Dear readers,
This AI thing has Gone Too Far. I asked ChatGPT (not my colleague Ted Reinert, who is known around here, for cause, as TedGPT) last night to tell me a Jewish Mother joke about NATO. (Yes, I was procrastinating about writing this newsletter introduction.) This was the response:
“NATO? Feh. You call that a defense pact? I’ve been holding this family together with nothing but guilt and a landline since 1973. Your Uncle Morty hasn’t spoken to your cousin in 10 years, but when I say ‘we’re having dinner,’ suddenly it’s détente.” And then it asked me: “Want one with more geopolitical nuance or more matzo balls?” I say that is sarcasm, and it is uncalled for.
Anyway. It appears the West has survived this week’s G-7 meeting in the Canadian mountain resort of Kananaskis, despite, or perhaps because of, President Trump’s precipitate return to Washington to focus on the war between Israel and Iran. But Western leaders meet again at what is probably most accurately described as a Readers Digest version of a NATO summit in the Dutch city of The Hague on June 24-25: dinner with the King and Queen to ensure good behavior all round, followed by a 2-hour meeting the next day, and rounded off with a maximally succinct document that carefully avoids any and all points of potential conflict.
Luckily, we here at the Center on the United States and Europe have been busy dissecting said points of contention, and we have a remarkable array of analysis for you:
Jim Goldgeier and Sophie Roehse have a primer on what is at stake in The Hague. For our “Reimagining Europe’s security” series, Tom Wright describes how Europe can help Ukraine defend itself against Russia (which continues its daily brutal bombardments); Sophia Besch explains what Europe must do to improve its conventional deterrence; and Liviu Horovitz and Claudia Major lay out the pros and cons of a European nuclear deterrent.
We also link to two related events. The 20th Raymond Aron Lecture earlier this month, delivered by Camille Grand, examined four scenarios of U.S.-European security decoupling, with responses from Mara Karlin and Peter Rough. And finally, just this morning four renowned security experts discussed the summit and European security in a webinar: former NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson, and our colleagues Fiona Hill (who along with Lord Robertson was one of three senior external experts guiding the recently published British Strategic Defence Review), Mike O’Hanlon, and Tom Wright.
As always, we hope you enjoy reading our analysis and commentary.
Yours, slightly rattled (you should have seen the Jewish Mother joke about Hegel),
Constanze Stelzenmüller
Director, Center on the United States and Europe
The Brookings Institution
