Sam Olsen

This weekend has seen the eruption of what has been building for months: a regional war in the Middle East. The United States and Israel have struck Iranian targets. Iran has retaliated not only directly but by widening the theatre, hitting Arab neighbours who assumed diplomacy and economic integration would shield them from escalation. RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus has now reportedly been targeted by Iranian drones. What began as a confrontation between Israel and Iran now entangles American assets, Gulf states and British infrastructure.  Thankfully, this is not world war three. Russia and China are watching rather than mobilising. There is no sign of escalation in Europe or the Indo-Pacific. But that reassurance misses the point.

When Vladimir Putin declared this week that Russia was 'ready' to fight a war in Europe, the remark barely seems to have rippled the surface of Britain’s political consciousness. It should have sent a shockwave. The US delegation that had flown to Moscow in the hope of reviving a peace plan left empty-handed. Putin’s message was not bluster but a statement of intent: Russia is preparing for possible escalation now. Yet Britain continues to behave as though danger is tidily scheduled for years in the future, safely beyond the horizon of any present responsibility. It is a comforting delusion, but a very dangerous one.

Over the weekend, millions of Americans took to the streets in more than 2,000 ‘No Kings’ marches nationwide, protesting what they regard as the creeping authoritarianism of President Trump. The marches – which Trump’s allies called ‘the hate America rally’ – were notable for their scale, but more importantly they are a symbol of something deeper: the erosion of political legitimacy in the world’s pre-eminent democracy. For China and Russia, the spectacle of Americans turning on their own institutions confirms a long-held belief, namely that the United States is entering a phase of irreversible decline and may soon hesitate abroad. The data bear them out.

The United Nations General Assembly is meant to showcase international consensus. This week it became a stage for its fiercest critic as Donald Trump returned to New York not to flatter the global order, but to flay it. He accused the UN of bankrolling migration, derided climate policy as hoax, and warned that if Russia refused to end its war, America would impose 'powerful tariffs' and force Europe to do the same. The rest of Donald Trump's UN speech made the pattern impossible to miss Later the same day, after meeting Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump struck a different but complementary note: Ukraine, he declared, could recover all of its lost territory, dismissing Russia as a 'paper tiger'.

Donald Trump’s second state visit to Britain this week is a spectacle, but the real significance lies away from the pageantry and protests. Instead, it forces a harder question: what does Britain want from America, and what does America want from us? The visit is a reminder that Britain’s relationship with Washington is not just a sentimental bond, but a strategic choice made in a world defined by geopolitical rivalry. That rivalry is sharpening. The 1990s dream of a unipolar, American-led order has long gone. We are drifting into a world shaped by competition between two great powers, the United States and China. The logic of that contest is already evident: a world split into spheres of influence, one anchored in Washington, the other in Beijing.

Poland woke yesterday morning to what its prime minister, Donald Tusk, called an “unprecedented violation of Polish airspace.” In the early hours, a “huge” swarm of Russian drones – at least 19 by Warsaw’s count, perhaps 23 according to Polish media – crossed the frontier during overnight strikes on Ukraine. Polish and Nato fighters scrambled, including Dutch F-35s, to bring them down. Airports were closed as air-raid sirens wailed. In one village, falling debris from an intercepted drone crashed into a residential block. For Vladimir Putin, Ukraine is not the goal but the stepping stone This was not business as usual. Drones have strayed into Poland’s skies before, but this was the first time Polish and Nato forces together have shot down multiple aircraft.

Beijing gave us a glimpse of the future this week. Across Tiananmen Square rolled column after column of tanks, missile launchers and robot dogs. Above, sleek new J-35 stealth fighters cut through the smog, together with drones and surveillance aircraft. The centrepiece was unmistakable: gleaming hypersonic and ballistic missiles, designed to extend China’s military reach across continents. Reviewing all this was Xi Jinping, flanked by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. It was military theatre, yes. But it was also a declaration: China is no longer just a regional power. It intends to set the rules of a new world order. Trump staged a piece of political nostalgia; Xi orchestrated a global summit with missiles attached This was no isolated spectacle.

'Pigeons, beaten to a fine lead by hunger, flickered amongst the rusted girders of the railway bridge… rubble was being trucked from busted gable ends, and demolishers worked in a fume of dust and smoke. You would’ve thought that the Ruskies had finally lobbed over one of their big megaton jobs.' Jeff Torrington’s brutal poetry in Swing Hammer Swing! captured the death of Glasgow shipbuilding, when the Clyde’s cranes fell silent and the yards were written off as relics. Half a century on, the noise is back. The clang of cranes, the hiss of welders, the shuffle of apprentices in overalls: the Clyde is stirring again. Shipbuilding jobs in Scotland have risen from 6,000 to more than 7,200 in the past decade.