There was President Barack Obama’s much-vaunted new “Asia–Pacific pivot,” which demonstrated Europe’s reduced strategic importance to the United States. It was signalled by the massive reduction in American forces stationed in Germany. How ironic it was that, a month after Putin invaded Crimea, the last American tanks left German soil after sixty-nine years. Once there were over 6,000 NATO tanks in Germany, most of them American: a massive statement of America’s determination to protect Europe. It is a simple fact of military life that, once you cut capability, it requires a superhuman effort to regenerate it. Storing mothballed tanks and other vehicles of war in Eastern Europe, as the Americans first did in 2015, does not by itself create a credible military capability. That requires manpower, training, logistics, and commitment and, equally important, enough time to pull everything together so they can operate as an effective team.

The impression of America’s decreasing interest in Europe was further reinforced by Obama’s abdication of diplomatic efforts to contain Russia in Ukraine in 2014. Don’t forget that America, together with Russia and the UK, were signatories of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, under which Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in return for US and Russian guarantees of its territorial integrity. Russia had torn up the Budapest Memorandum and Obama had chosen to forget American promises. I have served under the finest American generals and admirals in peace and war and know only too well that American leadership remains crucial to the defense and security of the free world—so this was not a good signal to send Russia, or the world.

The United Kingdom, Europe’s premier military power since the Second World War, was led, from 2010, by a coalition Prime Minister, David Cameron, who appeared increasingly backward-leaning on the international scene. His Defense Review of 2010 was nothing more than a gamble based on an assumption that the international scene would remain benign. Wars and conflicts that threatened the security of the United Kingdom were declared a thing of the past. The UK’s national strategy proclaimed that there was no existential threat to these shores. How irresponsibly naive that sounds, as I write these words today.