Left-wingers are much more worth reading on international relations than (so called) conservatives these days

I miss the anti-war left (think the formerly pacifist German Greens who are now the most warlike party in Germany), yet its heart is still beating. Here is left-wing feminist Almut Rochowanski, in Responsible Statecraft today, on the mood in the chanceries of Europe 

"A closer look at Europe also shows that a new bellicism has swept up the continent’s elites and gone into cataclysmic overdrive in recent weeks. Nowhere has this new martiality beenmore pronounced than in Germany, where political leaders and a new crop of “military experts” egg each other on.

"The latter have been abysmally wrong in their predictions of Ukraine’s certain victory and Russia’s imminent collapse again and again, but nevertheless dominate the country’s much-watched primetime debate shows. Last week, Germans were told that the coming summerwill be the last one we will be at peace, because Russia will, under cover of war games in Belarus, invade NATO territory."

"This new European militarism is curiously lacking in strategic thinking and fact-based analysis. While even the Biden administration never expected Ukraine to win the war, European leaders seem to believe in a Ukrainian victory to this day. At last month’s Munich security conference, Danish PM Mette Frederiksen talked of Ukraine winning the war while seated on the same panel as Keith Kellogg, Trump’s Special Envoy for Russia and Ukraine.

"The influential Brussels think tank Bruegel argues that Russia may attack Europe in as little as three years, simply because the country has x pieces of this and that military hardware. Bizarrely, Italian PM Giorgia Meloni has suggested that Ukraine should not be a NATO member yet still be covered by Article 5, while Finnish President Stubb proposes NATO membership not now, but triggered the moment Russia attacks Ukraine again, after the current war has ended."

Was there ever a time when Gibbon's description of history as little more than the catalogue of the crimes and follies of mankind seemed truer? The follies are even more obvious than the terrible crimes.

How foolish it has been for countries to put their faith in the wisdom of American foreign policy since 1991.  

The United Kingdom relationship with the United States is an example. 

Ending our alliance with Japan in 1923 at American prompting was a catastrophe. 

Later Chamberlain said the Americans were responsible for the British declaration of war on Germany. I don't know what he meant by that but going to war turned out to be a disaster, until Hitler saved us by invading Soviet Russia and declaring war on the United States.

Let's hope that the new US administration marks a new beginning. 

A complete change in most areas of foreign policy is required and might be happening.

Why does nobody say that Europe and the USA need an agreement with Russia to ensure lasting security? 

Except Calin Georgescu who has been forbidden to stand for the Romanian presidency.

Donald Trump reportedly wants to offer Vladimir Putin a good deal on Ukraine if he stops Iran getting the bomb, as if either Russia or Iran are any threat to the true interests of the USA, which are more or less what they were a hundred years ago.

I have come round to agreeing with John Mearsheimer that an Iranian bomb would have a stabilising effect in the Middle East. 

My Iranian doctor would not agree, though. She says almost all Iranians like Mr Netanyahu and hope he and  Mr Trump bring down their  rulers.