The threat to peace and democracy comes from Washington, not Moscow

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War fever dominates the national conversation. The BBC runs in-depth specials on whether we are psychologically ready for the next great war.

Labour politicians speak calmly of our nation rising to the occasion if war were to break out with Russia — which we should remember has the largest nuclear arsenal on Earth — and equally calmly of throwing anyone unenthusiastic about that prospect into prison.

Addressing the United Nations in New York, Prime Minister Andy Burnham also paints Russia as the pre-eminent threat to our freedoms and way of life. He accuses Moscow of spreading disinformation, trying to interfere in our elections, and supporting the far right.

On that same UN stage we have been treated this week to genocidal rants from a president threatening to “annihilate” a nation of 90 million people and boasting that the extreme suffering he is imposing on yet another nation will soon see it break under the pressure.

Not the president of Russia, but the president of the United States.

That US president’s administration has published a national security strategy openly stating its support for “patriotic” — far-right — parties across Europe, as a means of reversing the “civilisational erasure” it claims is progressing through immigration.

His vice-president has held court among Britain’s far-right leaders and influencers while on “holiday” in the Cotswolds.

His close ally Elon Musk, who greeted Donald Trump’s election with Nazi salutes to the crowds, has addressed far-right rallies in London by video-link, talking of the coming “civil war” in Britain, and used his huge social media reach to whip up unrest following horrifying incidents such as the Southport child killings or the stabbing of Henry Nowak in Portsmouth.

Yet it is Russia Burnham accuses of trying “to stoke tensions and unrest in the wake of horrific events” while he maintains that “America is Britain’s closest ally.”

The point is not that Russia is necessarily innocent of the charges levelled at it — it is that the United States is much more obviously guilty, often by its own admission.

That goes for electoral interference. Burnham claims Russia sought to influence the 2019 election, but the secretary of state in the first Trump administration, Mike Pompeo, was on record saying “we will do our level best” to stop the election of then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

It goes for direct political interference. US officials constantly intervene in British domestic politics, echoing far-right narratives about “two-tier policing,” instructing British governments to expand drilling for fossil fuels in the North Sea and threatening dire retaliation should we try to tax tech giants.

Most seriously, it is US demands that European Nato members raise military spending to 5 per cent of GDP that is pushing a huge rearmament drive, whose costs will derail any attempt to rebuild public services and whose justification relies on endlessly hyping up the Russia threat — with the very real risk that rising tensions then lead by accident or design into war on the scale “our grandparents and great-grandparents endured,” in the words of Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte.

Trump’s criminal siege of Cuba, his facilitation of Israel’s genocide against Palestine, and his flailing war effort against Iran show the US is the biggest threat to global security and international law.

His brazen backing for fascist forces across Europe means the US is also the biggest threat to our democracy.

This is obvious to anyone who listens to the man. That should be an advantage for our peace movement as we confront the war propaganda being rammed down our throats — and win wider public understanding of who our real enemies are.