You’re correct—I didn’t realize you were American, and I’m happy to acknowledge that. That said, nationality of birth doesn’t necessarily determine one’s perspective. People naturally absorb aspects of the places and institutions they spend significant time in. Given that you’ve been a professor in the UK for some time, I don’t think that observation is unreasonable. As an American who has lived in Europe for nearly a decade, I can personally appreciate how much your surroundings can shape your outlook. Regardless, my criticism is ultimately about the substance of your commentary, not your passport. Frankly, many of your posts on Twitter are surprising coming from an expert in war studies. You frequently seem to conflate criticism of America’s geopolitical and military strategy—which is certainly fair game—with assessments of its underlying military capability. Those are related questions, but they are not the same thing.

Until the Iran war, I hadn’t fully appreciated the extent of the resentment some British defense analysts seem to implicitly harbor toward America’s post-WWII rise as the dominant global military power. Some of that is understandable given the Trump administration’s rhetoric toward Europe. But what’s striking is the almost perverse sense of satisfaction some British defense commentators appear to take in the perception of American military decline—something I haven’t seen to nearly the same degree among defense analysts elsewhere in Europe.