Stopping forces at sea is as good as defeating them in the field. In fact, it’s better and far easier for a marine antagonist since troops are more or less cargo—a passive target—until they reach their destinations and unload. Even slowing down hostile convoys helps. Read Here | 1945
What ails the Atlantic alliance is not a lack of capabilities or resources—after all, the Euro-Atlantic basin holds eight hundred million people, a combined $20 trillion in gross domestic product and several of the world’s leading military powers—but the political commitment to use them. Read Here | The National Interest
NATO is celebrating its 70th birthday next week, but rather than blowing out 70 candles, the foreign-policy establishment is pondering whether it should still exist. In truth, we’ve been having this argument since 1992, after the Soviet collapse, and maybe since France pulled its military out of the alliance in 1966… Read Here – Bloomberg
Trump has overcome internal resistance and external pressure to deliver an as yet uninterrupted string of foreign-policy successes : North Korea’s “Rocket Man” Kim Jong-un hasn’t launched a rocket in ten months; America’s NATO allies are finally starting to deliver on pledges to increase defense spending toward the 2 percent of GDP target agreed in 2006 ; Mexico has […]
It was a moment Germans might call a Katastrophe. No translation needed. At what was supposed to be a simple breakfast meeting, President Donald Trump kicked off this week’s annual NATO summit with a televised tirade belittling Germany as “captive to Russia” over its energy policy and sneering at the country’s military spending levels. Read Here – […]
After watching the G7 train wreck aghast, senior officials at NATO headquarters are quaking in their boots at the prospect of hosting a summit of the Western defense alliance featuring a raging Donald Trump in Brussels. Far from showcasing transatlantic unity and resolve, they fear the 24-hour gathering of leaders of the 29-nation alliance, scheduled for about […]
In many ways, Russia’s current defiant geopolitical stance can be traced to a decisive moment in recent history: the belief that the West broke its promises not to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization eastwards. But experts argue over what exactly was promised, NATO itself calls the story of the broken promise a “myth,” and the former Soviet […]
The I.M.F. has a complex definition of “advanced,” but a common thread is that all the nations have a per-capita income of at least around $15,000. Since Poland completed the transition from Communism to democracy in 1991, its economy has been growing at an average annual rate of 4 percent and, remarkably, has not suffered […]
Donald Trump is a symptom of the larger crisis that has been brewing for NATO ever since the Cold War ended. Alliances are first and foremost a collective response to threats, and NATO’s primary rationale disappeared when the Soviet Union collapsed. Attempts to give NATO important new missions “out of area” did not go well, […]
Americans are serial amnesiacs. And today, after more than 70 years of great-power peace and a quarter-century of unrivalled global supremacy, Americans have lost their sense of tragedy. The U.S.-led international order has been so successful, for so long, that Americans have come to take it for granted. They have forgotten what that order is meant […]
looking beyond borders 