So the mask slips. Ukraine has now admitted that a drone struck Romanian soil, and cargo ships are being hit in the Black Sea. This is not a mere escalation: it is a strategic widening of the conflict.
We are watching the decline of the rules-based order with the same grim inevitability as Gibbon chronicling the fall of Constantinople. The Black Sea has always been a theatre of great power chess. Now it is a shooting gallery.
Romania, a NATO member, sees its territory violated. The response from Brussels and Washington? Measured, careful, studiously ambiguous.
They are terrified of escalation, which is precisely why Putin and Zelensky both push the boundaries. The cargo ships are the new U-boats. This is economic warfare by drone.
And the West, paralysed by its own decadence, watches as the old certainties crumble. I am Arthur Penhaligon, and I told you so.
