Quotulatiousness

August 7, 2025

The Arctic, strategically speaking

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

CDR Salamander suggests we tilt our globes (you have a globe on your desk, don’t you?) 90 degrees and consider the Arctic Ocean:

First things first, as it is the focus of the report, let’s go to the chart room and properly define the, “Central Arctic Ocean”.

There it is, the horizontally shaded bit outside everyone’s EEZ.

The chart comes from the report in question by RAND: The Future of Maritime Presence in the Central Arctic Ocean.

Before we dive in — and the Front Porch knows exactly where I am going here — I need to point out again what we see at the very top where all the red, green, and blue lines intersect. You can’t miss it, and it should have you screaming to whatever direction The Pentagon is from where you sit.

Yes kiddies, that is the Bering Strait, half of which is ours, and the other side is Russia. As you move from the Arctic into the greater Pacific or from the Pacific to the Arctic, you have to pass through that strait, and before it the American Aleutian Islands.

As we’ve covered here before, we have criminally avoided leveraging the blessings of the geography bequeathed to our nation, that of controlling both the inner and outer gates to the Arctic Ocean from the Pacific.

I should not have to explain to you the importance of the Arctic shores of Alaska to anyone. Challengers to the security of our resources in the north, both old and new, are back on the scene. We are a decade late in building a base at Nome and reactivating Adak. I covered that in a previous Substack linked in the prior sentence. Read it and come back if you need to catch up.

A weakness of much of the RAND report is, it is mostly based on stale talking points about immediate climate change in the Arctic, and questionably alarmist assumptions about the Arctic climate for the rest of the century, which seem more suited to the first Obama Administration, but put this to the side.

Should the climate in the Arctic mid-century trend towards the more ice or less, the simple facts remain — the competition in the Arctic is only increasing and the time to act on this new reality is now.

August 5, 2025

Inside the CIA Coup That Changed Iran Forever! – W2W 38

Filed under: Britain, History, Middle East, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 3 Aug 2025

In 1953, a battle for Iran’s soul erupts on the streets of Tehran. Prime Minister Mosaddegh defies British oil interests, outwits Soviet intrigue, and faces down the Shah — but a secret Anglo-American plot changes history forever. As coups, street mobs, and betrayal plunge Iran into chaos, the nation’s fragile democracy is crushed and a brutal new order rises. This is the untold story of oil, espionage, and the coup that reshaped the Middle East.
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July 11, 2025

Why Didn’t France and Britain Stop Germany’s Secret Rearmament? – Out of the Bullpen 001

Filed under: Britain, France, Germany, History, Military, Russia — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 10 Jul 2025

In this special “Out of the Bullpen” episode, we answer your burning questions about Weimar Germany’s most turbulent years. From clandestine military pacts with the Soviets to the creative ways Germany sidestepped Versailles, we dig into aspects which shaped a republic on the brink.
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July 10, 2025

Was Matilda II the BEST Tank of WWII?

Filed under: Australia, Britain, History, Military, Pacific, Russia, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published 21 Feb 2025

Forget the Sherman, forget the Panther, forget the T-34 … Should Matilda II be considered the best tank of WWII? 

Emerging from the request for a new and improved infantry tank, Matilda II debuted on the battlefield in France. The heroic actions of Matilda crews at Arras stopped Blitzkrieg in its tracks and allowed the British army to be evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk.

The Matilda’s fighting peak was during the North Africa campaign, where the 2pdr gun was more than a match for any of the Italian armour it came up against. Despite some mechanical issues, the performance of Matilda II at this time would earn her the title “Queen of the Desert”. Once the Germans arrived in North Africa, Matilda started to become obsolete but remained useful as a testbed for experimental equipment that would eventually be used on D-Day.

Matilda II saw service in all theatres of the Second World War. Around 900 tanks were deployed by the Soviets in 1942, filling the gap as the Red Army increased its roster of T-34s. Matilda made great contributions to campaigns in the Pacific – its small and solid profile making it ideal for jungle bashing. The Australians made effective use of the Matilda, creating variants including a mortar launcher and a flamethrower.

Some say that if it wasn’t for Matilda II we would be speaking German right now. Watch this video to find out why …

00:00 | Introduction
00:36 | Heroics at Arras
03:29 | It Takes Two
06:00 | Matilda II – Inside and Out
13:03 | Queen of the Desert
18:14 | Soviet Service on The Eastern Front
19:49 | The Pacific – Welcome to the Jungle… 
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July 3, 2025

QotD: Why Marxists turned away from space exploration and colonization

Filed under: History, Politics, Quotations, Russia, Space, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Devon Eriksen recently pointed out that today’s Marxists are hostile to space flight and off-world colonization. But in Cold War times, Marxists who ran countries were aggressively futuristic about space, treating it as the empire of their dreams.

What caused this turnaround?

To understand this, it’s helpful that to notice that spaceflight is not the only technology about which Marxist attitudes have done a 180. Nuclear power is another. More generally, where Marxists used to be pro-growth and celebrate industrialization and material progress, they’re now loudly for degrowth and renunciation.

But the history of western Marxism is more interesting than that. Western Marxists flipped to strident anti-futurism in the late 1960s and early 1970s while futurist propaganda in the Communist bloc did not end until its post-1989 collapse.

That 20-year-long disjunct was particularly strong about nuclear power, with the Soviets providing ideological support and funding to the foundation of European Green parties and the US’s anti-nuclear-power movement at the same time as they were pouring resources into nuclearizing their own power grid.

And that’s your clue. Domestic Marxism favored making power cheap and abundant, while their Western proxies pushed to keep it expensive and scarce and preached degrowth rather than expansion. Futurism vs. anti-futurism: why?

We don’t need to theorize about this. Yuri Bezmenov, a former gear in the Soviet propaganda machine, told us the answer starting in the early 1980s. Fewer people listened than should have.

Bezmenov explained that unlike Marxism in the Sino-Soviet bloc, Western Marxism was a mind virus, a memetic weapon designed to weaken and degrade its host societies from within, softening them up for totalitarianism and an eventual Soviet takeover. The West was to be denied power, both in a literal and figurative sense.

Ever wonder why today’s Marxists are so quick to make alliances with radical religious Islamists? This shouldn’t happen. According to Marxist theory, Islamism is a regression to an earlier stage of the dialectic than capitalism, and today’s Marxists ought to fear and hate it as a counter-ideology more than capitalism. But they don’t, because to them Islam is a tool to be used for nihilistic ends.

That nihilism is the actual purpose of Western Marxism and all its offshoots, including “woke”. One sign of this is how fervently it embraces the sexual mutilation of children.

The Soviets are gone but their program is still running autonomously in the brains of people who were infected by their Cold-War-era proxies and the successors of those proxies. And that program is nihilism all the way down.

Yuri Bezmenov should have been heeded. There is no simpler theory that fits the observed facts.

Eric S. Raymond, Twitter, 2024-05-14.

July 2, 2025

The Korean War Week 54 – The War is One Year Old – July 1, 1951

Filed under: China, History, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 1 Jul 2025

Over a year has passed since North Korean forces crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded South Korea, and while the war has seen the advantage switch hands time and again, one thing it has not seen is any sort of cease fire or peace negotiations. However, that might change soon, as this week both the Chinese and the Americans indicate their willingness to sit down and talk. South Korean President Syngman Rhee, however, is against any cease fire talks that do not set out to meet a big variety of his demands, demands which which the other warring parties do not see as being in their own best interests.
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June 29, 2025

Does Russia Always Win Its Wars?

Filed under: History, Military, Russia, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Real Time History
Published 17 Jan 2025

The Russian Federation is at war with Ukraine, and some of its supporters insist it will win because Russia doesn’t lose wars. They point to its vast territory, its cold climate, its manpower reserves, or its peoples’ ability to endure hardship and accept death – and they point to great Russian victories of the past. So let’s put this claim to the test and see what history has to say about Russia’s record on the battlefield.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
02:03 Mongol Invasion of Kyivan Rus’
03:29 Livonian War
04:52 Time of Troubles
06:13 3rd and 4th Coalition Wars
08:12 Crimean War
09:31 Russo-Japanese War
11:44 First World War & Russian Civil War
14:07 Polish-Soviet War
15:25 Winter War
16:48 Soviet-Afghan War
18:34 First Chechen War
19:33 Conclusion
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June 28, 2025

The Original Beef Stroganoff of Imperial Russia

Filed under: Food, History, Russia — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 28 Jan 2025

Tender cubes of beef seasoned with allspice and served with a delicious sour cream and mustard sauce

City/Region: Russia
Time Period: 1871

Beef stroganoff has certainly gone through a lot of changes since this recipe was printed in 1871. Nowadays mushrooms are often added, and the allspice has pretty much disappeared, but I think it’s a delicious and unusual flavor for modern palates. The mustard flavor is present in the sauce without being super mustardy, and the beef is tender and flavorful.

This tasty dish comes together fairly quickly after the meat has rested with the seasonings, so I definitely recommend giving this a try.

    Two hours prior to cooking take two funts of tender beef, cut in small cubes, and sprinkle with salt and allspice; take 30 grams butter and 1 tablespoon of flour and mix, lightly fry in a skillet, then mix with 2 glasses of stock, add 1 teaspoon of Sarepska mustard, a little bit of pepper, mix well, bring to a boil, then strain and add 2 tablespoons of the best fresh sour cream. Then fry the beef in butter, then add it to the sauce, boil again, and serve.
    — Podarok molodym khozyaykam (A Gift to Young Housewives) by Elena Molokhovets, 1871

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June 16, 2025

The Machine of Terror: How the Soviet Secret Police Ruled – W2W 32

Filed under: Government, History, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 15 Jun 2025

From Tsarist Russia to Stalin and the Cold War, the Soviet secret police evolved through endless name changes — but their mission never wavered: repress, control, and terrify. Discover how these agencies — from the Okhrana to the Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, and eventually the KGB, shaped Soviet life with ruthless efficiency. Torture, purges, and mass surveillance weren’t just tactics; they were the system.
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June 10, 2025

How Moscow Got the Atomic Bomb – W2W 31

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Japan, Military, Russia, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 8 Jun 2025

In 1949, the Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb — years ahead of Western expectations. This episode dives into how the USSR mobilized former Nazi scientists, forced Soviet physicists into secret cities, and relied on intelligence from spies like Klaus Fuchs. While Stalin pushes for rapid progress, Beria enforces brutal discipline, and Soviet scientists race to meet an impossible deadline. The nuclear balance of power is about to shift — forever.
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June 9, 2025

QotD: “Defending” democracy with totalitarian methods

Filed under: Britain, History, Liberty, Quotations, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that “bourgeois liberty” is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can defend democracy only by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who “objectively” endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought. This argument was used, for instance, to justify the Russian purges. The most ardent Russophile hardly believed that all of the victims were guilty of all the things they were accused of: but by holding heretical opinions they “objectively” harmed the regime, and therefore it was quite right not only to massacre them but to discredit them by false accusations. The same argument was used to justify the quite conscious lying that went on in the leftwing press about the Trotskyists and other Republican minorities in the Spanish civil war. And it was used again as a reason for yelping against habeas corpus when Mosley was released in 1943.

These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you. Make a habit of imprisoning Fascists without trial, and perhaps the process won’t stop at Fascists. Soon after the suppressed Daily Worker had been reinstated, I was lecturing to a working men’s college in South London. The audience were working‐class and lower‐middle‐class intellectuals — the same sort of audience that one used to meet at Left Book Club branches. The lecture had touched on the freedom of the press, and at the end, to my astonishment, several questioners stood up and asked me: Did I not think that the lifting of the ban on the Daily Worker was a great mistake? When asked why, they said that it was a paper of doubtful loyalty and ought not to he tolerated in war time. I found myself defending the Daily Worker, which has gone out of its way to libel me more than once. But where had these people learned this essentially totalitarian outlook? Pretty certainly they had learned it from the Communists themselves!

Tolerance and decency are deeply rooted in England, but they are not indestructible, and they have to be kept alive partly by conscious effort. The result of preaching totalitarian doctrines is to weaken the instinct by means of which free peoples know what is or is not dangerous. The case of Mosley illustrates this. In 1940, it was perfectly right to intern Mosley, whether or not he had committed any technical crime. We were fighting for our lives and could not allow a possible Quisling to go free. To keep him shut up, without trial, in 1943 was an outrage. The general failure to see this was a bad symptom, though it is true that the agitation against Mosley’s release was partly factitious and partly a rationalization of other discontents. But how much of the present slide to ward Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the “anti‐Fascism” of the past ten years, and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?

George Orwell, “The Freedom of the Press“, 1945 (written as the introduction to Animal Farm, but not published in Orwell’s lifetime).

June 7, 2025

QotD: The decline and fall of the Soviet experiment

Filed under: Economics, History, Quotations, Russia — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

One of the most remarkable and perhaps most relevant aspects of communism is how it regressed from an idealistic and inspirational world view to nothing more than a deeply flawed engineering project. Communism started out as a set of beliefs about liberating mankind to reach its full potential. It was not about material goods or political power, but human accomplishment. By the time the Soviet empire collapsed at the end of the 20th century, it was about making enough toilet paper and boots.

The early communists, including Marx, looked at work and the pursuit of material goods as a burden on mankind. Capitalism turned men into slaves to their own desires for wealth and property. This crude desire for material goods made them easy to exploit by the capital class. The point of overthrowing the capitalist system and replacing it with communism was to free man from that burden. The resulting material prosperity of communism would allow mankind to reach its full creative potential.

The Soviet empire that emerged from the Second World War was noticeably short on talk about mankind reaching its full potential. The practical necessity of feeding, housing and clothing its people consumed the regime. The great dream of a post-scarcity world of mankind united in brotherhood had given way to figuring out how to produce enough necessities to prevent rebellion. The last half of the 20th century was communism trying to keep pace with capitalism in the production of consumer goods.

The Z Man, “Human Progress”, The Z Blog, 2020-04-27.

June 6, 2025

Former Putin advisor claims nuclear strike is an appropriate reaction to Ukraine attacks

Filed under: Europe, Military, Russia, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Mark Steyn surveys the media reaction to Sergey Markov’s foaming-at-the-mouth threats of nuclear escalation in the Russo-Ukraine conflict:

Here’s a cheery headline from the Russian press:

    Markov: an attack on Russia’s strategic aviation is grounds for the use of nuclear weapons.

That would be Sergey Markov, former advisor to Tsar Vlad, who admittedly is somewhat partial to nuke-rattling: in the early stages of the Ukraine war, he threatened to nuke the UK, for what reason I forget — the exciting new Islamic blasphemy laws? the paedo rape gangs?

This time, however, Mr Markov was responding to the weekend’s Ukrainian drone strike deep inside Russia. By “deep”, I mean Siberia. Which supposedly took out forty of Putin’s 120 strategic bombers using drones smuggled into the country via trucks which then fanned out and parked within range of various air bases.

Which is brilliant and innovative, in the sense that Castro blowing up a third of the USAF during the Cuban missile-crisis negotiations would have been. Right now, the only thing standing between the planet and the Third World War is Vladimir Putin’s forbearance. And, as all the smart people assured us in the spring of 2022, the Russian not-so-strongman was “dying” (Christopher Steele, sole proprietor of Dossiers R Us) or dead, either of which condition can make one’s nuclear-war judgment a little erratic. Headline from the UK Daily Mirror, almost exactly three years ago:

    Vladimir Putin may already be dead with body double taking his place, MI6 chiefs claim

That headline is 100 per cent accurate if you remove the words “Vladimir” and “Putin” and replace them with “Joe” and “Biden” respectively. Incidentally, analyse each nation’s advances in body-double technology by comparing “Biden”‘s ability to host a G7 with “Putin”‘s ability to host a BRICS summit. That’s the way to bet if it comes to World War Three. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R – Zakarpattia), was in Kiev to meet with Zelenskyyyy the day before Operation Bring It On. He had the affect of a chap who knew what was coming — although one notes he has yet to make good on his comparatively less ambitious pledge to sink Greta Thunberg’s Gaza boat.

Forty years ago, everybody claimed to be super-worried about imminent mushroom clouds. A bestselling poster of the day:

Anyone care to remake the above with Senator Graham and Victoria Nuland, She-Wolf of the Donbass? Ah, but maybe it doesn’t work as well with Deep State non-household-names in the leads. It’s not so long since Lindsey was telling Zelenskyyyy to resign, but he’s apparently back on board. And, more generally, most western media were happy to report the drone strike as more of a poke in the eye to Trump than to Putin. Headline from National Review:

    Country That Allegedly Had No Cards to Play Keeps Finding New Cards to Play

This is in reference to Trump’s jibe from February that Ukraine had “no cards to play”. The question then arises: Where did Z find these “new cards”? When Pete Hegseth took over as US Defence Secretary, he quickly confirmed what every sentient creature had long suspected — that the Pentagon had been micro-managing Ukraine’s end of the war for the previous three years. Are they still doing so? In defiance of their nominal commander-in-chief?

June 3, 2025

Ukraine’s strategic strikes against Russian airbases

Filed under: Military, Russia — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

CDR Salamander on the lessons to be learned from the latest dramatic turn in the Russo-Ukrainian war with Ukraine carefully avoiding letting their American supporters know about the attack before it went in:

[This] picture from 2012 of Norfolk is what I want you to think about.

We talked about the superbly executed Ukrainian attack on Russian bomber bases for most of yesterday’s Midrats, and what keeps coming to mind for me is not the details of that attack, but the stark warning it is giving us.

The threat of drone strikes isn’t a new warning, but in my mind it intersect almost perfectly with the self-inflicted vulnerability of the US Navy’s fleet — its concentration.

The growing utility of attack drones isn’t an insight that is unique to the Russo-Ukrainian War. The topic has come up here and on Midrats for almost two decades. We’re not alone. Heck, broad thinking people like our friend Matt Hipple was pondering it over at CIMSEC thirteen years ago a few months before the picture at the top of the post was made.

I’ll tie in the picture a bit, but let’s take a moment to give the Ukrainians credit where credit is due. They executed precision strikes against the RUS bomber fleet across the entire two-thirds of the Euro-Asian landmass.

We will find out more details, a dozen or 40+ high-demand/low-density strategic bombers were taken off the battle line. RUS is not building any more of them. As missile carriers, they have been a cornerstone of the city terrors for most of the last four years. You would be hard-pressed to find a more honorable, or legitimate target.

Streiff over at Red State has a good summary with what we think we know as of Sunday afternoon:

    The airbases are the home to Russia’s fleet of Tu-22, Tu-95M, and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers as well as AS-50 battle management aircraft. They were located from the Siberian Far East to the Arctic Circle. The furthest target, Belaya Airbase in Irkutsk, is over 2700 miles from Ukraine.

    Reports indicate that at least 41 aircraft were hit. The unofficial tally indicates 24 Tu-22, 8 Tu-95MS, and 5 Tu-16 were hit. MiG-31 fighters and Il-76 transports were also hit. To put this in context, open-source data says Russia’s bomber inventory is about 58 Tu-22, 47 Tu-95MS, and 15 Tu-160. These planes are the ones used to launch most of the missiles fired at Ukrainian cities.

    By any standard, this was a devastating attack. Nearly half of the Tu-22, a quarter of the Tu-95MS, and a third of the Tu-160 fleet, representing just over 30 percent of Russia’s strategic bomber force, were damaged or destroyed in one attack. When you consider the operational readiness rate, Russia probably has less than 50 aircraft capable of flying … on the bright side, they have plenty of aircraft to cannibalize for parts. The Tu-22 and Tu-95MS production lines are closed, and the Tu-160 production is one, yes, one per year. For all intents and purposes, this represents a permanent decrease in the size of the Russian strategic bomber fleet.

Before we discuss what the USA needs to take away, let’s look at the top-4 primary and second-order effects this will have on the Russian Federation.

First Order Effects

  • Fewer raiding assets to use against UKR.
  • The weakest leg of their nuclear triad (bombers are dual use) is even weaker.
  • PSYOP defeat as RUS now know even their most valuable weapons, stationed deep into RUS rear, are vulnerable.
  • Paranoia elevated into an already paranoid national psyche under duress of year four of a grinding war.

Second Order Effects

  • Inefficiencies in both civilian logistics and manpower are the natural response to every tractor-trailer being a weapons delivery vehicle at range … and the need to defend important bases as a result, sinks into an already stressed nation.
  • Loss of face. RUS launched a war of choice against nation 1/4th its size and much weaker than it from any measure, and four years on, still has only made marginal progress. Now that nation proved it can operate with impunity anywhere inside RUS. The “R” in BRICS is not impressing its friends.
  • It shouldn’t, but this is going to get the nuclear autists the jitters. All theory, but yes, UKR took out one-third or more of the fully mission capable nuclear capable bombers that form one leg — but as mentioned above the weakest leg — of RUS’s nuclear deterrence. Those who work in the theory-dominated nuclear world will have all their gauges twitching, yes, but in the end analysis, it won’t matter.
  • UKR morale just got a big boost. Wars of attrition usually last until one side or the other loses either the material ability or the will to fight. At least from the “will” line of operation, that decisive point just shifted to the right.

Simply a superb operation. How do you defend against weapons like this disguised in a trailer’s false roof?

May 25, 2025

When NATO “stopped being an effective military alliance” and instead “became a kind of social club”

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In UnHerd, Edward Luttwak says that Europe (however you might prefer to define it) needs a new Great Power:

All through European history, the intervals of peace, during which reconstruction and progress overcame the ravages of war, were secured by a temporary equilibrium between the Great Powers of the day.

It is obvious that there was no such equilibrium on 23 February 2022, when Russian columns started rolling towards Kyiv, and Russian President Vladimir Putin had just described Ukraine not merely as Russian, but as the homeland of the very first Russian state: Kievan Rus’.

[…]

But when the moment came, and Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, there was no cohesive and determined power ready to respond quickly and effectively. Nato had done just that several times during the Cold War, by promptly reinforcing threatened allies with thousands of air-lifted troops from the so-called “Allied Command Europe Mobile Force”.

That, however, was the old, pre-enlargement Nato, which was still a veritable military alliance of countries capable of defending themselves, and help weaker allies in trouble, and whose chronically weak Mediterranean member states, with the most resplendent uniforms and least combat strength, had no Russian troops on their borders.

But once very deserving yet utterly indefensible countries such as Estonia were included in Nato — along with Poland, which mustered just 42,000 combat soldiers out of its population of 33 million a mere three months before Putin’s full-scale invasion began — it stopped being an effective military alliance.

Instead, it became a kind of social club. The Nato calendar is full of meetings at the “Supreme Allied Headquarters” in Mons in Belgium, where all manner of military and related issues are addressed often very professionally and quite freely — except that nobody is allowed to mention, however politely, even the most glaring military shortcomings of fellow allies, which undermine important war plans.

The highpoint of the Nato calendar is the splendid summits with all flags flying, in which the arrival of new countries is greatly celebrated, regardless of their ability to actually defend themselves. Both heads of state and heads of government are invited to those gatherings on the premise that there is strength in numbers, with no concerns about the inherent difficulty of reaching any agreements in such a vast crowd.

In the last summit, held in Washington DC in July 2024, Biden’s confusion of President Zelensky with Putin added a touch of humour to otherwise gloomy proceedings: nobody in attendance offered any suggestions on how to end the war in Ukraine.

What proves that Nato is no longer a genuine military alliance was that nothing was done in the last pre-war days before Putin’s invasion finally began. The satellite intelligence that revealed Russian forces on the move also showed that they were already in assault formations. But even then, five days remained to fly fighter-bomber squadrons to forward bases.

Yet even inaction would have been better than what actually happened. Instead of ordering the rapid deployment of tactical airpower to bases in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, the Biden administration instead evacuated US diplomats from Kyiv, starting a panic that induced the evacuation of some 20 other diplomatic missions.

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