When the world's at stake,
go beyond the headlines.

Welcome to Mid-Afternoon Map, our exclusive members-only newsletter that provides a cartographic perspective on current events, geopolitics, and history from the Caucasus to the Carolinas. Subscribers can look forward to interesting takes on good maps and bad maps, beautiful maps and ugly ones — and bizarre maps whenever possible.***As cliches go, the rise and fall of French Marxists was particularly dramatic. In my mind, at least, they pivoted directly from the Resistance to literary theory, deconstructing Nazis with dynamite one day, then taking out their fury on conceptual binaries and textual signifiers the next. Perhaps they paused to organize a few protests, or possibly even deigned to pronounce the letter H, but the trend line was clear. Now, however, they have a chance to redeem themselves. It’s time for French Marxists to step up, put on their fighting turtlenecks, and save NATO.As the U.S. elections get under way, European officials have voiced growing concerns about what Donald Trump’s reelection could mean for the North Atlantic alliance. One recently recounted a 2020 meeting in which Trump declared, “NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO.” That was the same year Trump also announced plans to cut U.S. forces in Germany, saying, “We don’t want to be the suckers anymore.” On both occasions, he complained about the Germans refusing to pay, suggesting at one point the country owed Washington $400 billion for its defense.Perhaps Europe’s best hope for preserving the alliance is to introduce Trump to some old-fashioned, over-the-top leftist critiques of it. As early as the 1950s, historians such as William Appleman Williams argued that America’s aspirations for global leadership, and indeed the entire intellectual apparatus of liberal internationalism, were just a ploy to enrich U.S. industry at the world’s expense. Which might be just the argument to bring a future Trump administration