Anatol Lieven: Freeze NATO expansion now or risk war (VIDEO) | Responsible Statecraft

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Analysis | Europe

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The Russians want NATO to close its doors to Ukraine and all further expansion into Eastern Europe — this is the red line Moscow as declared. Quincy Institute senior fellow Anatol Lieven talks here about why the U.S. and NATO must decide whether denying Russia is worth the bloody conflict that it might cause. He also talks about the imperative of revisiting the Minsk II agreement, resolving the Donbas dispute, and Ukraine neutrality as a longterm solution.

He also explains why he believes negotiations should take place between the U.S. and Russia only, how Europe is divided, and the consequences of U.S. military intervention (directly or indirectly) in anticipation of, or after a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Analysis | Europe

Royal Navy

Top image credit: The Royal Navy guided missile destroyer HMS Duncan arrives in the port of Hamburg and moors at the Überseebrücke. The HMS Duncan arrives from Portsmouth and will leave the Hanseatic city on Tuesday, November 25, at 10:00 a.m. Marcus Golejewski/dpa via Reuters Connect

If Europe starts attacking Russian cargo ships, all bets are off

Inspired by the U.S. seizure on the high seas of ships carrying Venezuelan oil, Britain and other NATO countries are now considering using their navies to do the same to ships carrying Russian cargoes.

This would be a radical escalation of existing moves against Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet,” which have been restricted to the ports and territorial waters of NATO states. As such, they can be considered to fall under the sovereign jurisdiction of the states concerned. An extension of this strategy, as presently contemplated by some European countries, would be a limited but reasonable and comparatively risk-free way of increasing economic pressure on Russia.

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Friedrich Merz

Top image credit: EUS-Nachrichten via shutterstock.com

Germany's grandstanding on Iran: The best Europe can muster?

In a striking display of recklessness, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared the Islamic Republic of Iran to be in its “last days and weeks,” a regime he asserted had “no legitimacy.”

While other Western leaders condemned the bloody clampdown on the protests in Iran — with, according to conservative estimates, around 2,500 a in few days — none of them went so far as to boldly prognosticate an imminent demise of the regime in Tehran.

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Top photo credit: U.S. President Donald Trump, with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route from Florida to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., January 4, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Does MAGA want Trump to ‘make regime change great again’?

Washington Politics

“We must abandon the failed policy of nation building and regime change that Hillary Clinton pushed in Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Syria,” then-candidate Donald Trump said in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016.

This wasn’t the first time he eschewed the foreign policies of his predecessors: “We’re not looking for regime change,” he said of Iran and North Korea during a press conference in 2019. “We’ve learned that lesson a long time ago.”

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