Welcome to the Euro Intelligence Podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me, Susanne Muncheng and Jack Smith.

Today, we would like to talk about the splits in the Western Alliance. Over the last few days,

we've seen quite a number of things happening and by the time you hear it, further things will have

happened. Germany has doubled down.

Schultz has doubled down on his refusal to deliver the tourist cruise missiles.

Red lines became even thicker and redder after Macron suggested that at one point the Western allies might have to send in ground troops into Ukraine.

But other things have

happened since as well, Schultz revealed military secrets or was accused of having revealed

military secrets. The Russian cyber attack on Germany has occurred, whereby a number of

German generals have been eavesdropped in a conversation they had on the operational aspects

of tourist missiles if Germany were to send them. And there are also signs, and Jack, you wrote

about this morning that France and the UK are working much closer together and with Germany

standing apart. Jack, what is the situation

there? Is the West in a great big mess right now over Ukraine? I think the first thing to say

is that this is all basically, at least my interpretation of it, is that this is all basically

downstream from the difficulties the U.S. has had or the difficulties that Joe Biden's

administration has had with getting military aid for Ukraine through Congress. And it's also downstream

of the very real possibility that Donald Trump could be president by this time next year,

which would severely compromise the reliability of

USA to Ukraine. So at least as I see it, the first domino to drop in all of this was probably

how Ukraine's counteroffensive last summer went. But then next off, what you had was this

domestic political deadlock in the United States, which has put

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