UNWITTINGLY, perhaps, Vladimir Putin is playing Cupid to America’s Mars and Europe’s Venus. By seizing Crimea, he has rekindled the love lost between the transatlantic allies. As with so many old couples, irritation has built up in recent years: over the war in Iraq, how to fight jihadi terrorism, the NSA spying scandals, the euro crisis and Europe’s ever-shrinking defence budgets. Now Russia is reminding both sides of the ties that bind. “I have not felt this good about transatlantic relations in a long time,” whispers one senior European politician.After his “pivot” to Asia, events in Ukraine are forcing Barack Obama back to the old continent. His trip to Europe this week was dominated by the issue of Russian militarism. Fittingly, perhaps, Mr Obama began in Belgium by honouring fallen American soldiers of the first world war, when Europe’s security first became an American concern. To turn a blind eye to the redrawing of borders by force, Mr Obama said, would be to “ignore the lessons that are written in the cemeteries of this continent.” Yet the new affection is more than just a return to Europe’s dependence on American protection via…
