Biden is a danger to the West
We think we have problems in the UK with the apparent lack of statesmen or women to run this country, but Joe Biden’s abject performance last night in the “debate” with Donald Trump is a worry not just for the US and the UK but the whole planet. What on earth will Vladimir Putin and the other evil tyrants around the globe be making of the leader of the only global superpower? The US president struggled to string a sentence together despite days of preparation, and seems to want the golf course rather more than the White House.
Our enemies will thrive on our weakness. At this moment, when the Western world teeters on the precipice of the next World War, the only person who can probably prevent it increasingly appears unfit for office. The person who would depose him might end hostilities in Ukraine by giving Putin the keys to Kyiv. Both may be able to run the US (at least with help from advisers) for the next four years, but they could set the rest of the world alight as they tinker in their own back yard.
We should have no say who the Americans chose as their leader, but as a “critical” friend and with our “special” relationship perhaps we have a duty to tell that friend what it looks like from the outside. I know it is often easier to see the splinter in somebody else’s eye rather than the log in one’s own, but at the moment the oak tree in Biden’s eye needs to be called out for what it is – very, very dangerous.
Putin is threatening nuclear war and his hand seems to be hovering over the red button. The axis of authoritarian nations - Russia, North Korea, Iran and China - is consolidating. It is America which dwarfs these countries in military might. It is the US which remains the world’s policeman at an increasingly tense and perilous moment.
At least when we had the chaotic Liz Truss as “commander in chief”, her tenure was short-lived. Granted, we now have the choice between a crushingly dull lawyer or a cocker spaniel like leader, ever chasing his tail and never catching it. But I would trust both with our “slightly” smaller “red” button, and I am sure our Armed Forces would, too.
The question which has stuck in people’s minds following this week’s Sunak-Starmer BBC debate was: Are you two really the best we have? That audience member ought to have considered the choice facing the US, a nation of so much talent where the demagogic and the frail will be on the ballot paper.
We should let Biden and Trump play golf, and let the next generation run the world.
Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon is former commanding officer of the 1st Royal Tank Regiment
