Photo by iMattSmart

I watched the close protection team empty their weapons at the gate of what was the largest US military base in Afghanistan. This was just under 17 years ago. It was a hot day and I had spent three hours of it filming inside a literal minefield. Later, as I sat down in the shade to eat, I wasn’t even hungry. In fact, I was feeling nauseous—my usual response to the company of trained killers. Just then, an American soldier—someone I had never met before—slapped me hard on the back, commenting first on my accent, then telling me how much he loved the Brits.

Who knows the situation by the time this goes out but watching Zelenskyy’s plane touch down at Stansted Airport—and the subsequent cavalcade of black and grey 4×4 vehicles speeding down the tidy three-lane motorway to London and Downing Street—was like eyeballing the future, not tending to the present. A future where the US may no longer be the go-to place for every democratic leader defending freedom.

As the motorbike dispatch riders weaved in and out of the traffic, speeding up and slowing down, like a performative dance, many softer-hearted viewers were feeling relief that our embattled guest would at least be predator-free for a couple of days. In addition, so many European leaders had offered carefully unified support for Zelenskyy after what had looked to the casual observer like a Vance-led mugging—already mischaracterised as the other way round by some Trump supporters—in the evidently coveted Oval Office.

Meanwhile, though Ukrainian forces had now advanced close to the major eastern cities of Pokrovsk and Toretsk, Moscow continued its own larger push with Russian and North Korean conscripts into a country which not so long ago had been the third-largest nuclear power in the world (before it surrendered its nuclear weapons in exchange for long-forgotten US, UK and Russian security guarantees in the equally unrecalled 1994 Budapest Memorandum). ‘The point is,’ as comedian Chris Farley once said, ‘how do you know the Guarantee Fairy isn’t a crazy glue sniffer.’

Unfairly or otherwise, a mixture of horror and despair now greeted one or two Americans in London. I had seen it in the park with my own eyes. However, even the most pro-Trump of social media sites had been showing overwhelming support for Zelenskyy. Only the most conspiracy theorist of Americans—and there are many—could honestly call it otherwise. To have attacked and berated a punch-drunk, bloodied ally in the middle........

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