Article 5 is dead; long live article 5

A 🧵 We are in a new world now.

Britain deploying troops to Ukraine?

Premature and strategically illiterate.

A 🧵 PM Starmer has announced that he would consider sending UK troops to Ukraine as part of the Ukraine peace deal.

Reflections on Day 1 of the Munich Security Conference

A 🧵 We went into the MSC in the context of the comments this week from the US Secretary of Defence announcing that:

- The US would talk with Russia about ending Ukraine War, without Ukraine
- Ukraine would not end up in NATO
- European troops would have to guarantee the detail without US support.

Europe and Ukraine: What now?

A🧶 The US has effectively said that it is scaling back its appetite to be the security guarantor in Europe - a role it has played for the almost exactly 80 years since the end of World War 2.

Trump: the digest.

A 🧵 It’s been an exhausting 3 weeks listening to President Trump’s executive orders.

Are there any patterns?

How did the collapse of British military power lead to the latest Donald Trump outburst on Greenland?

A 🧵 (with some 🖍️) Trump said yesterday that he wouldn’t rule out military force to bring Greenland under US control. Greenland is the largest island in the world and in a critical strategic position - of which more later

Today we call on the Government to investigate with our allies how to seize $300bn of frozen Russian state assets to fund Ukraine’s victory There is an unanswerable moral, strategic and legal case for the use of Russian state assets to support Ukraine in its war effort. It’s never been more urgent than in a world where the incoming US administration might be pulling the plug on support for Ukraine.

The last week has seem some momentous changes in Syria.

Here are some first thoughts.

A 🧵 Firstly, we should see the fall of the House of Assad as a function of a weak and rotten Syrian government, and stretched and weakened allies of Iran and Russia - more than HTS or any other rebel movement becoming vastly more competent.

Let’s take a look at the economic side of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A 🧵 Once wars go beyond a couple of months, they tend to become a battle of the economies—that is, who is will to turn a bigger part of their economy into a machine that produces arms and munitions.

The US has decided to allow Ukraine to use longer-range missiles in Russia.

This brings to a close a pretty feckless period of US policy towards Ukraine.

A 🧵 It’s quite hard to even work out what the White House is trying to do these days, apart from vainly responding to events.

Let’s dig into it.

Trump and the UK Strategic Defence Review

A 🪡

(Will there be 🖍️s?) In the aftermath of Trump’s reelection I tweeted that there were a few things that the UK needed to get onto pronto:

https://twitter.com/threshedthought/status/1854045673751990380

There is a lot going on in the news at the moment, but there is a story that is consistently being underreported: Russia.

A 🧵

(potentially with 🖍️) And in the UK - we have to recognise that Russia, and her actions, are the NUMBER ONE strategic threat that we face.

Snuck into the budget is something that you won’t hear on the news … UK Defence Spending was cut.

We have a land war in Europe that is about the eastern boundary of Europe.

The US has got a problem in the Middle East

A short thread Last week’s thread

https://twitter.com/threshedthought/status/1750192085716578785

This is the first of several 🧵 on the strategic challenges facing the world ….

First up … the Middle East. The most acute challenge is obviously Gaza-Palestine.

I wonder whether historians in 2100 will look at 2024 as a geopolitical inflection point…

A thread. There are a number of different themes/areas/trends now starting to come together.

There’s been a fair bit of movement in Ukraine - here is a round up and summary of what it means for the strategic environment.

🖍️ In the last few week days, we have had three big reports:

- A Ukr breakthrough in the South by Verbove
- Further progress around Bahkmut in the East
- A large number of Ukr strikes in Crimea.

These add up to a sum that is more than the parts.

Ok. Now that Ukraine has taken the settlement of Robotyne, what does this mean for the wider strategic environment?

Short version: there better be some movement soon, or time will run out. As we all know, Ukraine is launching a general offensive on Russian positions in four broad areas.

Prighozin dead.

Hmmm. That opens up a few pathways forward. Firstly. This was always going to happen.

After the coup in June either Putin or Priggo had to die. It wasn’t just going to rumble on.

Time for another brief update as to what has happened in the last two weeks in Ukraine. That image by the way is from a thread months ago - but the basic strategy hasn’t changed.

I’ve been having a bit of a deep dive into the Ukrainian offensive.

The main message is:

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON 💪 This offensive started in June and has had a couple of phases.