Daniel DePetris

Washington, DC is a town full of tradition. There’s the State of the Union address at the beginning of the year and the cherry blossom festival in March and April, when tourists around the world descend on the nation’s capital. There’s the ritualistic glad-handing, ego-stroking, and gossip-milling. And, of course, there’s the never-ending infatuation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—the transatlantic security body that helped keep Europe whole, free, and at peace during the Cold War. The Soviet menace, however, has been dead and buried for close to 30 years. Ever since that infamous day in 1989, when the world woke up to the news that the Soviet machine was tumbling down, Nato has struggled to justify its existence.

There is no civil war in the world today whose effects are so detrimental to civilians as the conflict engulfing Yemen. The war, pitting a Houthi rebellion in control of the Yemeni capital against the nominal Yemeni government in the south, just crossed its four-year anniversary last week. The United Nations is trying its best to end the fighting, with little to show for it other than a ceasefire in the Yemeni port city of Hodeida which may or (more likely) may not get peace talks off the ground. Unlike the United Kingdom, which has exported £5.7 billion of arms to the Saudi-led military coalition bombing Yemen to smithereens, Germany has largely been a passive spectator to the conflict.

Back in December, Emmanuel Macron was a man on edge. His poll numbers were spiralling down the toilet; hundreds of thousands of French who felt alienated from their government were taking to the streets to shout down the French elite in cities and towns across the country; and fires were burning all around Paris. Police officers and protesters-turned-rioters were on the frontlines trading rocks and rubber bullets, resulting in hundreds (if not thousands) of arrests. Macron, the blue-eyed, fresh-faced technocratic politician who marketed himself during the 2017 presidential contest as the Fifth French Republic’s aspiring saviour, was left twiddling his thumbs in the presidential mansion wondering how to address the turmoil around him.

When Steve Bannon was ousted from the White House as president Donald Trump’s chief strategist, the populist provocateur and former Hollywood executive was back running staff meetings at Breitbart less than 24 hours later. The rumpled, grizzled, grey-haired Bannon – who has a fondness for philosophy, history, political bloodsport and green camo jackets – is constantly on the move for a new project. In the United States, the big project was getting Trump elected and ensuring the New York billionaire never forgot about the part of America that loved him and the part that cringed at the mention of his name.

'Sometimes you have to walk', said Donald Trump this morning as talks between him and Kim Jong-un broke down. With no new summit planned, the prospects for a denuclearisation deal with North Korea are not good. Yet South Korea was still keen to look on the bright side: the two leaders had made "more meaningful progress than at any time prior", a spokesperson for president Moon said. For all the criticism chucked at Trump, this progress (albeit limited) is worth remembering. At least he is trying, after all. But can the same be said for Europe? It's certainly striking that while Trump and Kim were at the centre of festivities this week, Europe wasn't even in the building.

The days of black-clad militants rampaging through cities, parading captives as war trophies and doing wheelies in U.S.-made Humvees are over. The Islamic State – which once presided over eight million people in a reign of terror across territory as large as the United Kingdom – is now confined to an orchard in the dusty Syrian village of Baghouz. The so-called caliphate is now just 700 square metres. Within days— certainly weeks —all of Isis' territory will be retaken, the stragglers either killed in a barrage of US airstrikes or sent to Syrian Kurdish-run prison camps to the north. The demise of the caliphate, however, has given way to a new question: what to do with Isis foreign fighters? Donald Trump's answer is to make sure that Europe pulls its weight.

Last weekend’s Munich Security Conference could perhaps best be summarised by two sentences in the 102-page report produced by a group of Western luminaries, politicians, military officials, and ex-statesmen (and stateswomen): After 'two years in office, the Trump administration has triggered a reassessment of transatlantic relations in Europe,' the report somberly declared. And 'with President Trump under increasing domestic pressure and a national security team that is much closer to his views, there is reason to expect even more turmoil in the second part of his term.

Donald Trump takes no punches. He prides himself on being a counter-puncher, a person who won’t think twice about hitting an opponent in the teeth. It only took a few days for those who hoped the Oval Office and the nuclear button would smooth the edges of his boisterousness, combativeness, and unbounded egotism to learn that Trump wasn’t going to change his personality for the sake of high-powered, politically correct Washingtonians.   Halfway through his first term, however, Trump has learned the hard way how tough it is to enact a legislative agenda when you get on everyone’s bad side.

Emmanuel Macron, the young, dashing president of the Fifth French Republic, is the epitome of what it means to be a card-carrying member of the Paris political elite. The 41 year-old president was ushered through Sciences Po, France's premier centre of political education and a near requirement for youngsters who aspire to become politicians and policymakers. Upon graduating, he took an inspector job at the finance ministry before jumping into the investment world. Macron’s decision to hitch his stardom to Socialist Party boss Francois Hollande paid off when he was tapped to be the Deputy Secretary-General and then the Minister of Finance.

One of the most important duties of being an ambassador is serving as a counsellor of sorts. When relations between two countries are on the rocks – or a president or prime minister says or does something another nation regards as hostile – the ambassador is often called on to ensure that any diplomatic fallout can be contained and the relationship itself can be repaired. Apparently Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, didn’t get the memo.   In an extraordinarily frank interview with Politico Europe this week, ambassador Sondland blasted the EU as an archaic, obstructionist, elitist European superstructure whose primary objective is to keep itself in business.

It would be the understatement of the century to say that the normally constructive and cordial relationship between the United States and Germany was experiencing a few hiccups in the age of Donald Trump. Notwithstanding talk about mutual respect and friendship during shared photo sessions, Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are not exactly two peas in a pod. In fact, the two leaders are polar opposites in temperament, experience, and worldview: Trump is the loud-mouth, condescending, bull-in-a-china shop from New York who campaigned on burning America’s political system to the ground; Merkel is the consummate European politician deeply attached to multilateralism and extremely devoted to the rules-based international order.