Clear danger as war in Europe is in the air

There is a clear, present risk, particularly as Vladimir Putin does see himself as being at war with the West.

- Gwynne Dyer

The homeland is again (in peril)...Air and missile attacks will potentially cause civilian casualties (in the United Kingdom) in very large numbers.”

Therefore, concludes Gen Sir Richard Barrons, the UK needs to bring back air raid sirens and air raid drills.

I’m not making this up. Sir Barrons, a former deputy chief of the Defence Staff who retired from the British Army in 2016, is not just an ageing military fantasist longing to relive the Blitz; he was too young to experience it the first time around. He co-wrote the British government's Strategic Defence Review, published last week, and the government adopted it wholesale.

It’s not just the UK. In only four months, the Nato countries of Europe have managed to talk themselves into the belief that their continent is on the brink of war. Almost the entire Russian army has been bogged down in Ukraine for three years, and there is no other military threat in sight, yet the rhetoric suggests that Armageddon is just around the corner.

This is yet another consequence of that highly infectious disease, “Trump derangement syndrome”. The American president's penchant for making random radical comments, often just for the hell of it, has a way of panicking other countries into making policy decisions that are premature or just wrong.