Global predators are circling a weak and unstable continent Simon Tisdall

Is Europe entering a dangerous new age of instability? Not since the height of the cold war with the Soviet Union has it looked so vulnerable to hostile forces. Accumulating external threats and internal divisions, coupled with a weakening US security alliance, relentless Russian subversion and power-hungry China’s war on western values are exposing fundamental strategic weaknesses.

Europe increasingly resembles a beleaguered democratic island in an anarchic world, where a rising tide of authoritarianism, impunity and international rule-breaking threatens to inundate it. Some leaders understand