Former Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis sums up his concerns about NATO with an image borrowed from quantum mechanics: Schrödinger’s cat.

“We’re in an ambiguous position,” Landsbergis explained in an interview last week. President Donald Trump makes inflammatory statements about the alliance, threatening to walk away unless Europe steps up to carry more of the cost. But then Secretary of State Marco Rubio appears in Brussels or some other forum and calms Europe down—Landsbergis calls it “normalizing the situation.” The upshot: confusion and uncertainty. “NATO is challenged and not challenged at the same time,” the former diplomat says. And in his view, this creates a perfect, bone-chilling opportunity for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

It isn’t hard to imagine how the scenario would play out. If Putin can convince the White House that the U.S. will benefit from a better relationship with Moscow—as he apparently has—Trump may hesitate to jeopardize the opportunity, even if a NATO ally is attacked.

Read more in Forbes.

IS DONALD TRUMP GOING TO WALK AWAY from Ukraine? Who knows—only a fool would try to predict. His strategy, if we can call it that, changes from day to day, and his true motives, particularly with regard to Russia, are inscrutable. But all signs suggest that he may be about to give up on his oft-repeated promise to end the war.

As Trump finally recognized and admitted last week on a phone call with European leaders, Vladimir Putin isn’t ready to stop fighting. The Kremlin proved this and then some over the long weekend, hitting Ukrainian cities with nearly a thousand missiles and drones, among the worst attacks of the war. Arrogant and ill-informed, the Russian strongman thinks he’s winning.

The latest burst of Russian violence prompted Trump to criticize Putin: “He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers.” But the president also scolded Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky: “Likewise, President Zelensky is doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does. Everything out of his mouth caused problems.” And nothing suggests that Trump is likely to re-engage with the peace process. With no deal in sight, the White House says it’s going to take a back seat as low-level Russian and Ukrainian diplomats launch pro forma talks at the Vatican.

Some Ukrainians will breathe a sigh of relief. Most are tired of fighting, eager to end the war and get on with rebuilding their battered country. But no peace is better than a bad settlement—and what Trump has been pushing for the last few months often struck Kyiv as deeply unfair and unsustainable.

Read more in The Bulwark.

Europe has declared itself open for business — unless you’re actually trying to do business there. The European Commission’s latest €500 million fine against Apple, levied under the new Digital Markets Act (DMA), is not only a staggering penalty; it’s a signal flare to global investors that Europe is no longer a place of rule-based predictability, but one where political agendas override legal clarity, engagement, or fairness.

Apple’s offense? Attempting — repeatedly — to comply with a complex, evolving law while facing a Commission that gave them the silent treatment. According to correspondence reported by Politico, Apple spent the better part of 2024 making proposals, requesting guidance, and asking for confirmation that it was on the right side of the law. The Commission’s response: Delay, obfuscation, and ultimately, a massive fine that had seemingly been predetermined months in advance.

Let’s call this what it is: regulatory ambush.

In the Commission’s own words, “it is the sole responsibility of the gatekeepers to come up with product changes.” But how can companies do that when the Commission refuses to say what would or would not be compliant? When Apple proposed rolling back some of its rules, the Commission told them to wait for developer feedback. That feedback came from critics — Spotify, Epic, Match Group — and shortly after, Apple began to suspect, correctly, that it was being set up for a fall.

Read more in Real Clear Markets.

It was Donald Trump’s idea, but there appeared to be a consensus—the U.S., Ukraine, Europe, and even quasi-neutral Turkey agreeing that Ukraine and Russia should stop shooting and sign on to a comprehensive ceasefire before peace talks began. But as Vladimir Putin has proven again and again, he doesn’t want to stop fighting. He believes he has the battlefield advantage and wants to grab as much of Ukraine as possible before the guns go silent.

Trump responded to Putin’s ceasefire refusal by urging Kyiv to talk anyway and send what everyone assumed would be an exploratory delegation to meet with the Russians in Istanbul. Then, over the weekend, Volodymyr Zelensky upped the ante, committing to appear in person in Turkey and meet with Putin face to face.

It’s classic Zelensky—when in doubt, roll the dice. He’s a gambler who takes big risks, hoping for big rewards. But this could be one of his boldest gambits yet. Terrifyingly, the outcome depends on Trump.

Read more in Washington Monthly.

Every country, from Canada to Vietnam, is facing the same high-stakes conundrum: Is it wiser to try to placate Donald Trump or to push back against his bullying and outlandish demands?

Arguably, no nation is in a more difficult position than Poland. Historically one of America’s closest European allies, it’s also the country with the most to lose if a revanchist Russia, emboldened by a skewed peace in Ukraine, sets its sights on regaining its traditional sphere of influence not just within the former Soviet Union but also beyond it.

Imagine a spectrum with China on one end and Italy on the other. Beijing has defied Trump’s tariffs and hit back hard with retaliatory levies. Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, the only European leader to attend Trump’s second inauguration, never misses a chance to flatter the 47^th president and is angling for a trade deal.

In between, Japan and South Korea say little in public while pursuing bilateral agreements with Washington. Britain and France make nice in the Oval Office but still strive, with charm and diplomacy, to persuade Trump to block Vladimir Putin’s bid to dominate Ukraine. Incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has taken a tougher stance, vowing European “independence from the USA.” So has Canada, where Prime Minister Mark Carney, fresh off a stunning electoral triumph for his once-seemingly-doomed Liberal Party, has accused the American president of “trying to break us so he can own us.”

Both leaders of Poland’s two-headed “cohabitation” government—national conservative President Andrzej Duda and centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk—were once touted as “Trump whisperers” who could wrangle the U.S. president on behalf of Europe. Neither has managed to capture that mantle—if indeed there is such a thing. Several Polish officials, all of whom I spoke to this month, were wary of the term and requested anonymity as their nation heads into a presidential election.

Read more in Washington Monthly. 

When Andrius Kubilius considers Europe today, he thinks about the U.S. in the late 1930s. The former Lithuanian prime minister, now European commissioner for defense and space, sees many parallels. Americans lacked a sense of urgency about Nazi aggression. The U.S. had few reserves of manpower or weaponry. Its arms industry had been weakened by years of underinvestment. Manufacturers, uncertain about future orders, hesitated to ramp up production capacity, and money was in short supply.

In the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt defied this apathy and inaction with the historic defense buildup known as the “Victory Program.” Eighty years later, Kubilius says, Western democracies face a different form of totalitarian aggression. But if America could do it then, Europe can and must do it now. “We have the same responsibility,” the commissioner wrote recently in a personal post, “to define and to implement our ‘Victory Plan.’ This is our moral task. For our grandkids to live also in peace.”

Kubilius is one of the architects of the European Union’s ambitious new rearmament strategy, ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030, approved in principle last month by 26 of the continent’s 27 heads of state. Unlike in the U.S. where it now seems unclear to many whether Russia is a friend or foe, few Europeans are confused about the need for the initiative. Kubilius sums it up with one fact: as things stand today, Russia can produce more weapons in three months than all the NATO member states, including the U.S., can produce in a year.

Read more in Forbes.

The space industry was ecstatic to get a shout-out in President Trump’s first Joint Address to Congress. It appeared to be a signal that his administration was going to prioritize space issues, as it had during Trump’s first term, when significant attention was paid to ensuring the competitiveness of the space industry.

Unfortunately, the ever-evolving tariff regime is set to have the opposite effect. It will raise the cost of making rockets and satellites in the U.S., limit industry access to core inputs and materials and encourage boycotts of American products and services abroad.