Closed for Repairs? Rebuilding the Transatlantic Bridge /

Rebuilding the Transatlantic Bridge J ane’s Defence Weekly reported recently that in the seven days ending on June 20, NATO jets scrambled 32 times in Estonia and Lithuania to identify and escort incoming Russian warplanes over the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland. [...] This kind of activity, not seen since the Cold War, is becoming almost routine, not only on NATO’s northeastern flank but at sea and in the air over the Black Sea, the North Atlantic, the North Pacific and even the Canadian Arctic. [...] The clear military and political success of Russia’s surprise military intervention in Syria, against a background of U. S. and western lethargy, has reinforced the notion in the Kremlin, but also further afield, that the U. S. and its allies don’t have the backbone to stand up to Russian interventions in areas where President Vladimir Putin and his entourage see a clear strategic interest. [...] During the Cold War, it was taken for granted that Soviet armed aggression would be met by the combined armed force of all the allies, including the U. S. The certainty of a U. S. military reaction was guaranteed by 300,000 American troops permanently stationed in Europe who stood in the way of any Soviet attack. [...] German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s remarks, in the midst of an election campaign, on the U. S.’s growing unreliability and the need for Europe to stand on its own have deepened the divide.