In 2014, after Russia seized Crimea, I started saying something which quite a few people thought was ridiculous.

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Europe needed to prepare for the possibility of a much larger war with Russia. We needed to prepare for the possibility that, if it happened, America might not defend Europe as we had assumed it would since the Second World War. This is not a “I told you so” moment. In my long career, I have got plenty of things wrong.

Human beings, including myself, are good at finding facts which support what we want to believe and bad at accepting where the facts lead when the conclusion is something we don’t want to hear. We find possibilities that challenge our outlook extremely difficult to contemplate until they happen.

Europe is doing that. As the Government tell us to stock up and prepare – for what, they can’t quite bring themselves to say – stories about Burnham’s beans and Rayner’s Sauvignon Blanc make the situation almost quaint. But it’s far from that.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should have destroyed any remaining assumption that large-scale war in Europe belonged to history. We still seem to believe this will somehow resolve itself. And ultimately, if the worst happens, NATO will protect us and America will turn up. The United States has protected Western Europe for most of my lifetime. But it has a very different leader today, one interested only in short-term US interests.

Europe must face that we may largely have to defend ourselves. The conditions which could produce a much wider conflict are visible. Russia is prepared to use military force to alter European borders and absorb enormous casualties in doing so.........

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