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Divided: Europe Quails
European attitudes to risk vary. The “Life Free or Die” group thinks the risk of slavery under Russian rule is far worse than death. They will fight for their freedom and sovereignty, no matter what....
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Ukraine: Wishful Thinking
The movie script was almost written. Vladimir Putin had overreached himself in Ukraine. The Russian dictator forged national unity there and revived the transatlantic alliance. He had foolishly...
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Propaganda: Home and Abroad
Nazi propagandists were first-rate, but their British opponents were even better. The long-lost dark arts of our wartime efforts might help us now derail Kremlin imperialism. That is the thesis of...
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Germany: The Weakest Link
Greedy, sanctimonious, irresponsible, and untrustworthy: Germany is getting a well-deserved bashing from its allies. They have plenty of reasons to be cross over many years. Germany’s strategic...
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Macron: Unpredictability Pays
French policy on Ukraine is often wrong but never dull. The Normandy format and the resulting Minsk agreements following Russia’s initial attack on Ukraine in 2014 exemplified the “we know best”...
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Smoke and Fire: Kremlin Terrorism
Terrorism was the midwife to Vladimir Putin’s regime. As a Moscow correspondent in the fall of 1999, I witnessed the public horror at the carnage wrought in the apartment block bombings in the Russian...
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Test Run: Russia and China
The shameful dithering in Berlin, Washington DC, and other capitals impose a huge human and physical cost on Ukraine—and create great risks for everyone. Russia’s war machine will not stop until it is...
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Visit Vilnius: Jokes Included
Lithuanians are justly proud of their 701-year-old capital city and loathe the squalid legacy of the Soviet occupation. A new tourism commercial promoting Vilnius stamps on those feelings. It starts...
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Seasick: The Three Seas Initiative
The Iron Curtain is long gone. But you can still sense its shadow. Road, rail, air, energy and other connections are worse in the half of Europe that experienced communist rule. North-south links are...
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Last Round: Ukraine
spring is dawning. Beleaguered Ukrainian defenders will get some of the munitions they need. Battered Ukrainian cities should get more air defenses. The US political system has finally, six months...
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Dead Certs: Putin and Kadyrov
One does not have to be a believer in a literal afterlife to speculate about how Vladimir Putin and Ramzan Kadyrov will leave this world for the next, and what reception they might find there. Both...
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Trump’s New Deal: Pay Up
The former (and quite possibly future) US president, Donald Trump, takes a transactional approach to alliances. His speeches do not feature misty rhetoric about the D-Day landings, the Berlin Wall, or...
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Missing in Action: Western Minds
Outside Russia’s London embassy this week, I joined protestors celebrating the imminent departure of the defense attaché, Colonel Maxim Elovik. The British government expelled him for “malign...
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Singing the Blues: the Baltics and Ukraine
Gloom, but not doom. That was the defiant message on Ukraine from this year’s Lennart Meri Conference in the Estonian capital, Tallinn. The annual security-policy shindig, named after the country’s...
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Showdown: Britain’s Election
British voters go to the polls on July 4, in an early election called by the beleaguered Conservative Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. The Labour Party, led by Sir Keir Starmer, is the overwhelmingly...
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Reality Check
Election campaigns are supposed to be where politicians encounter the real world. But the parliamentary elections in France and the United Kingdom, and the looming presidential contest in the United...
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Solo Flight: Take-Off at Blenheim
Blenheim is the misspelled German name for a quintessentially British place. The lavish palace and sculpted grounds were built to reward the Duke of Marlborough for his victory in 1704 in the Bavarian...
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CrowdStrike: Accidents and Designs
Fragility is dangerous. That is the lesson of last week’s computer meltdowns. The culprit was a carelessly written update to CrowdStrike’s widely used Falcon Sentinel cybersecurity software. It...
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Real Prizes: The Paris Olympics
“Chinese Taipei” instead of Taiwan, 23 mainland Chinese participants who breached anti-doping rules, a Ukrainian team shrunken by the war, and “neutral” athletes from Russia and Belarus who support...
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Hostage Diplomacy: The Downside
Hydrocarbons and now hostages: Russia’s exports are booming. The West has failed to apply sanctions effectively to Russian oil, gas, or coal. Now it has given a boost to the Kremlin’s new industry,...
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