Us military

French president Emmanuel Macron, the self-appointed leader of Europe, is having a not so great week. His multi-day visit to China and successive meetings with Xi Jinping were high on pomp but low on deliverables. But it was during the plane ride back to Paris, when he gabbed with journalists, that he got into trouble. Seated aboard France’s version of Air Force One, Macron presented himself as a leader with an independent streak who believes Europe can't follow the United States like docile little ducklings. His interview wasn’t remarkable, yet foreign policy commentators and politicians are hung up on his remarks about China and Taiwan.

A US MQ-9 Reaper drone’s propeller was hit by a Russian Su-27 fighter jet over the Black Sea on Tuesday, causing the drone to lose control and crash. Before the fighter made contact with the drone, it and its wingman released fuel in what was likely an attempt to impair the American aircraft. The drone was in international airspace — which Russia seems to acknowledge — leaving no justification under international law for Moscow’s aggressive actions. Whether or not the physical contact was premeditated remains unknown. The Kremlin claims the drone’s “sharp maneuvers” caused it to crash and that its jet did not hit it.

The departure of American troops from Afghanistan is being lamented (or hailed — see the Chinese press, passim) as a defeat. But this is a shortsighted attitude, at least from the point of view of the US military and the multitude of interested parties who feed at its trough. For them, the whole adventure has been a thumping success, as measured in the trillions of taxpayer dollars that have flowed through their budgets and profits over the two decades in which they successfully maintained the operation. The truth of this was forcefully brought home to me once by a friend of mine who, as a mid-level staffer, attended a conclave of senior generals discussing Donald Trump’s Afghan mini-surge back in 2018.

This week's Nato summit communiqué was predictably replete with bombast about the ever growing threat of Russian aggression — along with tentative references to the 'challenges' of China's 'growing influence’. More cheerfully, it greeted the news that '24 allies are spending over 20 percent of their defense expenditures on major equipment’, with confident hopes that newcomers would join this exclusive club in the near future. Given that for seven European Nato members the principal item of ‘major equipment’ in question is Lockheed's F-35 fighter, this is good news for the Lockheed Corporation, but not such glad tidings for countries contracted to buy the plane, who find their armed forces steadily reduced to a state of emasculated beggary as a result.

In announcing his decision to withdraw all remaining US troops from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden declared that 'it’s time to end America’s longest war.' The wording of the President’s announcement left little room for backtracking so his decision appears to be definitive. It’s also necessary and long overdue, if not without risk. But it will not actually 'end' the war that began just weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks when US special operations forces and CIA paramilitary units entered Afghanistan. The conflict that Americans are accustomed to calling the Afghanistan War will continue, albeit without any overt US military involvement.