Posted on 6th January, 2026 in Blog posts
Coalition of the willies? what Britain should do
East European leaders, especially those countries which have suffered Russian domination in the past, are petrified of Russian imperialism. Western Europeans, recalling Nazi invasions by the Putin of another age, are pretty sure that they’ve got to back the Easterners. Britain enthuses about standing with Ukraine on the grounds that this is defending democracy.
Yet at the same time, European leaders are deserving of President Trump‘s and V/P Vance’s disdain, because they continue to want to be dependent upon the USA. They say they are ‘willing’ but without a big stick they are just willies. They have not yet faced up to the fact that the USA wants them to deal with Europe’s problems themselves because its own focus has shifted. And Trump/Vance are not wrong: the Europeans seem incompetent to take the measures necessary to restore independence of action. I don’t mean just spending adequate money on defence, although even that is something that the UK seems incapable of doing.
We now know that President Trump is a military adventurer, by contrast with what he said in his first term about not wanting the USA mired in foreign conflicts. And we also know that his adventures are likely to be restricted to those areas that he considers to be the USA’s or his son-in-law‘s backyard. Any day he may become sufficiently fed up with Europe to withdraw all support. Even though we know all this, we are still not taking the action that he demands of us, and that the new environment he has created in the world requires of us. And now I’m thinking mainly of the UK, which ought to heed Trump and rejuvenate itself, not because Trump wants it but because we must, if we are to survive.
The UK needs a massive redevelopment of our economy, a revolution in attitudes to industry and enterprise, a clearing out of reactionary regulations and regulators in order to reconfigure the economic infrastructure of the country. It needs all this not only so that we can keep our health and welfare services going but enable us to defend ourselves against malignant forces from wherever they come.
I’ve written about what we need to do in WHO ARE WE, and how will we survive in the Age of Asia?