No Longer in Denial

NATO Begins To Understand Its Predicament ... And Its Impotence

We are in the middle of a ‘process’ where future trajectories seem to have been set in motion to the point of becoming ‘remorseless’. Most of the players in the game are now managing their slowly dawning realisation that this is their reality, at least until the result of the US Mid-Terms in November 2026. As in all such ‘coming to terms with reality’, the period of fighting change is being replaced, more slowly in some cases than others, by a period of adaptation to the demands of the US as hegemon This adaptation, however, is creating strains in domestic and regional relationships throughout the West. At this stage it is best not to try and give an over-arching model of what is happening but simply to summarise the state of the components in the global machine and where the risks of future crisis exist.

The US

The best way of characterising US politics at the moment is in terms of it being in a major potential transition from one stable order to another but where the new order is far from certainly going to be established. The MAGA reaction to the bombing of Iran was a warning that Trump could not take his base for granted. The quick resolution of that crisis probably secured his political position but it also demonstrated that the US was limited in its ability to act because of domestic pressures. Domestic strain is proving to be a constraint on elites across the West as we shall see. International affairs is secondary to this Presidency. Foreign adventurism could (it became clear) threaten the ability to effect the economic transition that is at the heart of the MAGA project. Foreign affairs need to be managed so as not to be a problem rather than exploited as an opportunity as was the case under liberal internationalism. Already a substantial part of Trump’s original coalition is disturbed that the national debt is not being dealt with as decisively as they had expected. What Trump had achieved however was the reintegration of conservative Republicans and neo-conservatives into his coalition.

Trump cannot be said to have the support of a majority of the American population but discontent is currently more in the line of grumbling and cultural distaste in the graduate middle classes with no clear alternative being presented by the Democrat Party at the national evel although there is time yet to deliver this. The idea of a new Third Party (briefly touted by Musk) has for the moment been kicked into the long grass but stands as a warning to Trump. A key event was the ousting of Cuomo in the NYC Democrat Mayoral Primaries by an apparent radical progressive Zohran Mamdani but this is not quite what it seems to many hoping for a reinvigoration from the Left. The charismatic Mamdani captured the middle class vote but the working class and black vote tended to stay with Cuomo. In other words, we are simply seeing a circulation of elites within the elite as liberal urban progressives move against older machine politicians. This is creating a new generation of Democrats but not a generation that can easily re-connect with the working class who shifted into the MAGA camp.

The Middle East

The bombing of Iran’s alleged nuclear facility was not quite the decisive act that it was presented to be but it has caused a pause in hostilities that might be exploited to end them. The US essentially made a statement that it would deploy its power for specific ends (with the implication that one of those ends would be the defence of Israel if ever it was under true existential threat) but one of the consequences of the last ten days was, in fact, a reaffirmation that the US was no longer in the business of regime change, let alone boots on the ground. The Israelis were given the chance to demonstrate that they could effect such a change but the bulk of liberal middle class opinion in Tehran rallied around the regime (apart from those scuttling to Armenia for the duration). The mass demonstrations at the funerals of those assassinated by the Israelis showed the force of popular opinion in the capital. The BBC had been reporting nonsense spun from security service dossiers - as so often.

Whether the US bombing was decisive in destroying any nuclear weapons programme by Iran is unclear. Our view is that Trump was playing an elaborate game in which military success was not the issue. The bombing was political – to show the consequences to Iran of taking too strong a line in negotiations, to neuter Netanyahu by demonstrating that Israel was over-reaching itself and that Trump was ‘Daddy’ and to deal with the neo-conservatives in Congress by throwing them a very big bone. This is not to say that Trump will not up the ante with a second and more intensive bombing later but only that the immediate aim is to negotiate Iran into adaptation to Trump’s world view. This gets to the heart of differing perspectives within Iran represented by the hardliners and the reformers in the Iranian President’s office. A lot of what happens next will take place behind close doors as intermediation takes place between the US and Iran and adaptation takes place within Iran.

The current stance of Iran is (to summarise) to commit to negotiation but if and only if the US makes a firm commitment (implicitly including Israel as perceived proxy) not to attack Iran while negotiations continue – Iran was aggrieved that bombing was used as a negotiating tactic during negotiations. Iran is, of course, buying time to rearm with Chinese and no doubt some Russian assistance. It is also strengthening its alliance with nuclear power Pakistan. Regime change is off the cards as the Israelis intended it: they have probably used up their assets on the ground. What is now at issue is ‘soft’ internally generated regime change in which Iran shifts into the model of regional co-operation promoted by the Gulf States and which ultimately would include a post-Netanyahu Israel. Iran has absolutely no interest in abandoning its nuclear programme without something very big in return (sanctions relief and regime respect).

As for Israel, it is touting recent events as a victory but this is not how it looks objectively. The US bombing was a double-edged sword, reaffirming commitment to Israel but also putting in place a boundary which Israel can no longer cross unless and until there is proof of Iran’s nuclear weapons programme having reached the 60% enrichment stage again. Trump is claiming that he destroyed what may have not been destroyed. Netanyahu cannot call Trump a liar without some seriously hard evidence. The Iranian refusal to allow the IAEA access to Iran is now justified insofar as the IAEA almost certainly was supplying information to Israel and Israel almost certainly was manipulating data (as happened with Iraqi WMD) to drive the US into action. In addition, Israel was severely damaged by recent missile exchanges and is still having to maintain expensive military positions in relation to Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon-Syria and Yemen.

More to the point, Israel is increasingly on the defensive in reputational terms. Its October 7^th justification for subsequent actions is looking increasingly hollow. The sheer scale of the disproportionate actions undertaken in Gaza is demonstrable even in the mainstream media. The Gaza War is educating younger generations in the West through social media about the history of Israel, the fate of the Palestinians and behaviours on the West Bank and towards Israeli Arabs. Jewish protest is increasing within the community. The supply of armament to Israel from NATO countries is also degrading support for NATO in Westen Europe as complicity results in yet more narratives (some coming from Russian psy-ops but true to facts) about NATO’s Cold War history that appears to confirm the ‘Nazi narrative’. This was not helped by the new female Head of MI6 being proven to have a Nazi war criminal as grandfather although she cannot be held responsible for the sins of the past. Narratives from history are becoming weapons in a major cultural split emerging between young progressives and older ‘conservatives’.

The Eastern Front & Political Strains in Europe

Events in the Middle East distracted attention from Ukraine where the story continues much as before – Europeans maintaining a regime that is being run on paper and string with its economic and military support, constant attritional and relatively low cost expansion of territory by Russia, no sign of any promised regime changes here any more than in Iran and American lack of interest in the war or the survival of the Zelensky regime. The key event, of course, was the recent NATO Summit which Trump deigned to attend. Other Western leaders (notably Rutte of NATO) embarrassed themselves by fawning over ‘Daddy’. Despite all the tough talk, it was clear that Europeans were terrified of the withdrawal of the US nuclear umbrella, loss of commitments to European regime support and withdrawal of the presence of US troops. The offer was a largely face-saving 5% long term GDP commitment across the board to defence spending which looks as if it will create significant internal political problems for many member nations. Trump accepted. Relief all round.

However, if we look at the small print, as always this is not quite as it seems. First, the 5% of GDP to be committed was largely long term and aspirational. A lot can happen between now and 2030 and 2035 both in terms of perceived threat (as we have pointed out elsewhere) and internal European democratic regime change as well in US domestic politics. Second, many of the budgetary allocations were not directed at armament and men but at something called ‘resilience’ which actually meant repurposing bits of various non-defence budgets towards a redefinition of national resilience that could be counted as ‘defence’. Third, not everyone was prepared to drink the Kool-Aid. The moderate centre-left Government of Sanchez in Spain baulked, refused to reduce social protection to feed the maw of the war machine and opened up to public debate that this is what MAGA meant – a brutal choice to shift the welfare state into a warfare-welfare state where not everyone was convinced that a threat even existed.

This became most salient in the UK where we may have the most tactically incompetent Government in British history. The key issue in the last ten days has been significant cuts in disability benefits for very vulnerable people – social protection at the sharp end. A major revolt on the centre-left, grossly mishandled by the Government, at one point even threatened to bring down the Government or at least result in the ousting of a Prime Minister with appalling national approval ratings. In the middle of all this, the Prime Minister announced (to pacify Trump at the NATO Summit) the purchase of 12 more F-35s to carry nuclear armament – nuclear capacity that could not be used except on American say-so. In other words, Starmer was confirming that the UK was Airstrip One and prime nuclear target at huge expense just at the point when he was throwing tens of thousands of the desperately anxious disabled below the poverty line. The timing was truly inept. There could be more blunders to report but that will do for now!

This emerging problem of how to spend for wars that may never come and may only come because of the spend is only a little mitigated by the attempts to steal Russian assets and use them to maintain what would otherwise be a bankrupt Ukrainian State. The reality is that Western countries are still separate sovereign entities but have very different appreciations of threat, the need to pacify Trump and internal political risk. The East Asians are not allowing Trump to bully them into compliance: Trump appears to have very little interest in doing so. His energy seems to be directed entirely at forcing Canada and Europe to submit to Washington’s hegemony at whatever the cost. It is noticeable that there was no serious trade-off between tariffs and defence spending. The Canadians have already folded on their proposed tech tax which would have been damaging to the globally dominant US digital platforms.

What Trump is risking is the melt-down of moderate liberal regimes amongst allies in favour of more militaristic populisms in some cases and anti-militarist populisms in others. Is this a deliberate strategy? We cannot be sure but some regimes physically closer to Russia which are cohesive such as Poland and the Baltic States appear to have no difficulty in rapid and intensive militarisation. Move further West and the tension between social protection and neo-militarism becomes more salient and divisive with major risks of potential social collapse. Already there are mutterings on the German Centre-Right that perhaps Germany would be better served by ‘Ostpolitik’ than Atlanticism. The resistance of Spain to militarisation in favour of social protection represents the relative security of a nation with low risks of invasion and greater risks from climate developments (as we see today) and poverty.

Conclusion

The kow-towing of European politicians to Washington may be embarrassing but it is logical. Europe and Canada certainly were complacent about mounting trade imbalances and the effect on the US economy. The UK has a separate problem in that it is essentially a wholly owned economic subsidiary of the US with a strategic position completely dependent on integration with the US war machine. The troubling complicity of the British military-industrial complex with the Israeli war effort is actually an example of the impossibility of detaching the country from a military-industrial nexus in which the US, the UK and Israel are all dependent on each other or rather the last two are absolutely dependent on the US and on each other. This complicity represents a major internal political threat to the British regime as the Government attempts to use lawfare to silence dissent only to see it grow to probably uncontrollable proportions in response.

At the beginning of this note we suggested that we were in a period in which change could no longer be denied. The hope of a reversion to the old order after the mid-terms or after the next Presidential Election is slipping away. Nothing except a costly pre-emptive strike on liberal globalisation in the cause of future resilience could have prepared Europe for this crisis – the UK was a lost cause in any case because of its dependency on the US. The effort simultaneously to pacify the Trump Administration and to find an independent European way looks as if it is trapped in the internal contradiction that it has to be one or the other. The economic and so political costs of either route are profound. One route diverts capital away from investment in new technologies and social cohesion into potlach military-industrial spend, the other risks levels of tariff that could cause rapid de-industrialisation and severe social conflict as well as imply eventual accommodation with Washington’s rivals.

What is most interesting is that Europe is making enemies of what it assumes to be Washington’s enemies – Russia, China and the Arab World – and yet Trump seems to have a long term plan to make these apparent enemies into potential partners. He talks of Russia as a country he can do business with. His administration speaks of progress in Chinese trade talks. His plan for Iran appears to be to integrate into a regional economic investment hub that will eventually include Israel as well as the Gulf States. Meanwhile the UK and Europe in their desperation to pacify ‘Daddy’ are at war to all intents and purposes with Russia, are destabilising their own trade relations with China and have become almost entirely irrelevant in the Middle East (and increasingly so in Africa). All very strange and only to be explained by strategic structural dependence.