We are close to the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of NATO and the tensions between the leaders of the 29 member states who will meet in London on 3-4 December are not abating. US President Donald Trump no longer wants to "subsidize" Europe. He wants it to spend at least 2014 percent of GDP on defense by 2, while French President Emmanuel Macron has defined the Alliance in a condition of brain death by suggesting a "strategic relationship" with Russia.
Then there is Turkey which could vote against a defense plan for the Baltic states and Poland unless NATO recognizes the Kurdish YPG militia as terrorists. This is unlikely as the YPG helped defeat the Islamic State.
Regarding the future role of NATO, the summit will ask a group of "wise personalities" to make suggestions, but they will not report until the next summit at the end of the 2021. Then the news of these last hours that Turkey has handed Al Baghdadi to Trump, in exchange for a piece of Syria.
Yesterday, the answer. In London, a lone wolf, armed with a knife, sowed panic on London Bridge. The death toll is three, including the bomber and several injured. A few hours later, in The Hague, the same scene, a bomber armed with a knife threw himself at several passers-by.
Apparently ISIS is not defeated and does not want to lose the scene in a moment dear to Westerners, Christmas. Then there is the thirst for revenge for the killing of Al Baghdadi, the founder of the Caliphate.
For some months now, the propaganda of terrorists has been flooding the web with claims of revenge, which according to the analysis of European intelligence are focused on two priority targets, writes La Repubblica. Great Britain, and London in particular, was quickly followed by Germany in this ranking of hatred. But all over the continent, including Italy, controls are intensifying. The new leaders of ISIS could in fact accelerate these murderous projects to show themselves up to their predecessors: "The one inflicted by Al-Baghdadi will have a sweet taste by comparison".
The ISIS network is scattered over the Syrian and Iraqi mountains, where just three weeks ago the local commandos hunted it down with the support of the injured Italian raiders. The direction that Raqqa managed to manage the hidden cells in France and Belgium, supplying them with men and weapons, has been dismantled. The attention shown in their messages to London and Germany is perhaps linked to this operational decadence: there may still be jihadists "asleep", camouflaged in Muslim communities. For sure, ISIS will try to carry out more massacres. Its characteristic is that of being resilient, flexible and not very centralized. It has a global presence that continues to grow on two continents. The threat can now start, for example, from Nigeria or the Philippines, displacing the prevention measures built by Western police. "We are at the gates of Europe and in the heart of Africa“, Reiterated a message from a few days ago.
"The depth and breadth of ISIS leadership is unprecedented for this type of terrorist organization", Said former general Michael Nagata, head of US special forces in the Middle East in 2014:"Al Baghdadi's death, however important, was not a catastrophic blow to their chain of command".