The election of Donald Trump is a final warning for liberal Europe

Liberal Europe has had quite a few warnings now – signals that all is not well and the populous are not content. The strong performance of hard-right parties in the 2014 European Parliament elections. The near victory of the Austrian Freedom Party’s Norbert Hofer in the (to be rerun) Austrian Presidential election last May. And most spectacularly the Brexit vote which was registered on 23 June. Liberal Europe should have woken up by this point, and to some extent changed course, but it has failed to do so. The election of Donald Trump as President of America last week should be seen as another, perhaps final, warning. Mainstream European politicians need to start addressing their voters’ concerns on a number of issues, particularly related to identity and immigration, or they risk oblivion. And so far, with some exceptions, they show little sign of doing so.

Donald Trump’s victory has far bigger implications than a standard American Presidential election. It was a revolutionary event. And as a conservative I tend to be suspicious of revolutionary events. During the campaign Trump appealed, fairly openly, to white identity politics. Not necessarily white nationalism, or indeed racism, but certainly to a racialized discourse. And it worked, allowing Trump to secure the Republican nomination, and then helping, or at least not preventing, his election as President. He promised to build a ‘big beautiful’ wall along America’s Southern border, to keep out Mexicans and other Hispanics, many of whom according to Trump were rapists and criminals. He pledged to deport 11 million undocumented migrants, and to remove Syrian refugees from the United States. And, for a time, he said he would ban Muslims from entering the United States.

The subtext of Trump’s commitments was probably more important than their actual content. America has been undergoing significant ethnic and cultural change. In 2014 for the first time more minority babies were born than non-Hispanic whites. For some white Americans this is clearly a source of discomfort. And Trump’s unstated promise, when you combine his commitments, is to keep ‘traditional’ (read largely white) America strong. The mistake that liberals made, and I largely include myself in this category, was to assume that the economy trumps everything. This is usually the case, but not always. And in 2016 it wasn’t the economy stupid. Brexit and Trump’s election show that for many voters issues around identity can also be decisive. During the Brexit debate the ‘Remain’ campaign enjoyed a consistent poll lead on the economy, whilst the ‘Leave’ campaign was significantly ahead on immigration. And the ‘Leave’ campaign won. Liberals have underestimated the power of issues related to identity, and for our sake this needs to stop now.

The revolution which has taken place in America could easily be replicated in Europe. And considering that Europe is more divided, unstable and threatened than America the results could well be more destructive. There is a good chance that a far-right party will either form part of the Government, or provide the head of state, for a Western or Central European country over the next year. This could happen as soon as 4 December, when the hard-right Freedom Party candidate has a decent chance of winning the Austrian Presidential election. If not Geert Wilder’s Freedom Party is currently polling strongly for the Dutch general election on 15 March 2017, though it’s exceptionally unlikely to win outright. Most significantly Marine Le Pen has a real change of being elected French President in May 2017. If Le Pen wins it would explode the Western European post-war consensus. The EU and Eurozone would be crippled, perhaps to the point of disintegration, whilst NATO would be undermined. For the first time since 1945 France and Germany could plausibly become hostile powers.

So given the severity of the crisis we potentially face what should European liberals do? Firstly we should acknowledge that the impact of immigration is more than just economic. It’s also cultural, and for better or worse can have a significant impact on the feel and sense of community of an area. As immigrants tend to be poor they are more likely to settle in less wealthy areas, so we should also recognise that the cultural impact of immigration falls disproportionately on the working class. This is why the notion that Western states are dominated by an unrepresentative liberal elite has become so potent, and was used so effectively by Trump and Brexit campaigners. The image of liberals, who benefit from the way mass migration suppresses wages in certain professions, and whose experience of immigration is primarily more exotic restaurants on the high street, is an exaggeration rather than a fantasy. And, when combined with the way a section of the liberal-intelligentsia dismisses any concerns about immigration and/or cultural change as bigotry, it’s easy to appreciate why this has caused a backlash.

European liberals should look at the election of Trump, as well as the growing popularity of the radical right in Europe, and realise that they need to change. They need to be more responsive to concerns about immigration, and acknowledge that the impact of immigration is more than just economic. And they need to pray to God that it’s not already too late, and that the tidal-wave of public anger can be assuaged before it starts undermining liberal-democracy itself. 

If you found this piece interesting you might like to follow me on Twitter @JBickertonUK. 

The election of Donald Trump just torpedoed the case for Scottish independence

The election of Donald J. Trump as President of America last Tuesday was a revolutionary event. Unless he totally abandons the policies and persona that got him election, which seems unlikely, 2016 could well be remembered along with the likes of 1917, 1929 and 1989 as a transformative year in human history. The implications of having an American President who doesn’t fully conform (or at least pretend to conform) to liberal-democratic principles are vast. America is, by some margin, the most powerful liberal-democratic state in the world. She spends significantly more on defence than the other 27 NATO members combined, and much of the liberal-democratic world has become reliant to some extent on America for protection. As a result there isn’t a country on the planet that isn’t profoundly affected by political developments in America. If America sneezes the rest of the free world gets flu. And America might be about to deliver a monumental sneeze.

The implications of a Trump Presidency are so enormous that I can’t possibly hope to address them all in one article. I lack both the time and the ability to do so. As a result I want to focus on one impact of Trump’s election, which has been to severely weaken the case for Scotland leaving the United Kingdom. I should confess at this point that I’m a strident unionist, for emotional as well as economic reasons. I’ve always felt that the case for Scotland remaining part of the UK was strong, if somewhat weakened by June’s Brexit vote, but now it’s become overwhelming. And primarily because of an issue what barely featured in the 2014 referendum campaign, the security of the British Isles.

The security of Western Europe is less assured than at any time since the fall of the USSR, and probably for quite some time before that. Western Europe has relied on America for defence since 1945 and, if Trump follows through on his campaign rhetoric, this can no longer be relied upon. During a New York Times interview, published on 20 July, Trump wouldn’t commit to defending NATO members who hadn’t ‘fulfilled their obligations to us’. Certainly it’s true that NATO’s European members have become dangerously complacent, with only four NATO members other than the United States spending the recommended 2% of GDP on defence (Britain, Poland, Greece and Estonia). When we combine this with Trump’s personal warmth towards Russian President Putin, and other authoritarian leaders, it’s far from clear that Europe can continue to rely on American protection. As a result European states need to be able to defend themselves, and the regional order, and most are not clearly able to do so.

So what does this have to do with Scotland? Scotland at present forms part, in many ways a crucial part, of one of the only liberal-democratic European states which does have a potent military, and therefore is able to uphold the regional order. The United Kingdom. Of the states of liberal-democratic Europe the most powerful militaries are possessed by Britain and France, who are also the only states in this region to be nuclear armed. As a result by virtue of forming part of the UK Scotland is effectively protected, and is also able to play an important role in defending the liberal-democratic order across Europe. If America retreats from the defence of Europe the strain will have to be taken, initially at least, by Britain, France and to some extent Germany. And considering the serious possibility that Le Pen could win next year’s French Presidential election, France can’t be considered completely reliable.  The only plausible alternative, some form of European Union army, seems too weak and unlikely (and the risk of the EU imploding is not insubstantial). Thus the disintegration of the UK would be a disaster not just for the British Isles, but for the security of Europe as a whole.

The stakes in world politics have got dramatically higher over the past week. The first duty of any Government is the security of its people, and for the first time in an era this is seriously threatened in liberal-democratic Europe. The British union has been extremely successful from a security point of view. Britain has been kept safe from invasion and ground conflict, and therefore somewhat shielded from the butchery which has taken place on the European continent. This protection has been brought by the English, Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish standing together as Britons, and now would be a particularly foolish moment to throw this security away.  

If you found this piece interesting you might like to follow me on Twitter @JBickertonUK. 

Once again our Union is in peril – the fight to protect it starts now

The British union, one of the most successful political unions in human history, is once again in danger. This is a shame, partly because it’s so unnecessary. It was, I’m afraid, always likely that a Brexit vote would reopen the debate about Scotland’s place within the UK. Clear enough that Boris Johnson, one of the chief architects of the leave vote, noted that it was a risk in the piece he penned but did not publish supporting a remain vote. But we are where we are. The case for Scotland remaining part of the UK may be marginally weaker than it was on 22 June, but it’s still overpoweringly strong. The SNP Government has published a draft Bill for a second independence referendum. They are positioning themselves so that, if the opinion polls turn as Brexit starts to bite, they are ready for a second referendum. And this means unionists need to be ready as well.

To be blunt I think that preserving the British union is the most important challenge Theresa May’s Government faces. If the union collapses on their watch they will be remembered for little else (assuming they don’t decide to nuke Moscow). It’s more important even than getting a decent Brexit deal, though I suspect the two are closely related. Indeed, if it’s clear that a hard-Brexit would break the union, I think there would be a strong case for a second referendum on Britain’s EU membership. The impact of Brexit on Scottish nationalism wasn’t much discussed during the referendum, and if Brexit is about to end the union there would be a strong democratic case for a second referendum to ask if this is a price people are willing to pay.

In retrospect it’s pretty clear that many unionists were, at least initially, complacent about the 2014 referendum. Support for independence had long hovered around 30%. As a result the British Government, whilst not desiring a referendum, saw it as a way of shutting down the question for a generation. They allowed the nationalists to draft a wording favourable to themselves, asking ‘Should Scotland be an independent country’ rather than ‘should Scotland remain part of the United Kingdom’. They also allowed then to tinker with the electorate, giving the vote to 16 and 17 year olds who the SNP were convinced leaned towards independence. The result, 55% for ‘No’ versus 45% for ‘Yes’ was strong, but the nationalist gene was out of the bottle and the constitutional question became the dominant fault line in Scottish politics.  

This piece is intended as a unionist call-to-arms (though I’ll admit it’s only likely to be read by a scoop full of people). Unionists, including English unionists like myself, need to start making the case for the union before it’s too late. And not just the economic case, though clearly this will be an important part of our argument, but the moral and emotional case as well. We should celebrate the success of the union.

Both England and Scotland have been at peace, and neither has suffered foreign invasion, since the Jacobite rising of 1745. It’s my view that the balance of probability is that this would not have been the case had Britain not been united. A united Britain allowed us, for better and worse, to transport our people, trade and way of life around the world whilst staying secure at home. It meant that when autocratic leaders sought to dominate the continent, from Napoleon to Hitler, we never had to fight them on British soil. British unity has been the foundation of our security for over 250 years, and consequently of our prosperity as well. If would be unwise to put this at risk without very good cause.

But the case for the union doesn’t just rest on security and prosperity, but on cultural compatibility and kinship as well. Put simply, whilst there are some cultural differences, the Scottish are objectively very similar to the English (and Welsh and Northern Irish). We speak the same language, eat the same food, watch the same TV, listen to the same music, have over 300 years of shared history and largely play the same sports. If two groups as objectively similar as the English and Scots can’t share a country, what chance is there of greater human unity ever being achieved? No Scottish nationalist has yet managed to explain to me how the interests of a bricklayer in Dundee are radically different from a scaffolder in Hull, and I expect they will struggle to do so. This isn’t humanist utopianism, I’m not calling for calling for a world Government, but I do think it would be astonishingly regressive if it turns out that the English and Scottish can’t share a state.

I have heard Scottish nationalists argue that, because of Brexit, things aren’t so clear cut. That rather than leaving a union, and adding to the fractures of humanity, they are merely exchanging the British union for the European one. But I’m afraid this doesn’t hold true. The EU is not remotely comparable with the UK. You can’t leave a full political-economic union, and join an incomplete political-economic union, and argue that you are doing anything other than strengthening the divisions in humanity. In any case the EU itself is starting to look a little shaky, and it’s perfectly possible that in the near future events (for example a Le Pen Presidency in France) will fundamentally alter its character or cause it to collapse.

Now I don’t want to make too much of economics, primarily because for me the benefits of the union can primarily be weighed in kinship/security rather than coin. And yet I feel I should mention it briefly. Scotland sells at least twice as much to other parts of the UK as to the rest of the world combined. If forced to choose between economic union with the UK and the EU, and I dearly wish the Scots hadn’t been put in a position where they might be compelled to, the UK option is far better from an economic perspective.

So to conclude, because of the EU referendum result the Brexit vote is once again in danger. And yet the case for the union, on cultural, security and economic grounds, remains overwhelming. Unionists can’t afford complacency, and we need to start making this case as assertively as we can. The battle of Europe is over. The battle of Britain is about to begin. 

When military inaction is murderous

We need to talk about a leader of the Labour Party, whose Middle Eastern policy has arguably contributed to many deaths and enormous suffering. I’m not thinking about Tony Blair, though the Iraq War was clearly a costly mistake. I’m thinking about Ed Miliband.  Probably the most significant thing Ed Miliband did, other than help the Conservative Party achieve a majority at the 2015 General Election, was to play a key role in blocking Western military intervention in Syria in 2013. This followed a number of chemical weapons attacks by the Assad regime, crossing Obama’s infamous ‘red line’. In response military action was planned by the US, France and Britain. Miliband, after some initial wavering, instructed his Labour MP’s to oppose the intervention, resulting in a Parliamentary defeat for the Government. This in turn caused the American Government to pause for thought, and then to negotiate with the Russian and Syrian Government to avoid intervention.

The deal was that the Syrian Government would hand over its chemical weapons, and in return America wouldn’t take military action. France, quite understandably, was unwilling to take action on her own. Now this wasn’t a total failure. Chemical weapons have only been used on a very small scale since the deal. But it has allowed the butchery to continue, and intensify, over the past three years.

The cost of non-intervention has been high, and probably greater than that of intervention. Just under 500,000 people have now been killed in the Syrian Civil War. In mid-2013 this figure was much lower, at just under 100,000. For all the media focus on the Islamic State and other Jihadi groups, understandably considering the threat they pose to the West, the majority of civilian deaths in Syria have been caused by the Assad regime and its allies. That’s not to say we should intervene now. Quite frankly since Russia began her military intervention to support Assad in September 2015 any Western action against Assad has become far too dangerous. Russia will be one of the key players in any solution to the Syrian conflict, and were going to have to accept that. But if the West had intervened in 2013 or before would the outcome have been different? Probably. It would have made it clear to the Assad regime, and its allies, that they couldn’t win outright. As such they would have had a strong incentive to negotiate with moderate rebel factions, who back in 2013 were considerably more potent than they are today.

Now if Western nations had intervened in 2013 thousands would still have died, and I suspect violence would be continuing on some scale to this day. But there’s good reason to think it wouldn’t have been on the same scale – something less than the outright slaughter house which were currently witnessing.

One of the curious things about the British left is how little they seem to care about Syrians dying in large numbers. They do admittedly care when Syrians drown trying to cross the Mediterranean, but when their getting barrel bombed in Aleppo or Damascus their interest vanishes like a thin mist on a summer’s day. Thousands of leftists took to the streets to oppose military action against the Islamic State in Syria last December. Their cry was ‘Don’t attack Syria’, which was odd considering that the Islamic State and Syria clearly aren’t the same thing. Labour MPs who supported this action received aggressive abuse from Corbyn’s supporters. Now I agree that MPs need to be held to account when they decide to commit our country to war, but they also need to be held to account when they decide to do nothing. The consequences can be just as dangerous. And that means that, just as Tony Blair has legitimate questions to answer over Iraq, so does Ed Miliband over Syria. 

Angela Merkel – the leader who revitalised Europe’s radical right

I’m writing this on Sunday 4 September, and it looks like a party from Europe’s populist right has just secured another victory. Early projections predict that Alternative for Germany (AfD), the anti-Euro party which transformed itself into an anti-immigration party, has beaten Merkel’s Christian Democrats in her home state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.  Not beaten them by much admittedly – it looks like 21 per cent to 19 per cent – but the symbolic value is enormous. A party of the hard-right has emerged as a serious player in German politics for the first time during the post-war era, and has defeated the Chancellor’s party in her native state. And the migration policy of the defeated Chancellor, Angela Merkel, bears a significant among of responsibility for this right-wing revival in Germany and other parts of Europe. It’s hard to imagine that, had she spent the past year being remote controlled by someone who wanted to see the likes of Marine Le-Pen and Norbert Hofer elected, her policy would have been much different.

Angela Merkel’s refugee policy was certainly bold, verging on revolutionary. It’s difficult not to admire her humanitarianism, nor to appreciate the quality of welcome which Syrian refugees received in Germany last year. But acts which are motivated by the best of human decency can have negative political impacts, and can be unwise. Germany took in over a million refugees, mostly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans. Other European countries, most notably Austria and Sweden, took in similar or greater numbers as a proportion of their population. The political fallout has been significant, and generally negative. Europe’s more authoritarian leaders have seen their support increase. Orban in Hungary, and since October 2015 the Law and Justice Government of Poland, have boosted their support by opposing the resettlement of Syrian refugees in their respective countries. Turkey’s autocratic ruler President Erdogan secured significant concessions from the EU by blackmailing the body over migrant controls, whilst all Putin has to do is point Russian’s to the chaos in Central Europe to increase his own support.

For Europe’s radical right the refugee crisis, linked to the EU’s apparent inability to control its external borders, has been a Godsend. The Schengen area, the European free travel area, is only as secure as its weakest link. And its weakest link, Greece, has proven totally incapable of securing its borders. The initial refusal of certain key European leaders such as Merkel, European Commission President Jean-Claude Junker and the former Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann (who managed to offend both sides in a particularly undignified manner) to take serious action turned the situation into a crisis. Merkel’s famous shout of ‘Wir schaffen es’ (we can do this), and the initial pressure which was placed on countries such as Hungary to let refugees head North, turned the problem into a crisis.

Now it may seem unfair to blame Merkel and various other European liberal leaders for the migration crisis. And to some extend it is. Clearly they weren’t responsible for civil war in Syria or the conflict in Afghanistan (though most of liberal Europe has preferred to let the Syrian meat grinder continue than intervene directly). Moreover whatever else it was, and I think it was a lot of other things, Merkel’s refugee policy was inescapably well intentioned. But it was also extremely chaotic. For a long period virtually anybody from certain countries who managed to make their way to Germany could stay. This boosted the forces of nationalism and made people smugglers rich. But it also encouraged hundreds of thousands of refugees to attempt to cross the Mediterranean, and thousands died during the trip. Surely it would have been far more humane to take a smaller number of the most deserving cases straight from Turkey, rather than promoting a deadly free for all.

Now if the refugees were arriving in Germany and other European countries straight from a warzone the moral pressure to take in an unlimited number would be almost irresistible. But the refugees arriving in Germany last year had already passed through several safe countries. Would it not be better to focus on improving conditions in refugee camps in Turkey and Lebanon, rather than incentivising people to cross the sea in rickety boats with the inevitable tragic consequences? We should remember that kindness isn’t always compassionate.

And the impact of the fortunes of the European radical right has been phenomenal. Admittedly this has been a good time for them generally, as a result of Islamist terror and the still smouldering Euro crisis, and it’s very possible that the combination of these three factors will lead to a party of the radical right taking over either the Government and/or Presidency of a Western European state. In recent months the Dutch Freedom Party, Front National, Swedish Democrats and Austrian Freedom Party have all topped polls in their respective countries. Now these parties will struggle to find partners to join coalitions with them, and so are unlikely to achieve power in the short term. But if terrorist attacks continue, or the economic situations takes a bad turn for the worst, this could change.

More likely in the short-term in a radical-right victory in a Presidential election. At present the Austrian Freedom Party candidate, Norbert Hofer, is leading polls for the rerun Austrian Presidential election later this year. If Hofer does win it will be a direct result of the refugee policy pursued by certain European Governments in 2015-16. And it would also be a shot across the bow of liberal Europe. A Hofer Presidency would be embarrassing, but its political impact would be containable. A Le Pen Presidency in France in 2016, and I think this is quite plausible, would be utterly revolutionary for European politics.

So liberals, and I generally count myself in this category, need to wake up. We need to start listening to the voters on immigration and asylum policy, or we will be replaced by those that do. We need to be pragmatic, and stop fermenting chaos. And the stakes are high. If we fail systems of Government which we though had been banished to the dustbin of European history could plausibly make a return. We were shocked by Brexit, but what follows could be an earthquake. 

What would a Donald Trump Presidency mean for European security?

In less than 100 days’ time Donald J. Trump could plausibly have been elected President of the United States. Now admittedly this is looking less likely than it once did. Trump is badly behind in the polls. He’s spent the last couple of weeks insulting the family of a dead American soldier, calling on a foreign power to hack the emails of his rival and possibly hinting that rival political figures could be assassinated. His ratings amongst significant chunks of the American population, specifically African-Americans and Hispanics, are rivalled by the likes of Ebola. And yet three months is a long time in politics. Long enough, considering the level of media attention he can deploy, for Trump to reinvent himself. Long enough to for some unexpected event, say a major terrorist attack, to fundamentally alter the focus of the campaign. This means we still need to take the possibility of a President Trump very seriously, and need to consider what it could mean for European security. Because the potential impact is enormous.

One of the few things that Trump’s critics and admirers agree on is that he is unlike any recent Presidential candidate. This is especially the case with foreign and security policy. Since 1941 one of the key focuses of American foreign policy has been the defence of the liberal-democratic or ‘free’ world. There have certainly been exceptions to this, generally where American Government have concluded that in certain countries immature liberal-democratic institutions would allow Communists (or more recently Islamists) to assume power. In these circumstances they have often concluded that a military and/or nationalist dictatorship is preferable. But broadly America has committed herself to the defence of the liberal-democratic world, most prominently through NATO in 1949 (which is primarily an American security umbrella over much of democratic Europe) and through commitments to protect various far-Eastern states, most prominently Japan. Trump, unlike any serious Presidential candidate in my lifetime, has cast doubt on these commitments.

In an interview with the New York Times, published on 20 July, Trump would only commit to defending NATO members which had ‘fulfilled their obligations to us’. This is directly contrary to Article 5 of NATO, which compels all NATO members to come to the assistance of any other member which is attacked. He didn’t, in typical Trump fashion, go into details so it’s not clear how Trump defines NATO countries ‘obligations’ to the US. Perhaps he is referring to the NATO recommendation that its members spend at least two percent of GDP on defence. At present only five NATO countries (USA, Britain, Greece, Poland and Estonia) fulfil this criteria. According to NATO’s own estimates 15 of its members, including the likes of Spain, Italy and the Netherlands, spent less than one per cent of their GDP on defence in 2015. I can understand why this irritates many Americans – indeed I’m somewhat surprised this hasn’t become a major political issue earlier. America has committed herself via NATO to fight to defend much of Europe, despite the fact that relatively few European countries can be bothered to maintain serious armed forces. Indeed much of Europe, especially liberal Europe, has responded with an impressive level of ingratitude. Anti-Americanism remains one of the few prejudices acceptable to liberal Europe, where the view that American culture is bigoted, militaristic and uncaring is widely shared. And yet it’s almost certainly because of the strength of this same American culture that Europe’s children haven’t spent much time killing and dying in trenches since 1945. 

But I’m not sure Trump is referring to countries which meet the two per cent GDP target – this feels rather two structured for him. More likely Trump will defend those European countries which he likes and sympathises with, whilst the rest with be subject to his ‘deals’. Trump clearly, for example, has some genuine attachment to Britain. His mother was British born, and Trump was concerned enough to repeatedly back Brexit during the recent EU referendum campaign. However I’m not at all sure that Trump has any real interest in, or concern for, some other parts of Europe. Most significantly I doubt he much cares about the Baltic States. This, combined with Trump’s obvious admiration for, and affinity with, Russia’s President Putin, could potentially have dramatic consequences.

Trump has a long history of making pro-Putin comments. In October 2007 he told CNN’s Larry King that Putin was ‘doing a great job in rebuilding the image of Russia and also rebuilding Russia period’, whilst in July 2015, shortly after joining the Presidential race, Trump asserted that ‘I think I’d get along very well with Vladimir Putin’. More recently Putin has returned the complements, describing Trump in December 2015 as ‘bright and talented’ and as the ‘absolute leader of the presidential race’. This mutual admiration has already had policy implications. It appears that Trump’s allies worked to block an attempt at the Republican Convention to include providing ‘lethal defensive weapons’ to Ukraine in the party platform. When asked if he’d recognise Russia’s seizure of Crimea Trump replied that ‘I’m going to take a look at it’. Short of promising to return Alaska to Russian rule I’m not sure Trump could have done much more to please the Kremlin. It’s also worth noting that his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, used to work for deposed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovynch, a key Putin ally.

A combination of Trump’s disinterest in defending liberal-democratic principles, and his warm relationship with Putin, means it’s far from clear he would defend the Baltic States (and indeed other parts of Eastern Europe) in the event of Russian aggression. This carries two substantial risks. Firstly, perhaps a little counter-intuitively, it makes an armed conflict between Russian and Western powers more likely. This is because it significantly increases the chances of miscalculation by either side. The Russian Government knows that it needs to avoid a full-scale war with NATO. If such a war was fought conventionally Russia would almost certainly lose, and if it was fought with nuclear weapons everybody would lose. Now at present Moscow has a pretty good idea of where the red lines are. Ukraine and Georgia yes, but the Baltic States and Poland (integrated into both NATO and the EU) no. But with a President Trump, a man whose decision making seems to be primarily based on gut feelings, it would be hard to know. And this significantly increases the chances of Russia and the West stumbling, at least somewhat accidentally, into conflict.

The second big danger of course is that it would undermine the liberal-democratic (or Western) alliance in general. If America under Trump won’t fight to protect the Baltic, or other NATO members near Russia, will the Western European powers? I’m far from convinced. And if that happens then what, if anything, will NATO stand for? Parts of the NATO alliance have long been a fiction – the idea that Turkey would fight Russia to protect Estonia is fairly ludicrous.  But this hasn’t mattered too much because America’s commitment has seemed secure, and the US is by far the most potent partner in NATO. If this changes then NATO, the shield of liberal-democratic Europe, could collapse either partially or completely.  According to NATO’s own estimates the alliance spent $900,473 million on defence in 2015. However the same figures estimate that of this $665,688 was accounted for by the US.

Support for Article 5 in parts of Europe has long been shaky. According to a 2015 poll 58% of Germans, 53% of French and 51% of Italians don’t necessarily think their country should use military force to defend a NATO ally from Russian attack. However in the poll 68% of respondents, drawn from eight NATO member states, believed that the US would take action if Russia attacked a NATO ally. In the absence of American support it’s likely that the proportion of Europeans favouring military action in these circumstances would be even lower. As such a Trump Presidency could gravely undermine the security of liberal-democratic Europe.

A Trump Presidency would have enormous consequences. Its implications are truly revolutionary, for America and much of the rest of the world. For Europe it means that the assumption we have maintained since 1945, that America will be prepared to fight to defend liberal-democratic Europe, may no longer be true. As a result if Trump becomes President, or looks like he will, European powers should significantly increase military cooperation (though not political integration). They should also substantially boost military spending, despite the impact this will have on our social security systems. The first duty of any Government is to defend its people. The Governments of some European powers would do well to remember this. 

Will the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction continue to prevent nuclear war?

The Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) thesis is the argument that two states armed with nuclear weapons are unlikely to engage in a nuclear war, on the basis that it would be so destructive for both countries. In practice this also makes it less likely that these states would engage each other in a conventional war, as it risks nuclear escalation. There is clearly some truth to this. The balance of probability, in my view, is that some form of conventional war would have taken place during the 1945-90 Cold ‘War’ had the main actors not been nuclear armed. There might have been a war between the American led anti-communist block and the USSR, or communist China, or indeed a more intense conflict between the USSR and communist China (as opposed to the relatively brief border war which they actually fought).  But whilst, because the stakes are so high, nuclear armed adversaries are less likely to go to war, this doesn’t make it impossible nor, given enough time, necessarily improbable. MAD is only partially correct. Its behaviour is like that of an old and fat cat to a rat infestation. It makes it less likely, but by no means impossible. There are I think three primary scenarios in which MAD fails – making a nuclear attack from one nuclear armed power on another plausible. These are:

1. Insanity/hate: MAD works on the assumption that those with access to nuclear weapons behave rationally, and care about preventing the destruction of their supporters at least as much as they want to destroy their opponents. A leader who hates his enemies more than he loves his own people, and history has thrown up plenty such examples, may decide to deploy nuclear weapons even if likely to invite a nuclear reply. This is particularly plausible in the case of a power-crazed dictator, confronted with either a popular uprising or foreign invasion. If Hitler had been able to deploy nuclear weapons from his bunker in 1945, even if his enemies had been similarly armed, my guess is he would have done so. We should also recognise that world leaders do occasionally go mad, by any reasonable definition of the term. If they have access to nuclear weapons, and there aren’t sufficient checks-and-balances to stop them being deployed (most likely in an autocratic dictatorship) it’s possible that they might decide to use them.  
2. Belief in an afterlife: MAD works on the assumption that those with access to nuclear weapons care more about this life than any potential ‘afterlife’. For a decent proportion of humanity this is simply not the case, and of this a tiny proportion believe that destroying their enemies facilitates a pleasant afterlife.  If you believe that killing large numbers of your Gods ‘enemies’ makes your assent to heaven more likely, and that it either doesn’t matter or is a bonus if your killed in the process, then mutually assured destruction is no longer an irrational act. Almost anything becomes rational if it guarantees you an eternity in paradise (indeed beyond getting into paradise this life becomes almost irrelevant), and if large numbers of your supporters die as well that’s not necessarily a bad thing – you may have arranged their transition to heaven as well. The world’s two biggest religions by number of adherents, Christianity and Islam, have both produced bodies of believers who believe that killing, and dying fighting, the enemies of God guarantees entry into Heaven (for example Christian Crusaders and a variety of fundamentalist Islamic groups). This could well lead to groups or individuals who would launch a nuclear attack if they could, in the full knowledge that it would lead to MAD. There are a number of, generally rather small, Islamic fundamentalist groups who would probably deploy a nuclear weapon if they could, even if it were to invite a nuclear reply. Groups like ISIS have produced large numbers of suicide bombers prepared to die in order to harm their enemies, and it’s likely they would be prepared to deploy nuclear weapons using the same rational.
3. Disparity of destructive impact: Some countries are much bigger, and much more densely populated, than others. As a result it’s possible to imagine a scenario in which, should a nuclear war occur, one combatant would suffer significantly more than the other. In practice this is only likely to occur if the countries concerned only have a handful of nuclear weapons, say less than ten, and most currently nuclear armed states have considerable or vastly more (the exception being North Korea which is estimated to have around eight). However if additional countries develop nuclear weapons they may do so in small numbers, activating this scenario. Iran is around 1,648,195 km2 in size. Israel by contrast only has 22,072 km2. If both countries only had a few nuclear weapons you can just about imagine a scenario in which Iran decides to launch, on the basis that it will suffer a lot less than Israel (though this may be complicated by having one of the holiest shrines for Islam in Jerusalem).

What should we conclude from the obvious flaws to mutually assured destruction? That, whilst it certainly makes nuclear war less likely than conventional war, it far from prevents it. There are two main, somewhat interlinked, conclusions. Firstly it emphasises the importance of nuclear non-proliferation. Broadly speaking the more countries have nuclear weapons, the more likely one of the scenarios when MAD fails will come to pass, leading to nuclear war. It’s worth noting that the failure to stop one country developing nuclear weapons risks several countries developing them. Pakistan decided it needed nuclear weapons, which it eventually got, after the first Indian bomb was tested in 1974. This is one of the reasons why it was so important to stop Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb. If Iran got the bomb it’s likely that at least one of the Sunni Muslim states of the Middle East would have attempted to reciprocate. The most likely candidates would be Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and maybe even the UAE (whose rulers seem to like big shiny things which convey status). And to be blunt a Middle East with multiple nuclear armed powers would be a powder-keg.

The second conclusion is that it matters enormously what sort of political systems nuclear armed countries have. It is especially important to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands countries which are led by, or are likely to be led by, Government which are likely to trigger one of the three scenarios outlined above. Broadly this means regimes which are dictatorial/autocratic, allow few checks on executive power and/or are led by those who value an ‘afterlife’ over this life, and think violence can help them secure it. I would say that, because nuclear weapons are so uniquely awful, it would almost certainly be better to live in a world without them. I say that recognising that this would make conventional warfare more likely. But this isn’t an ideal world, and nuclear weapons are here to stay. As such it’s crucial that nuclear arms are maintained by a small number of liberal-democratic states, to avert a world dominated by nuclear armed tyrants. At present five states which could reasonably be described as liberal-democratic are nuclear armed (America, Britain, France, India and Israel). I would say three or four is the ideal number. It certainly needs to be more than one – the rise of Trump in America has shown how potentially unstable even the most advanced democracies can be, and we’d be foolish to put all our eggs in one basket.

The counter-point to this is that, as I mentioned earlier, it’s of vital importance to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons amongst unstable/authoritarian/theocratic states, if need by via the use of force. To put it bluntly it’s my view that if nuclear proliferation expands significantly beyond the current nine nuclear armed powers, then nuclear war becomes all but inevitable. And a nuclear war would be so horrific that it’s worth almost any price, including a bloody conventional war, to avoid this danger. No one knows exactly how many people were killed when American planes dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, though a total initial death toll of 120,000 is almost certainly on the conservative side. The nuclear bombs advanced nations currently possess are significantly more powerful than those deployed in 1945. I’m very glad the Iranian Government came to its senses, and agreed to a reasonable settlement with some of the main world powers in July 2015 over its nuclear programme. But if it hadn’t agreed I think there would have been a strong moral case to fight a conventional war with Iran, to prevent nuclear proliferation amongst autocratic, unstable and theocratic regimes. In short, if we allow significant nuclear proliferation, we will probably at some point have to face nuclear war.