Is defence about more than weaponry?

This week, the world exploded, but what really shocked me wasn’t Trump.

Trump was predictable. The chaos was published in advance. Project 2025 made the method and the objective plain: disruption as strategy, empire as the goal.

What has truly appalled me is this: despite vast defence budgets and vast intelligence capabilities, Western leaders have appeared totally unprepared. They clung to the “rules-based order” as if rules might still have meaning to a man who rejects legality.

So, in this video, I argue something many will find uncomfortable:

Defence isn’t fundamentally about armaments. It’s about legitimacy.

If people do not believe a society is worth defending, then no quantity of weapons will save it. And neoliberalism, which is designed to reward the few, cannot now demand sacrifice from the many.

That is why I think the only credible defence policy now is a politics of care: a society that values everyone, delivers for everyone, and earns loyalty by legitimacy.

This demands pragmatism, compromise, and coalition. The world we must create will be messy, but that will be its strength, and not its weakness.

There’s a poll below. What do you think?