NATO must stop looking for new enemies and focus on the main one

"NATO must stop looking for new enemies and to focus on the main enemy - Moscow. The European members of NATO will not be able to significantly influence the balance of power in Asia, even if they wanted to," Simon Tisdall, the Observer's foreign policy analyst, wrote for the Guardian.

Was this the week Ukraine lost the war? Or to put it another way, the week the West lost Ukraine? Heroic resistance on the battlefield continued, Ukrainian citizens struggled with merciless atrocities such as the rocket attack on the "Okhmatdit" children's hospital. in Kiev - but in Washington, NATO's risk-averse leaders stuck stubbornly to the road map to defeat.

Hypercautious US President Joe Biden, whose political weakness is growing by the day, has said the 32-nation alliance is the strongest the world has ever seen. But what good is an alliance that fears battle? Rarely has the gap between the rhetoric of solidarity and the appalling political refusal to directly confront Russian brutality been so wide.

This gap could prove fatal for Ukraine and NATO. Alliance leaders agree that pushing back Moscow is vital to Europe's future security and the rule of international law. But their new "Treaty on Ukraine" helps Kiev just survive, not win. They have no plan to defeat Russia. In fact, they seem to be afraid of her. This is an open invitation to President Vladimir Putin to renew aggression in Eastern Europe.