Meanwhile, the international institutions on which the US and Europe’s transatlantic defense and security depends, NATO and the EU, are coming under increasing pressure. Yes, NATO has now agreed to send four individual battalions from the USA, Canada, Germany, and Britain to the Baltic States and eastern Poland. While this is a start, no one should be under any illusions that this is anything but a political token. First, it will take some time to deploy those battalions, which may itself encourage the Russian president to conduct a preemptive strike before they are in position. Second, without proper command and control and the artillery, engineers, attack helicopters, and logistics to turn individual battalions into an effective fighting brigade, and spread out over four countries, those four battalions would be picked off piecemeal should Russia attack. At the same time, NATO is itself unexpectedly weakened by the fallout from the attempted military coup in Turkey, which threatens to emasculate its second largest military power and render it ineffective and increasingly unstable as a result of the swinging purges against its armed forces.

Most recently, in July 2016, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, in an interview with the New York Times, cast doubt on America’s willingness to come to the aid of a NATO ally under attack. At a stroke, this comment has undermined the notion of NATO’s founding principle of collective defense. NATO is totally dependent on strong US leadership and peace in Europe will only be maintained if there is absolute certainty that the US will always be there to defend its allies. Trump’s comments will embolden the Russian president and make the nightmare scenario in this book more likely.

At the same time, the EU is itself faced with an existential crisis following the British vote to leave in the June 2016 referendum. Britain itself not only faces a potential breakup of the Union following the resounding Scottish vote to remain in the EU, to say nothing of the risk to the Northern Ireland peace process, but also has been plunged into political and economic turmoil with inevitable implications for its international standing and its armed forces as the full fiscal impact of BREXIT is felt. At the very least, maintaining defense spending at even a creatively accounted 2% of GDP will be little comfort if GDP shrinks as a result of the economic consequences of BREXIT.