Read the original article at The Daily Express

It would be better if Russia isn’t seen as the enemy

Of all the outpourings of hysteria in the wake of the Trump victory, surely the daftest must be that he is pro-Russian

I have written some pretty disobliging comments about Donald Trump in this column but I find his stance towards Russia more reassuring than disturbing.

It is his understanding – or rather lack of it – of Nato that is worrying and I can only hope he speedily comes to a different view. His current one is likely to threaten peace itself.

It is ironic that after the Second World War – indeed for nearly all the second half of the last century – we longed for the day when the US and Russia (or the Soviet Union as it then was) would become friends. When Reagan and Gorbachev began a peace process to end the Cold War we cheered. Now the opposite is true and too many commentators seem to want enmity between the two countries – a pretty curious view.

Indeed if one makes any comment about Russia which does not suggest that Putin is the devil incarnate, the result can be an avalanche of vitriolic criticism, as the perfectly harmless Bow Group recently found out. 

This organisation is an association of Conservatives, mainly young, who produce research publications. It has no corporate view and the only criteria for publication are that the documents are carefully researched, original and interesting. It has produced work both criticising Russia and supporting some of Putin’s actions but only the latter resulted in bitter attacks in the press.

So let me stick my own head above the parapet. I do not trust Putin and if Trump persists in his delusional approach to Nato then I could also fear Putin, but I think that he has got it right over Islamic State and showed a purpose which the West was too busy worrying about Assad to match. Indeed had we acted decisively earlier Putin might not have got his foothold in Syria.

The enemy of civilisation is IS, which crucifies, beheads and burns alive its opponents. It is wholly without mercy and has brought destruction to vast swathes of Iraq and Syria, killing men, women and children. Putin is right to be fighting these hordes of barbarians. 

Every time Russian missiles hit a hospital the media in this country pretty well suggests it’s deliberate, rather than facing the unpalatable fact that IS, like Hamas in the Middle East, operates in civilian areas, not in some discrete, carefully marked out battlefield. 

We are the country which allied with the monster Stalin against Hitler, which bombed thousands of civilians including children in Dresden, which supported its major ally when it unleashed atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Assad could well plead that, measured against such a record, he is knee-high to a grasshopper in horror.

Putin is ghastly, Assad is wicked but IS is worse by miles. We won the Second World War by knowing our real enemy. It is time to do so again.