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A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep on a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it.***Last week, Germany and the United Kingdom signed what they called a “landmark defense treaty” to boost security, investment, and employment. Under the terms of the “Trinity House Agreement,” the countries agreed to cooperate on a range of defense initiatives, including joint missile development, drone production, and maritime security. We asked six experts to tell us more about the agreement and what it might indicate about the changing security landscape in Europe.Read more below.Ulrike Esther Franke Senior Fellow European Council on Foreign RelationsThe British-German defense agreement is a good step by two major European actors. But its main motivation is the desire to move beyond Brexit, not a sense of urgency on the need for a serious European defense. This doesn’t diminish the agreement but is representative of the thinking on the continent.Among experts, and in some policymaker circles, there is a real concern, an actual fear, about insufficient European defense in a context of a war in Europe and a guaranteed mid- to longer- term U.S. turn away from Europe (and possible immediate abandonment if Donald Trump wins). But beyond “those in the know,” none of this has registered.This is why the laudable changes — such the E.U. institutions strengthening Europe’s defense industrial base, the German Zeitenwende, and the Polish rearmament program — are still falling short of what is needed.The Trinity House Treaty augments the British-French Lancaster House Treaty and the Franco-German Treaty of Aachen, thus creating a European defense cooperation trinity. Such cooperation could be the basis of a credible European defense project. It looks, however, as if another, even greater shock to Europe’s security is needed to make