The middle powers step in, to America’s detriment

Last week, British Typhoon aircraft escorted French Rafale multirole fighters in a first-ever Anglo-French airborne nuclear strike exercise, codenamed Exercise Rummy. My former boss, Donald Rumsfeld, would not have been amused; it did not include American forces. Instead, as London stated, the exercise “mark[ed] a major step forward in UK-France defence cooperation under the [2025] Northwood Declaration” to coordinate their nuclear deterrent strategies.

In fact, the joint effort was yet another indication of the increasing number of hedges on the part of what Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has termed “middle powers” against the possibility of America turning its back against its allies.

France has extended “forward deterrence”  to ten European states — among them nuclear-armed Britain, with which, as the exercise demonstrated, there already exists a framework for nuclear cooperation. The French arrangement provides for joint exercises, such as the recently completed exercise with Britain; possible short-term deployment of nuclear-capable assets on allied territory and deeper consultation among them.

None of these states has openly acknowledged that their cooperation is a hedge against American refusal to implement Article Five of the NATO Treaty in the event of a Russian attack. Yet the intent is obvious. As Norwegian Prime Minister  Jonas Gahr Stoere put it, “we are doing this in light of the security policy situation in Europe, including Russia’s massive rearmament, also in the nuclear domain, and that it is waging a full-scale war against another European country.”

If Norway, and the other nine states were........

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