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The Burden of Proximity One of my world history professors once remarked that for the states of Central America the United States is a historical curse - one from which decisive emancipation is structurally impossible. It is difficult to expect that the fate of countries south of the Rio Grande will serve as a lesson to anyone. Yet what unfolds there offers a useful reflection point for all large powers. It raises a simple question: what should a great state’s strategy toward its immediate neighbors actually look like? The dramatic events that followed the elimination by Mexican security forces of one of the country’s major organized crime leaders revealed to the world the fragility of Mexico’s institutional structure. More precisely, they revealed something deeper than fragility - the absence of the state in the classical sense, as the sole authority capable of organizing legitimate violence. This should not surprise anyone who has studied international relations. States construct the...
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Repricing the Umbrella Driving through Northern Virginia on the way from Washington toward the Shenandoah Valley, I randomly found myself thinking about the recently concluded Munich Security Conference. The landscape was orderly, the roads smooth, the federal skyline fading behind me. The conference, by contrast, felt like a controlled demolition of familiar assumptions. Munich 2026 marked a structural shift in transatlantic relations. The United States articulated a revised formula in which the American security umbrella is explicitly linked to political and economic discipline. Protection is framed as a managed asset within a negotiated arrangement. The language of shared destiny has given way to the language of conditionality. At the level of systemic signals, the shift is visible. European officials speak more cautiously about American reliability. Washington speaks more openly about European dependency. Leverage is no longer an abstract concept. It is referenced directly, i...
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The Residual Empire After Françafrique Following yesterday’s article, “The End of Françafrique,” I received a number of requests for further analysis and additional detail. What follows is an expanded examination of the subject. France maintains an entire corps of military advisers across Africa. Yet at the same time, it is steadily losing its visible military footprint on the continent. Chad has terminated its 2019 military cooperation agreement with Paris — the last Sahel country to host a French contingent of roughly one thousand troops. Senegal has announced a similar decision. Dakar had long been considered one of France’s most reliable pillars in West Africa. The withdrawal of troops will not immediately dismantle economic ties. But the loss of bases in the Sahel is unmistakably one of the major foreign policy reversals of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency. The timing was deliberate. Chad’s foreign minister announced the termination one day after a visit by France’s new foreign m...
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The End of Françafrique Niger Declares War on France? Millions of headlines proclaimed that Niger had declared war on France. Formally, this is not the case. And in practical terms it is not entirely clear with whom Niger intends to fight. There are no French troops left in the country. They departed at the end of 2023. Yet the broader reality remains: Africa’s war against colonialism continues. Niger announced the beginning of military actions against France. The statement was made before a crowd at a stadium in Niamey by the military chief under the President of Niger, Amadou Ibro. He clarified that previously there had been no state of war, but that now there was no alternative but to enter one. Legally speaking, this cannot be considered a formal declaration of war. Nor is it clear how such a war would even be conducted, given the absence of French soldiers. What we are witnessing is a sharp escalation in anti-French rhetoric by Niger’s authorities. And there are reasons for ...
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  Remarks by the Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference - analyzed 14 February 2025, 3:32pm Full transcript here COMPREHENSIVE COGNITIVE AUDIT SUBJECT: JD VANCE (MUNICH SECURITY CONFERENCE ADDRESS) - UNIFIED FORENSIC REPORT (ENHANCED) DATE: 19 FEB 2026   1. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ARCHITECTURE The speaker exhibits high ideological volition and advanced narrative control, utilizing a calculated populist architecture to execute structural disruption over the course of the 22-minute address. Calculated Empathy: The speaker establishes immediate rapport by acknowledging a recent local tragedy, stating: "We're very moved, and our thoughts and prayers are with Munich and everybody affected by the evil inflicted on this beautiful community." This secures audience receptivity before introducing a confrontational critique. Authority Transference: The speaker claims authority derived directly from ...
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Peace as Rearmament or Negotiating for War What exactly are Ukraine’s European partners doing    - having lost the war and now being saved from disaster at the last moment by Trump? Let us leave aside the fact that not a single Russian demand made it into their “plan.” Perhaps they intend to bargain further at the negotiating table. But to sit at that table, they first have to convince Russia that there is any point in substantive negotiations over the Ukrainian crisis. Exchanging plans remotely can continue forever. If Trump is interested, he can read them. They propose that negotiations begin with Ukraine retaining an 800,000-strong peacetime army, armed and trained by the West. Ukraine’s army is currently smaller. The Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Syrsky recently complained that it needs to be increased at least to 700,000. I will not even discuss the shortage of weapons and ammunition, or the grim prospects for solving these problems. In other words, they are open...
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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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