Philip Stephens of the Financial Times recently pens a rather pessimistic piece on what Libya said about “Britain’s pretensions of influence.” Noting that the “campaign has stretched the armed forces to their limit,” he calls it a “last hurrah.” Now, the underlying tone of the piece is his criticism of PM David Cameron’s desire to …
NATO
NATO’s Nuclear Weapons: Here to Stay
A warm first greeting to Battleland readers. Here in London, where I am based, I’ve written for TIME on several occasions about a strange arrangement that means that Belgium, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the Netherlands are de facto nuclear weapons states. The U.S. stores 200 B-61 thermonuclear gravity bombs in those five European …
Illuminating the Dark Afghan Tunnel
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen slipped in and out of the White House Tuesday like some ancient daguerreotype, his brief visit memorialized only in still photographs — no video, no reporters, no questions, no answers. Perhaps President Obama’s handlers didn’t want another round of bashing like last week’s, when critics — …