Book Review: ‘Who Will Defend Europe? An Awakened Russia and a Sleeping Continent’

November 3, 2024Posted inopinionNo Comments

Despite frequent US calls to lift defence spending, most of NATO’s European members pocketed a ‘peace dividend’ in recent years by reducing their armed forces and defence industries. They imagined that war would never return to Europe and that, in any event, they could rely on the US to ensure their national security.

Both of these assumptions were illusory, as Keir Giles argues in a new book, Who Will Defend Europe? Giles is a senior fellow at Chatham House and Director of the Conflict Studies Research Centre. He has been a very active and prescient analyst of Russia, especially since the invasion of Ukraine, notably through his books Moscow Rules and Russia’s War on Everybody.

Book Review: Autocracy, Inc by Anne Applebaum

August 11, 2024Posted inopinion1 Comment

One of the most impressive aspects of the Ukraine war has been how over 40 countries, led by NATO, have rallied together to offer military, financial, and humanitarian support to Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022.

But one of the most disturbing aspects has been how fellow autocratic regimes, notably China, Iran, and North Korea, have been providing substantial support to Russia.  Without this support, Russia’s war efforts would have most likely collapsed quite some time ago.  This is just one example of how modern autocracies are joining forces against their “common enemies”, the group of capitalist democracies and the rules-based world order, according to Anne Applebaum’s new book, Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World.


From photo by Andrea De Santis on Unsplash.