Soviet invasions of allies helped destroy the Warsaw Pact – Trump’s dangerous rhetoric risks repeating the mistake inside Nato

Donald Trump’s echoing of Russia’s talking points in its war against Ukraine has long been a cause for alarm and dismay in the west.

Now an even more disturbing Kremlin precedent dating from the cold war is being evoked by the US president’s fixation on taking over Greenland – that of carrying out attacks on military allies.

I worried about nuclear war throughout my childhood, partly because it was the 80s, and partly because we were always demonstrating against it. On this important day, I knew where I needed to be ...

It would have been my late mother’s birthday last Monday, and because I am either astronomically stupid or fathomlessly wise, I elected to spend it at a public meeting about nuclear disarmament. I’d call it a blast from the past, except I feel superstitious about introducing explode-y words too near the nuclear topic.

I spent my entire childhood worrying about nuclear war, partly because it was the 80s, and everyone did, and partly because we spent our lives demonstrating against it. We had “Protest and Survive” stickers everywhere, in droll parody of the public information booklet “Protect and Survive”, along with “Nuclear Power? No Thanks”. We were also early adopters of climate change anxiety, while fiercely against the closure of coalmines. If you’re wondering where we expected to get our power from, well, obviously we didn’t need central heating: the combination of political fervour and long johns was very warming. When I say we, of course I mean “my mother”; my sister and I had very little agency in this quest for peace.