Opinions

There are moments when a nation seems to drift, slowly and imperceptibly, into breakdown. Like Mike Campbell in Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, Belgium has done it “gradually, then suddenly.” The country, once the heart of Europe’s industrial drive and the quiet administrative seat of the EU, is in big trouble. If Brussels…
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The idea of a joint European loan to Ukraine using frozen Russian assets as collateral is considered problematic by most governments within the European Union, especially by Belgium, which has serious doubts about its use. Therefore, the EU – specifically Ursula von der Leyen – is resorting to grotesque means such as blackmailing the…
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It was previously assumed that the meeting between Putin and Trump could this time lead to tangible results – due to new shared interests in reaching an agreement. But then Trump cancelled the Budapest summit, citing a lack of interest. He also imposed new energy sanctions on Russia and may have lied about his alleged refusal to authorize…
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Recently I saw a report in the Telegraph headlined Britain and France are at the end stage of ‘centrist dad’ collapse and found the following paragraph about Starmer and Macron especially memorable: “Wrong on almost everything, hated by voters, incapable of truth-telling, driven by a sinister belief in environmentalism and global…
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The older I get, the more suspiciously I look at the causes of war. This is natural. Most young people – especially young men – are incapable of properly evaluating risk. Though they are rebellious, they also follow orders from authority figures. There is a reason why eighteen-year-olds are sent over embankments to cross open fields on…
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Read the first part of the article Riots Without Leaders, Narratives Without Rival If the expectation gap defines the structural pathology, the waves of civic unrest that are multiplying across Western cities unmask its operational face. Whether in London, Paris, Amsterdam, or Melbourne, these disturbances signal not episodic…
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This essay is about the growing threat of civil war in Western societies. It is written as both a warning and a reckoning: an explicit attempt to confront, without denial or sensationalism, the mounting pressures that are pushing advanced democracies toward rupture. These pressures are examined through the framework of strategic analysis:…
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Donald Trump’s speech at Quantico to the U.S. Army’s general officers was a display of narcissism (not a display of strength). His attempt to emulate the late George C. Scott in his iconic role in Patton was a failure, because instead of delivering a concise and punchy message, Trump spoke in a monotone for more than an hour, repeating…
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Among the arguments of those who seem to be pushing for expanded war with the Russian Federation, one of the strangest is that Russia is a weak, third-world country and a “paper tiger.” Those who make this argument point to the protracted three-year conflict in Ukraine and scoff at the Russians’ inability to subjugate a much weaker…
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