The idea that Benjamin Netanyahu is instinctively conflict-averse sounds absurd today, says Yair Rosenberg in The Atlantic. The Israeli PM is currently waging his second war on Iran in under a year and spent more than two years pummelling Gaza. But before October 7, Bibi’s longevity as a leader was “built on a foundation of conflict avoidance”. Having lost his brother in a hostage-rescue raid in 1976, and having seen how the ruinous 2006 Lebanon war destroyed the standing of his predecessor Ehud Olmert, he was cautious by both temperament and experience.

Understanding that wars are impossible to script, Netanyahu long avoided tackling Tehran head-on, instead championing global sanctions in public while covertly sabotaging Iran’s nuclear programme from within. For years, he resisted calls from his cabinet to invade Gaza and topple Hamas, writing in his 2022 memoir about the many thousands of Palestinian casualties this would cause. Even after the brutal horrors of October 7, when his defence minister was pushing for Israel to strike not just Hamas but also Hezbollah, Netanyahu demurred. As one senior official in the Obama administration put it in 2014: “The thing about Bibi is he’s a chickenshit.” The “seismic shift” occurred when his fully-fledged response to October 7 went according to plan. Israel decimated Hamas and took out Hezbollah’s entire chain of command, and soon Syria’s Bashar al-Assad fell too. With each successful escalation, Netanyahu’s willingness to use force to settle Israel’s scores increased. Whether his latest gambit will pay off is unclear. But the Israel and Netanyahu of October 6, 2023, are never coming back.

Bridgerton used to be so great, says Faye Curran in The New Statesman. Formulaic, of course, but what a formula: an attractive, posh, Georgian man meets an attractive, posh, Georgian woman. They hate each other – until, suddenly, disgust gives way to lust. There is a sex scene in a hallway, lust turns to love, all is well. But no! The Queen forbids it and they cannot marry. “And yet – omnia vincit amor.” Unfortunately, everything’s different now. The Netflix show has grown so anxious for approval that it leaps at every fashionable cause as though it were written by left-wing fan-fiction geeks. Recently covered topics include sexually ambiguous servants litigating workers’ rights; lovers riven by class politics; middle-aged mothers undergoing erotic revivals; ingénues discovering orgasms; and someone dying from a headache. The 19th century was sexist and class-obsessed, and that’s what made early Bridgerton so enjoyable. Pretending otherwise has made a fun show, which made its name on winks, spanks and heaving empire lines, “mind-numbingly, irrevocably boring”.

Emmanuel Macron has long argued for Europe to develop “strategic autonomy” from the US, says Le Monde. With the world tipped into uncertainty by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, Donald Trump’s open ambivalence about the transatlantic alliance, and the end of the era of treaty-regulated nuclear weapons, the French president finally has an audience. This week, he announced he was ramping up the country’s nuclear arsenal. And crucially, for the first time, France is planning to include its neighbours in the programme – not as partners in making the final decision, but as part of a Europe-wide system of “advanced deterrence” designed to supplement, if not replace, a crumbling Nato.

This is an “epochal turning point” for Europe, says Jörg Lau in Die Zeit. “To be free, we must be feared,” Macron said frankly, “and to be feared, we must be powerful.” This is of course partly an appeal to domestic voters, who will bear the cost, but also to his European neighbours, eight of whom have apparently already been involved in talks. Germany, despite months of bickering between Paris and Berlin, is signed on to play a “key role”. The Bundeswehr will participate in nuclear exercises with the French, inspect “strategic deposits” together and develop a “common understanding of deterrence”. It is vital, Macron said, that Europe is put back in a position to control its own fate. Angela Merkel and Olaf Scholz did nothing to help, out of excessive “transatlantic caution”. It is to Friedrich Merz’s credit that he has broken with traditional German restraint and “accepted Macron’s outstretched hand”.