Nato

It is hardly news that US relations with the rest of NATO (“rNATO” hereafter) are at an unprecedentedly low ebb. But they took a new and interesting twist last week when the US Under Secretary of War for Policy, Elbridge Colby, issued a curious statement via social media, opining that “middle powers” have no coherent basis for alignment independent of the United States, and that they would therefore be foolish to try. The “middle powers” in question here are erstwhile US allies with enough of their own wealth and technological capacity to pursue meaningful sovereign capabilities, but not enough to independently rival systemic great powers such as the United States (the likes of Germany, Japan, Britain, Canada, Australia and so forth). Colby is a serious strategic mind.

With all the Hollywood drama and heart-pounding music of a Mission: Impossible trailer, NATO screened a short promotional film at its Ankara summit to showcase the military hardware it plans to buy to hit Donald Trump's defense spending target. One of the aircraft featured in the mini-movie was even an A400M – the heavy-lift plane that Tom Cruise clung to the side of in the fifth installment of his action film franchise. When the lights came back up, NATO’s Secretary General, Mark Rutte, shook hands, slapped backs and made clear that NATO had not only chosen to accept Trump’s mission to boost spending, it was now delivering.

Everyone who is everyone – within a certain political and social fragment – has been in Russia this past week. Conservative American conspiracy theorist Candace Owens; Errol Musk, father of Elon; toxic “manosphere” influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate; and Tommy Robinson, the far-right activist. Robinson told the Guardian that he had traveled to Moscow “to see how this country got itself so well on to the straight and narrow and see the beauty of a civilized society here.” In the process, he was walking a well-trodden path of westerners heading to Russia to see exactly what they want to see. Once it was socialists like Sidney and Beatrice Webb, who found Stalin’s regime “the very opposite of a dictatorship.

The long war in Ukraine has morphed into a new and decisive phase, one that could lead to Ukraine’s upset victory over its much larger, more aggressive neighbor. The global consequences of Russia’s loss – and Vladimir Putin’s humiliation – would be enormous. What is this new phase? Is there really evidence the tide has turned in Ukraine’s favor? To sort out the answers and understand what’s new about the war’s current phase, we need to do a brief tour of the three phases that preceded it. The first phase began well over a decade ago, in February 2014, when Barack Obama was president. Ukraine fatefully signaled it wanted much stronger ties with Europe and the United States, not Russia, at the very moment US deterrence was weak.

When John Healey was asked, on stage at the London Defence Conference, whether the armed forces were ‘ready’ for war, the Defence Secretary replied: ‘Yes.’ One of those present says: ‘That was greeted with near incredulity in the room.’ Another attendee compared Healey’s plight to someone ‘playing French cricket’, with critics from all sides hurling balls at his ankles while he tried to bat them away. ‘You can’t score any runs in French cricket.’ George Robertson, Healey’s most respected Labour predecessor and a former secretary general of Nato, was not present; he was in Scotland celebrating his 80th birthday. But he returned to give a withering interview to the FT and a speech.

The idea that the United States has been swindled by its NATO allies is not new. Robert Gates, in his valedictory address as secretary of defense in June 2011, warned bluntly that future American leaders might not consider the return on defense investment in Europe worthwhile. He spoke of a "two-tiered alliance… Between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of alliance commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership… but don’t want to share the risks and the costs." Gates was no populist. He was a career intelligence officer and establishment Republican, and his warning carried real weight precisely because it came from inside the institutional consensus rather than against it.

Was Donald Trump’s profane and threatening tweet, which included an F-bomb and an allusion to Iran’s leaders as "crazy bastards," on Easter Sunday itself a bunch of BS? Trump is riding high after the daring rescue of an American airman from Iran, but its leadership doesn’t appear to be overly impressed by his tweet threatening a major attack on Tuesday if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened. On Saturday, Iran’s military leadership indicated that it had no intention of complying with Trump’s demands, dismissing his vow to destroy its infrastructure as a "helpless, nervous, unbalanced and stupid action.