1960s, we practised diving under the table
Late in the day, Europe’s liberal elites in countries such as Sweden and Holland have ordered industrial and agricultural interests to stockpile food, fuel and vital equipment including diesel generators.
Which underscores the madness of Keir Starmer’s declaration of war on Britain’s hard-pressed farmers. We may soon need every acre to plant crops and dig for victory.
Nor can Labour now justify its decision to mothball our coal, gas and oil resources at a time of soaring energy prices in pursuit of Ed Miliband’s insane Net Zero deadline.
Voters will also ask why this Government is scrapping five Royal Navy warships, dozens of military helicopters and drones and perhaps even our two brand-new aircraft carriers.
If our plodding PM has learned anything from his never-ending overseas meetings with world leaders, it is surely that socialism is no substitute for a proper defence policy.
We have been through similar crises in the past, not least the decades-long Cold War when the Kremlin really did pose a nuclear threat to our survival.
In the 1960s we lived with the possibility of imminent attack, heralded only by a “four-minute warning” on old war-time sirens.
Government advice booklets from the 1970sAlamy
AlamyA nuclear device known as The Badger, a 2,000-kiloton bomb, tiny by today’s standards, detonated at the US Defense Dept’s Nevada test site in 1953[/caption]
AlamyZelensky is grabbing every weapon he can lay his hands on to beat off the Russian bear while he still has time including the long-range American ATACMS[/caption]
Britain’s lethal Storm Shadow cruise missiles have already been deployed with devastating effect this week
We practised diving under the dining room table, or standing in doorways which are more likely to survive a blast.
The best-selling book On The Beach portrayed Aussies awaiting their “last days on Earth” after a nuclear war in the northern hemisphere.
Peter Sellers made us laugh nervously in Dr Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb.
Women protesting against Polaris missiles camped out for years at RAF Greenham Common, while “Red Ken” Livingstone fatuously declared London a “nuclear-free zone”.
By the 1980s, East-West negotiations reached the basis for an uneasy truce.
It was literally MAD — “Mutually Assured Destruction”. Press the red button and we all die.
In my early days as The Sun’s Political Editor, I accompanied PM Margaret Thatcher to Moscow for various talks with Soviet leaders.
I had a ringside seat at one of the most significant disarmament summits between Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev and American President Ronald Reagan.
The superpower leaders agreed on huge, if symbolic, missile cuts, captured on Page One of The Sun by an image of nukes launched harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean.
“We reaffirmed our solemn conviction that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” said the two world leaders in 1988.
The Berlin Wall fell one year later, marking the so-called End Of History.
But nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented. Mutually Assured Destruction remains the only bulwark against Armageddon.
Luckily, Donald Trump is a master of The Art Of The Deal.
Putin is desperate to be treated with respect on the world stage, not as a global pariah.
For all his bombast, he knows his country has suffered disastrous losses in blood and treasure from his blundering assault on Ukraine.
Tough call for so-called European superstate
Sanctions have blocked Russia’s stagnant economy from Western advances in technology.
A permanent ceasefire is negotiable, but only if Putin is not humiliated.
There could be deals which revive Russia’s lucrative trade in oil and gas.
Putin will want to be re-admitted to the top table of the world’s most powerful economies, making the G7 into the G8 once again.
Brave Ukraine cannot fight on without allied support.
Nor should it be abandoned to exist in a “frozen war”, perpetually intimidated by Russia.
Which is where the European Union must step in.
Ukraine is now Europe’s responsibility, not America’s.
The EU’s member states must find the resources to guard their own borders.
They can rely on Nato — which includes the US and UK — but only if they raise defence spending by billions.
This is a tough call for the so-called European superstate, which has spent the past five decades effectively disarming.
A failure of will at this crucial point would be disastrous.
If Putin digs his heels in on Ukraine, we might yet find ourselves buying “affordable bunkers to survive the apocalypse”.
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