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Europe’s Broken Bargain How Europe’s Promised Prosperity Became a Political Liability Political science has long recognized a particularly uncomfortable source of instability: people’s expectations can grow faster than their ability to satisfy them. A government may discover that improving conditions produces more demands, while an economic setback can turn yesterday’s promise of progress into today’s accusation of betrayal. Alexis de Tocqueville explored this paradox in The Old Regime and the Revolution , published in 1856. Studying France before its revolution, he observed that improvements could make surviving injustices increasingly intolerable. Once people could imagine a better life, conditions previously endured as inevitable became much harder to accept. Progress changes the standard against which people judge their circumstances. A modest improvement can enlarge the horizon of what they believe is possible and, eventually, what they believe is owed to them. As the prover...
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The Autumn of Discontent How Europe’s Domestic Crisis Could Become Everyone Else’s War Europe’s domestic upheaval deserves close attention in Washington because its consequences may extend well beyond European streets. Governments struggling to maintain authority at home still make decisions about sanctions, military commitments, and relations with nuclear powers. Their internal difficulties can become security problems for everyone expected to support them. For Russia, the concern is familiar. Centuries of confrontation have accustomed Moscow to looking westward for its principal security challenges. Today, the societies of Western Europe’s leading powers face a choice with consequences for their own development and for peace across the continent. Russia’s size and historical role in stopping European military expansion place it at the center of that calculation. The unrest spreading across several European countries this autumn appears to mark a new stage of the continent’s syste...
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The Logic of Suicidal Escalation Europe’s Military Bet Against Russia European governments have placed a possible direct confrontation with Russia on their planning horizon for the turn of the decade, roughly between 2029 and 2032. Budgets are being allocated, plans for a European military structure with greater independence from NATO are taking shape, defense industries are expanding, and new missile and aviation systems are entering production and service. The “coalition of the willing” has also announced exercises in Poland, officially intended to prepare European troops for deployment in Ukraine after the present conflict ends. Taken separately, exercises involving a few thousand soldiers might seem a relatively minor development. Against the background of confrontation in the Baltic Sea, pressure on Russian maritime access, and threats concerning Kaliningrad, another set of maneuvers could easily disappear into the general noise. The broader pattern deserves more attention...
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The Ingrates Why Washington Tolerates Zelenskiy “Zelenskiy must go.” A year and a half ago, Trump meant leaving the White House, after he threw Zelenskiy out for his rudeness to Vice President JD Vance. This time, the instruction concerns the presidency. “Ukraine needs a new leader capable of making deals,” the American president declared. He backed his words by halting the transfer of intelligence to the Kiev regime, including advance warnings of Russian ballistic missile strikes, and restricting the bandwidth of the Starlink systems on which communications throughout the Ukrainian Armed Forces depend. Ukraine consequently lost the ability to conduct a number of terrorist operations against Russia, operations on which it has built its military strategy. Those measures raise a question that extends beyond the latest quarrel: why has Washington tolerated such behavior for so long, and what still limits its willingness to confront it? The United States possesses substantial lever...
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The Spectacle of the Scaffold Why Broadcasting an Execution Corrodes the Soul The argument should begin with the people Nidal Malik Hasan murdered. Thirteen were killed at Fort Hood in 2009: twelve service members and one civilian. Their families have lived with the consequences ever since. Hasan’s guilt was established by a military court, and the Army has scheduled his execution by firing squad for December 3, 2026. ( AP News ) Those facts deserve to remain at the center of the discussion. Every person killed had a life extending far beyond the circumstances of that death. The families are entitled to their grief and anger. Forgiveness, should it ever come, belongs to them; politicians and commentators have no authority to demand it. The Pentagon’s announced intention to livestream the execution introduces a separate decision: to make the destruction of a human life available for public consumption. Trump has subsequently said he is still considering whether to authorize the broadcas...
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The Winter Respite Why Truce Consultations Mask Strategic Attrition in Ukraine Diplomatic channels around Ukraine remain active. Russian envoys have met with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, while Ukrainian officials have conducted trilateral consultations with the United States and the European Union. Moscow continues to insist publicly on a durable settlement, warning that another operational breathing space would give Kiev and its sponsors time to replenish their resources. The fundamental distance between Russian and Ukrainian terms makes comprehensive peace negotiations an unlikely immediate outcome. These contacts serve more immediate purposes. Kiev needs to survive the winter, prevent a destabilizing exodus from the capital and other major cities along the Dnieper, and secure financial commitments before Western governments finish allocating their next budgets. A diplomatic process becomes particularly valuable when continued funding depends on demonstrating that there wil...
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The Diesel Pivot Trump, Moscow, and the Ukrainian Endgame Donald Trump has supplied a remarkably practical definition of allied solidarity. Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries become a problem when American farmers receive the bill. On October 10, he accused Zelenskiy of disrupting diesel supplies, passing up opportunities to settle the war, and making life harder for American farmers and ranchers. His proposed remedy extended to Ukrainian personnel policy: “I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president.” ( Scripps News ) The remarks followed Trump’s announcement of a diesel agreement with Vladimir Putin. The administrative machinery moved with unusual speed: on October 9, the U.S. Treasury issued General License 135, authorizing transactions involving Russian-origin diesel, including imports into the United States, through April 7, 2027. A presidential conversation had acquired a legal instrument that traders could actually use. For Kiev, the uncomfortable implication is th...
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