Now is the winter of our discontent

Let’s start with empirically provable facts and go on from there.

Fact 1: The EU is built on lies, of which the most dangerous one is that it can act as a defensive alliance.

The lie is necessary for the EU to bring all European armies under its command, thereby subjugating nation states even further. Typically for that wicked contrivance, its defence policy pursues nothing but political objectives.

These are the only objectives it can pursue, for EU members are manifestly incapable of defending themselves against the juggernaut of Russian aggression.

Fact 2: Russia is gearing for war. It has amassed 30 motorised divisions on its western borders, with more tanks, by an order of magnitude, than Britain, Germany and France possess put together. The deployment pattern points at a direct threat to the Baltic EU (and NATO) members.

The large-scale civilian evacuation drills, vast army exercises in offensive tactics, surreptitious call-up of reservists, massive deployment of missile forces all cost billions which Russia’s shrinking economy can’t afford to keep up for long. That means the country is looking at some short-term action soon.

This is confirmed by the ratcheting up of war propaganda. Putin’s Goebbelses are clearly priming the populace for war.

All this may just be an on-going effort to blackmail the West into submission. Yet only a fool would ignore the possibility that the threat is real and war is just round the corner. Even a greater fool would believe that the EU is ready to fight it.

Fact 3: Only NATO is capable of matching up to the Russian military muscle. And, for all practical purposes, NATO means the USA.

Since NATO was formed in 1949, its European members have always been assigned the role of a sacrificial delaying force only. They were supposed to hold on long enough for the US to perform today’s answer to D-Day.

It was also mostly the US nuclear umbrella, rather than Britain’s two Tridents or France’s minuscule force de frappe, that has been keeping Soviet, now Russian, aggression in check.

Hence the EU, one of whose declared aims is to nullify US power, is digging a hole for itself. Conceivably it could survive without American economic assistance, but it certainly can’t resist Russia, the only militarily virile European power, without American military protection.

Fact 4: At no time since the Second World War has America been in a weaker position vis-à-vis the potential Russian threat.

The most disastrous election campaign in US history has weakened the country’s spirit and will weaken it even further regardless of who wins in a week’s time.

The Democrats are accusing Trump of being in Putin’s pocket, and their harangues aren’t wholly groundless. Trump’s son has admitted that a great deal of the family income comes from Russia, and persistent rumours suggest that Putin has paid for much of Trump’s campaign.

Even if that’s not the case, it’s hard to see how Trump’s pronouncements on Putin would be different if it were. He regularly makes pro-Putin appeasement noises and has often cast doubt on America’s willingness to come to Europe’s aid under his presidency.

Less publicised is the fact that the utterly corrupt Clinton Foundation has also received vast amounts of laundered Russian cash. Hillary is making tough noises now, to differentiate herself from Trump, but her record as Secretary of State is that of craven appeasement towards Putin.

Her reaction to Russia’s 2008 aggression against Georgia was to present Putin’s Foreign Minister Lavrov with a ‘reset’ button. It was also during her tenure that Obama abandoned the Bush administration’s plan to build a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe, a decision KGB Vlad described as “correct and brave”.

Now let’s use these facts as the starting point of ratiocination leading to a dismaying conclusion:

The US interregnum period between 8 November, 2016 (presidential election), and 20 January, 2017 (presidential inauguration), is by far the most dangerous one in Western post-war history. The combination of a sitting lame-duck president and a freshly elected appeaser may well render America both impotent and unwilling to stand up to Putin’s threat.

The KGB-trained chieftain will doubtless see this period as a window of opportunity. The opportunity to do what is open to question. It may be that he’ll hold a gun to the West’s head and demand economic concessions, which he sorely needs.

Russia’s economy is rapidly contracting, with living standards sliding down even faster. Though it’s impossible to take opinion polls conducted in a totalitarian state at face value, it’s clear that Putin enjoys some popular support – even if it’s in reality short of the notorious 85 per cent. But, should food disappear from the counters, such support may prove brittle.

Since 1917 the evil Russian state has relied on the West to bail it out, which the West has been willing to do, much to its own detriment. But war is another time-proven trick for totalitarians to solve their economic problems.

No one knows which of these stratagems, blackmail or war, Putin will choose. Perhaps he doesn’t know that himself yet. But the only possible explanation of the available facts is that he’ll definitely choose one of them.

Brace yourself for a long, harsh winter.