A vignette from the end of the U.S.-led global order, per Reuters:

France will expand its nuclear arsenal and will potentially allow European partners to host its aircraft on nuclear deterrence ‌missions, President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday, signalling a major doctrine change for France and the continent.

Though France and Britain are both nuclear powers, most European countries have relied primarily on the United States for deterring any potential adversaries — a decades-old pillar of transatlantic security.

But Trump’s rapprochement with Russia on the Ukraine ​war and his harsher posture towards traditional allies have rattled European governments, and some countries have expressed interest in how Paris ​could protect them by extending its nuclear umbrella.

Happy Tuesday.

Why War? Why Now?

by William Kristol

Why did we go to war four days ago? And why are we going to continue this war, apparently for weeks or longer?

The Trump administration can’t answer either question.

That’s why some administration surrogates are trying to tell us we’re not at war.

Yesterday Kasie Hunt of CNN posed a sensible question to Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who serves on the Armed Services Committee and who has been acting as an administration surrogate over the last few days: “Did the president not run on not starting a war with Iran?” Sen. Mullin deflected: “This isn’t a war.”

You know the administration’s defenders are in trouble when they resort to this kind of denial of reality. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had undermined this talking point a few hours earlier, acknowledging that we are in fact at war: “We didn’t start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it.”

So yes, we are at war. To deny this is disrespectful both to the American public, who have eyes to see what is happening, and to our servicemen and servicewomen, whom the administration has ordered into harm’s way. Will Sen. Mullin explain to the families of the service members who have died that their loved ones were not fighting in a war?

Why did we go to war now? The administration hasn’t offered a coherent explanation. Over the weekend, President Trump suggested several purposes and backed away from some, leaving confusion in his wake. His aides tried to clean things up yesterday, having Trump read military “objectives” from a teleprompter at the White House. But none of the objectives—destroying Iran’s missile capabilities and its navy, ensuring Iran can’t obtain a nuclear weapon or support terrorism—explain why we had to go to war now. Nor do they explain why we are engaged in such an open-ended and massive military campaign.

Yesterday, President Trump sent the formal notice to Congress required by the War Powers Act. He explained, “Despite my Administration’s repeated efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution to Iran’s malign behavior, the threat to the United States and its allies and partners became untenable.”

“The threat became . . . untenable.” There’s no claim of self-defense. There’s no claim of imminent danger. Rather, the claim is that we were facing an allegedly untenable threat. But of course if the administration saw the threat becoming untenable, it could have done what the Constitution requires—gone to Congress, explained the situation, and sought authorization for going to war.

Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, tried to help out his boss yesterday by arguing that the threat really was imminent, and that it required a preemptive attack:

We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.

But last June, Israel was at war with Iran for almost two weeks before the United States came in briefly to help finish the job. During that time there were major Iranian attacks against Israel—but only very minor, scattered attacks on U.S. assets in the region. Presumably the administration, which was, after all, in discussions with Iran last week, could have warned Iran not to attack our bases if Israel attacked. Iran would have had plenty of incentives to heed such a warning.

Instead the administration chose a pre-emptive and unauthorized war for which it has offered no coherent rationale. And it now has no sound argument for why this war must be extended. The military objectives Trump mentioned have mostly been achieved, insofar as they can be. The human toll and the geopolitical and economic costs mount each day. And six American service members have died. Why should more be put in harm’s way?

The answer is simple: Congress should not give this administration a blank and open-ended check to continue to wage a massive, risky, and unconstitutional war.