If Argentina’s dictator, Leopoldo Galtieri, had waited just six months to invade the Falklands, there would have been no task force for Britain to retake the islands. The aircraft carriers, Invincible and Hermes, intrinsic to the mission’s success, would have been delivered to Australian and India.
Would Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine have floundered so badly had he waited until 2024 when Donald Trump could possibly be president? Would Trump, the man accused of being the Muscovian candidate for the White House who was prepared to accept the Russian occupation of Crimea, and had faced an impeachment inquiry for withholding military aid to Kyiv really have provided Volodymyr Zelensky’s government with billions of dollars of arms, enabling his country to fight back?
If China’s Xi Jinping, sabre-rattling at present over Taiwan, was to delay any invasion he may have planned what would be the reaction of Trump? After all, he threatened to pull US forces out of the Indo-Pacific and warned allies in the region that they should not expect the US will defend them against Beijing.
It is, of course, far from inevitable that Trump will win the Republican nomination, trailing as he is Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, in the polls. The showing of the candidates he endorsed in the midterm polls has been poor.
More and more senior Republicans including those previously ardently loyal) are now saying it is time for the party to move on. A YouGov poll at the weekend showed that DeSantis had a seven-point lead among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters for the nomination. But it is worth remembering that in 2016, nine months before Trump won the presidency, an NBC News/Waill Street fournal poll had given Ted Cruz a two-point lead over Trump. There is a long way to go before the nominations close. We now await the former president’s announcement.
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Denne historien er fra November 16, 2022-utgaven av The Independent.
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Why fans will shrug at loss of Man Utd's brightest star
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Will Usyk or Fury 'get old overnight' in their rematch?
In boxing we have an expression we use during a fight, if one of the boxers looks bad: \"He got old overnight.\"
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Sliding doors moment that saw Spurs embrace chaos
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HS2 doesn't need a 'reset'...this line never made sense
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Hope for economic growth dampened by uncertainty
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Trump's war on the press is straight from Putin playbook
The pen may not be mightier than the sword, but it still has the power to wound. How else to explain the extraordinary remarks of the former Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, this week in which he revealed how stung he'd been by an editorial in The Times?
Musk calls far-right AfD party saviours of Germany
Elon Musk has described the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as the country's saviour, sparking calls from Berlin for the US billionaire to \"stay out\" of their politics.
Macron swears in heated exchanges with crowds in cyclone-battered Mayotte
French president Emmanuel Macron swore during an exchange as he was heckled by angry residents of a Mayotte neighbourhood ravaged by cyclone Chido, telling them: “If it wasn’t for France, you’d be 10,000 times deeper in shit.”
Store guard helped uncover abuse of Pelicot by husband
When Gisèle Pelicot was called to talk to police in November 2020, she believed it was to discuss upskirting allegations made against her husband of 50 years.
