It has been going on for some time — this too-and-fro exchange of niceties, Donald Trump, the POTUS gushing how much he loves the monarch, and so on. But when you are a nation’s leader, hiding under a rock and closing your eyes against the obvious truth only works so long.
In perhaps the worst-acted farce of the century, Trump has claimed that he is “angry” at Vladimir Putin. But so far, he has, not-so-subtly, done everything that Russia and Putin would like from America — picking trade wars, snatching America’s aid from Ukraine, belittling Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelenskyy, made his dislike for Europe obvious, severed America’s longheld ally ties, and is currently in the process of dismantling the country democracy and economy.
The implications are clear, the danger is obvious, and the former MI6 boss would like Britain to stop trying to stay blind to the danger staring them in the face.
Since Trump’s inauguration ceremony, Charles and Britain’s PM, Keir Starmer, have done their best to pretend that their nation’s relationship with America didn’t just experience a 180-degree flip or that its elected leader hasn’t embarked on a crusade to threaten the U.K.’s closest allies. Even though the threat from Russia was always looming overhead, Trump’s shifting America’s strategies and directly or indirectly backing Putin’s ideologies and decisions have made the danger — of Putin dreaming of dominating Europe — much real and urgent.
But as former head of MI6, Sir Alex Younger, pointed out in his chat with The Independent, Britain is no longer willing or capable of defending itself since it has “disarmed militarily, self-evidently. We’ve largely dismantled our military and industrial base, which is a big problem.”
“We have, for many years, been completely free of any form of existential threat. We’ve unforgivably… launched a set of wars of choice, which have imposed sacrifice needlessly on young people and there’s great cynicism about this idea of collective effort to defend your country.
I think we’re more comfortable thinking about the army as like the England football team; they go and do their thing over there and we watch it on telly – and that can’t happen anymore.”
Younger further stressed that now with Trump only acting to dislike Russia — he is still just considering to levy the hefty tariffs on Russia which he has already imposed on other nations — Britain has to open its eye to what Putin and the President of America have been doing: “Putin and Trump together have done their best to persuade us that the rules have changed.”
Trump’s favor for Putin — he called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “genius” — has also made way for allegations that the POTUS is a Russian agent working for Putin. There has been no solid evidence to prove these claims, and Younger — who “went out of my way not to find out” if they are true — wants Britain instead to focus on the glaring instances when Trump agreed with Putin.
“He agrees that big countries get additional rights over small countries, particularly in their own backyard.”
Just days ago, Dan Jarvis, the security minister of Britain official named Russia an “acute threat to the U.K.’s national security” given its steadily mounting invasive attacks against the nation, with the latest being the conviction of six Russian agents under the biggest spying investigation in the country. If Charles or Starmer are waiting for Trump to do or at least something substantial and impactful on this grave matter, they might find themselves waiting forever.
Published: Apr 8, 2025 07:30 am