Imagine a world in which western Europe was actually able to stick it to Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump simultaneously. As if. Back in the real world, there’s a remote possibility the Europeans might get their act together sufficiently to …
Erdoğan’s new world order
Celebrating the Turkish centennial, in 2023, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan unveiled an outsized vision of his country’s future. The “Century of Turkey” would have his country playing a far more autonomous, assertive role. “The international community will see a Turkey …
How rearmament can make us rich
On May 1, 1954, for its May Day air show, the Soviet Air Force flew a pair of four-engined Myasishchev-4 jet bombers over Red Square. With their ultra-modern lines, and dimensions large enough to suggest a sufficient range to reach …
Is civil war coming for France?
Today marks the moment, 63 years ago, that France finally ceded control of Algeria. But speak to many in both countries and the war might have finished yesterday, with tensions between Paris and Algiers now higher than they’ve been for …
Rearmament is a noble lie
In Oracles, Magic and Witchcraft Among the Azande, one of the seminal texts of British social anthropology, E.E. Evans-Pritchard used the example of a granary which suddenly collapses, killing an unfortunate Zande tribesman, to elucidate the difference between magical and …
Europe’s great delusion
Wars, it is said, make people conservative, since they are fought for an idea of home under threat. And yet their innate tragedy is that, even in victory, they usher in a world transformed. We are seeing this revolutionary fable …
Europe isn’t planning for peace
In a surprising reversal from the Oval Office standoff between Zelensky and Trump and the suspension of US military aid to Ukraine, Kyiv, late on Tuesday, announced its willingness to implement an immediate 30-day ceasefire — provided Moscow agrees to …
Trump has Europe in check
“And are we not guilty of offensive disparagement in calling chess a game? Is it not also a science and an art, hovering between those categories as Muhammad’s coffin hovered between heaven and earth, a unique link between pairs of …
Germany’s soft spot for Russia
Mounted atop a former warehouse in Hamburg’s industrial-era docklands, the billowing form of the Elbphilharmonie concert hall rises above Germany’s second-largest city like an ocean wave. The glass-panelled building crowns a new, forward-looking section of the city, a modern and …
Europe’s nuclear delusion
He’s not even chancellor yet, but Friedrich Merz already wants to revolutionise European security. In a recent interview on German television, he called for a European nuclear umbrella, with the Federal Republic swapping US protection for the backing of Britain …
Trump’s Ukraine power play
“I’m working tirelessly to end the savage conflict in Ukraine. Millions of Ukrainians and Russians have been needlessly killed or wounded in this horrific and brutal conflict with no end in sight. The United States has sent hundreds of billions …
Trump’s reverse-Nixon manoeuvre
As the world reels from the scenes of the televised boxing match between Zelensky and Trump, with Vance egging the fight on, we are in danger of losing sight of what the encounter reveals about Trump’s priorities. Though it was …
Europe’s reckless bid for victory
Donald Trump wants peace, now. Volodymyr Zelensky and his European supporters want victory, later. This is what the very public disagreement in the Oval Office on Friday was all about. Peace through victory — essentially the Second World War model …
Only Poland can save Nato
In July 2028, Europe holds its breath. Russian troops, reinvigorated since the dismemberment of Ukraine three years earlier, have gathered by their hundreds of thousands on the frontiers of the EU. There are three groupings in all, stretching hundreds of …
Are we all Gaullists now?
A conventional wisdom is sweeping across much of Europe as indignity is heaped upon it by the new imperator in Washington. Maybe Charles de Gaulle was right after all. Finally, it seems, France’s age-old push for “strategic autonomy” has found …