Round-up: A dismal NATO summit. Post-truth intelligence politics. New York state of politics.

Analysis of the week's events

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A dismal NATO summit

The NATO summit is now over. Blink and you might have missed it. Clocking in at just five hours of meetings and with only a five paragraph closing statement, it was the shortest NATO summit ever.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and the assembled European leaders had just one goal for the summit: make Donald Trump feel really, really good about himself. And in that regard at least, they seem to have succeeded.

The whole thing was structured around lavishing praise on the president while avoiding the kind of detailed policy discussion that he finds boring and contentious. Trump enjoyed a regal dinner, got to have a sleepover at the royal palace, and heard other leaders tell him how great he is. One suggested that the alliance ought to adopt the slogan “Make NATO Great Again”, while Rutte even called him “daddy”.

Given the circumstances, it’s hard to find fault with any of this. But the lamentable thing is that it was necessary at all.

Given Trump’s frequent attacks on NATO and threats to withdraw from the alliance, keeping him onboard was clearly priority number one. The withdrawal of the United States from NATO would effectively be the end of the alliance and of the entire structure of European security. For all their fine words, European countries are not ready to fill the gap. They desperately needed to win over Trump.

On the other hand, as I wrote in a piece for The Conversation yesterday, successfully managing Trump’s ego is a very low bar for an international summit. And all it really does is push the hard issues down the road.

NATO is at a critical moment, not just because of Trump but because of Russia’s war in Ukraine. European countries need to rearm in an efficient way, avoiding the duplication of effort which currently exists in their 30+ national militaries. They need to figure out how best to support and defend Ukraine. They need to talk about the consequences of the Pentagon’s upcoming global posture review, which is likely to recommend the removal of tens of thousands of U.S. troops from Europe.

On all of these matters, though, we heard basically nothing at the summit, from daddy or anyone else. On the plane ride over, Trump even seemed to cast doubt on the alliance’s mutual defense clause, Article V:

“Depends on your definition. There are numerous definitions of Article 5. You know that, right? But I’m committed to being their friends.”

“I’m committed to saving lives. I’m committed to life and safety. And I’m going to give you an exact definition when I get there. I just don’t want to do it on the back of an airplane.”

But he didn’t give an exact definition when he got there, and none of the assembled world leaders asked. That, I’m afraid, tells you all you need to know about what this summit really achieved.

Post-truth intelligence politics

This week we got some rather contradictory estimates of the damage done to Iran’s nuclear program during the Twelve Day War (that’s what I’m calling it - let’s see if it sticks).

The first was a leaked report from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) which said that the damage was not particularly extensive and that Iran could repair the damage within “months”. Because it contradicts his narrative that U.S. intervention was a masterstroke that destroyed Iran’s nuclear ambitions forever, Donald Trump reacted volcanically to the leak.

Then, predictably, every other intelligence producer in the administration lined up to say that actually, Trump was right. The CIA, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (whose department includes DIA), and Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard all apparently agree that Trump is wise and awesome and right.

It’s tempting to look at this as a simple case of “the truth” being suppressed. But the situation is a bit more complicated than that - and arguably worse.

You and I have no way of knowing whether the DIA or the CIA is right. Intelligence agencies have different sources and methods, and they often reach different conclusions. One of the roles of the DNI is to arbitrate among these different conclusions and report the best estimate of the intelligence community as a whole to the president. You can’t just look at a leaked report produced by one of these agencies and say it represents “the truth”, even if it bolsters a political narrative that you believe in.

The real problem here is that it doesn’t look like the Trump regime has any interest in arriving at “the truth” either. Intelligence is clearly being heavily politicized in this administration. All prominent figures clearly feel the need to twist it to avoid offending Trump’s fragile ego. Gabbard - the person whose job it supposedly is to synthesize different assessments - is on shaky ground with the president and is not going to contradict him. Hegseth is a political shill. Rubio has his eye on the presidency.

To repeat, that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily wrong in this particular instance. A stopped clock is still right twice a day. But it does mean that we can have no confidence that they will try to accurately find out the truth and then feed that information to the president to form the basis of his decisions. Post-truth politics has become firmly entrenched in the intelligence community.

Trump’s habit of demanding that his supporters agree blindly with his version of reality, however warped, is particularly dangerous in international affairs. The outside world has a nasty habit of disproving assumptions, even among people who are earnestly interested in building an accurate understanding of it. Those who aren’t even interested in doing so can get their countries - and the rest of the world - into serious trouble.

NYC’s political earthquake

The Democratic establishment doesn’t know what to make of Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Muslim socialist who just won the party’s primary election for New York City mayor.