Trump must defeat Putin, if he is to prevail against Xi

Russian dolls depicting Donald  Trump, President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping
Russian dolls depicting Donald Trump, President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping

President Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine’s use of US long-range missiles in the Kursk region currently occupied by Ukrainian troops is welcome. But he does make Marshal Blücher, who famously arrived at the Battle of Waterloo at 4pm, look like an early bird. He could and should have made this decision last year.

As for Britain, we should have refused the Biden constraints on what Ukraine could do with the Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles that we have already given them. Now we must help as fast as we can. With rare decisiveness, Germany chickened out yesterday.

Apart from the fact that Mr Biden has only two months left in office, what seems to have prompted him to act more boldly is the arrival of 10,000 North Korean troops to fight on the Russian side in the Kursk region, standing behind Putin’s invasion. Their presence is such a blatant affront to international norms that even “Sleepy Joe” woke up. What happens next, of course, is largely a matter for Donald Trump, not for the now comprehensively defeated Democrats.

The Trump camp have a theory that Ukraine is not a matter for them, but for Europe. They wish to concentrate their energies on confronting China.

In terms of burden-sharing, the Trumpists are quite right that the European part of Nato should be the main protectors of Ukraine. It is our persistent failure even to meet agreed levels of spending, let alone commit further, which has fed Mr Trump’s almost pro-Putin rhetoric. In the Far East, America makes all the difference, and calls on Japan, South Korea and Australia, more than on us.

However, the North Korean presence in the middle of Europe is vivid proof that, from a joint European and American point of view, our interests do not divide clearly at some imaginary border roughly between Europe and Asia. The crazy and cruel regime in North Korea is a client state of China and a supplier of Russia. Kim Jong-un’s exploited soldiery would not be turning up in Kursk if Xi Jinping were actively opposing their move.

Just before the current Ukraine war got going, China and Russia declared a “friendship without limits” (even though they hate one another). What they have in common is a determination to advance their respective empires and persecute minorities within them, and a detestation of democracy. The fall of Kyiv and Taipei would be welcome to Russia and China for similar reasons. Western weakness in support of one makes their task of subverting or invading both so much easier.

Mr Trump seems to have a distasteful fondness for autocrats, but he also hates to lose. His chances of prevailing in his struggle against China are far weaker if he decides to let Russia win in Ukraine.


Extensions of life

As the Bill to permit assisted suicide gains more attention, it runs into more trouble – on safeguards, on co-opting of the NHS and the judiciary into the process of killing, and much more.

One safeguard of which the promoters of the Bill are proud is that assisted suicide will be allowed only if the terminally ill person has fewer than six months to live. It sounds reassuring but how can this be determined? Nowadays people are frequently told they have six months left but then live far longer. Wonder drugs can give welcome extensions of life.

If the Bill were passed, pressure would quickly grow to scrap the six-month upper limit. Some who could not get the medical certification of six months would complain that their “right” to assisted suicide was being denied.

It is interesting that the person who is said to have inspired Sir Keir Starmer to support such legislation is a case in point. It was in January 2023 that Dame Esther Rantzen told the world she was suffering from cancer. In May 2023, she announced that she was at stage four, the worst. So she has now lived for over 18 months after her terminal diagnosis. This is tremendous news for her, her family and her many admirers but it is also evidence that doctors do not necessarily know what will happen next.


Trivial policing

Roger Hirst, a Conservative, is the Police and Crime Commissioner for Essex, whose force quizzed my colleague Allison Pearson about her tweet of a year ago. He defended the police’s action on the grounds that “it” – inciting racial hatred – was a crime which carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison, more, he emphasised, than shoplifting and “well ahead of most car theft”.

Although Mr Hirst said he could not comment on individual cases, he seemed to be implying that Ms Pearson had committed “it”, or that there was a reasonable suspicion that she had.

Two points arise. The first is that if the Pearson tweet really does deserve seven years inside, the law of England has gone mad.

The other is that, when speaking of Essex Police, Mr Hirst used the word “we”. That pronoun shows he has switched sides. Police and crime commissioners are elected, says the official government website, to make sure “police meet the needs of the local community”, not to make sure that they blindly defend the police.

The police’s duty to investigate, which Mr Hirst cited, surely does not extend to complaints which are malicious, dotty or utterly trivial. The visit to the Pearson home took up hours on a Sunday (presumably on overtime pay). Did it really “meet the needs of the local community”?