According to statements made at last weekend’s summit in Warsaw, NATO regards Russia as a bigger threat than ISIS. Of course, that’s ludicrous but when you scratch beneath the surface, the use of these falsehoods makes perverted sense.

Gleb is a Russian student in Dublin. Recently, at the request of a mutual friend, I’ve been helping him with his university thesis which focuses on the reasons Ireland is one of the few Western European countries that has resisted NATO membership. A distinction that most Irish people are extremely proud of.

As an Irishman myself, I’ve always been baffled by why so many members of the British and continental European elite see NATO as a good thing. After all, where’s the glory in being dictated to by an external power whose interests are often at marked variance with your own?

Like right this moment, when it’s plainly obvious the biggest threat to Western Europe is Islamic fundamentalism and the fallout from a destabilized Middle East. But the US remains somewhat impervious to these issues, which it largely helped to ferment, and instead continues to be, bizarrely, focused on Russia.