I’m old enough to remember the last years of the Cold War. There were definite signs of a thaw by the time of my childhood – there were weary sighs when I wrote about the Reykjavík Summit for my prep school magazine – but the threat of genuine conflict still hovered over West and East, and we all understood that such a conflict could be existential. If nothing else, it currently provides a tinge of nostalgia to the strategic frostiness with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
The Telegraph reports that officials have been instructed to update contingency plans for a direct attack on the United Kingdom by a foreign power. Given that General Sergei Shoigu, secretary of the Russian Federation’s Security Council, has warned that the presence of UK or allied forces in Ukraine ‘could lead to a direct clash between Nato and Russia and subsequently to world war three’, we all know what that ‘foreign power’ might be.
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