…in getting out that further post I promised on Comey and the DOJ. It’s turning out to take longer than I originally thought.
So if anyone’s been sitting on a hot stove waiting for it, jump right off. It won’t be today.
Apologies.
The polls…
…don’t appear to have changed much as a result of the Comey reveal.
That’s what I expected. But I think the situation is still very much in flux. If more revelations come out, I’m not sure what will happen. And of course, rumors abound.
Fasten your seatbelts, it’s already a bumpy ride. For everyone—including Hillary supporters.
A little historic perspective on Trump and me
I often forget that not everyone here has perfect recall of everything I’ve ever written.
That’s meant to be humorous, because of course they don’t. I don’t even have perfect recall of everything I’ve ever written, and I’m the one who wrote the posts. Sometimes I barely have recall of them at all—I regularly come across posts that I don’t even remember writing until I see them, and then they look only vaguely familiar.
Well, maybe I can be forgiven, because my blog dashboard says that there are 10,976 published posts on this blog and 420 drafts (that last number would include this one, about to go from column B to column A).
And certainly you can be forgiven for not remembering, or never having read, or not really caring to read, many of the posts I’ve written. But that fact puts us both at a disadvantage, because without having done so it’s hard for you to know the deep background for some of the things I say.
For example, good old Donald Trump (yeah, you knew that he’d creep into this post sooner or later). I’ve been studying him intensely since the summer of 2015, and to date I’ve written 227 posts that feature him in some way or other. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though, because the number of hours I’ve spent watching, listening, reading (including a biography and many interviews with him going back many years), and thinking about the man is even more enormous.
I didn’t start out with a lot of feelings about Trump, and not even many opinions. He was certainly a person I knew about, but not much, and he didn’t interest me much either. Real estate mogul, fancy European wives, loudmouth, TV show that I once tried to watch but gave up after one episode. But as I studied him, I felt a deepening sense of unease about him, and “unease” is really a euphemism for it.
I’m not going to try to recap the evolution of my reasoning; it’s too big a topic. If you’re interested, I suggest you plow through those 200+ posts. Right now I just want to talk about one, which came to mind again today because of a discussion in the comments section of this recent thread. I’m referring to the research I did for this post, written over a year ago, in October of 2015.
Doing that research taught me a lot. The post concerns some remarks Trump had made back in 2007 and 2008 about George Bush in particular but about other things as well, and also features some comments in 2011 by Mark Levin on Trump. Please take a moment now to follow the link and read the entire post, but I’ll excerpt someof it here to give you the flavor:
BLITZER: [What do you think of] Nancy Pelosi, the speaker?
TRUMP: Well, you know, when she first got in and was named speaker, I met her. And I’m very impressed by her. I think she’s a very impressive person. I like her a lot.
But I was surprised that she didn’t do more in terms of Bush and going after Bush. It was almost ”” it just seemed like she was going to really look to impeach Bush and get him out of office, which, personally, I think would have been a wonderful thing.
BLITZER: Impeaching him?
TRUMP: Absolutely, for the war, for the war.
BLITZER: Because of the conduct of the war.
TRUMP: Well, he lied. He got us into the war with lies.
And, I mean, look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally unimportant. And they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense. And, yet, Bush got us into this horrible war with lies, by lying, by saying they had weapons of mass destruction, by saying all sorts of things that turned out not to be true.
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: Their argument is, they weren’t lying, that that was the intelligence that he was presented, and it was not as if he was just lying about it.
TRUMP: I don’t believe that.
BLITZER: You believe that it was a deliberate lie?
TRUMP: I don’t believe it. And I don’t think you believe it either, Wolf. You are a very, very intelligent young man. I don’t think you believe it either.The fact is that he lied.
In 2008, by the way, when the surge in Iraq was going well, Trump suggested in an interview that we should “just leave” Iraq. This would have set up the exact situation he has criticized Obama for, which Trump now says led to the rise of ISIS. But back in 2008, Trump was advocating it himself.
Here are more of his quotes:
TRUMP: Oh, [Bush has] been a terrible president.
BLITZER: You think he’s the worst in the history of the United States?
TRUMP: I don’t think you can get much worse. Why? I mean, who is worse? Give me a couple of names. Who could be worse?
You might say it all doesn’t matter because Trump’s running against Hillary now, and Hillary is so terrible herself. Maybe you’re correct. But Trump’s history keeps haunting me because it tells me how terrible and how extreme he is, too. The things he said in those interviews are right smack out of the leftist handbook. You cannot point to anything Hillary Clinton has ever said (at least, I can’t find it) about George Bush—or any other ex-president I can think of—that is so tinfoil-hattish, so conspiracy-theory-minded, so over-the-top. When you get Wolf Blitzer defending George Bush, you know you’ve jumped the shark.
No one had a gun pointed at Trump’s head forcing him to say that or any of the other things I documented in that post. Nor has he ever repudiated them. In fact, he made some related accusations somewhat more subtly in a GOP debate last February. This is the real Donald Trump.
You might ask me why it matters what Trump said back then, because after all Trump might do this, that, and the other good thing he’s promised to do in 2016, or that his webpage has a certain policy position I should applaud. The reason I believe that what he said in those earlier interviews (and thousands of other things, too numerous to mention right now) matters is that, much more than the promises someone has made, it’s important to evaluate the workings of that person’s mind and personality. What good is a promise, or a policy written on a webpage, if the person will say just about anything? If a person has such poor judgment, or the person cannot be trusted? These remarks of Trump’s tell me that Trump’s mind works in a simplistic and conspiratorial way, that he fails to understand geopolitical realities, that he is no conservative and not even a Republican, that he will trash anyone for any reason, and praise people who are abominable (Nancy Pelosi, for example). These characteristics have not disappeared, either. They have been stable over time, and amply demonstrated by Trump during the campaign of 2016.
I assume that most Trump defenders here won’t like being reminded of these remarks of his, nor will they like the remarks themselves. But they will strongly suggest that we ignore them because defeating Hillary justifies taking a chance with Trump despite them.
I understand that argument. It’s even possible I may succumb to it myself on voting day. But every fiber of my being revolts against it, and I want to try to explain why I continue to distrust Trump so very deeply, and to consider that there is a not-insignificant chance he will be no better than Hillary, and even some small chance that he will be worse.
A few more thoughts on the Comey announcement
[NOTE: I’ll probably be writing a bigger post on the topic tomorrow, because I have quite a few things to say about it. But here are some quick thoughts.]
James Comey is now the center of an even hotter firestorm of controversy than he was this past summer when he announced the results of the Clinton email investigation. And that’s saying something. One of the biggest problems at the moment, both for Clinton and the American people, is that we don’t know whether the news is important or a big pile of nothing. And we probably won’t know until after the election.
However, those who say Comey never should have disclosed this a little over a week before the presidential election because it affects that election are ignoring a huge elephant in the room, which is that there was no way for Comey not to have influenced the election, no matter what he did. Keeping a secret affects it, disclosing it affects it. The information was going to come out sooner or later, and if it was known that he knew and failed to disclose, that would create a terrible furor too.
The only difference is that at present most of the furor is on the left. Had Comey kept it secret, the furor would have been mostly on the right.
As Andrew McCarthy writes, under the usual rules Comey probably shouldn’t have taken the unusual step back in July of saying so much about an investigation that led to no indictment:
For these reasons, the common adage when I worked in the U.S. attorney’s office was: “The government speaks in court.” The idea is that it is not the business of the Justice Department and the FBI to convict people in the court of public opinion; we speak only when we are ready to put our money where our mouth is by charging someone publicly in a court of law. Unless and until charges are filed, zip it: Don’t confirm or deny the existence of an investigation, don’t publicly identify targets, subjects or witnesses, and don’t describe the evidence that has been gathered…
Director Comey departed from these guidelines in the Clinton investigation, rationalizing that the probe was a matter of great public concern. But many criminal investigations are matters of great public concern. That doesn’t mean law enforcement holds press conferences to outline the evidence that has not resulted in the filing of criminal charges. Since Americans are presumed innocent in our system, there is no reason to clear them publicly. They are “cleared” by the happenstance that they are not charged.
And now we see the fallout of bending the rules: you end up having to keep bending them. Because Comey went public when he did not have to, he created an expectation ”“ perhaps even an obligation, which is certainly how he sees it ”“ that if circumstances changed, he would have to amend or supplement the record.
There are also many people calling Comey’s move “unprecedented” for a host of reasons (I plan to write more about that tomorrow). But if it’s unprecedented, that’s because the situation itself is unprecedented. Has there ever been an FBI investigation of a nominee of a major party for the office of president of the United States during the build-up to an election? I seriously doubt it. The closest thing we have that I can think of is the Paula Jones civil trial (very different from an FBI investigation), and that was commenced after Clinton was already president (and allowed to go forward, according to the Supreme Court). We also have the three pending Trump University fraud lawsuits, which are ongoing and serious. However, they are also civil suits that commenced long before Trump became a candidate, and they don’t involve the FBI, although one lawsuit features the State of New York as plaintiff.
It almost seems as though the United States’ extraordinary good fortune—the one Otto von Bismarck referred to when he said “There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America”—may have run out all in a rush this year. The nominations of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would appear to me to indicate it.
Further thoughts on this election and my vote
You may notice that I’m posting today, something I don’t usually do on Sundays.
Well, first of all, I’m sick. I have a nasty cold. So my energy level for doing other more fun things (although what could be more fun than posting on a blog?) is low.
But more importantly, I’ve been thinking. And once I do that, a post is usually not far behind.
Since James Comey announced the possibility of new emails relevant to the Clinton investigation, I’ve held to the idea that it won’t make a difference in the election outcome, despite the enormous brouhaha about it in the press. I think most committed Hillary and most committed Trump supporters demonize the opponent so deeply that nothing could change their minds, literally nothing. So the only question is how many true “undecideds” there are, and will they care enough about the Comey announcement for it to change the result.
I have no idea, although I still don’t think so. But I’ll be watching the polls. And if Trump ends up winning, I will be fairly certain it was because of this announcement.
As for what I plan to do in terms of my own vote, I’ve said many times that I won’t know till I go into that voting booth, and maybe not even then. That is still the case as of this writing. The situation is in flux, and changes on a daily basis.
To many of you the voting dilemma this year has been hard, but resolvable. You have decided who is the lesser of the two evils, and you are at peace with that. Or, you may have decided you can’t vote for either, and you are at peace with that.
I haven’t found any peace with any of it, and I’m not at all sure I will by Tuesday, November 8, 2016. I do know that when I perform a thought experiment and first imagine Hillary Clinton winning, and then imagine Donald Trump winning, each prospect fills me with a sense of overwhelming dread and horror. The details of the two horrors are different (I’ve gone into that at great length already, so no need to reiterate it here), but the depth of the horror seems the same. For me, it’s not “cancer or flu” or some other facile, simplistic, reductionistic, unknowable, and IMHO incorrect analogy. For different reasons, I see both Hillary and Trump as disastrous for the country, and since I love this country I see both as tragic.
So, what will I do on November 8? The only two things I know are that (a) I won’t be voting for Hillary Clinton, and (2) I plan to vote for Republicans for offices other than the presidency. Of these two things I can pretty much assure you.
On a personal level, there are people near and dear to me on both sides who would be angry at any vote I cast, whether for Trump, for Hillary, or for someone else. I’ve been open here about my point of view on both candidates; it’s no secret how negative I am on both, and why. But right now, while I still honestly don’t know who I will be voting for (if either), I have been wrestling with the idea of exercising my right to keep my ultimate vote a secret and never disclose it.
That’s the way I’m leaning at the moment, however I decide to vote on that day. There’s a reason we have the secret ballot in this country. Since any vote of mine will make some people I love angry (and although I love you guys, I’m not talking about you), there’s no reason I am obligated to disclose my vote and give myself that aggravation and strife.
My views on these candidates are open and transparent, and have been fully and honestly expressed here. I plan to continue to do that. My vote is mine alone.
Congress could save the US from the nightmare of this election
I have an idea, although no one will take me seriously and I don’t delude myself that it’s going to happen.
Each party hates its own nominee and feels him/her to be an albatross around its neck. So whoever wins the election, Congress should impeach and convict that person of something or other. Take your pick; I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to find an offense, since “high crimes and misdemeanors” is whatever Congress takes it to mean.
Then either Kaine or Pence, depending on whether Hillary or Trump has won, would become president. I think the majority of Americans on both sides would breathe a little sigh of relief.
Yeah, I know; it sets a bad precedent, and would probably cause some sort of insurrection among the minority of Americans who wouldn’t be pleased by the move, the die-hard Trump or Clinton supporters. But as far as I can tell it would be completely constitutional.
Am I being facetious? A bit. But I have a deep desire to make sure neither Clinton nor Trump ever becomes president, and occurs to me that Congress actually has that power.
An indomitable spirit
That describes Aimee Copeland, a beautiful young woman who lost both hands, two feet, and one leg as a result of an attack of so-called flesh-eating bacteria (necrotizing fasciitis) after a zipline accident:
Copeland looks forward to her career of service. She says she’s in the best shape of her life, and the happiest she’s ever been.
She says she’d even go on that zip line again if she could do it over.
“Knowing the impact that I have and will continue to have, and knowing how this experience has shaped my life for the better, a million and one times, I would go on that zip line again,” she recently told students and faculty at West Georgia.
Of course she’d like her legs and hands back, she adds later. But “my life has been (shaped) by everything that happened to me,” she says. “I wouldn’t trade everything that I gained to get them back.”
An extraordinarily strong person in body, mind, and spirit.
Copeland reminds me of Amy Purdy, another athlete who has weathered incredible physical challenges and come out way way ahead.
I also note that (although the Copeland article doesn’t use the word) they both lost limbs to (in Copeland’s case, her hands) and almost died from septic shock, a terrible illness I wrote about in this post.
When life hands you apples, make applesauce
Ever since I encountered the Golden Russet apple about a week ago, I’ve been on a rare heirloom apple kick.
The Russett made me wonder what other gems I’d not explored, ambrosial taste thrills as-yet unimagined in the apple realm. Living in New England I have a golden opportunity to find out, and I’ve gone to a total of three apple orchards specializing in such rarities.
As a result, I’ve purchased a lot of apples, maybe 70 in all, that have come to fill my rather small refrigerator. It’s hard to sort out what I’ve got there, since I mostly bought them in batches of 2s and 3s per variety, for a total of over 20 different varieties.
I’ve tasted every single one, and the Golden Russett is still one of the winners. We also have favorites “Sweet Sixteen,” “Crimson Gold, “Esopus Spitzbergen,” and “Regent,” among others.
I’ve also discovered that looks aren’t everything. For example, one of the most unusual and attention-getting apples I found was the black orchid, sporting a deep wine tone that promised a similar richness of taste. In the following photo I’ve placed a regular apple at the top for comparison; the black orchid is on the bottom (the photo doesn’t do its color justice, though):
Well, that black orchid was a bitter disappointment. It had a weak, insipid taste. Which reminds me of the fact that roses that are bred for looks are often the least fragrant.
Last night I decided to deal with the apple overflow by taking the least crisp and tasty apples from the bunch, peeling and cutting them, and making applesauce. This took a long time, and I have a lot of applesauce.
It’s pretty darn good.
Comey’s choice
Today there’s a lot more news about FBI director James Comey’s announcement of the discovery of more Hillary Clinton emails that require further investigation.
What we know now—some of it from undisclosed sources—is that the emails appear to have been discovered during the Anthony Weiner investigation, on Huma Abedin’s computer, seized as part of that investigation. We don’t know their content, or whether they actually implicate Hillary and if so what the offense is.
And we probably won’t know till after the election.
That makes for a strange and ambiguous situation. Comey has been heavily criticized for releasing this information right before the election (by Hillary supporters I bet would not be at all critical if it implicated Donald Trump). But Comey was required to disclose further developments in the case by his previous testimony before Congress:
Why did FBI Director James Comey shock Washington on Friday with an announcement that the FBI “has learned of the existence of emails” related to Hillary Clinton’s private email server, and what does it mean?
The truth is Comey didn’t have a choice. Because the new information followed his sworn testimony about the case, Comey was obligated by Department of Justice rules to keep the relevant committees apprised…
Comey’s letter to congressional committee chairs doesn’t say his agents have discovered new witnesses or documents suggesting a criminal act occurred. Rather, he only suggests that evidence that has not yet been examined needs to be reviewed because it is relevant to the case.
There’s also a political dimension. Had Comey not told Congress and it emerged after the election that new materials had come into its possession, the director and his entire agency’s credibility might have been questioned.
Not that they haven’t been questioned already, big time. I guess, though, that they might have been further questioned—which is happening anyway.
Yesterday I wrote that I don’t think this news of further emails will matter much. I still don’t think it will matter much, although I know a lot of people disagree with me. But it’s just too general and hazy; there’s no smoking gun, and Hillary supporters will have no trouble whatsoever shrugging it off.
The Hillary supporters I know (and I know a lot of them) are for the most part not flaming leftists or anywhere near it. Many of them are not even especially keen on her. But most of them consider Donald Trump completely and utterly unacceptable in every way, and would not vote for him even if Hillary had tortured and killed a puppy on live TV, cackling maniacally all the while.
In a way, these people are the exact flip side of the people on the right who excuse every single bad thing about Trump because they believe Hillary is some form of devil in human guise, “Stalin in a pantsuit,” etc.. Many Hillary supporters believe something equivalent in its awfulness about Donald Trump. So something as relatively small as this has no chance whatsoever of changing their minds.
I don’t know whether the following reaction of Clinton’s means she agrees with me, or whether it was just bravado on her part. I’m sure she’s at least worried by the news:
Clinton laughed when…a reporter asked her if Comey’s letter would “sink” the campaign.
I continue to see this election as a tragedy.
What is the purpose of the income tax?
I always thought the main purpose was to raise money for the services the federal government provides—defense, for example; and in more recent decades, entitlements.
As for the tax structure, its progressive nature was meant to be “fair” in the sense that people with an enormous amount of money could afford to pay a much higher percentage of it without feeling any sort of pinch. Whether or not you or I consider that fair, or whether we’d rather have a flat tax or some other arrangement, that’s been the way it’s worked for most of my life.
Back in 2008, when Obama was running for president, there was a big furor when he had a conversation with Joe the Plumber (remember Joe?), regarding Obama’s tax proposals:
“Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?” the blue-collar worker asked.
After Obama responded that it would, Wurzelbacher continued: “I’ve worked hard . . . I work 10 to 12 hours a day and I’m buying this company and I’m going to continue working that way. I’m getting taxed more and more while fulfilling the American Dream.”
“It’s not that I want to punish your success,” Obama told him. “I want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success, too.
Then, Obama explained his trickle-up theory of economics.
“My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
“Spread the wealth around” was the controversial phrase and was considered evidence of Obama’s socialist predilections, something he had previously kept somewhat under wraps. But it struck me, on reading this article at AEI, that such thoughts have now become unremarkable and mainstream in eight short years.
Our choice of a small progressive tax system has important policy implications. The relatively steep progressivity of our tax system tends to reduce income inequality by redistributing income from rich to poor. But the small size of our tax system pushes in the opposite direction, limiting the amount of redistribution that it can induce…
…[A] larger tax system could significantly reduce inequality even if it was not very progressive, particularly if the taxes were used to finance larger benefit payments to those with lower incomes. In general, the same volume of redistribution can be achieved with a smaller, more progressive system or with a larger, less progressive system.
There’s much more to the article, which is interesting in terms of what it says about our tax system compared with Europe’s. But what struck me most forcibly is how the authors seem to accept that a major and desirable goal of the tax structure is the same “spreading the wealth around” for which Obama was so criticized in 2008. And this is at AEI, a supposedly conservative think tank.
And now for something completely different: restoration work at Christ’s tomb
This must be delicate work, both in the physical and in the philosophical sense:
For the first time in centuries, scientists have exposed the original surface of what is traditionally considered the tomb of Jesus Christ. Located in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem, the tomb has been covered by marble cladding since at least 1555 A.D., and most likely centuries earlier.
“The marble covering of the tomb has been pulled back, and we were surprised by the amount of fill material beneath it,” said Fredrik Hiebert, archaeologist-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, a partner in the restoration project. “It will be a long scientific analysis, but we will finally be able to see the original rock surface on which, according to tradition, the body of Christ was laid.”
I’m not sure what exactly they might be looking for in that “scientific analysis,” but the following explains it a bit without being especially specific. It’s not the first time the site has been restored, either:
This burial shelf is now enclosed by a small structure known as the Edicule (from the Latin aedicule, or “little house”), which was last reconstructed in 1808-1810 after being destroyed in a fire. The Edicule and the interior tomb are currently undergoing restoration by a team of scientists from the National Technical University of Athens, under the direction of Chief Scientific Supervisor Professor Antonia Moropoulou.
The exposure of the burial bed is giving researchers an unprecedented opportunity to study the original surface of what is considered the most sacred site in Christianity. An analysis of the original rock may enable them to better understand not only the original form of the tomb chamber, but also how it evolved as the focal point of veneration since it was first identified by Helena, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, in A.D. 326.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre isn’t the only site reputed to be the place of Jesus’ burial; there are others. But the Church of the Holy Sepulchre seems to have the most traditional clout:
According to Eusebius of Caesarea, the Roman emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD built a temple dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite in order to bury the cave in which Jesus had been buried.The first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great, ordered in about 325/326 that the temple be replaced by a church. During the building of the Church, Constantine’s mother, Helena, is believed to have rediscovered the “True Cross”, which tradition holds that when she found three crosses she tested each by having it held over a corpse and when the corpse rose up under one, that was the true cross…
According to tradition, Constantine arranged for the rockface to be removed from around the tomb, without harming it, in order to isolate the tomb; in the centre of the rotunda is a small building called the Kouvouklion in Greek[ or the Aedicula in Latin, which encloses this tomb. The remains are completely enveloped by a marble sheath placed some 500 years before to protect the ledge from Ottoman attacks. However, there are several thick window wells extending through the marble sheath, from the interior to the exterior that are not marble clad. They appear to reveal an underlying limestone rock, which may be part of the original living rock of the tomb.
Ah, so the marble sheath was to protect from Ottoman attacks. The church has also suffered a number of earthquakes, and some fires. Here’s some more history vis a vis Islam:
After Jerusalem was captured by the Arabs, it remained a Christian church, with the early Muslim rulers protecting the city’s Christian sites. A story reports that the Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab visited the church and stopped to pray on the balcony; but at the time of prayer, he turned away from the church and prayed outside. He feared that future generations would misinterpret this gesture, taking it as a pretext to turn the church into a mosque. Eutychius added that Umar wrote a decree prohibiting Muslims from praying at this location…
…In 935, the Orthodox Christians prevented the construction of a Muslim mosque adjacent the Church…In 966, due to a defeat of Muslim armies in the region of Syria, a riot broke out and was followed by reprisals. The basilica was burned again. The doors and roof were burnt, and the Patriarch John VII was murdered.
On 18 October 1009, Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the complete destruction of the church as part of a more general campaign against Christian places of worship in Palestine and Egypt. The damage was extensive, with few parts of the early church remaining. Christian Europe reacted with shock and expulsions of Jews (for example, Cluniac monk Rodulfus Glaber blamed the Jews, with the result that Jews were expelled from Limoges and other French towns[citation needed]) and an impetus to later Crusades.
When in doubt, blame the Jews. Ironic, isn’t it?
Something’s going on with Russia and Europe
Russia’s military escalation on Europe’s border has triggered the West’s biggest show of force in the region since the Cold War as Nato continues to square up to Vladimir Putin.
Britain is to deploy troops, tanks and jets to Estonia to deter Russian aggression while UK and Romanian forces will also join a US battalion in Poland.
As part of the biggest military build-up in Eastern Europe since the Cold War, RAF planes are also being dispatched to patrol Romanian airspace for the first time.
The moves are designed to stop Moscow taking over or undermining its former Eastern European satellites as it has with Crimea and Ukraine…
Yesterday, Putin also reportedly launched an RS-18 ballistic missile, understood to be a test to see if it could defeat US defence systems.
And today, 130 military centres were put on high alert in Russia and six surrounding countries for drills on the region’s ability to respond to attacks from the West…
Several Nato states, including Estonia, fear they could be next on President Putin’s hit list. And fellow members, including the UK, have a legal duty to defend them.