The west

Tuesday

Tom Switzer

NATO’s Suez moment

In 1969, Charles de Gaulle told his friend André Malraux that America’s “desire – and one day it will satisfy it – is to desert Europe. You will see.” It has taken nearly six decades, but de Gaulle’s prophecy now looks uncomfortably close to fulfillment. After years of diplomatic effort to manage, placate and charm successive American presidents – and Donald Trump in particular – European leaders are coming to a grim realization: the United States is, at best, indifferent to their interests and sensibilities and, at worst, openly hostile to them. Some, such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, still believe Trump can be cajoled, that the transatlantic relationship can somehow

Greenland

Saturday

Peter Jones

How the Roman ranking system actually worked

For otherwise healthy plebs in the Roman world, survival depended on four Fs: farming (the sole source of food and money), fighting, family and friends. Everything else that made life worth living meant having some degree of political control over your own existence, which could be summed up in a fifth F: freedom, or political equality. But the elite had little time for such goodwill towards men. For the plebs, there was the rub. In the 20s BC Livy began writing a history of Rome from its foundation in 753 BC. It was first ruled by a series of seven kings (none actually Roman) who were finally thrown out as

roman ranking

Tuesday

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