UNITED STATES

Poland and the Baltic states feel threatened by Russia’s recent deployment of nuclear-capable Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, the Russian territory wedged between Poland and Lithuania. The U.S. has responded by sending troops and reinforcements to Poland.

Intro: We need to turn away from Donald Trump’s Twitter feed and concentrate on some of the more worrying developments that the United States are involved in.

Much of the attention in the United States over the past week has been on Donald Trump and what the Russians may or may not have got on embarrassing material about his business and private life. The revelations have been fascinating, the risk of Mr Trump being held for blackmail on any hidden agenda with Russia lurid, but, nevertheless, it is no wonder such news has dominated the headlines.

Beneath all of this, however, there has been much more serious global developments with US involvement, eclipsed by the shenanigans and salacious disclosures of the incoming president’s behaviour. But it is best that they do not go unnoticed.

The first was the biggest deployment of U.S. troops in Europe since the end of the cold war. Some one thousand troops (of a promised four thousand) were deployed to Poland, part of President Barack Obama’s response to the nervousness of central European states in the face of Russian aggression. Agitated concerns have been expressed in many European states ever since Russia’s belligerence and actions in Ukraine and the Crimea. Notably, this is the first-time U.S. troops have been permanently stationed along Russia’s western border.

More than 80 main battle tanks and hundreds of armoured vehicles have already arrived in Germany and are being moved into eastern Europe by road and rail.

The Kremlin has been angered by the deployment, branding the arrival of tanks and reinforcements as a threat to Russia’s security.

Last October Russia sent nuclear-adaptable Iskander missiles to the Polish border and in December deployed Bastion anti-ship missile launchers to the Baltic. America has now responded to that threat given its commitment to peace in Europe. An old-fashioned arms build-up is now taking shape.

This is not the only part of the world where Russia and the U.S. are squaring up to each other. In another scenario, Russia has a powerful partner – China. The Asian economic powerhouse has also said U.S. actions in the region, namely in the South China Sea, are a threat to its national security.

In recent days China has sent its only aircraft carrier into the Taiwan Strait, largely seen as a provocative move amid ongoing tensions between Beijing and Taiwan. China claims that Taiwan is its rightful province.

China is also deeply resentful about a joint plan between the U.S. and South Korea to deploy an advanced missile defence system, ostensibly a defence system against any missiles fired from North Korea. China is North Korea’s only ally.

It is understood that representatives from Beijing and Moscow met last week and that they had agreed to take ‘further counter-measures’ in response to the U.S.-South Korea plan. It is not known what those counter-measures will be but it is likely that will be from a range of economic, military and diplomatic relations they have at their disposal.

Mr Trump is already heightening tensions in the region, first with his earlier decision to break diplomatic protocol and call Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-Wen, and then his secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson saying the U.S. should deny Beijing access to new islands it has built in the heavily disputed waters of the South China Sea. Many in China, reinforced by editorials in Chinese newspapers, believe such U.S. action could result in war.

Rather than being obsessed and preoccupied with Mr Trump’s Twitter feed we should be concentrating instead on the bigger, more pressing, issues.