NATO’s Myopic Accounting Ignores Maritime Superpower Greece

America just skipped December’s NATO foreign ministers’ meeting. That’s a first in over two decades. Part of the reason is the alliance’s irrelevance to President Donald Trump’s personalized, high-stakes peace negotiation to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Another is likely the administration’s weariness over Europe’s anemic defense spending. The alliance’s current 2 percent of GDP benchmark has long been a source of transatlantic friction. It is also a dangerously simplistic metric that measures inputs, not outputs.  

The benchmark quantifies treasure, not strategic capability, and overlooks one of the most critical (and undervalued) contributions allies can make: maritime power—specifically, commercial sealift capacity. There is a solution.  READ MORE

Europe: Trump v. Harris

Kamala Devi Harris will be the first post-pandemic president of the United States. Unless, of course, she loses to the guy who was a failed pandemic leader.

Covid-19 changed the world. We are more digitally connected. We grew to understand how interdependent our world is and how reliant we are on Greek ships and container cargo. We learned that China could lock down and take over a remonstrating Hong Kong without firing a shot or taking much guff. Moscow made a run for Kyiv. All this between 2020 and 2022. READ MORE