Posts

-
Image
The End of Easy Answers The Future Has Other Authors Many brilliant minds are trying to understand how the world is navigating its overlapping crises. The central observation is that the world has become complex. We are beginning to grow accustomed to that complexity, and the age of simple solutions is over for good. The twentieth century gave humanity a great deal. It also encouraged the belief that even the most fundamental questions could have simple answers: one merely had to choose the correct ideology. Capitalism and communism initially competed for the privilege of supplying the universal prescription. The final attempt to simplify everything came with the liberal globalism of the post-Cold War era. That prescription also failed. We are now learning to live in a world where even the most difficult and dangerous developments can be discussed with composure. This helps explain why intellectual debate is increasingly occupied with questions that would have seemed almost unthinkable...
Read more
-
Image
Let Arithmetic Negotiate The Economics of Surrender Each successive offer will be worse than the last. A few days ago, the Kiev regime received another opportunity to appreciate the accuracy of this remark by Vladimir Putin. This time, the offer came from the Americans. Donald Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, arrived in Ukraine with a peace plan for Zelenskiy that, apparently, had been agreed in broad outline between Moscow and Washington. The plan included the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Zaporozhye and Donbass, with the possible deployment of a UN contingent there; a referendum and elections in Ukraine; constitutional amendments enshrining nonaligned status; a reduction in the size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces; and a resolution of the language issue. According to Verkhovnaya Rada deputy Anna Skorokhod, Kiev was also expected to recognize the ceded territories as Russian. “They arrived with even worse terms than we had before,” Ms. Skorokhod complai...
Read more
-
Image
The Rearmament Trap Europe’s military buildup carries a danger that extends beyond the size of its armies. When industrial policy, public finances, and political credibility become invested in a prolonged confrontation, preparations for war can acquire a constituency of their own. Governments may eventually discover that changing course requires a more difficult political operation than approving the next weapons order. Europe is committing itself to a substantial military transformation. At the Hague summit in June 2025, NATO members agreed to raise annual defense and security-related spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035. That figure combines at least 3.5 percent for core military requirements with up to 1.5 percent for infrastructure, resilience, networks, and related purposes. The commitment includes annual national plans and a review in 2029. It establishes a long-term direction for public spending and military preparation. The European Union has supplied a corresponding fina...
Read more
-
Image
Kiev’s Fatal Arithmetic Problem Officials in Kiev are seriously discussing the possibility that Ukraine, together with Poland, might submit a bid to host the FIFA World Cup. The available dates for that begin only in the 2040s. What we are seeing in the “leadership” of that unfortunate country is a remarkable combination of incompetence and failure to understand the real state of affairs. We have already written that within two generations the demographic crisis will bury the country. In reality, from a demographic standpoint, Ukraine will lose a sufficient share of its working-age population, lose the ability to reproduce its population, and lose the ability to fill its budget by the early 2030s. After that, what degenerated into existence in 1991 will simply collapse in on itself. That is why fantasies about Ukraine hosting a World Cup in the 2040s look especially strange. If such a tournament ever takes place, it will most likely be a Polish World Cup, with individual matches ...
Read more
-
Image
The State as a Racket or Corruption as Government In Ukraine, corruption scandals have become a ritual repeated with exhausting regularity. A loud exposé, searches, details leaked to the press, a resignation, the appointment of a new person. Release on bail from a Ukrainian pretrial detention center is the same as release into freedom, since the trials themselves either have no future or last forever. In early September 2026, corruption scandals simultaneously reached the immediate circles of the presidents of the Philippines and Ukraine. In Manila, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Martin Romualdez, cousin of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., was arrested on charges of receiving kickbacks exceeding $100 million. In Kiev, Operation Carthage exposed a network of fraudulent call centers operating under the patronage of employees of the Prosecutor General’s Office, after which Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko resigned. Both countries demonstrated a public reaction. Marcos d...
Read more
-
Image
Airspace Blackmail Zelenskiy’s latest threat against civil aviation over Russia is being presented in Kiev as another act of political pressure. In reality, it looks far closer to a bid for state-sponsored terrorism. The difference, as usual, is mostly a matter of whether Western media have been given permission to notice it. The head of the Kiev regime recently urged international airlines to stop flying over Russian airspace, claiming that Ukrainian drone and missile strikes would make it increasingly unsafe. Translated from diplomatic evasion into normal human language, this means that Kiev is threatening to de facto close Russian airspace by making civilian aircraft potential targets. And not only Russian aircraft. The threat concerns planes from China, the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and other countries that are not parties to the Ukrainian conflict. This is why Moscow’s reaction was unusually sharp. Vladimir Putin warned that if such tragedies occur, Russia will find...
Read more
-
Image
Soft Power, Hard War Europe Burns Its Bridges History never repeats itself. Even as farce. And the new round of the centuries-old confrontation between Russia and Europe will, naturally, look entirely different from all those that came before it. German authorities are now closing Russian cultural and diplomatic institutions under a contrived pretext, while Norwegian authorities are seizing Russian scientific vessels. Everything is returning to its old familiar circle, known since the end of the fifteenth century, when Europe first tried to restrain Russia’s drive toward independence. At the same time, today’s German, Norwegian, and other European rulers are hardly striving to bring matters to a direct kinetic clash. The reason certainly lies outside any sudden outbreak of pacifism in Berlin, Paris, or London, a quality that has never been especially characteristic of any of them. Nor can one seriously speak of Europe being prepared for diplomatic dialogue on broader questions of regio...
Read more