It's not yet World War Three but 'World War Z' has begun

Time was when optimists responded to the imminence of world war with a cocky: "It'll all be over by Christmas..."

- MARK ALMOND

Since President Biden’s foreign policy team leaked his decision to let Ukraine use US-supplied long-range missiles to strike military targets within Russia, pessimists have been warning that World War Three will start by Christmas.

The Russians certainly have been issuing blood-curdling warnings that any Western permission for Ukraine to use NATO-supplied rockets to attack Russia itself would trigger a terrible response.

The deterrent effect of the Kremlin’s threats worked with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholtz, who pointedly repeated his refusal to send Germany’s Taurus cruise missile to Ukraine – and went on to telephone President Putin for the first time in more than two years.

Our prime minister, however, has not only repeated his support for Ukraine, but Sir Keir Starmer seems to have anticipated Biden’s decision by authorising British-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles to make similar strikes against the Russian airbases and bunkers used to launch the recent wave of devastating airstrikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

What makes authorising these new missiles and expanding the range of the authorised targets more sensitive than other types of weapons supplies is that the long-range weapons, known as ATACMS (short for Army Tactical Missile System), use intelligence from US satellites to find their targets.