Russia tests the West

DRONES OVER Poland; MiG fighters traversing Estonian airspace; telecom cables damaged deep beneath the Baltic Sea; airports paralysed by cyber-attacks and quadcopters; mysterious explosions and assassinations; bot swarms pumping out propaganda to disrupt elections: none of these on its own is a casus belli, but together they are adding up to something new and dangerous. Vladimir Putin is waging a grey-zone campaign against NATO: a cheap, deniable and calibrated effort to unsettle Europe that is carefully short of outright conflict. “We are not at war,” Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said this week. “But we are no longer at peace, either.”


On September 29TH President Donald Trump stood with Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and set out a 20-point plan for “eternal peace” in Gaza. It is tempting to be dismissive. Although the hyperbole was exceptional, it is hardly the first peace plan since the war began in 2023. And while the talking continues, the horror in Gaza persists. Yet dismissal would be a mistake. This proposal is a milestone because it sets parameters for a way out of the nightmare and marks a change in the positions of America and Israel, and, just possibly, Hamas.



Few things infuriate Americans as much as drug prices. Republicans and Democrats alike agree that poorly patients are being ripped off by greedy pharma firms. They point to the fact that America’s list prices for branded drugs are, on average, more than four times those in other rich countries.