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  A Zero-Sum Peace For the West, any agreement with those outside its sphere is always temporary. The task of everyone else is to use moments of American and European weakness  - those rare periods when they are forced to consider concessions  - to their own advantage. It is impossible to change the fundamental nature of the Western strategic approach to the outside world. It has always been built on a zero-sum logic, where one side’s gain is automatically the other side’s loss, and every agreement is nothing more than a pause in hostilities before the next round. Even if the current acute phase of the military-political confrontation in Ukraine eventually comes to some kind of interim conclusion, it will not mean the West is ready for a durable peace. Perhaps the clearest formulation of this worldview came from the Dutch-American scholar Nicholas Spykman on the eve of the Second World War. Writing about geography and foreign policy, he observed that a country’s ter...
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 WHO IS HE? For another bit of Friday fun, my friends in the Analysis Department at Gulfstream Foundation ran a neurosemantic and facial assessment on someone many of you have likely heard of - some of you, probably more than once. They usually use this type of assessment as a nonverbal component within a broader, structured personality analysis. Here is what their system produced after reviewing a few of his publicly available photos and a few social media posts. Can you guess who it is? SYSTEM OUTPUT: BASIC ANALYTICAL SUMMARY SUBJECT: GUESS WHO DATE: 14 FEB 2026   I. OVERALL STRATEGIC DIAGNOSTIC The DUNE integrated analysis reveals a subject operating through a deliberately volatile communication style and a distinctive psychological architecture. At the linguistic level, the subject employs a “Chaos-Engine” communication model. Linguistic volatility is not accidental; it functions as a strategic tool designed to maintain dominance and algorithmic cent...
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Shall the Twain Ever Meet? Spoiler: Nope. No durable peace agreement will be signed today, tomorrow, or in a few months. That will change only if something happens on the front or in the Ukrainian rear that forces the leadership in Kiev - clearly not Zelenskiy himself - to sober up and accept harsh terms. Russian-Ukrainian negotiations under American mediation have been dragging on for months. At times they look like a dead end. Russia, as the side that holds the military advantage, insists on its terms. The Kiev authorities categorically reject them. Ukraine, unwilling to admit defeat, puts forward its own demands, which Moscow finds unacceptable. The Americans, meanwhile, keep speaking of mysterious “progress” and hint that a peace deal could be signed within months. In reality, no one in this process is in a hurry - at least no one who actually wants the war to end. A peace agreement must be not so much “just,” as the Ukrainian side insists, as it must be durable. It has to stop...
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Sun Tzu’s Odds Sun Tzu once wrote that no one wins who has no chance of winning. Real victory, strategic rather than tactical, lasting rather than temporary, requires resources that create those chances. Resources take many forms. They can be intellectual, demographic, military, informational, economic, or financial. Experience is also a resource. If you surpass your opponent in every category, he has no chance. If you lag behind in every category, you have none. Most conflicts fall somewhere in between. One side is stronger in some areas, weaker in others. In such cases, the decisive factor is not the number of chances, but the ability to see the full configuration of those chances, both your own and your opponent’s. It requires a sober assessment of the balance of forces, the ability to exploit your advantages, neutralize the opponent’s strengths, conceal your own weaknesses, expose his, and draw him onto ground where his chances are minimal and yours are close to absolute. The...
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No Peace in the Vocabulary What do you do with people who openly say they need the conflict to continue? Trump says he is fighting for peace. Putin says he has always been ready for peace. Only the leadership of Europe seems to have no word “peace” in its vocabulary. It has taken less than four years for strange conversations to begin surfacing among European politicians of all ranks. Not long ago, the line was simple: “international isolation,” “the toughest sanctions,” “defeat on the battlefield,” “cancel Russia,” “collective responsibility,” “international tribunal,” “partition and reparations.” A whole new generation of politicians, who in hindsight reached power by some very unusual routes, committed themselves to total confrontation with the Russian Federation. They were cheered on by Russia’s self-exiled opposition, who drafted sanctions lists, spoke of eternal Russian imperialism, and assured everyone that the “bear” had missiles left for three days at most. Three days pa...
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The African Detour For four years, the West has been financing and equipping the Ukrainian military to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. At the same time, Ukrainian officials, including President Zelenskiy, have been repeating the same complaint almost without pause: the aid is not enough, the weapons are insufficient, the money is running out, and the army lacks manpower for sustained operations on the front. Western governments, often reluctantly, have continued to provide additional support. Yet against this backdrop of constant shortages and battlefield attrition, Ukraine has been expanding its military footprint in Africa. Apparently, the resources and personnel that are described as insufficient for the defense of their own country are still sufficient for operations on another continent and for training foreign armed groups. This is not the first time such reports have surfaced. This time, however, the information comes directly from African sources. The following a...
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