James Snell | The Spectator columnists & writers

Has war broken out again between Armenia and Azerbaijan?

Overnight, it seems as if a new war might have broken out in Europe. Armenian authorities claim that at least 49 soldiers have been killed in fighting with Azerbaijan at their disputed border. A new conflict would be a tragedy and a waste. But it would also signal something else: the collapse of Russia’s global empire as it is defeated in Ukraine, and the shaking of the kaleidoscope this will inevitably cause. Armenia and Azerbaijan dispute the ownership of the Nagorno-Karabakh region. In 2020, they fought a war over it. Unexpectedly, the Armenians were handily defeated. Azerbaijan was heavily supported by Turkey, and Armenia by Russia. The same Turkish drones which are fan favourites in Ukrainian hands wrecked hundreds of Armenian vehicles and positions.

North Korea’s nuclear sabre-rattling isn’t frightening

North Korea would like you to know that it has nuclear weapons. It has put rather a lot of effort in recent weeks into making you aware. And if you haven’t thought much about North Korea’s nuclear programme in the last few days, it means its propaganda effort has failed. Here is what North Korea’s leaders want you to know. On September 9, North Korean media announced that the country has officially declared itself a nuclear weapons state. In a speech to the rubber-stamp Supreme People’s Assembly, Kim Jong-Un declared that this made his country’s nuclear programme ‘irreversible’, and declared that they would never give up their weapons even in the face of a hundred years of sanctions. At the same time, the country has passed a law allowing a 'pre-emptive' nuclear attack, using the weapons ‘automatically’ in cases that are still murkily defined.

Germany’s stinginess is betraying Ukraine

Bafflement is not quite the right word. Instead, Ukrainian officials and their allies now see Germany through a confused form of anger. Things started out well. Within days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in late February, and in response to international condemnation, Germany did the following, against type: It halted the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, placing it more thoroughly in the palm of Russian fossil fuel suppliers; it committed — for the first time since reunification — to spend more than 2 per cent of its giant GDP on self-defence, per year, in perpetuity; and it announced a €100 billion investment to rearm, beginning that instant. The most moving speech of that special session of the Bundestag was from the finance minister, of the economically libertarian Free Democrats.

The Brexit party crack-up

At the start of the year, the Brexit party didn't exist. When it roared to success a few months later in the European parliamentary elections, much was made of how unlike a normal party it was. Nigel Farage was fond of telling audiences that his MEPs included Tories and former members of the Revolutionary Communist party. What else could unite them, he would ask, but the need to leave the European Union? Yet that common cause is now proving to be the party's undoing in the wake of Boris Johnson's Brexit deal. While Theresa May's agreement was panned almost instantly, reaction to Boris Johnson's Brexit deal has been mostly positive. Tory Brexiteers queued up on the airwaves and in studios to condemn what amounted to 'vassalage' under May.

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