A troubling new era of war and instability

Editor – William Hague, ex Foreign Secretary, has written a brilliant article in Today’s Times (Tuesday). Tech has changed war and we must keep up.
Every Tuesday I read his article. My copy is soon full of underlinings, queries, question marks and ticks. AI has taken us into a different world. Trump is now free to kill any government of Iran and there is no place or procedure for complaint or redress, partly because Iran’s regime has been an appalling danger to the whole Middle East for many years, as well as to its own citizens, 35,000 of whom have been shot dead in peaceful protests.
No wonder a new regime, sensitive to the wishes of its 90 million people, cries out to be empowered. But will it? And how will it? There are no signs of it yet. If Trump backed off, would that do? No, because the IRGC, a huge power, will shoot every protester on its streets and invent a new regime from its own ranks.
In his article, Hague writes: “A significant technological advantage reinforces the temptation to strike. To possess overwhelming power and not use it is rare. Trump has just used it. The first in recent times. A state or an armed group will be tempted to use its advantage. Morality will have no part in it.”
That is what we have seen in the migration of immigrants to our shores and any country or group with a nuclear weapon will use it to its advantage.
Rapid and uneven technological change is inherently destabilising. It requires a new way of thinking here in Britain. And we have given up our allies in NATO and even in the USA: Trump has written us off. He will not rescue us again.
It is probable that his love of cash has tempted Trump to invest in Russia. Putin will have bought him with high rates of interest. His preference for Putin over Ukraine is otherwise impossible. Meanwhile, Putin will have been selling drones and missiles by the thousand to Iran, the reason for their stranglehold on Hormuz. And yet if the other Middle East states were to fire all their missiles at Iran for a month or two, there would soon be no sites left in Iran as well as no small boats to fire on tankers. These have to be beached near the shore. So by flooding the Hormuz shore with bombers and jets regularly every day, these will no longer be a threat.
As Hague says, chronic instability has become our lot. We have given up our allies, the US is no longer our friend. The age of temptation has arrived.