“A Russia Strategy Must Look South: The Caucasus Impacts Europe through the Eastern Mediterranean”, Bernard Siman (Egmont, Belgium)

In the current Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, NATO and the EU would do well to recall the Boston speech of the great Belgian statesman, Paul-Henri Spaak, on 2 September 1958 when he was Secretary-General of NATO. Aside from the many parallels between recent geopolitical developments in Europe and expansionist Soviet actions at the time, he posed a key question: “Is it sufficient […] to construct a solid military barrier along the Elbe, on the eastern frontier of the free world, if the free world is to be outflanked politically, militarily and economically in the Middle East and Africa?”