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Pakistan now says the alliance is over—and good riddance. Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif complained that “This is not how allies behave.” He is absolutely correct: U.S. allies do not take its lower and middle-class taxpayers’ hard-earned money and hand it over to enemies such as the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and Lashkar-e-Taiba.Asif went on to offer the usual protestations that Pakistan’s military operations have cleared Pakistan of sanctuaries for these groups to hide in. But if there were such scoundrels on Pakistan’s territory, he said that if Pakistan went after them, “then the war will again be fought on our soil, which will suit the Americans.”

Still, Pakistan likely suspects it has the upper hand, and for good reason: It has cultivated a global fear that it is too dangerous to fail. This is why many Americans have been afraid to break ties with Pakistan and have never encouraged the International Monetary Fund and other multilateral organizations to cut off the country and let Pakistan wallow in its own mess. Pakistan believes it has effectively bribed the international community with the specter that any instability could result in terrorists getting their hands on Pakistani nuclear technology, fissile materials, or a weapon. In fact, Pakistan has stoked these fears by having the world’s fastest-growing nuclear program, including of battlefield nuclear weapons. It is conceivable that Pakistan could use funds from a future IMF bailout to service its burgeoning Chinese debt.

Still, one positive side effect of having an erratic head of state is that the United States now has a genuine and credible threat to act against Pakistan. America has not been in such a position since 9/11, when it used its position of leverage to coerce Pakistan to facilitate the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Whereas Pakistan had long comforted itself that neither Presidents Bush nor Obama would seriously alter course, due to the petting zoo of Islamist militants that Pakistan cultivated as crucial tools of foreign policy, and to its nuclear weapons, Pakistan will have to seriously consider that Trump means what he says. Since the early months of the war on terror that began in October 2001, the United States has ultimately swerved when confronted with Pakistani brinkmanship. Pakistan can’t count on that this time.

built in 1020 by Werner

in the Aargau

in what is now Switzerland

rebelled against the German king Otto I in 950

Rudolf II of Habsburg (died 1232)

Rudolf III’s descendants, however, sold their portion, including Laufenburg, to Albert IV’s descendants before dying out in 1408

Albert IV’s son Rudolf IV of Habsburg was elected German king as Rudolf I in 1273. It was he who, in 1282, bestowed Austria and Styria on his two sons Albert (the future German king Albert I) and Rudolf (reckoned as Rudolf II of Austria). From that date the agelong identification of the Habsburgs with Austria begins

the most formidable dynasty was no longer the Habsburg but the Bourbon. In the War of the Grand Alliance (1689–97) the rising powers that 100 years earlier had been Habsburg Spain’s principal enemies and feeble France’s most fluent encouragers

Apart from the Bourbon ascendancy

The physical debility of Charles II of Spain was such that no male heir could be expected to be born to him

his crowns would pass to the electoral prince of Bavaria, Joseph Ferdinand, son of his niece Maria Antonia, daughter of the emperor Leopold I.

Charles II’s next natural heirs were the descendants (1) of his half-sister, who had married Louis XIV of France, and (2) of his father’s two sisters, of whom one had been Louis XIV’s mother and the other the emperor Leopold I’s

Critical tension developed: on the one hand neither the imperial Habsburgs nor their British and Dutch friends could consent to their Bourbon enemy’s acquiring the whole Spanish inheritance

Charles II in the meantime regarded any partition of his inheritance as a humiliation to Spain: dying in 1700, he named as his sole heir a Bourbon prince, Philip of Anjou, the second of Louis XIV’s grandsons. The War of the Spanish Succession ensued

To allay British and Dutch misgivings, Leopold I and his elder son, the future emperor Joseph I, in 1703 renounced their own claims to Spain in favour of Joseph’s brother Charles, so that he might found a second line of Spanish Habsburgs distinct from the imperial

Sardinia, however, was exchanged by him in 1717 for Sicily, which the peacemakers of Utrecht had assigned to the House of Savoy.

Charles remained technically at war with Bourbon Spain until 1720

Meanwhile the extinction of the Spanish Habsburgs’ male line and the death of his brother Joseph left Charles, in 1711, as the last male Habsburg. He had therefore to consider what should happen after his death. No woman could rule the Holy Roman Empire, and furthermore the Habsburg succession in some of the hereditary lands was assured only to the male line

he issued his famous Pragmatic Sanction of April 19, 1713, prescribing that, in the event of his dying sonless, the whole inheritance should pass (1) to a daughter of his, according to the rule of primogeniture, and thence to her descendants; next (2) if he himself left no daughter, to his late brother’s daughters, under the same conditions; and finally (3) if his nieces’ line was extinct, to the heirs of his paternal aunts

The attempt to win general recognition for his Pragmatic Sanction was Charles VI’s main concern from 1716 onward

By 1738, at the end of the War of the Polish Succession (in which he lost both Naples and Sicily to a Spanish Bourbon but got Parma and Piacenza

acknowledged the Pragmatic Sanction. His hopes were illusory: less than two months after his death, in 1740, his daughter Maria Theresa had to face a Prussian invasion of Silesia, which unleashed the War of the Austrian Succession

Bavaria then promptly challenged the Habsburg position in Germany; and France’s support of Bavaria encouraged Saxony to follow suit and Spain to try to oust the Habsburgs from Lombardy

The War of the Austrian Succession cost Maria Theresa most of Silesia, part of Lombardy, and the duchies of Parma and Piacenza (Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748) but left her in possession of the rest of her father’s hereditary lands

her husband, Francis Stephen of Lorraine, who in 1737 had become hereditary grand duke of Tuscany, was finally recognized as Holy Roman emperor, with the title of Francis I. He and his descendants, of the House of Habsburg–Lorraine, are the dynastic continuators of the original Habsburgs

An Austro-French entente was subsequently maintained until 1792: the marriage of the archduchess Marie-Antoinette to the future Louis XVI of France (1770) was intended to confirm it

the Habsburgs exerted themselves to consolidate and to expand their central European bloc of territory

when the emperor Francis I died (1765), his eldest son, the emperor Joseph II, became coregent with his mother of the Austrian dominions, but Joseph’s brother Leopold became grand duke of Tuscany

The northeastward expansion of Habsburg central Europe, which came about in Joseph II’s time, was a result not so much of Joseph’s initiative as of external events: the First Partition of Poland (1772)

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars brought a kaleidoscopic series of changes

On Napoleon’s downfall the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) inaugurated the Restoration, from which the battered House of Habsburg naturally benefitted

a brother of the Holy Roman emperors Joseph II and Leopold II, had in 1771 married the heiress of the House of Este; and Napoleon’s Habsburg consort, Marie Louise

The history of the House of Habsburg for the century following the Congress of Vienna is inseparable from that of the Austrian Empire

German, Italian, Hungarian, Slav, and Romanian—gradually eroded. The first territorial losses came in 1859, when Austria had to cede Lombardy to Sardinia–Piedmont, nucleus of the emergent kingdom of Italy

Next, the Seven Weeks’ War of 1866, in which Prussia, exploiting German nationalism, was in alliance with Italy, forced Austria both to renounce its hopes of reviving its ancient hegemony in Germany and to cede Venetia.

Franz Joseph took a step intended to consolidate his “multinational empire”

he granted to that kingdom equal status with the Austrian Empire in what was henceforth to be the Dual Monarchy of Austria–Hungary.

The ardent German nationalists of the Austrian Empire, as opposed to the Germans who were simply loyal to the Habsburgs, took the same attitude as did the Magyars

Remote from Austria’s national concerns but still wounding to the House of Habsburg was the fate of Franz Joseph’s brother Maximilian: set up by the French as emperor of Mexico in 1864

In 1878 Austro-Hungarian forces had “occupied” Bosnia and Herzegovina, which belonged to declining Turkey

World War I led to the dismemberment of the Habsburg Empire. While Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Romanians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Italians were all claiming their share of the spoil, nothing remained to Charles, the last emperor and king, but “German” Austria and Hungary proper

A combination of Louis XIV of France, the Elector of Bavaria, Max Emanuel, and Hungarian rebels, threatened to overthrow Leopold, and thus to end the Habsburg ability to counter-balance French power

These depots enabled the army to maintain cohesion and discipline, instead of having to disperse to obtain supplies

Marlborough had been more successful than his opponents in integrating cavalry and infantry; his cavalry were better trained for charging; and the artillery, under Colonel Holcroft Blood, manoeuvred rapidly on the battlefield, and was brought forward to help support the breakthrough in the centre

The victory ended the threat to Austria. Most of the Franco-Bavarian army was no longer effective after the battle and its subsequent retreat to the Rhine. The Allies followed up the battle with the conquest of southern Germany, as Bavaria was ‘taken out’ of the war, and took the major fortresses of Ulm, Ingolstadt and Landau before the close of the year. It was not until 1741 that French forces were again to campaign so far to the east – and later, and more seriously, in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, when no British army marched to the Danube. In contrast, Marlborough’s advance into Germany had prepared the way for George II to campaign there in 1743, a campaign that culminated in another victory for the British and Austrians over the French at Dettingen, to the east of Frankfurt

Under Marlborough at Blenheim, the British army reached a peak of success that it was not to achieve again in Europe for another hundred years, until Wellington

Marlborough’s army was the most battle-hardened British army since those of the Civil Wars of the 1640s, but the armies of the Civil Wars had not been engaged in battles that were as extensive or sieges of positions that were as well fortified as those that faced Marlborough’s forces

The British in Gibraltar were now besieged on land by the French and the supporters of Philip V, but, as with the lengthy siege of Gibraltar by the Spaniards in 1780 during the American War of Independence, British fleet action proved crucial to the relief of the besieged garrison

As Marlborough was Master-General of the Ordnance as well as Captain-General of the Army, he was able to overcome any institutional constraints on co-operation between artillery and the rest of the army

Like Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in the Thirty Years’ War seventy years earlier, Marlborough made his cavalry charge fast and act like a shock force, rather than as mounted infantry relying on pistol firepower

Marlborough went on to win other battles – notably Ramillies (1706), Oudenaarde (1708), and Malplaquet (1709) – but none had the dramatic impact of Blenheim, in part because that victory ended the danger that the anti-French alliance would collapse. But he also found that victory did not make it any easier to get the Allied forces to work together, and this, combined with differences in military and diplomatic strategy among the political leaders (the Dutch were especially cautious), made his task very difficult

Meanwhile, a few weeks earlier the seizure of Gibraltar had brought together Britain’s role as a Continental power with her interests as a maritime state. British troops were engaged in Iberia in support of ‘Charles III’, Leopold I’s second son and the Habsburg candidate for the crown of Spain, against Louis XIV’s second grandson, Philip V of Spain, who had been installed in 1700 under the terms of Charles II’s will. It proved far easier for Britain to intervene on the littoral, however, than to control the interior

the seizure of Gibraltar proved important as it registered the shift of naval hegemony from France to Britain. In the early 1690s Britain and France had contested the English Channel, but following the British victory at Barfleur in 1692, the navy had become far more effective in the Mediterranean. The dispatch of a large fleet under Russell to the Mediterranean in 1694 had been followed by its wintering at the then Allied port of Cadiz, a new achievement. The competing interests of Austria, France and Spain in the western Mediterranean ensured that this area was the cockpit of European diplomacy

n 1702, Sir George Rooke had concentrated on Spain’s Atlantic waters as a consequence of an attempt to intercept the Spanish treasure fleet from the New World. His attack on Cadiz had failed, but the Franco-Spanish fleet at Vigo was successfully attacked. British naval strength encouraged Portugal to switch sides in 1703; but, in an even more significant move, the same year Sir Cloudesley Shovell entered the Mediterranean and persuaded Victor Amadeus II of Savoy-Piedmont to abandon his alliance with Louis XIV

Rooke’s capture of Gibraltar on July 23rd, 1704, when the landing force was crucially supported by naval gunfire that silenced the enemy battery on the New Mole, led the French to mount a naval response to regain Gibraltar for Philip V and to demonstrate that France was still the leading naval power in the Mediterranean

Marlborough’s battles were fought on a more extended front than those of the 1690s, let alone the 1650s

These blows led the French to abandon the siege. Gibraltar’s inhabitants had been allowed to remain in the town if they took an oath of fidelity to ‘Charles III’, but ultimately the victory of Philip V, the Bourbon claimant, in the wider war removed this option, and instead the British acquired Gibraltar under the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. In an attempt to improve relations with Spain, in 1721 George I promised to approach Parliament for consent to return Gibraltar to Spain, but this was not deemed politically possible

Three years later a fleet based at Gibraltar discouraged a junction between Bourbon naval forces in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, when the Mediterranean formed a frontline between the alliance systems of two clashing empires, Gibraltar was a key British resource

Maintaining a presence in Gibraltar thereafter ceased to be of vital strategic concern to the British and became a curiosity to many; but its major role for a quarter-millennium of national history should not be underplayed.

It failed, after a night-time error in navigation led to the loss of eight transport ships and nearly 900 men in the St Lawrence estuary, but the Peace of Utrecht of 1713 left Britain with recognition of its wartime gains: not only Gibraltar and Minorca, but also Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. This weakened the defences of New France and left the British clearly dominant in North American waters

He was the “most Christian King” who entered into an alliance with the enemy of Christendom. He was the destroyer of the integrity and tradition of the Gallican Church. He was the voluptuary who allowed his court to be divided into factions

His father, Charles of Angouleme, resembled his namesake and uncle, the graceful lyric poet, Charles of Orleans

The group accepted the easy guardianship at Amboise of Louis, Duke of Orléans, who two years later became King as Louis XII.

The adulation of his mother and sister shielded him from the hatred of Anne of Brittany. The Queen had borne Louise XII an only child, the Princess Claude, who was heiress of Brittany in her mother’s right

Francis was heir-presumptive to the French Crown. A marriage between Francis and Claude seemed a natural arrangement, which would prevent the alienation of the Duchy of Brittany from the French royal house. But the Queen was firmly opposed to it, and the marriage took place only after her death in 1514

the future of the heir-presumptive remained in doubt. In October 1514, Louis XII

married Mary of England, the sister of Henry VIII. Francis was less distressed than his mother

Bonnivet was made Admiral of France, and the long-vacant title of Constable was bestowed upon his cousin, Charles of Bourbon

The election of Charles V marked the beginning of a two-hundred-year conflict between the French monarchy and the Hapsburgs

In February 1516, the grandson of the Emperor, Charles of Austria, inherited the thrones of Aragon and Castile. Six months later, he recognized the French conquest of Milan. At this time there was no hostility between him and Francis I.

Political responsibilities were not neglected in the flush of military success.

opposed to a rival whose encircling dominions included Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and southern Italy, and whose strength was augmented by the wealth of the New World

The contrast between the ebullient King of the Renaissance and the melancholic Emperor has always attracted the attention of historians

The one reliving the ancient myths of the universal monarchy and the crusade against the infidel: the other replacing the symbolic attitudes of the past with the realistic values of the nation state

The two Kings were too much alike in age and temperament to allow common interests to still the spirit of mutual competition

Henry VIII, reading through the terms of a declaration, obligingly omitted his title of King of France

When hostilities began in the following year, the Tudor King, after making some show of mediation, aligned himself with the Emperor. The war went badly

For a year Francis I remained the captive of the Emperor in Madrid, while Louise of Savoy rallied national sentiment for the continuation of the war

The great-grandfather of the Emperor was Charles the Bold of Burgundy. It was as a Burgundian that Charles V claimed the lands that had been seized by Louis XI. The release of the King was not secured until a pledge had been given for the cession of Burgundy

The subsequent death of Catherine of Aragon removed the cause of English disagreement with the Emperor. In the last two wars of the reign Henry VIII reverted to the imperial alliance

In the course of the war, Bourbon was killed during the ferocious assault of his mutinous forces on Rome in May 1527

In the sack of Rome Henry VIII saw an opportunity to win the favour of Clement VII and obtain the annulment of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon. For several years he remained the ally of France

Even after the revelation of the marriage with Anne Boleyn, Francis pleaded the English case during his meeting with the Pope at Marseilles in October 1533

The King had never intended to observe the terms of the Treaty of Madrid. Fresh allies were found in Italy, notably Pope Clement VII

Turkish armies were threatening the eastern imperial marches. In his league with the Sultan Sulaiman he inaugurated one of the most enduring of French policies

a vast Turkish army had erupted into Hungary and overwhelmed the Emperor’s Hungarian allies

The infidel was regarded with mingled curiosity and horror

The Ottoman alliance appalled the conscience of Europe; but the King found it difficult to resist the temptation offered by the expeditions of Charles V to North Africa and the campaigns of his brother, Ferdinand, upon the Bohemian border

Although the King’s diplomacy with the Papacy, the Turk, England and the Princes of the Empire, contained many failures and much duplicity, it was pursued with a realism and a flexibility that offset his lack of strategic ability in war

By June 1538, when Paul III personally negotiated the truce of Nice, it appeared possible to achieve a genuine reconciliation

The significant campaigns of the future were not to be fought in Italy, but on the frontiers of France

The altered texture of French society in the first half of the sixteenth century was, in part, a response to the demands of the monarchy

Francis I never summoned a full Estates-General

In July 1527, in the presence of the King, the Parlement heard from the lips of secretary Robertet a statement so imperious and unequivocal that it represented an unprecedented declaration of monarchical absolutism. The King, like Louis XII before him, was called the father of his people; but, whereas Louis earned his patriarchal status through his benevolence, Francis claimed it as his right

His sister, Marguerite, now Queen of Navarre, was scarcely less influential

Factions long concealed within the court became more apparent after the death of the Dauphin in 1536

The plain and modest Queen Eleonore, sister of Charles V, whom the King had married five years after the death of Claude in 1525, became the centre of the pro-Hapsburg party at the court

He held the office once occupied by de Boisy and, finally, that which the traitor Bourbon had forfeited

the King’s death in 1547

In the last years of the reign the glories of the new monarchy seemed tarnished and outworn

bowed to the zealots of the Sorbonne and aped the gallant ways of his youth

As complaisant royal consort and then as Regent of France, Marie de Médicis was called upon to play a role resembling that of her distant cousin

Ferdinando, who renounced his cardinalate to assume the ducal dignity, reversed his brother’s policies, and invested his ducats in the struggle of Henry IV, the Bourbon King of France, against the Spanish-supported Catholic League

Negotiations for marriage with a number of Italian and German suitors of princely rank were inconclusive, and, as the financial obligations of the French monarchy to Florentine creditors increased, so, too, did the probability of a French husband for Marie de Médicis

A more promising expedient to recover or reduce a bad debt seemed to be the marriage of his niece with the French King

Papal authority was needed to annul Henry IV’s marriage with Marguerite de Valois, the wayward daughter of Catherine de Médicis

the marriage contract was signed in Tuscany

The kingdom that received Marie de Médicis as its Queen had been torn by four decades of civil war.

The imposition of peace in itself had created the conditions for economic recovery, but the monarchy appreciated that it had a positive task to heal and to restore.

Sully had served his master when he had been no more than a petty King of Navarre, had fought beside him in a score of engagements, and, though a Huguenot

Some of the weaknesses shown by Marie de Médicis may be condoned in the light of her husband’s conduct. The King treated her with courtesy and, intermittently, with a familiar affection

Henry IV’s domestic life was likened to that of the Grand Turk. He expected his Queen and his mistresses to live in harmony

Her half-brother, Charles d’Auvergne, the natural son of the Valois King, Charles IX, and her father, Francois de Balzac d’Entragues

Her marriage with Henry IV, the prelude to the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572, had been as farcical in later years as it had been tragic in its origin

Henry IV allied himself with Savoy against Spain, and proposed to intervene against the Catholic Emperor

Regency by declaring the tearful Queen-Mother sole Regent in the minority of Louis XIII

France turned towards alliance with Henry IV’s Spanish enemies

Marie de Médicis, lacking the authority of Henry IV, had now to contend with the ambitions he had held in check. She could no longer afford the peevish indolence she had affected as Queen: she had to devote all her energy to conciliating and balancing the forces that threatened to curtail her power

A proposal to affirm the Spanish alliance by the dual marriage of the King and his sister, Elizabeth, with the Spanish Haps-burgs provoked this response

Conflicts between the three orders enabled Marie de Médicis and her Ministers to survive these challenges

In the following year a desultory campaign against Nevers was complicated by a war between Spain and Savoy, in which, despite the insistence of the government upon the sincerity of the Spanish alliance, a French army under the command of Henry IV’s old general, Lesdiguieres, marched into Italy against the Hapsburgs

The Queen Mother was placed under arrest and exiled to Blois. Her confidante, Leonora Galigaï, was put on trial for peculation and sorcery, and condemned to death on both counts

the princess Elizabeth crossed the Bidassoa and, in exchange, Anne of Austria became the bride of Louis XIII

If her roles as Queen and Regent had resembled those of Catherine de Médicis, her actions after her fall seemed bent upon the destruction of all that her predecessor had represented

It was her tragedy that she failed to identify her personal ambitions with the symbolic meaning of the crown she wore

The King’s delight in his children was boundless, and his affection recognized no distinction between legitimate and illegitimate

he recognized the political significance of the eldest legitimate son in an hereditary monarchy, and as a matter of course the Dauphin was accorded special status. The King knew well the importance of forging personal ties between the sovereign and his people, and at the age of one month the future Louis XIII was introduced to public life:

Henry’s premature death ended César’s role in government; lacking his royal father’s support, he was reduced instantly to that anomalous status attendant upon a former monarch’s illegitimate offspring. During the reign of his half-brother he was naturally a rebel against the Crown

Jeanne-Baptiste de Bourbon and Marie-Henriette de Bourbon suffered the usual fate of unmarriageable daughters; they were relegated to convents

Throughout the last decade of Henry’s reign, speculation centred around the ‘Spanish marriages,’ a system of alliances

These schemes were encouraged by the Pope, who wished to unite the two great Catholic powers of Europe; and the Queen herself (who was half-Habsburg) voiced approval of alliance with Spain.

Her marriage to the Dauphin would have incorporated Lorraine in the French crown by peaceful annexation, strengthening France’s north-eastern frontier

The contract, signed a few weeks before the King’s murder, provided for an offensive and defensive league against Spain in which Henry agreed to support Savoy’s claims to Milan

Henry’s assassination in May of 1610 left Marie de Médicis Regent of a kingdom poised for attack against the forces of Austria and Spain, and she scrambled frantically to extricate France from the anti-Habsburg coalition without leaving herself diplomatically isolated. Charles Emmanuel of Savoy finally agreed to accept the younger princess, Christine, as his son’s bride

Thus Elisabeth was available for another alliance, and the long-discussed ‘Spanish match’ was realized in a double marriage in 1615: Louis XIII received the Infanta as his wife and Elisabeth went to Spain as the bride of the future Philip IV

In order to win Habsburg good will, the Regent had sacrificed the advantages of a match with Lorraine

he enlisted in the French army

supporter of the Revolution

Bernadotte first met Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797 in Italy. Their relationship, at first friendly, was soon embittered by rivalries and misunderstandings

In November 1799 Bernadotte refused to assist Bonaparte’s coup d’état that ended the Directory but neither did he defend it

When, on May 18, 1804, Napoleon proclaimed the empire, Bernadotte declared full loyalty to him and, in May, was named marshal of the empire

he was invited to become crown prince of Sweden. In 1809 a palace revolution had overthrown King Gustav IV of Sweden and had put the aged, childless, and sickly Charles XIII on the throne. The Danish prince Christian August had been elected crown prince but died suddenly in 1810, and the Swedes turned to Napoleon for advice.

he respected his military ability, his skillful and humane administration of Hanover and the Hanseatic towns, and his charitable treatment of Swedish prisoners in Germany

Bernadotte was elected Swedish crown prince. On October 20 he accepted Lutheranism and landed in Sweden; he was adopted as son by Charles XIII and took the name of Charles John (Karl Johan). The Crown Prince at once assumed control of the government and acted officially as regent during the illnesses of Charles XIII. Napoleon now tried to prevent any reorientation of Swedish foreign policy and moreover sent an immediate demand that Sweden declare war on Great Britain

Charles John was anxious to achieve something for Sweden that would prove his worth to the Swedes and establish his dynasty in power. He could, as many Swedes wished, have regained Finland from Russia, either by conquest or by negotiation

the conquest of Norway from Denmark, based on a Swedish alliance with Napoleon’s enemies. An alliance was signed with Russia in April 1812, with Great Britain in March 1813—with the British granting a subsidy for the proposed conquest of Norway—and with Prussia in April 1813. Urged by the allies, however, Charles John agreed to take part in the great campaign against Napoleon and to postpone his war with Denmark. The Crown Prince landed his troops at Stralsund, Ger., in May 1813 and soon took command of the allied army of the north

conserve his forces for the war with Denmark, and the Prussians bore the brunt of the fighting

After the decisive Battle of Leipzig (October 1813), Napoleon’s first great defeat, Charles John succeeded in defeating the Danes in a swift campaign and forced King Frederick VI of Denmark to sign the Treaty of Kiel (January 1814), which transferred Norway to the Swedish crown. Charles John now had dreams of becoming king or “protector” of France, but he had become alienated from the French people, and the victorious allies would not tolerate another soldier in charge of French affairs

Charles John conducted an efficient and almost bloodless campaign, and in August the Norwegians signed the Convention of Moss, whereby they accepted Charles XIII as king

At the Congress of Vienna (1814–15), Austria and the French Bourbons were hostile to the upstart prince, and the son of the deposed Gustav was a potential pretender to the throne. But, thanks to Russian and British support, the status of the new dynasty was undisturbed

Upon the death of Charles XIII on Feb. 5, 1818, Charles John became king of Sweden and Norway, and the former republican and revolutionary general became a conservative ruler.

His foreign policy inaugurated a long and favourable period of peace, based on good relations with Russia and Great Britain

Francis married Claude in May 1514 and, in October of the same year, Louis XII married the young and beautiful Mary Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII. Had she conceived a son, all Francis' hopes would have been dashed. Yet, less than three months after his marriage, Louis XII was dead and the 20-year-old Francis was proclaimed king of France on January 1st, 1515

He inherited Charles VIII's claim to the Kingdom of Naples, which included Sicily and most of southern Italy. He claimed certain territories along the ill-defined border between France, the Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire, whose Habsburg overlord was the future emperor, Charles V. Francis also wanted the city of Tournai, conquered by Henry VIII in 1513, to be returned to France. For roughly 20 of his 32 years as king, Francis was preparing for war, active in it, or managing its consequences in expensive and convoluted diplomacy

Barely nine months after his accession, in September 1515, Francis conquered Milan, after defeating a Swiss mercenary army at the battle of Marignano

He secured this prominence through peace treaties and alliances, culminating in his inclusion in the 'Universal Peace' of 1518, agreed in the name of Pope Leo X but actually organised under the auspices of Henry VIII, who felt a keen and life-long rivalry with Francis

Francis had hoped to impress and intimidate Henry into committing himself as an ally against Charles V, whose power in Italy unnerved Francis

appreciated that securing and maintaining the support of interest groups, particularly the nobility, was vital to effective kingship

He made an ill-advised pre-emptive strike against imperial territory in the Netherlands and Spain in early 1521

Disappointed by Charles V's lack of support for his own claim to France, Henry once more turned the tables on the emperor. A renewed Anglo-French alliance enabled Francis to repudiate the treaty of Madrid and led indirectly to a more acceptable agreement

Francis maintained peace with his English counterpart until 1542

He never finally secured Milan from Charles but he did, nevertheless, maintain his dynastic rights against the emperor's potentially overwhelming power. This he did in part by allying with the papacy, with various Italian states, with the heretical Henry VIII and with the Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. These last two alliances scandalised Catholic Europe, but keeping Charles' enemies close for as long as he could assisted Francis in projecting royal power well beyond the borders of the French state throughout his reign

Another important factor in Francis' capacity to project this power was his widespread reform of crown fiscal administration after his return from Spain in 1526. These were prompted first and foremost by the need to pay huge debts incurred in the war and in securing peace with Henry and Charles

His sale of judicial offices set up long-lasting difficulties for the monarchy

Francis was taken to Spain as the emperor's prisoner. France was left vulnerable to its enemies and to internal dissent, which Louise de Savoie, as her son's regent, had much to do to overcome while trying to secure Francis' release. She immediately sought the assistance of the English and sympathetic Italian states, who were wary of the immense power of Charles V in the wake of his triumph at Pavia

Daily life there was never as elaborately choreographed under Francis as it would be under his successors. He is perhaps second only to Henry IV in his reputation for informality and spontaneity as a French king.

The 'big boy' had come close at times to ruining everything, but had also made France a power to be reckoned with and made his own mark on its history

Under Francis, the court of France was at the height of its prestige and international influence during the 16th century.

Once it was clear to Charles that British terms were nonnegotiable, then the Bourbon Family Compact of 1761, a mutual-defense treaty with France, was a piece of realpolitik, signed by the “Anglophile” Ricardo Wall.

The consequence of such an alliance was involvement in the Seven Years’ War—too late to save France.

The Treaty of Paris (1763) concluded the Seven Years’ War and destroyed France as an American power.

The Family Compact was therefore an immediate military failure, and it was only the revolt of the North American colonies against Britain that enabled Spain to recover the ground it had lost; the successful alliance with France to aid the colonists resulted in the Treaty of Versailles (1783), which gave back Sacramento, the two Floridas, and Minorca.

In 1788 Charles III, who had been the “nerve” of reform in the sense that he loyally supported able ministers, was succeeded by his son, Charles IV, a weak, amiable man dominated by a lascivious wife, María Luisa.

The volume of Spanish goods in the American trade increased 10-fold in 10 years, prompting British concern at the Spanish revival.

The main attack of the regalists fell on the Jesuit order.

The question arises of the extent to which the policies of Charles III resulted from the acceptance by his servants of the precepts of the Enlightenment.

When the French Revolution exposed the dangers of progressive thought, the traditionalist cause was immensely strengthened, and the Inquisition appeared to the crown itself to be a useful instrument to control the spread of dangerous ideas

The problems of imperial defense were thus temporarily solved by British weakness after 1765. The positive side of Charles III’s imperial policy was an attempt to create an efficiently administered colonial empire that would provide the crown with increased revenues and with a closed market for the exports of an expanding Spanish economy, a program known as the “Bourbon Reforms.”

the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars put unbearable pressures on a weak power. Reform was now dangerous. Neutrality was impossible; alliance with either France or the anti-revolutionary coalitions engineered by Britain proved equally disastrous

Spain had no alternative but to declare war on France after the execution of Louis XVI in 1793. The war was popular but disastrous; in 1794 the French armies invaded Spain, taking Bilbao, San Sebastián (Donostia–San Sebastián), and Figueres (Figueras).

Napoleon had lost all faith in Godoy and Spain as an ally; the “dirty intrigues” of Ferdinand, prince of Asturias and heir to the throne, against his father and Godoy led Napoleon to consider drastic intervention in Spanish affairs

compelled the abdication of Charles IV and the dismissal of Godoy. Napoleon summoned both the old king and Ferdinand VII to Bayonne, where both were compelled to abdicate. The Spanish throne was then offered to Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother.

Turkey had earlier planned to buy missiles from China, but that deal fell through under pressure from the United States.

Yet Turkey has other reasons for the missile purchase. It needs to cultivate good relations with Russia, and it also needs to build its own military defense, said Asli Aydintasbas, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Turkey wants the deal,” she said, “and Russia is only too happy to drive a wedge into the NATO alliance.”

Mr. Erdogan’s announcement of the deal with Russia came after Germany said that it was suspending all major arms exports to Turkey because of the deteriorating human rights situation in the country and the increasingly strained ties.

As suspicions toward the West have grown, relations with Russia have warmed, driven by the personal relationship between Mr. Erdogan and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Mr. Erdogan has expressed personal admiration for Mr. Putin, to the consternation of many European and American leaders, if not President Trump.

After a tense falling out in 2015, when Turkish jets shot down a Russian warplane on Turkey’s border with Syria, Mr. Erdogan sought to improve relations with Russia, sending two letters to Mr. Putin and then traveling to Moscow for a meeting in June 2016.

The purchase of Russian missiles would take cooperation to a new level, but is not the first time that Turkey has bought military equipment from Russia. It turned to Moscow in the early 1990s to buy military helicopters and armored personnel carriers.

“By smoothly addressing the key pending alliance issue early on after the launch of the Biden administration, South Korea and the United States demonstrated the robustness of the firm alliance,”

North Korea has long campaigned for the American troops’ withdrawal, arguing that the threat they posed, including their joint war games with the South Korean military, had forced it to develop nuclear weapons.

How to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table will be a key topic when Mr. Blinken and Mr. Austin visit South Korea next Wednesday and Thursday, meeting President Moon Jae-in and other senior South Korean officials. North Korea has yet to react to their planned visit or the joint military drill by Washington and Seoul.

Mr. Moon’s government hopes that the Biden administration will follow up on the diplomacy started by Mr. Trump rather than going back to former President Obama’s policy of “strategic patience,” which focused on squeezing North Korea with sanctions.

Attempting to ease tensions with China to make cooperation on global public health possible won’t work, partly because Beijing cannot credibly commit to being more transparent and cooperative in the future.

For China’s leaders, the pandemic revealed the inexorable decline of the West, confirmed Beijing’s power and capabilities, and created more latitude for the CCP to do as it wished.

But in case cooperation fails, it must have a backup plan to rally allies and partners to provide a much greater share of global public goods, even if that means shouldering more of the costs.

as a number of U.S. embassy officials told the foreign policy analyst Colin Kahl and me for our book Aftershocks, this team’s cooperation with the Chinese government became more challenging as U.S.-Chinese rivalry intensified, largely because of China’s actions.

When COVID-19 hit, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintained near-absolute secrecy. All channels of communication between Beijing and Washington went silent, as they did between Beijing and other governments. Chinese leaders sought to conceal vital information about the emerging epidemic in China from the rest of the world, even attempting to prevent Chinese scientists from sharing the genetic sequence of the virus with scientists in other countries.

It is impossible to say for certain why the Chinese government behaved the way it did, but secrecy and control make sense in light of what the vast majority of China experts believe to be Xi’s top priority: regime survival.

Xi did not want to facilitate an international response to COVID-19 that could have attributed blame to China or isolated it through travel restrictions, either of which might have damaged the regime’s domestic legitimacy. Instead, Xi leveraged the pandemic to his advantage: China’s suppression of the virus became a matter of national pride, held up by Beijing in sharp contrast to the experience of the United States.

according to the UN, the pandemic could force a total of 490 million people into poverty—defined as the loss of access to clean water, adequate food, or shelter—pushing the global poverty rate to around seven percent by 2030, compared with the pre-pandemic target of three percent. 

Contrary to popular belief, some senior Trump administration officials grasped the national security threat posed by the virus faster than their European counterparts did. Top officials in the National Security Council began focusing on the pandemic in early January, just days after news of the outbreak in Wuhan, China, became public.

ven though Pottinger and other NSC officials were wise to the danger, they ultimately failed to persuade Trump to make the necessary preparations to deal with the pandemic when it inevitably reached the United States. 

As the administration began to formulate its response, those who favored a more comprehensive public health approach both at home and abroad were excluded or marginalized at crucial moments. The result was that the Trump administration focused more on holding China responsible for the outbreak and reducing U.S. reliance on Beijing than on the minutiae of global public health policy or the hard work of rallying the world to tackle the pandemic.

the pandemic and China’s response to it helped unify the administration behind a more comprehensive strategy to push back against Beijing. Between March 2020 and the end of the year, the senior official said, the United States put in place more containment measures than it had in the previous three years, including restrictions on Chinese technology firms, sanctions on Chinese officials, looser regulations on diplomatic contacts with Taiwan, and recognition of the repression in Xinjiang as a genocide. In this sense, the pandemic was a pivotal moment in the U.S.-Chinese rivalry. 

Competition between the two countries overwhelmed everything else, including U.S. cooperation with allies on the pandemic, leaving a global leadership vacuum that no one could fill.

The EU tried to step up by increasing funding for the WHO and for COVAX, the global initiative to share vaccines, but it never came close to organizing a global response. China’s assertive foreign policy, and its attempts to use pandemic assistance to advance its interests, aggravated European leaders and convinced them to harden their positions toward China throughout the course of 2020. 

During this period, there was hardly any international cooperation on vaccine development or distribution, no coordination on travel restrictions or the distribution of medical supplies, and limited cooperation on achieving a cessation of hostilities in conflict zones

The United States needs a strategy to address transnational threats under the conditions of great-power competition. It must aim to cooperate with rivals, especially China, to prepare for future pandemics and to tackle climate change

The economic disruption caused by COVID-19 devastated low-income countries, which received little in the way of international assistance. Especially hard hit were countries, such as Bangladesh, that had made significant development gains in the last two decades and were propelling themselves into the lower tier of middle-income economies.

Pandemics are not the only transnational threat that promises to intensify great-power rivalry and diminish the prospects for much-needed cooperation. Climate change could do the same.

the real challenge is determining what to do when cooperation with China and other rivals falls short of what is required. The United States needs a backup plan to tackle shared challenges through coalitions of the willing.

Countries that aggressively decarbonize could place sanctions and other trade restrictions on countries that do not, leading to counterresponses and new trade wars.

the impediments to cooperation between Europe and China on climate change “are becoming higher” and warn that “decision-makers must not underestimate the highly competitive aspects of how China is changing its energy production and consumption.” 

The United States and Europe will both compete with China for access to raw materials and in developing the technology needed to make their economies carbon neutral: magnets, batteries, high-performance ceramics, and light-emitting diodes, among other things

even if the U.S. government remains broadly aligned with Europe on climate policy, the Europeans could still become disaffected if Congress blocks meaningful climate action, such as commitments to cut carbon emissions or invest in clean technology. This, in turn, could diminish Europe’s willingness to help uphold the U.S.-led international order.

If, on the one hand, they mean softening U.S. rhetoric without conceding much of substance to China, they would do well to look to Europe, where governments were much more inclined than the Trump administration to cooperate with China, but China did not take them up on the offer.

If, on the other hand, they mean unilaterally making major geopolitical concessions to China—on its territorial acquisitions in the South China Sea, for instance, or the status of Taiwan—the United States would not only pay an extremely high price but also likely embolden Beijing further without actually securing cooperation on pandemics or climate change beyond what Beijing has already offered.

There is no getting around strategic competition with Beijing: it is deeply embedded in the international order, mainly because China seeks to expand its sphere of influence in Asia at the expense of the United States and its allies, which are in turn committed to thwarting Beijing’s plans.

The United States and China are also engaged in what Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, recently called “a competition of models.” China is seeking to make the world safe for the CCP and to demonstrate the effectiveness of its system. This entails pushing back against what it sees as pressure from liberal democratic countries that could thwart its objectives. For its part, the United States worries about the negative externalities of Chinese authoritarianism, such as censorship of international criticism of Beijing or the export of its tools of repression to other countries.

The United States also worries about what would happen to the military balance of power if China secured an enduring advantage in key technologies.

Even in diplomacy, friction will be endemic to the U.S.-Chinese relationship and will affect the broader international order for the foreseeable future. Outright confrontation can be avoided—but competition cannot. 

This competition places real limits on cooperation. Take the arena of global public health: many studies on how to improve pandemic preparedness call on world leaders to dramatically strengthen the WHO, including by giving it the same power to enforce international health regulations as the International Atomic Energy Agency enjoys with nuclear nonproliferation rules

The problem is getting every government to agree to a universally applicable mechanism for sanctions or some other enforcement mechanism. China will not agree to any reform that would involve intrusive inspections of its scientific research facilities.

The need for cooperation on transnational threats must change how the United States competes with China—not whether it competes.

U.S. officials should not give up on China entirely; instead, they should make a good-faith effort to work with Beijing, both bilaterally and in multilateral settings. Recognizing that there are strict limits on U.S.-Chinese cooperation is not the same as saying that no cooperation is possible.

Rather than unite the world around a common purpose, climate change is likely to deepen competition between major powers, especially as the transition away from fossil fuels creates economic winners and losers.

When it comes to pandemic preparedness, this means fully supporting the WHO (including by pressing for needed reforms) but also forging a coalition of like-minded states: a global alliance for pandemic preparedness that would regularly convene at the head-of-state level and work alongside nongovernmental organizations and the private sector.

Crucially, whenever the WHO declared an international public health emergency, alliance members would coordinate on travel and trade restrictions, as well as on public messaging and financial penalties and sanctions. Those penalties and sanctions would be aimed at those states that failed to provide sufficient access to or fully cooperate with the WHO. The alliance would support, not supplant, the WHO.

Sustained, managed competition with China could potentially help the United States build bipartisan support for investments in clean technology that would prevent Beijing from gaining an enduring advantage in this area.

ut the United States and the European Union will also need to build coalitions of the willing to deal with the international security consequences of accelerated climate change, such as extreme weather events that threaten large numbers of people, and to address the foreign policy dimensions of climate action, including managing the risk that a shift away from fossil fuels could destabilize countries and regions that are dependent on oil exports.

Cooperation across this divide should always be the first choice in times of shared crisis, but as the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, the U.S.-led constellation must always have a backup plan. It did not have one in 2020. It needs one for the next crisis

A “civilization-based world order” was emerging, in which societies “sharing cultural affinities” were more likely to group themselves into alliances or blocs.

And the would-be universalism of the West was setting the stage for sustained conflict with rival civilizations, most notably with China and the Islamic world.

These claims were the backbone of Huntington’s book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,” which was seen as a sweeping interpretive alternative to Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis, with its vision of liberal democracy as the horizon toward which post-Cold War societies were likely to converge.

often lately Huntington has been invoked either warily, on the grounds that Putin wants a clash of civilizations and we shouldn’t give it to him, or in dismissal or critique, with the idea being that his theory of world politics has actually been disproved by Putin’s attempt to restore a Greater Russia.

Christopher Caldwell also invokes Huntington’s seemingly falsified predictions about Orthodox Christian unity. But then he also offers a different reason to reject Huntington’s application to our moment, suggesting that the civilizational model has been a useful framework for understanding events over the last 20 years, but lately we have been moving back to a world of explicitly ideological conflict — one defined by a Western elite preaching a universal gospel of “neoliberalism” and “wokeness,” and various regimes and movements that are trying to resist it.

Caldwell’s analysis resembles the popular liberal argument that the world is increasingly divided between liberalism and authoritarianism, democracy and autocracy, rather than being divided into multiple poles and competing civilizations.

if you want to understand the direction of global politics right now, the Huntington thesis is more relevant than ever.

The first years of the 21st century, in other words, provided a fair amount of evidence for the universal appeal of Western capitalism, liberalism and democracy, with outright opposition to those values confined to the margins — Islamists, far-left critics of globalization, the government of North Korea.

American power has obviously declined relative to our rivals and competitors, or that our post-9/11 efforts to spread Western values by force of arms so often came to grief.

The specific divergences between the world’s major powers have also followed, in general ways, the civilizational patterns Huntington sketched out.

None of the emerging non-Western great powers have yet built grand alliances based on civilizational affinities, meaning that the third of the four big Huntingtonian predictions looks like the weakest one tod

wherever smaller countries are somehow “torn,” in his language, between some other civilization and the liberal West, they usually prefer an American alliance to an alignment with Moscow or Beijing.

This speaks to the West’s resilient appeal, to enduring American advantages even in a multipolar world. But it doesn’t mean that liberalism is poised for some sweeping return to the position it occupied when American strength was at its height.

while aspects of Fukuyama’s end of history have clearly spread beyond the liberal West, it’s as often the shadow side of his vision — consumerism and childless anomie — as the idealism of democracy and human rights.

Still less does the conflict in Ukraine mean that the export of American-style “wokeness,”

Quite the reverse: Most of wokeness feels inward-looking and parochial, a specifically Western and especially Anglo-American response to disappointments with the neoliberal period

the current culture war may actually be reducing ethnic polarization in our political parties — drawing some racial minorities rightward, for instance — while resurfacing some of the oldest divides in Anglo-American politics.

The woke often seem like heirs of the New England Puritans and the utopian zeal of Yankeedom; their foes are often Southern evangelicals and conservative Catholics and the libertarian descendants of the Scots-Irish; and the stakes in the debates are competing interpretations of the American founding, the Constitution, the Civil War and the settlement of the frontier.

if there’s going to be a clash of civilizations, the clash inside America is over what kind of civilization ours should be.

Right now, the outcome that we have been sliding toward seems one in which an autocratic East gradually divides from — and then potentially accelerates past — a democratic but divided West. 

Seizing that opportunity will require an understanding of both economics and history.

By any economic measure the West is significantly more powerful than the East, using the terms “West” and “East” to mean political alliances rather than just geographical regions. The U.S. and its allies account for 60% of global gross domestic product at current exchange rates; China, Russia and the autocracies amount to barely a third of that. And for the first time in years, the West is coming together rather than falling apart.

The question for Biden and the European leaders he will meet this week is simple: What sort of world do they want to build in the future? Ukraine could well mark the end of one great episode in human history. It could also be the time that the free world comes together and creates another, more united, more interconnected and more sustainable one than ever before

the answer to globalization’s woes isn’t to abandon economic liberalism, but to redesign it. And the coming weeks offer a golden opportunity to redesign the global economic order.

Yet once politicians got out of the way, globalization sped up, driven by technology and commerce.

Only after the Second World War did economic integration resume its advance — and then only on the Western half of the map

What most of us today think of as globalization only began in the 1980s, with the arrival of Thatcherism and Reaganism, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reintegration of China into the world economy, and, in 1992, the creation of the European single market.

When the guns finally fell silent in 1918 and peace was forced on Germany at Versailles (in the Carthaginian terms that Keynes decried so eloquently), the Bidens, Johnsons and Macrons of the time tried to restore the old world order of free trade and liberal harmony — and comprehensively failed. 

As the new century dawned and an unknown “pro-Western” bureaucrat called Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia, the daily volume of foreign-exchange transactions reached $15 trillion. 

More recently, as the attacks on globalization have mounted, economic integration has slowed and in some cases gone into reverse.

Meanwhile in the West, Ukraine has already prompted a great rethink. As German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has proclaimed, we are at a Zeitenwende — a turning point. Under his leadership, pacifist Germany has already proposed a defense budget that’s larger than Russia’s. Meanwhile, Ukrainian immigrants are being welcomed by nations that only a few months ago were shunning foreigners, and, after a decade of slumber in Brussels, the momentum for integration is increasing.

But this turning point can still lead in several directions.

the invasion of Ukraine is accelerating changes in both geopolitics and the capitalist mindset that are deeply inimical to globalization.

The changes in geopolitics come down to one word: China, whose rapid and seemingly inexorable rise is the central geopolitical fact of our time.  

absent any decisive action by the West, geopolitics is definitively moving against globalization — toward a world dominated by two or three great trading blocs: an Asian one with China at its heart and perhaps Russia as its energy supplier; an American-led bloc; and perhaps a third centered on the European Union, with the Europeans broadly sympathetic to the U.S. but nervous about the possible return of an America-First isolationist to the White House and irked by America’s approach to digital and media regulation.

World trade in manufactured goods doubled in the 1990s and doubled again in the 2000s. Inflationary pressures have been kept low despite loose monetary policies.

From a CEO’s viewpoint, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has done more than unleash Western embargoes and boost inflation. It is burying most of the basic assumptions that have underlain business thinking about the world for the past 40 years. 

Commercially speaking, this bet paid off spectacularly. Over the past 50 years multinationals have turned themselves from federations of national companies into truly integrated organizations that could take full advantage of global economies of scale and scope (and, of course, global loopholes in taxes and regulations)

Just as important as this geopolitical shift is the change in the capitalist mindset. If the current age of globalization was facilitated by politicians, it has been driven by businesspeople. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher didn’t decide that the components of an iPhone should come from 40 countries. Facebook wasn’t created by senior politicians — not even by Al Gore. Uber wasn’t an arm of the Department of Transportation. 

profits have remained high, as the cost of inputs (such as energy and labor) have been kept low.

Now what might be called the Capitalist Grand Illusion is under assault in Kyiv — just as Norman Angell’s version was machine-gunned on the Western Front.

Militarism and cultural rivalries keep trumping economic logic.

The second is Biden’s long experience

Every Western company is now wondering how exposed it is to political risk. Capitalists are all Huntingtonians now.

Greed is also acquiring an anti-global tint. CEOs are rationally asking how they can profit from what Keynes called “monopolies, restrictions and exclusions.

So the second age of globalization is fading fast. Unless something is done quickly and decisively, the world will divide into hostile camps, regardless of what happens in Ukraine.

this divided world will not suit the West. Look at the resolution passed by the United Nations General Assembly to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The most trumpeted figure is that only 40 countries did not vote for this (35 abstained, and five voted against it), compared with 141 countries who voted in favor. But those 40 countries, which include India and China, account for the majority of the world’s population.

we still have time to shape a very different future: one in which global wealth is increased and the Western alliance bolstered.

One of the great problems with modern liberalism for the past few decades has been its lack of a gripping narrative and a compelling cast of heroes and villains

Now Putin has inadvertently reversed all that. Freedom is the creed of heroes such as Zelenskiy; anti-liberalism is the creed of monsters who drop bombs on children.

Biden can soften that message at home by adding a political dimension to his trade agenda. “Build back better” applies to globalization, too. A global new deal should certainly include a focus on making multinational companies pay their taxes, and the environment should be to the fore. But Biden should also talk about the true cost of protectionism in terms of higher prices, worse products and less innovation.

So far, Biden’s handling of the Ukraine invasion has been similarly nuanced. He has drawn a line between supplying the resistance and becoming involved in the war (or giving others an excuse to claim the U.S. is involved). And he has put firm pressure on China to stay out of the conflict.

Biden needs to recognize that expanding economic interdependence among his allies is a geostrategic imperative. He should offer Europe a comprehensive free-trade deal to bind the West together

It is not difficult to imagine Europe or democratic Asia signing up for these sorts of pacts, given the shock of Putin’s aggression and their fear of China. Biden’s problem is at home. Why should the Democratic left accept this? Because, Biden should say, Ukraine, China and America’s security matter more than union votes.

Biden should pursue a two-stage strategy: First, deepen economic integration among like-minded nations; but leave the door open to autocracies if they become more flexible.

CEOs who used to build empires based on just-in-time production are now looking at just-in-case: adding inefficient production closer to home in case their foreign plants are cut off.

Constructing such a “new world order” will be laborious work. But the alternative is a division of the world into hostile economic and political blocs that comes straight out of the 1930s

Biden, Johnson, Scholz and Macron should think hard about how history will judge them. Do they want to be compared to the policymakers in the aftermath of World War I, who stood by impassively as the world fragmented and monsters seized the reins of power? Or would they rather be compared to their peers after World War II, policymakers who built a much more stable and interconnected world?

The Western policymakers meeting this week will say they have no intention of closing down the global order. All this economic savagery is to punish Putin’s aggression precisely in order to restore the rules-based system that he is bent on destroying — and with it, the free flow of commerce and finance. In an ideal world, Putin would be toppled — the victim of his own delusions and paranoia — and the Russian people would sweep away the kleptocracy in the Kremlin. 

In this optimistic scenario, Putin’s humiliation would do more than bring Russia back to its senses. It would bring the West back as well. The U.S. would abandon its Trumpian isolationism while Europe would start taking its own defense seriously. The culture warriors on both sides of the Atlantic would simmer down, and the woke and unwoke alike would celebrate their collective belief in freedom and democracy.

There’s a chance this could happen. Putin wouldn’t be the first czar to fall because of a misjudged and mishandled war.

Regardless of whether China’s leader decides to ditch Putin, the invasion has surely sped up Xi’s medium-term imperative of “decoupling” — insulating his country from dependence on the West.

For the “wolf pack” of young Chinese nationalists around Xi, the reaction to Ukraine is another powerful argument for self-sufficiency. China’s vast holdings of dollar assets now look like a liability given America’s willingness to confiscate Russia’s assets,

Some Americans are equally keen on decoupling, a sentiment that bridged Republicans and Democrats before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

In the great intellectual battle of the 1990s between Francis Fukuyama, who wrote “The End of History and the Last Man” (1992), and his Harvard teacher Samuel Huntington, who wrote “The Clash of Civilizations” (1996), CEOs have generally sided with Fukuyama.

Biden needs to go further in the coming weeks. He needs to reinforce the Western alliance so that it can withstand the potential storms to come

Keynes, no longer a protectionist, played a leading role in designing the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the infrastructure of the postwar Western order of stable exchange rates. He helped persuade the U.S. to lead the world rather than retreating into itself. He helped create the America of the Marshall Plan. This Bretton Woods settlement created the regime that eventually won the Cold War and laid the foundations for the second age of globalization.

At the closing banquet on July 22, the great man was greeted with a standing ovation. Within two years he was dead — but the world that he did so much to create lived on. That world does not need to die in the streets of Kyiv. But it is on course to do so, unless the leaders meeting this week seize the moment to create something better. 

In that mission, it has proved remarkably successful.

Tellingly, the scale of U.S. military aid — $47 billion over the first year of the conflict — is more than double that offered by European Union countries combined.

Coinciding with the global war on terrorism, the “big bang” expansion of 2004 — in which seven countries acceded — saw counterterrorism supersede democracy and human rights in alliance rhetoric. Stress on the need for liberalization and public sector reforms remained a constant.

In the realm of defense, the alliance was not as advertised. For decades, the United States has been the chief provider of weapons, logistics, air bases and battle plans

The organization pushed would-be partners to adhere to a liberal, pro-market creed, according to which — as President Bill Clinton’s national security adviser put it — “the pursuit of democratic institutions, the expansion of free markets” and “the promotion of collective security” marched in lock step. European military professionals and reform-minded elites formed a willing constituency, their campaigns boosted by NATO’s information apparatus.

By forbidding duplication of existing capabilities and prodding allies to accept niche roles, NATO has stymied the emergence of any semiautonomous European force capable of independent action. As for defense procurement, common standards for interoperability, coupled with the sheer size of the U.S. military-industrial sector and bureaucratic impediments in Brussels, favor American firms at the expense of their European competitors. The alliance, paradoxically, appears to have weakened allies’ ability to defend themselves.

Yet the paradox is only superficial. In fact, NATO is working exactly as it was designed by postwar U.S. planners, drawing Europe into a dependency on American power that reduces its room for maneuver. Far from a costly charity program, NATO secures American influence in Europe on the cheap

U.S. contributions to NATO and other security assistance programs in Europe account for a tiny fraction of the Pentagon’s annual budget — less than 6 percent by a recent estimate.

Surging demand has exacerbated this tendency as buyers rush to acquire tanks, combat aircraft and other weapons systems, locking into costly, multiyear contracts. Europe may be remilitarizing, but America is reaping the rewards.

In Ukraine, the pattern is clear. Washington will provide the military security, and its corporations will benefit from a bonanza of European armament orders, while Europeans will shoulder the cost of postwar reconstruction — something Germany is better poised to accomplish than the buildup of its military

The war also serves as a dress rehearsal for U.S. confrontation with China, in which European support cannot be so easily counted on. Limiting Beijing’s access to strategic technologies and promoting American industry are hardly European priorities, and severing European and Chinese trade is still difficult to imagine. Yet already there are signs that NATO is making headway in getting Europe to follow its lead in the theater

No matter their ascendance, Atlanticists fret over support for the organization being undermined by disinformation and cybermeddling.

Today, dissent is less audible than ever before.

Left parties in Europe, historically critical of militarism and American power, have overwhelmingly enlisted in the defense of the West: The trajectory of the German Greens, from fierce opponents of nuclear weapons to a party seemingly willing to risk atomic war, is a particularly vivid illustration

In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis outlines the ways in which citizens should love their nations.

healthy patriotism is rooted in this deep and natural sense of home, it rebukes any sense of chauvinism or xenophobia. “In any mind which has a pennyworth of imagination it produces a good attitude towards foreigners,” Lewis says, “How can I love my home without coming to realise that other men, no less rightly, love theirs.” 

“As the family offers us the first step beyond self-love,” writes Lewis, “so this offers us the first step beyond family selfishness.” 

Critically, love of country rooted in love of home “is not in the least aggressive.” It “asks only to be let alone.” That’s not to say that it’s pacifistic, but “it becomes militant only to protect what it loves.” 

he uses a key word—“home.” He compares the love of your country to the “love of home, of the place we grew up in or the places, perhaps many, which have been our homes; and of all places fairly near these and fairly like them; love of old acquaintances, of familiar sights, sounds and smells.” 

, it is “not in the least aggressive.” It “asks only to be let alone.” As a nation that has endured its own aggressive attacks, how can we not empathize? How can we not do what we reasonably can to deter Russian aggression and help Ukrainians defend themselves?

It is this sense of peace and place that echoes in the prophet Micah’s words: “Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid.”

No one claims that Ukraine is a perfect country.

Because

The chauvinist has no concern beyond our borders. The angry critic says we have no right to demonstrate concern, so long as we are still so flawed

In fact, it is our understanding of the value of our national home—and the deeply destabilizing and violent pain of the loss of others’ national homes—that leads to the network of defensive alliances that has maintained great power peace for so long.

NATO is not “American imperialism.” Our defensive alliances in Asia aren’t the result of “imperial overreach.” To continue the comparison to home, a defensive alliance is akin to a neighborhood watch, where neighbors look after and protect each other.

It is no coincidence, however, that the unhealthy nationalism of the modern incarnation of America First does seek to repeat those past mistakes

the reason isn’t just tactical or strategic, it’s philosophical—rooted in temptations and vices that Lewis warns against in the Four Loves. 

Essentially, the warning is against a sense of superiority—about both the past and present. As Lewis said, a love of country can lead to a “particular attitude to our country’s past” that has “not quite such good credentials as the sheer love of home.” 

“The actual history of every country is full of shabby and even shameful doings … The heroic stories,” Lewis writes, “if taken to be typical, give a false impression of it

Why is that dangerous? Why is it so important to understand history in full?

At worst we can hold the “firm, even prosaic belief that our own nation, in sober fact, has long been, and still is markedly superior to all others.” This belief “can produce asses that kick and bite.” “On the lunatic fringe,” Lewis warned, “It may shade off into that popular Racialism which Christianity and science equally forbid.”

Interestingly enough, the sense of superiority can create the same outcome as the sense of national self-loathing you sometimes see on far-left and far-right.

But this moment should cast our existing obligations in a different light, reaffirming their immense value.

the result is similar—an insular people, focused on themselves.

A criminal regime is on the verge of kicking down the door of a national home, and our nation should stand with the innocent, with those who wish to be left alone. We are all Ukrainians now. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin is demanding that the West rewrite the post-Cold War security arrangements for Europe and demonstrated that Russia has the military capability to impose its will despite Western objections and economic sanctions.

“We all thought we were looking at a Europe whole, free and at peace indefinitely,” said Michele Flournoy, who served as the Pentagon’s top policy official during the Obama administration. “We knew that Russia would conduct gray zone operations and that Putin would use his KGB playbook to create instability on his periphery. But a wholesale invasion of a sovereign country to reorient its government is a different moment.”

“And we’re seeing that while Beijing doesn’t really like Putin’s tactics, they’re willing to band together as authoritarian states against the Western democracies,” Ms. Flournoy added. “We are going to see more and more of that in the future.”

China’s Communist Party leadership also saw pro-democracy protest movements in former Soviet republics as U.S.-engineered plots that could ultimately be used against Beijing.

For much of the past decade, the U.S. security establishment began taking note of what the Pentagon in 2015 called the “re-emergence of great power competition” and shifted from its emphasis of counterterrorism operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has repeatedly cast China as the “pacing challenge” while Russia was seen as the lesser longer-term danger.