Putin’s on manoeuvres – are we ready?

‘What follows plague?’ I asked a medieval historian at the start of the pandemic. ‘War,’ he replied. In recent days, this remark has seemed worryingly prescient: 120,000 Russian troops are massing on the border with Ukraine, China is aggressively increasing military activity across the Taiwan Strait and Iran has responded to Israel’s successful sabotage of its nuclear facility by declaring it will enrich uranium to close to the level required for a nuclear bomb.

The West — and specifically the new US President — is being tested. Those who want an end to the western-led rules-based system are pushing to see what they can get away with. British foreign policy sources dismiss the idea that Russia and China are coordinating their actions, but there is little doubt that the two countries benefit from the fact that there are two simultaneous challenges in Europe and Asia. The West’s plans for a US-led ‘tilt’ to the Indo-Pacific will be tricky while Russia continues to menace Europe; something that Joe Biden’s administration has acknowledged with its reversal of Donald Trump’s decision to pull around 12,000 troops out of Germany. Moscow and Beijing know that they can act when the West is distracted by the actions of the other. If China did ever try to seize Taiwan, Russia would almost certainly take the opportunity to march into Eastern Ukraine.

‘Anybody who threatens the fundamental interests of our security will regret it like they have not regretted anything,’ warned Vladimir Putin in his annual speech to the Federal Assembly on Wednesday. He said Russia would respond to any crossing of its ‘red lines’, which ‘we ourselves will define in each separate case’. It was an attempt to tell the West to back off at a time when his control at home is being challenged by pro-opposition protests.