What Caught My Eye (no. 69)
Some interesting articles and podcasts that caught my eye this week
Here’s this week’s edition of articles I thought worth reading and sharing. Don’t hesitate to recommend your own reads; I may include some as well.
Rahm Emanuel, “The US-Israel Relationship: Where It Stands Today and the Road Ahead,” Rahm Emanuel’s Substack, July 8, 2026. A remarkable speech by the former White House Chief of Staff, Chicago Mayor, former U.S. ambassador to Japan, and son of an Israeli-born father who fought in Israel’s war of independence — arguing that decades of unconditional American support have enabled Prime Minister Netanyahu to pursue a “military-only” strategy that has left Israel more isolated than ever. Emanuel traces three historical Israeli strategies (unilateral action, “divorce and occupation,” and regional partnership), arguing only the third has ever produced durable peace, and proposes replacing the “discredited” two-state framework with a “23-state solution” in which Arab nations take responsibility for Palestinian governance in exchange for full diplomatic normalization with Israel. He calls for ending U.S. subsidies of Israel’s defense budget, sanctioning Israelis who attack Palestinian civilians or fund illegal settlements, and reviving the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor as an economic anchor for regional integration. Emanuel closes by warning that Israel will stand alone if it pursues annexation of the West Bank, but that “should you choose to pursue peace and security, we will be by your side.”
Farnaz Fassihi, “Momentary Unity at a Funeral Masks Deep Divisions Among Iran’s Leaders,” The New York Times, July 4, 2026. The elaborate state funeral for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was meant to project unity, but the notable absence of his son and successor, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei — unseen in public since assuming power in March — has instead exposed a bitter rift among Iran’s conservative elite. Fassihi reports that a “pragmatic” faction, including Revolutionary Guards generals, parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and President Masoud Pezeshkian, has pushed through a cease-fire and direct negotiations with the Trump administration over the objections of hard-liners who see any concession as capitulation. Interviews with four senior officials and two Revolutionary Guards members reveal the new supreme leader approved the deal only reluctantly, swayed by warnings from the president and central bank chief that a U.S. naval blockade would trigger a food and medical crisis by August.
Jennifer M. Harris, “The Generational Force Hollowing Out the Economy,” The New York Times, June 29, 2026. Harris, a former Biden White House economic official, argues that the trillion-dollar AI buildout is not merely propping up a fragile economy but actively crowding out investment the country needs elsewhere. She traces how data center land grabs are worsening the housing shortage (a Prince William County developer sold Amazon land for $700 million after buying it for $50 million), how manufacturing and clean-energy construction are losing out to data centers for capital and materials, and how AI startups now swallow nearly two-thirds of global venture capital, up from about 30 percent in 2022. Drawing parallels to the 1850s railroad boom and the dot-com era’s “revenge of the old economy,” she warns that capital starvation in critical sectors is a known driver of inflation and could tip the economy into recession before AI’s productivity gains materialize.
Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, “Trans-Atlanticism Isn’t Dead—It’s Being Renegotiated,” Foreign Policy, July 1, 2026. De Hoop Scheffer, president of the German Marshall Fund, rebuts Nathalie Tocci’s recent Foreign Policy essay declaring trans-Atlanticism dead, arguing the alliance is undergoing a painful but overdue renegotiation rather than a terminal collapse. Drawing on Stephen Walt’s theory of alliance durability, she contends shared threat perception, not shared values, was always the glue holding the U.S. and Europe together, and that divergence on Russia versus China as the primary threat, alongside Trump’s support for European far-right movements, is exposing real fault lines. She cites striking evidence of European mobilization rather than retreat, including a 20 percent real-terms increase in European defense spending in 2025 to $574 billion and Germany’s move to break its constitutional debt brake for $114 billion in new defense investment. The piece lays out a four-part agenda, from defense procurement reform to a formal trans-Atlantic technology compact, framing the goal as rebalanced burden-sharing rather than divorce. She closes on the note that the alliance emerging from this turbulence “will look different from the one built in 1949,” but will be better suited to the world that actually exists.
Simon Romero, “With $8 Billion in Venezuelan Oil Money, U.S. Gives $300 Million in Quake Aid,” The New York Times, July 6, 2026. Romero, who covered Haiti’s 2010 earthquake as one of the first reporters on the ground, draws a stark contrast between that disaster’s roughly $3 billion U.S. relief effort and Washington’s $300 million response to Venezuela’s recent earthquakes, even as U.S. officials oversee an estimated $8 billion in Venezuelan oil revenue since deposing Nicolás Maduro in January. He reports that the Trump administration, having dismantled USAID, is channeling aid through groups like the Red Cross while keeping its broader Venezuela strategy — prioritizing political stability and using the country’s own oil wealth to fund recovery — unchanged despite the destruction. The mismatch underscores the new, much more transactional, statecraft-driven approach to humanitarian aid.
Shaun Walker, “All Quiet on the Eastern Flank? Nato Leaders Fear They Can No Longer Rely on US Help If Russia Attacks,” The Guardian, June 27, 2026. Drawing on dozens of interviews with officials across eastern Europe, Walker traces how 18 months of Trump’s second term have curdled cautious optimism about US commitment into real fear that Washington would not fight if Russia attacked a NATO member. He documents a string of trust-eroding episodes, from Pete Hegseth’s blunt demands that Europe fund its own defense to the chaotic on-again-off-again cancellation of a US troop rotation to Poland, alongside a genuine NATO success in securing a 5% GDP defense-spending pledge at last year’s Hague summit. The piece captures a growing split between Baltic states still counseling calm and a more openly skeptical Poland, while noting that intelligence gathering and high-end air defense remain areas where Europe cannot easily replace American capability. Walker closes on ECFR analyst Jana Puglierin’s memorable framing of the alliance’s uncertainty as “Schrödinger’s NATO,” warning that “by then, it might be too late for the Europeans.”
Joe Parkinson, Drew Hinshaw, and Daniel Michaels, “‘There Is No Going Back’: The Inside Story of Europe’s Rupture With America,” The Wall Street Journal, July 5, 2026. Drawing on interviews with heads of government and their aides plus leaked intelligence assessments, this deeply reported piece reconstructs 18 months of closed-door meetings in which European leaders moved from flattering Trump to quietly preparing for American abandonment. It centers on the rivalry between NATO chief Mark Rutte’s “flattery diplomacy,” including engineering the alliance’s 5%-of-GDP spending pledge as a symbolic win for Trump, and Canadian PM Mark Carney’s push for genuine “de-Americanization,” with European governments now stripping US tech from government systems and building parallel space, AI, and data infrastructure. The authors detail flashpoints that hardened European resolve, including Trump’s Greenland threats, his hurling a tablet during a Trudeau video call, and his softening stance toward Russia after the Alaska summit with Putin. A British MI6 assessment likened Trump’s White House to “’The Crucible’ meets ‘Wolf Hall,’” while a Southern European intelligence report bluntly warned allies that they were “not dealing with an administration that has processes,” but “a single volatile individual.”
Ben Meindertsma and Huib Modderkolk, “‘Unique Source’ Blinded Dutch Intelligence Agencies to Putin’s Invasion,” de Volkskrant, July 8, 2026. Based on interviews with nineteen intelligence officials and policymakers, this investigation reconstructs how the Netherlands’ AIVD and MIVD spent months insisting a Russian invasion was “unlikely,” even as the US and UK went public with intercepted attack plans, because Dutch intelligence unit Ruslandhuis relied on a prized, unnamed source close to the Kremlin suggesting Putin was merely posturing for negotiating leverage. The piece traces the corrosive legacy of the 2003 Iraq WMD debacle, which made European officials instinctively distrust American intelligence claims, alongside a striking contrast between an ambassador in Kyiv who quietly prepared for war based on Anglo-American warnings and a Dutch defense attaché who slept through CNN’s invasion coverage still believing in diplomacy. It reveals that Dutch intelligence continued rating war merely “possible” even hours before the invasion, and that afterward, Ruslandhuis discovered its Kremlin source had only a handful of confidants who actually knew Putin’s plans. One AIVD officer’s blunt self-assessment sums up the reckoning: “That’s the tragedy of having a good position: you come to rely on it too much. We should have stepped back.”
Finally, below are links to some of the things I did and wrote this week.
The NATO Summit in Ankara kept me plenty busy. My regular Politico column discussed the most important outcome — agreement that these meetings are not worth the time and energy so long as Trump is president.
I was interviewed for a feature in Politiken on the state of transatlantic relations.
I reflected on the Summit and other issues in interviews for PBS NewsHour, CBC Power & Politics, CNN Amanpour, CNN News Central, CNN Situation Room, CNN Anderson Cooper, CNBC Squawk Box, Al Jazeera English, BBC World News, and Bloomberg Balance of Power.
I also discussed the Summit on Substack Live with Elise Labott.
This week’s World Review focused on the resumption of the Iran War, the NATO Summit, and Russia’s Fuel Crisis.
Happy reading, watching, and listening! Stay safe.