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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15239/take-nato-seriously

The second major challenge the NATO summit will face is Turkey. Following the 2016 coup attempt, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan purged his army. As a result, many senior Turkish officers assigned to NATO asked for asylum in Belgium.

Turkey has the second-largest army in NATO, but it is no longer a fully democratic country, nor it is a reliable ally. As long as Erdogan’s Islamist AKP party dominates Turkish politics, the country will remain a significant problem for the Alliance.

It will be illuminating to see what the London Summit brings.

In May 2017, the new $1.23 billion NATO headquarters was inaugurated in Brussels, in the presence of US President Donald Trump. With its state-of-the-art facilities, it was supposed to be “an emblem of a strong, adaptable Alliance… a 21st century headquarters for a 21st century Alliance”, according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

In November 2019, in an explosive interview with The Economist, French President Emmanuel Macron declared NATO to be “brain dead”, thereby triggering a flood of angry reactions.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-least-20-killed-in-mexico-gunbattle-near-texas-border-11575252949

MEXICO CITY—Dozens of cartel gunmen engaged in a two-day battle with Mexican security forces that left at least 20 people dead in a small town across the border from Texas, officials said Sunday.

The clash is the latest incident in a surge of violence hitting Mexico, exacerbating doubts about the ability of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to control organized crime groups.

Last week, President Trump said he planned to declare Mexico’s cartels foreign terrorist organizations. In November, gunmen ambushed and killed three mothers and six of their children, all U.S. citizens living in a fundamentalist Mormon community in northern Mexico. Mexico’s attorney general’s office said Sunday it had detained various suspects in the killings.

Mexican officials criticized Mr. Trump’s proposal as opening the door to U.S. interference in its domestic affairs. U.S. Attorney General William Barr is expected to meet with Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard to discuss security issues later this week.

On Saturday, a caravan of gunmen in trucks, many marked with the initials of the Northeast Cartel, drove into the small town of Villa Unión, about 44 miles from the city of Eagle Pass, Texas, according to officials. The gunmen shot up municipal offices and other buildings.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cuba-imprisons-a-humanitarian-11575229476?mod=opinion_major_pos7

When Nelva Ortega Tamayo visited her husband José Daniel Ferrer in a Cuban prison in early November, she found him emaciated, hunched over and covered with bruises. He had a laceration on his face.

The Cuban dissident had been in custody for five weeks; the dictatorship had yet to announce charges against him. But his wife, who is a medical doctor, came away convinced that her husband was in grave danger of losing his life. Her concern is justified.

This isn’t Mr. Ferrer’s first time behind bars. He was named a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International during a 2003-11 incarceration. Now he is again jailed, and again drawing global attention.

Last week the European Parliament approved a joint resolution condemning the 49-year-old’s “arbitrary detention” and calling for his “immediate release.” The European body further denounced the dictatorship’s use of torture and expressed concern over continuous “attacks against peaceful dissidents, independent journalists, human rights defenders and political opposition.”

The resolution noted that there are an estimated 120 Cuban political prisoners. Three fellow members of the Patriotic Union, which was founded by Mr. Ferrer in 2011, were arrested with him. The whereabouts of two of them—José Pupo and Fernando González—remain unknown.

Dr. Ortega Tamayo had only five minutes with her husband at the Aguadores prison near Santiago de Cuba. But it was long enough to assess his condition.

https://www.jns.org/netanyahu-warns-europe-over-iran-sanctions-relief-efforts/

“History and your own people will judge you harshly” for choosing to appease Tehran, says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned European nations on Sunday that they were making a big mistake by trying to salvage the nuclear deal with Iran through a special mechanism that would bypass U.S. sanctions on the Islamic republic.

In a video message posted on YouTube, Netanyahu implored European nations to abandon their efforts to strengthen economic ties with Iran and instead join the U.S.-led “maximum pressure” effort, launched by the Trump administration a year ago after Washington withdrew from the nuclear deal.

“These European countries should be ashamed of themselves. Have they learned nothing from history? Well, apparently not. They are enabling a fanatic terrorist state to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, thereby bringing disaster to themselves and upon everyone else,” said Netanyahu.

“Now is the time to change course. Now is the time to ratchet up the pressures on Iran, not to lessen them. Now is the time to join the United States and increase sanctions against Iran. To those who favor appeasement of Iran, I say this: History and your own people will judge you harshly. Change course.”