Commentary
During the Cold War, the United States counted on a few key European allies to shore up the NATO alliance. West Germany was the Atlantic Alliance’s front line, hosting hundreds of thousands of troops from several NATO nations. Britain was America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier for medium-range bombers. Italy and Spain provided critical infrastructure for the U.S. Navy.
And France? Well, it was there, too.
Since the end of the Cold War, NATO’s frontier has moved hundreds of miles to the east after several former communist nations (and one-time members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact) joined the western alliance. Given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Moscow’s new hostility toward the West—to the point of darkly warning that it might want to “push back the borders that threaten” Russia—the strategic importance of the “Bucharest Nine” has gained a new appreciation….