Three wars that Turkey is currently involved in, namely in Syria, Libya, and the South Caucasus, suggest that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s foreign policy has settled into a new phase. Erdoğan is building a “mini Empire” by—often—simultaneously fighting and power- brokering with his Russian homologue, and to this end the Eastern Mediterranean provides ample opportunities for him.

He talks frequently with the US president and he’s one of the few people who knows about the real views of Donald Trump on Greece.

On September 11, 1944, a patrol led by Staff Sergeant Warner L. Holzinger of Troop B, 85th Reconnaissance Squadron, 5^th Armored Division, crossed the Our River from Luxembourg into Germany. Those five soldiers were the vanguard of a mighty Allied force that would within eight months conquer the Third Reich, thereby ending World War II in Europe.

The Trump drawdown of U.S. troops in Europe is not the end of the alliance, but part of a familiar story. America’s military presence has been contested from Week 1—make that February 4–11, 1945. At Yalta, Franklin D. Roosevelt assured Joseph Stalin that the United States would soon depart from Europe. Its troops—three million at the peak—would all be gone in two years.