This year’s Paris Defense and Strategy Forum – the annual superpower gathering of some 300 military chiefs, munition developers, and policy wonks from 30 countries held inside the French military school that failed to teach Napoleon Bonaparte how to strategically retreat from Moscow – was not a gathering intentionally calculated to make America grumpy again.

Although the official theme of the powwow was a milquetoast “Europe at the Crossroads,” it didn’t take long for the conclave to devolve into a three-day tutorial on French President Charles de Gaulle’s observation, “You may be sure that Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.”

The U.S. military brass on hand bit hard on their complimentary croissants; a pack of allied Polish colonels beat a hasty retreat to a cordon sanitaire established behind a falafel lunch wagon. Bejeweled commanders of Cameroonian troops stroked their silk aiguillettes, watching the West’s group therapy session on U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian despot Vladimir Putin in stiff-lipped silence.

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