War

"Putin Uses The Refugee Crisis To Weaken Merkel", by Judy Dempsey as originally published at Carnegie Europe,

Back in December 2015, when it became clear that refugees from the Middle East would continue to head toward Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel reassured her conservative Christian Democratic Union party that everything was under control. All she needed, she told party members, was more time. Germany could manage the influx of over 1 million refugees and asylum seekers.

Tomorrow, John Kerry will meet Sergei Lavrov and several of his other counterparts from Europe and the Mid-East in Munich in a last ditch effort to revive Syrian peace talks, which fell apart amid an intense Russian air assault on rebel positions in Aleppo.

The UK are sending up to 6,000 British troops and five warships to the Baltic as part of an operation to buildup Nato’s military presence against Russia.  Amid escalating tensions between Russia and NATO-backed allies, the UK have decided to significantly increase its presence with other European countries in the region, including Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. NATO say the increase in military on the Russian border is a more “muscular approach” against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Michael Ignatieff and Leon Wieseltier make a predictably horrible plea for more military intervention in Syria: