Trump's new world order
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and I will not be silent. President Zelensky has for the first time acknowledged that his forces are conducting a cross-border offensive inside Russia. I just find bombs and I find dead people, but it's a really scary thing for me.

Well, it's the election result that many of us didn't expect. Donald Trump has won a ringing endorsement from American voters. He has a much stronger, cleaner mandate than almost anybody expected. But what does it mean for the rest of the world? He's been called an isolationist. He's been accused of cozying up to America's enemies, including Russia.

and he has threatened to deport hundreds of thousands, if not millions of migrants back to the countries from which they came. We'll explore the international implications with Ed Arnold of the Royal United Services Institute. But first, I spoke to our chief reporter, Rob Mendick, who has been on the ground in the United States and Mexico for the past few weeks, but his impression of why Americans voted the way they did

and whether that country has changed in ways that outsiders don't necessarily understand. You've been over in the States covering this for several weeks now. Can you just tell us about just what's your impressions? Where were you on this?

Tuesday night. And what's it been like? What have you seen? Last night I was at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, which was where the Republican Party had its official watch party. It's about a 10-minute drive from Donald Trump's home.

in Mar-a-Lago on Palm Beach Island. And so that was the celebratory, that was the place where Republicans were gathering. So he had his own party in Mar-a-Lago for about 700 VIPs, which included guests of his, you know, members of his club.

And then he had sort of Elon Musk's and various other celebrities. He had this guy, Bryson DeChambeau, who's the US Open golf champion. He had the guy who runs UFC martial arts fighting. There's a big name here, Dana White, which we in the UK don't really understand. These are big figures. Tucker Carlson turned up. And I think that sort of gives you an understanding of where he was winning from, which we don't necessarily always understand. But after several weeks out in the US, you kind of get a handle on it.

which is that middle America, rural America, great swathes of America love him and they don't love her. That sort of became obvious very quickly. I didn't ever buy that there were any undecided voters in this thing. I couldn't quite see how you could be undecided. It was so chalk and cheese. But I think the question was who had the bigger numbers.

and who got their vote out. And I think they probably both got the vote out, but boy, does he have the numbers. And he's got numbers in all sorts of surprising places. It's obviously white men, and it's obviously white blue-collar men, but it's also very wealthy white men, very wealthy white women, and huge Latino vote. And all those things, in the end, did for her, so that he won the popular vote, which is something you could get five to one on him winning the popular vote and the presidency. That just wasn't on the cards. Everyone thought she'd get the popular vote, he'd win the electoral college potentially.

That's the extraordinary thing, isn't it? I think it's the first time since 2004 the Republicans have taken the Electoral College and the popular vote. Was it as surprising to you and the people around you last night as it was to everybody else? Did you kind of already have a sense? I went to the convention centre about eight o'clock, nine o'clock last night. So polls had closed at that point. And the numbers looked interesting for the Republicans pretty early on. There was a sort of quick poll come out of Georgia, which showed that independent voters were

really had switched to him from Biden. That gave you a pretty good steer pretty early on, actually, that this was a bad night for her. It's surprising how important that was, that she didn't have the popularity of Biden. And Biden was a popular guy four years ago, but not now. When I got there, there was a lot of nerves amongst the Republican diehards, a lot of nerves. The local fire chief was there in his sort of capacity as a Trump cheerleader saying, I've never been so nervous in my life. And he's a firefighter.

and he was just nervous as hell this is about saving america for everyone there this is about saving america i mean there's not some british election where it's about numbers are up and numbers are down a bit of unemployment we're worried about something else they literally see this as america in peril and he is he is riding in to save america which is why

The amount on his plate, given the promises he makes, is off the chart. It's, you know, what the hell? He's going to fix everything. And all the signs say Trump will fix it. It's not entirely clear what's broken, by the way. The US economy is flying right now. It's 3%. I mean, we in the UK would die for that kind of economic growth rate. Fuel costs gas and the tank costs nothing. Their heating costs are pretty nothing. But even on Palm Beach, which has got to be about the wealthiest place I've ever been with more billionaires per square foot, when I went to the polls yesterday where Trump was voting,

And I'm speaking to people coming out and they're saying, God, the cost of living crisis, man. These guys are multimillionaires, probably billionaires. And they're talking about the cost of living crisis and saving America. So when I got to the Republican convention, by the time I got there, eight o'clock, when people were starting to come in, I think they already were feeling pretty confident. I'm told from someone I spoke to who was at the Trump thing at Mar-a-Lago said he was confident all night. He was energetic all night. And so I'm guessing the Republican inside numbers

They were happy. They were confident. It wasn't the surprise that 2016 was. When he went in 2016, he never saw it coming. He wasn't prepared. He didn't have people lined up. This time around, he's got a whole plan. He's got 4,000 appointments he can make as president. You get that pick. And then Elon Musk is going to sack everyone. He's going to save $2 trillion off the domestic budget. Literally won't be a Department of Education, for example.

I think it's fascinating what you just said about the Republican side also thinking this is a battle for the future of America, about saving America, because we hear that a lot from the other side who are opposing Trump. But just setting that aside...

Just allowing myself to make that observation. Let's get into these big plans and these big implications. And particularly, I want to talk to you about what overseas stuff in general, but in particular, the migration thing, which has dominated this election. And as we understand, has done a lot to get the vote out for Donald Trump. You wrote a really good dispatch article.

from down in Mexico the other week, talking to people on their way to try and get across the border. What is your take on the state of the migration debate and what he's going to try and do now? He's talking about mass deportations and things like that. Can he actually implement that? And if he does, what are the knock-on implications?

Well, first of all, this is the guy in 2016 said, we're going to build a wall and we're going to get the Mexicans to pay for it. As far as I can see, a bit of a fence got built and they paid for it and the Americans paid for it. So there's a big promise there already broken back in 2016. And so when he says we're going to get our borders back, we're going to check everyone out.

That's big. That's difficult. The wall seems easier, actually. When I was down on the Guatemalan border with Mexico, so we're not talking in this case about Mexican immigrants coming into the U.S. These are all Latin Americans, South Americans, Central Americans coming through Mexico in their hundreds of thousands.

and through the millions, I think, probably. And funnily enough, the Biden-Harris administration, from what I could see, had got a grip on the situation. So the numbers of illegal crossings had plummeted in this current year. And that was deliberate policy by Biden.

to try and win this election because he knew he had a problem with immigration. They've struck up a deal with Mexico so that the Mexicans were keeping a lot of these migrants back in the southern border area down in Guatemala border, making it very difficult for them to move. The National Guard checkpoints everywhere I went. And any migrant caught on a bus, for instance, would be hoiked off and sent back to where they started. And it was a sort of like two steps up a slope.

a slippery drain pattern and then back down again for each of these migrants. The journey is unbelievably arduous and dangerous. It was drug cartel country too, which makes them prone to being trafficked. It makes them prone to being kidnapped, extorted and used as drug mules and all the rest of it. The issue Trump is going to have is if he wants to impose tariffs on Mexico, which he wants to do,

the Mexicans aren't going to be inclined to help him with this immigrant problem. And my kind of gut feeling is they'll just turn the tap on and let everyone walk up and go as far as they want to get in Mexico and get to the northern border. At the moment, they've been keeping them away from the northern border under a deal done with Biden-Harris. And I spoke to migrants and some of them said, we're rushing to America before Trump gets in. But the reality is when you said, if Trump gets in, are you going to turn around then? They said, no, we'll still keep going. So it

Trump is not going to deter anyone from getting to the promised land. They're leaving Venezuela, Ecuador, Haiti in their droves. Who can blame them? I thought it was a really interesting report to read. What can you tell us about the kind of scale of what you saw there? Because you're talking about this caravan, right, of people who were trying to... Were they walking? Were they travelling by road? No, they were walking. So the one I saw, and I went out to meet on

confined. They started in a town called Tapachula or a city in Tapachula, about 450,000 people, the population inflated by about 200,000 by migrants coming from Central and South America mainly. And they're not allowed to take buses out of the city so they have to walk and they have to walk to the next province I think it is. So they've got to walk about 300 miles something like that before they can start their onward journey to the northern border. And they do it in numbers because it's safer

So you literally had, we had 2,000 migrants. It was like watching a sort of football match empty out, but walking just along the main coastal highway that leads from Tapachula up to Mexico City, follows the Pacific for a great chunk of it. And they're just walking in the slow lane and lorries are going past them. And they walk at night, by the way. So it looked pretty dangerous to me because it's too hot. It's just the tropics. It's humid and all the rest of it.

And so they set off at midnight and they walk about six, seven hours each day. And inch by inch, they get closer to the northern border. And then all the time they're trying to get these appointments on this app that the Biden administration set up. So it's the only way you can legally claim asylum and get into the U.S. as a migrant is to get an app. You get an appointment on the app, then you get to the border and you have an appointment with the U.S. border force. And then they may or may not turn you down. But there aren't enough appointments on the app. There's 1,450 a day.

out in Tapachula because it's geolocated. They're probably offering about 300 a month for, I don't know how many, tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands I calculated coming over the border each month. So the numbers don't add up. You can't get the appointment. So you're just stuck in Mexico in this kind of holding. That'll be interesting to see how, if Trump wants to stick tariffs on the Mexicans, which is really what he wants to do because...

This is the place where every call center in the U.S., or many of the call centers in the U.S., are operated out of Mexico. It's just cheap labor. The car factories are in Mexico and then imported back in. He's threatening to put huge tariffs on this. Well, Mexico is a big enough country in its own right. It's one of the largest countries in the world by land mass, sixth, seventh, eighth largest country in the world, with a population of 145.

20, 30 million. It's not going to just roll over. You know, it is a country of migrants and the migrants who are here don't want more migrants, but they can handle it in many ways. The economy is booming.

Let's go back to the American side of the border. In the past few weeks since you've been there, how much has migration come up in your conversations with ordinary American voters? Huge. Everywhere you go, regardless, immigration is huge. Palm Beach, where I am at the moment, where the convention was held and where Trump lives. When you ask people coming out of the polls, why did you vote and how did you vote? We want to reclaim our borders and cost a living crisis. Well, these are multimillionaires and there's no great immigration problem in Palm Beach, trust me.

But it's everywhere. Every Trump supporter will tell you that we need to get a control of our borders back. It was the number one, number two issue for them by a mile. And she had a huge problem because borders are or whatever you want to call it. But she had this notional border problem, border role. She never went to the border.

She was a catastrophic candidate in that sense because she was totally open to that problem. And the way the Democrats picked their candidate gave them no option. But that was a huge problem because they couldn't answer that. Whether the problem was a real one or a perceived one, it made no difference. Now what everyone wanted to do was get our borders back. I mean, can he get the borders back? How can you see this happening? Can he deliver on this promise or not?

Well, as I say, in 2016, when he was elected on one issue alone in 2016, I'm going to build the wall and I'm going to get the Mexicans to pay for it. I mean, you know, that won him an election.

And what happened? He did less than deliver on it. He anti-delivered. They built a fence that he paid for. The stretch is tiny. So can he do it? Can he deliver it? He's better prepared this time. Everyone tells me in 2016, it was such a shock victory. He didn't have anyone in place. He didn't really know what he was doing for the first two years. It was chaos. This time around, they have a plan and he has people lined up. He has people to pick.

People want to come to America. It tells you that America can't be that terrible because all these people want to come here. And that's tricky. That's not a straightforward fix, frankly. And the border's huge. It stretches for how many thousands of miles or whatever it is between the two. I mean, that's not a straightforward patrol.

You were talking at the beginning about Elon Musk's plans to fire 2 million people or something and save a trillion dollars and get rid of the Department for Education. Is there anything you think in those very radical plans that we think that he's now got a big mandate to pursue that are going to impact the rest of the world or all of us who didn't get a vote, who are so enmeshed in the greater Pax Americana? The knock-on effect is huge. We haven't touched on Ukraine, we haven't touched on...

Israel and the West Bank, the Palestinian problem. We haven't touched on tariffs straight up. He wants to impose tariffs. He wants to protectionist strategy that no one really knows if he's genuine about the full-blown tariffs or it's strategic tariffs against China, these punitive tariffs for any American company that moves to Mexico and then tries to re-import into America. All of this will drive inflation through the roof potentially. Equally, there's a trade deal with the UK, for instance, which speaks

speak to Nigel Farage the other night out in Palm Beach, who flew out here for the election. He thinks Trump will do a trade deal with the UK now, and he'd always wanted to do one. It was the Tories who couldn't get their act together, so forget chlorinated chicken. That's in the offing, and he believes that'll get done, and so on and so forth. So the repercussions are off the charts, I think, in terms of what this means for the rest of the world. One clearly worries if you're waking up in Ukraine this morning, I would have thought.

And Israel's been a mess. One of Trump's big donors, a woman called Miriam Adelson, who's a sort of multi-billionaire, married a casino magnate and inherited his money when he died. He's given around about $100 million to the Trump campaign, I think more than Musk. And the reports, I have no idea if they're true or not, but there have been pretty serious reports suggesting that she's given that money on condition that he gives Netanyahu the green light to annex a great chunk of the West Bank, for instance. That's clearly going to be on the table. And then think

sometime he was the first person to congratulate him. I'd be pretty worried there, which is ironic because, I mean, she probably lost votes amongst the Palestinian Arab voters in Michigan. Well, that'll get pretty interesting. And lastly, it's always something of an advantage in a way, being an outsider, going around a country and you see things and stuff. Is there anything you think that we outside America are kind of

missing or haven't grasped about this whole business that you think we should know about? Yeah, look, it's a continent, not a country in many ways. I mean, that's the first thing that strikes you is the language might be the same, but it's utterly diverse and it's utterly chalk and cheese. So if you go to Manhattan or you go into DC, you've just got a completely different worldview from when you go into rural Pennsylvania or rural Minnesota where I've been or to Nebraska or Florida for that matter. When I hire a car, I hire the biggest car I can find in the U.S.,

because I feel safer in the most enormous kind of truck that I can drive. And I fill it up and it costs me about $40 to do so. And it's so obviously divided. We know it's obviously divided, but the majority is with Trump. And don't pretend otherwise. Don't pretend this is some extraordinary result. This is what America wants. And that would be my kind of takeaway, really, is that you can get a distorted view from the media. You can get a distorted view from CNN, for instance, which is terrific, but

It comes at it from a certain angle. Americans want a kind of vision of America that just allows them to do what they like. And they don't want to see Kamala Harris. Democrats imposing on that. Let's see where we end up. But as an outsider, people do talk to me, actually. They don't like mainstream media. But if you're British and you come from London, you're a bit quirky or whatever it is, they will talk to me. And they want my country back from something that it's not entirely clear who's taken it.

But they want their country back in some kind of modeled way that they can do what they like. Donald Trump's election has created massive uncertainty around the world. There is visible nervousness in Ukraine and NATO's European members. Tubulation in Israel and in China. Well, Beijing is keeping as calm as it possibly can.

Why? Well, because some of Donald Trump's pronouncements on the campaign trail about foreign and defense policy have been pretty dramatic. But no one's quite sure how far he's going to go in implementing them to discuss the knock-on security impacts for conflict zones around the world. I spoke to Ed Arnold. He's the European Security Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. I asked him what this means for America's allies, and

and what they should be doing in response. The outcome of the American election is absolutely unambiguous. It's probably less ambiguous than a lot of us expected. Donald Trump clearly has pretty much an ironclad mandate to do what he said he was going to do. You deal with questions of international security and war amongst America's allies. What does this mean? How dramatic is this?

I think the first point to make in terms of looking at this from an allied perspective, I mean, you mentioned that it's unambiguous. First point that we need to understand is that this isn't just it's four years and it's Trump's second term. He can't run again and he said he won't.

This is something that is probably a structural change within US politics and therefore the Europeans and other allies around the world have to act accordingly. This is something that is going to outlast this current administration. So,

So I think that's the first point that's really important to actually prepare for the long term. This is something that the Europeans especially have not done. And then in terms of Trump's election victory, I mean, the immediate issues, there's a variety around the world. I think the world is a far more dangerous place than during Trump's first term. And we're starting to see a lot of interlinkages within security environments.

We like to sort of isolate theatres and talk about European security or Indo-Pacific security or the Middle East. But the issue for principally the US at the moment is they face four adversaries in terms of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea across those three theatres. But they only really have the capacity to prosecute one major war.

So there's a lot of choices, prioritizations, a lot of risk that needs to be managed in this international security environment, which is very different to what it was in 2016.

I appreciate what you just said about not dividing the theatres, but that's exactly what I'm going to do. You mentioned four American adversaries, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. And I suppose we could split them into those three main theatres of global confrontation that we see now. There's the kind of European North Atlantic area, the war in Ukraine is the epicentre of that. Then there's the whole thing in the Middle East.

wars around Israel's periphery, confrontation with Iran, and then the Pacific Basin, North Korea, China, Taiwan. I was wondering if we could take these in turn.

Maybe starting with the one that's closest home for us, Europe, NATO, Ukraine, if I can put them all into one basket. There have been some pretty alarmist predictions about what this means here. I was wondering if you could spell out what is the most extreme scenario that we can expect from Donald Trump in a shift in US policy? What, on the other hand, is the most, I don't know, kind of...

I've written it down as a scenario that we could expect. And then give us an idea of where you think we actually are on that scale. Well, I think to take it back to sort of military planning, military plans are based on the most dangerous course of action and then the most likely course of action. And the critical point in your plan is at what point does your most likely become your most dangerous looking for those potential indicators and warnings. And I think that's actually also really important because you might start off with one and it moves forward.

quite quickly to the other. The issue around main defense and security issues in Europe, they can't fully be isolated from any of the other issues. So as a probably an immediate example is what Trump is talking about in terms of trade and tariffs, particularly with the EU.

Now, if that starts a sour relations and that makes it very difficult, then Trump might equate the EU with Europeans plus NATO plus others. So actually what you might see is policy areas bleeding in to others. And also it's probably going to compound issues. And I think the closest crocodile to the canoe is really support to Ukraine, both diplomatically and militarily.

And I think from a diplomatic perspective, now the Europeans have two months to come up with a, what do we do if Trump is serious about negotiating within 24 hours? Now, it's fine for the Europeans to come up with a roughly settled position on that, but

The other likely scenario is that the US deals with Russia without Europe, as the Russians wanted in December 21 when they created the draft treaties. The first one was between Russia and the US and then the second one, Russia to NATO. So diplomatically, there's going to be an issue there.

And yes, during the transition period, that's going to be absolutely critical. And then the more immediate and tangible concerns are about whether the Europeans can make up for the expected reduction in capabilities, military capabilities, economic assistance to Ukraine.

There's a variety of mechanisms Europeans can use. They could do that through NATO, which has been taking more of a leading role this year, through the EU, which obviously has pretty significant financial instruments, or they could do that bilaterally. The issue is it doesn't really matter about the mechanism that this thing is going to be ruinously expensive at the same point in time that budgets are stretched across Europe and economies are struggling.

So this is really going to be more about political leadership and the ability to set a path. And I'm not convinced that there are the right European leaders within Europe at the moment. And actually, you might probably see a coalition of the willing of states that are more invested in this than others, which obviously then potentially risks fragmentation as well. And any political fragmentation with Europe, the Kremlin will certainly want to exploit.

So Donald Trump has spoken about resolving the war in Ukraine in 24 hours or starting talks before he's even inaugurated. The nightmare scenario seems to be that Donald Trump might cut aid to Ukraine, use that as leverage to force a peace deal. A peace deal that if you look at kind of what J.D. Vance has said and other people around Trump have said, it could involve a kind of

an unarmed neutrality in a way. Ukraine barred from NATO, Russia keeping all the territories kept and possibly Ukraine being left without any kind of outside security guarantees. We've also heard the talk about I would encourage Russia to do whatever the hell it likes to NATO allies who have not paid their way

How dangerous is all this talk? And do you think we are in a really dangerous moment here or not? I think very dangerous. And again, the issue where I see compounding problems that you get back to my earlier point, you can't isolate what's a potential negotiation surrounding Ukraine, maybe at the end of January, if Trump's very serious with all of the other issues.

So Trump falls out with other NATO allies surrounding that in the alliance and also Article 5. And actually, you saw this through the first Trump one, that each of these issues, regardless of the format, including the G7 as well, that famous sort of photo where he's just sitting down with his arms crossed and he's got everyone talking to him, trying to change his mind.

that the Europeans get off to a bad start with their second Trump administration in January. These things are only going to get worse. And I think that the worst case scenario is that there's a direct deal between the US and Russia and the Europeans are left out in the cold.

That's actually also what happened within the withdrawal from Afghanistan, although it started under Trump and then it was executed under Biden. There's very little consultation with NATO allies. So there's a precedent of it actually happening, a Democratic president who is very supportive

supportive of Europe and that'll put the Europeans in a very difficult place. There's also the sort of the view at the moment is, well, yes, we can increase support to Ukraine in the next two months. We could sort of ease restrictions, send them as much as we can to get them in a more favourable position. But there's already the voices to say, well, if it's all going to be negotiated towards Ukraine,

the start of next year, kind of almost what's the point. And I think the Biden administration now in the next two months will hopefully try and use all of the presidential broadband authority that he has to arm Ukraine as much as possible, who are really struggling and will struggle far more over the winter. And then that will sort of set the tone for European security and NATO

for the next four years. And if it has issues surrounding NATO, and especially sort of Article 4, Article 5 with the US, I mean, that's going to be very difficult. And I don't think that NATO in that circumstance can survive in its current form. It might survive as an organization, but might have to look at pretty significant reforms.

to enable better burden sharing over the transatlantic. What is it that NATO, the British government, Keir Starmer, Olaf Scholz, Emmanuel Macron need to do? And shouldn't they have done it earlier?

Absolutely, they should have done it earlier. Trump 2 was a risk and you mitigate risk to minimize the impact. My worry is now that Europeans are doing sort of four years of thinking within two months and it's only lucky that the US electoral system provides that two-month transition and it gives the Europeans a little bit of time. And I think for those nations that you mentioned, individually, NATO nations can't wait

for collective decision-making now. I think, again, in terms of coalitions and the willing and leadership, states just start to say, well, although it's not agreed that 2% is the minimum, we're all moving to 2.5% and start to shame others into pushing

in that direction. I think they also need to understand where those critical capabilities are that the Americans might start to withdraw from Europe, which are mainly enablers in terms of logistics, air-to-air refueling, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, those things that the Europeans actually don't have a lot of, and decide who's going to buy what and when and to get it serviceable as quickly as possible. And when you look at all of the

time frames of when Russia might recapitalize its forces and pose a threat to Europe. They're all predicated on the fact that the Russians won't be fighting at their current intensity in Ukraine. So if you go through a negotiation process and it eases the Russians' military casualties, then that almost starts the clock.

So if the most pessimistic scenarios are three years, well, that's potentially three years from January if the Russians are able to gain the territory that they have and hold on to it politically rather than militarily. So the most pessimistic scenario, three years from the moment of, say, a ceasefire in Ukraine for NATO's European members to rearm to a degree that they're ready to fight Russia potentially without American help.

Yes. How far are we from that goal now? Quite far, not just in terms of numbers, but again, like I say, enablers, but also a political desire to get into that position. I think the worry at the moment is that we've put so much into Ukraine in terms of our own capabilities. So quite a lot of nations have...

emptied the shelves of capabilities to send to Ukraine, which has also denuded the Europeans' ability. So there's an element of restocking here as well, and then going further than we were a few years ago. There's a variety of initiatives, a variety of mechanisms for all of those initiatives. In some areas, Europeans are doing reasonably well.

in other areas not and I think it's less about understanding where those mechanisms are but just ultimately spending more and getting capabilities that will be ready far sooner.

Moving to the next theater, we've seen a lot of nervousness in Europe and in Ukraine, I'd say, over the past couple of days. In Israel, absolute, almost blanket jubilation. They're really pleased Donald Trump is in. And I suppose there's two kind of scenarios there that I've seen laid out. One is that Donald Trump pressures Netanyahu to wrap up the war because he doesn't want conflict control.

continuing, because he is Donald Trump, that intimidates Iran into negotiating an end to its nuclear policy and eventually kind of normalization between Israel and its Arab neighbors can resume and things get better. The flip side of that, I suppose, is a green lighting for, I don't know, Israeli annexation of the West Bank, strikes in Iranian nuclear facilities, all this kind of thing. What's the most extreme kind of implication there?

I think the most extreme implication is actually partly outside of Trump's control that much wider regional war happens between Iran and Israel, and it sucks in the US, which Trump does not want to happen. Again, he took this peace through strength approach last time, and a lot of his campaigning has been on the fact that no war started. And in his first terms, he doesn't want war, but that might be the trajectory, regardless of sort of

policy to that. And I think you're already going to start to see those changes. So again, within this transition that under the first scenario that you outlined, then it might be that Netanyahu wants to actually increase the

their military operations, both in Gaza but also in Lebanon, to try and get into as favourable a position as possible so that if Trump puts pressure on to halt, then they've got some military gains that they're able to do in these two months. Also, it's stated Iranian policy that they're going to retaliate for the sort of tit-for-tat attacks that have been happening between Israel and Iran. They might want to do that ahead of

Trump coming in because they're worried about a potential Trump response. So I think it's going to have an immediate impact way ahead of Trump's actual inauguration in the area. May I move on to the other grand theatre in the Pacific? And the reason I've kind of left it to last is because

China occupies Donald Trump's imagination and rhetoric almost more than any other country on the planet. He seems to me to have two principal ideas about China. One is that it is absolutely head and shoulders by a country mile the United States territory.

major strategic competitor in the 21st century, that it threatens American security, but most of all, and most concerning, American prosperity, that it has to be confronted, that warrants a major trade war if necessary. And his second opinion seems to be that Xi Jinping is just an absolutely great bloke. So

How does Trump in the White House, probably with a Republican-controlled Senate, with the mandate to do what he said he is going to do, how does that affect these long-term security questions in the Pacific Basin? And are we closer to...

or further from that feared conflagration, that feared war between China and its neighbours, principally over Taiwan? I think taking the last part of your question first, I mean, it's still the US intelligence community's assessment that China will have a militarily favourable window of opportunity around 2027. And even if you pull that a year earlier or a year later, I think we can conclude that US intelligence thinks that it will happen on January.

Trump's watch. So again, that's sort of something that is very time specific.

And I think the early indications will be who he puts in key national security positions, also in terms of his Secretary of State, etc. Because there's roughly two schools within the US. There's the sort of isolationist America First that don't want to get into these potential conflicts around the world that could obviously escalate. He has previously been quite lukewarm in terms of Taiwan and deterrence.

towards China. And then the other school is the Division of Labor School, which is effectively saying to NATO and Europeans, well, we can't do everything. So you do Europe, we'll do Indo-Pacific or Asia-Pacific as they call it.

So within that, there's sort of slightly two competing thoughts within that in terms of security. And I think he could probably be pushed either way by potential advice. It's actually interesting that quite a lot of people at the moment, I mean, they are China first. That's really important. We need to be there because that's where the strategic imperative is.

I think the worry for them will be that he sees a bit of personal charisma as the ability for doing personal diplomacy as apart from using those mechanisms of state. And that's similarly what he did with North Korean leader in his first term. But I think for the main issues with China, again, it starts with trade and potential tariffs, that it will be an economic relationship primarily between

that will start to bleed into the defense and security relationship as well. And I think it is the part that Trump does have to his advantage and America's advantage is this element of unpredictability. I think China and some of the other adversaries had

President Biden and his administrations, they were pretty wise to what they were able to do and not do. You're staying in those bounds of escalation management. It's far more difficult to do that when you have an unpredictable or potentially unpredictable administration. I remember talking to you and several other people, including some veteran US diplomats back in spring when we were talking about, OK, what are the implications of a potential Trump presidency?

And one of the thoughts that came up was, this is a profound shift back to a much older kind of American attitude to the world in a way. I think the quotation I used for the article, I'm not sure if it came from you or not, was in 1945 in reverse. The kind of America retreating from the world as it was before the Second World War, rather than continuing its role as this dominant global power that could affect humanity.

and is interested in affecting everything. And that's the world we've kind of got used to in a decade since. Is that the turning point we're at, do you think? Have we got to get used to a world without the Americans in a sense?

I mean, possibly, but again, it's whichever school of international relations wins within the Trump administration. Yes, there's the American first part, and that's where you see more protectionist potential trade policies coming. And that's obviously very important. It's also probably fueled quite a lot of the electoral success that Trump has just shown.

But the position that the US is in is the preeminent power. I mean, it can't easily sit back if you look at before the First World War and the Second World War as well. Both wars they didn't want to get involved in, but then they ultimately had to, and then they were decisive in both areas. And actually, I think within the potential picks of some of the national security people within Washington now, they're not really arguing for that.

They're arguing that China is the pacing threat, which is current US policy, and it really needs to be taken seriously. They're exceptionally worried about it because the implications of the US losing that preeminent position, China becoming more dominant, China then being able to stitch together this sort of patchwork of partnerships and alliances as if somewhere to really challenge the US dominated world.

That's the worst case scenario to the US. So I think that's where the advisors will be to say, we understand your instincts on peace through strength. We understand that American first policy, we understand your political base, but these are things that you just can't ignore. And I think there'll be much better at making that argument within the Indo-Pacific as opposed to Europe, as opposed to Europe.

the Middle East. So again, you sort of start to get this rough division of labor, which will potentially happen where the US really does focus on the Indo-Pacific. That's continuation of policy under Obama, but it's moving quite quickly from economic and foreign policy to defense and security policy. The Europeans manage Europe, which is not really an unrealistic, because the

Not unexpected. And then sort of there'll probably be a bit of duality within the Middle East where the Americans and Europeans will have to work together, have they had over a number of years. And when you said at the beginning, you've got to understand that this is a long term thing. This is what it's not just Trump for four years. That's what you're talking about. The European governments need to realize.

Absolutely. I think this was the key failure when you're saying people are now having crisis talks, the German defense minister going over to see the French defense minister yesterday, all of these issues. I mean, it was quite clear, I'd say very early on, almost 2015, that Trump was a significant power outside of the US Republican Party.

ran first time for the Republican primaries, basically battered away 17 candidates. One included Jeb Bush, the son and brother of former US presidents. Completely knocked them aside. The US Republican Party back then didn't want Trump. He's actually managed to change the party and now they very much want Trump and obviously the electorate as well.

So I imagine at the moment, though a lot can change, that probably JD Vance will be the Republican nominee in four years. So again, this long-term preparations that the Europeans need to do, they need to do it alongside the immediate.

issues and mitigations because they just have not been taking this seriously. It's been a head in the sand moment in the hope that Kamala Harris won the election. But even if she had won the election, they would have still needed to do this anyway. So it's really a bit of a dereliction of duty now that they're suddenly getting or trying to get their act together. And I think it's an issue within European political systems individually and collectively that you need these sort of absolute crisis moments

in order for nations to act. I wanted to ask you about that kind of head in the sand moment. Is it because people just can't imagine being in the front line of a war and don't really realize what it might mean? I'm wondering if you could flesh out to us how realistic is that nightmare scenario of a Russia versus European NATO conventional war? And what would happen in that case? How close would that be to affecting ordinary people here in Britain?

Well, I think we're very close in my earlier point of those sort of largely intelligence assessments of where we might need to be ready for the war. That's all predicated on the fact that it's deliberate Kremlin policy because NATO Defence Alliance would not choose to go to war with Russia, but it could just happen accidentally. On the 22nd of September 2022, a Russian fighter shot a missile that's a RC-130 RAF River Joint Aircraft, so approximately 45

UK nationals on board, a very expensive piece of equipment. For that, if that had hit, that would have probably met the Article 5 threshold. There were two points of failure there that the pilot thought that he'd been given the command to fire and then the missile just missed for technical reasons. So I would say that the most likely scenario if there is a war in the coming years is through a complete accident that escalates and that could happen at any time. It could happen tomorrow. That's where the real sort of

concern is for where it starts. It's very difficult to predict how a potential war would happen between Russia and NATO and obviously if it could be kept in the sub-nuclear domain. And if it could, if it was conventional, I mean you only have to look at Ukraine, you only have to look at Ukrainian casualty rates, you only have to look at Ukrainian civilian casualty rates to see how

disastrous this could potentially be. And I worry particularly within our country that we say, well, we're not a frontline state, so we don't need to worry about this as much as others. And our allies do the worrying for us, but we do support them in a variety of ways.

But I counter that to say, well, we're in an alliance. We have UGA forces in a frontline state, Estonia. If they are attacked, we are brought in because we've signed a treaty with these countries. So we are a frontline state. And the Russians have submarines. They can get close to the UGA. It's not that the tanks will suddenly appear in the UK. Not at all. But this will be an all-domain fight. You'll see it.

cyber attacks, your potential critical national infrastructure attacked as well. So that sort of political division, so cabinet, COBRA, National Security Council, the MOD are having to also deal with domestic things and foreign issues and sort of suck up capacity that way. And I think if you look at, for example, the COVID inquiry in terms of political decision making that's going on at the moment, I mean, that gives you a key indication of how

good or how bad the country is in crisis. And I just don't think that the mindset is serious enough into what all these potential implications are. I think some departments are, or some areas within some departments are, but not as a whole. And particularly in terms of being very honest with the public about these are the potential consequences of that. You said to me on the phone the other day something about this RAF base in Scotland that would be

a key target for the Russians potentially in the event of a NATO-Russia war, Britain's going to be involved and targeted straight away? Yes, I think so. And not in a way that people currently think in terms of what's happening in Israel and Iron Dome, etc. I mean, there's some critical areas that do need to be defended, probably within the capital, but we just don't have the capabilities. And where we have these sort of quite poor tactical air defence capabilities, they all need to be at

RAF Lossiemouth in the north because that is where a lot of NATO's maritime patrol aircraft capability comes from. Not exclusively by the UK, but a lot of that to look at effectively Russian submarine activity within the North Sea. I think a very likely scenario if it's a deliberate Kremlin policy, then that would probably be one of the first targets to attack because you take out NATO's maritime patrol capability

Then Russian submarines have freedom of maneuver in the North Atlantic and they're able to target any US reinforcements coming over the Atlantic. So again these scenarios I think we need to really stress test them a lot more and again obviously not wanting to say panic but we need to be far more honest with the public about where we think the

the threats are going to materialise rather than doing what we're doing at the moment, which is very an internal review. We'll talk about the threat a bit, but I think we need to be very clear about how that threat will manifest and affect the public at large. Battle Lines is an original podcast from The Telegraph created by David Knowles.

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