We are living in an extremely dangerous moment in history. We are also living in an extremely irrational time, at least when it comes to evaluating the mentality, conduct, and words of Western politicians and media in the face of disaster.
On the one hand, Western leaders, pundits, and military commanders clamor with predictions of war with Russia as being imminent. Yet on the other hand, there is an astounding dereliction to avert it. Diplomacy and understanding are boorishly shunned. Indeed, there is an absolutely irrational choice of escalation towards war, especially among European politicians.
Underlying this, of course, is an ideological supremacist belief, a contempt for Russia and other officially designated enemies (China, Iran, and so on), whereby the Western political class sees itself as superior, not as equals. That mentality makes for war and precludes diplomatic engagement and dialogue.
In any objective reading of the situation, there is little doubt that the danger of all-out world war is upon us. Incredibly, for the third time in just over a century, the planet is facing the specter of a massive international conflict. But on this occasion, the outcome would be nuclear conflagration with the extinction of life as we know it. This repeated destruction is a damning indictment of the Western system, its capitalist and imperialist engines for violence, domination and, inevitably, conflict. Surely, such a system should be abolished.
The Doomsday Clock, overseen by the independent Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, is at its closest point to midnight in all of 80 years of existence. The clock was inaugurated following the U.S. atomic horror attacks on Japan in 1945. It was meant to serve as a warning of the increasing risk of nuclear war. It is truly a frightening spectacle that today’s danger of global disaster surpasses the many perils that were encountered during the Cold War decades. Today’s tensions surpass even those of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the United States and the Soviet Union edged towards a nuclear war.
Many Western scholars, legal experts, analysts, and seasoned diplomats have increasingly added their voices warning of the ultimate disaster. We pay respect to the sane voices of people like Alfred de Zayas, Jeffrey Sachs, Larry Johnson, and Scott Ritter, voices in the West that, unlike their political class, are passionately warning of the path to perdition the world is on and needs to urgently get off.
The warning words are flashing like a red light, yet Western leaders keep making decisions and issuing belligerent statements that are driving the world to the precipice.
This week, European politicians have again openly advocated attacking the Russian Federation by blockading Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and NATO chief Mark Rutte (former Dutch premier) have echoed calls from other European politicians to effectively attack Kaliningrad, that is, to attack the Russian Federation. Russia’s nuclear doctrine explicitly states that such an assault compels it to use nuclear weapons in response.
So, why do NATO leaders keep pushing provocation? Such moves are merely an extension of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine. Their war is a failure. But the Western pro-war politicians cannot admit they are wrong. They are willing to incite a wider war rather than admit defeat and face the political repercussions from their own citizens.
Russia this week issued a grave warning, saying that any attack on Kaliningrad would result in Russian retaliation with nuclear weapons.
Instead of coming to their senses and sobering up, European politicians haughtily dismiss Russia’s warnings as a “bluff” or accuse Moscow of nuclear saber-rattling.
In a plenary address to the Valdai forum in Moscow on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin underlined the infernal precariousness.
“If it comes to a direct attack on the Russian Federation – in this case, Kaliningrad, although it could potentially involve other territories as well – the question of Russia using all the weapons at its disposal would inevitably and immediately arise. That is inevitable,” said Putin.
In an ominous assessment of the reckless direction, he noted:
“We must realise that the moment when nothing can be changed any longer may come very quickly and unexpectedly for everyone. The logic of escalating, increasingly harsh retaliatory measures leads to a fatal point of no return.”
The Russian leader is saying that the West’s relentless escalation in words and deeds is leading to an abyss. Incredibly, the Western politicians refuse to restrain themselves. “At the heart of this escalation lie arrogance and overconfidence… The spiral is tightening, and the devastating consequences are growing.”
This appalling dynamic is redolent of the prelude to the First and Second World Wars, when Western political establishments were insouciant about the impending doom.
But a Third World War is truly a point of no return.
“All the more so today, when the arsenals of the world’s leading powers contain weapons capable of destroying all life or, at the very least, reducing the Earth to a catastrophic state,” Putin said.
What is deplorable is the total propagandizing of public discussion in the West. Anyone who dares to speak about the objective historical causes that have given rise to the current tensions is censored or pilloried as a Russian stooge.
There are eminent voices of sanity in the West, as noted above. But they are systematically excluded from public discourse by the mainstream media and academia. The public has to rely on alternative media sources for information. That has, thankfully, energized critical views among citizens in ever greater numbers, who are questioning the whole warmongering policy of inordinate military spending and weapons for Ukraine to fight a futile war against Russia. Notably, this week German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and NATO’s Mark Rutte were heckled and booed when they appeared in public in Muenster, Germany.
Increasing numbers of people understand that we have been pushed to an existential crisis by Western governments (regimes) who took undemocratic, secret decisions to wage war against Russia years ago.
As former British diplomat Ian Proud pointed out in an excellent podcast this week while attending the Sochi forum, the rulers in London made a conscious decision to go to war with Russia as far back as 2014, when the West sponsored the fascist coup in Kiev.
Other Western figures, like former U.S. state planner Victoria Nuland and former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, have also admitted in their own words that NATO deliberately weaponized Ukraine after 2014 for the purpose of confronting Russia. This was before the hostilities erupted in Ukraine in February 2o22.
Thus, the world has been pushed to a nuclear “extinction event” all because of Western policy to pursue confrontation with Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy.
War is highly probable, but it is not inevitable. Western politicians and media, through their arrogance and Russophobia, are certainly doing their worst to make it inevitable. But these criminal elements may not prevail.
There are international structures and laws; there is still diplomacy, albeit abused and trashed; perhaps more importantly, there is mass public opinion against the odious warmongers; and there is a burgeoning social and political uprising against the evidently bankrupt Western political system.
The political elite in the West who are pimping for war may seem dominant, owing to apparently dominant media narratives. But their power is vastly overrated against the huge public opposition to their criminal agenda.
History may rhyme, as with lead-ups to previous infamous wars. This time, however, a crucial difference is that there may be sufficient public awareness so as not to fall for the warmonger ruse of bailing out the rotten system.
We are on the eve of destruction, but there is every sound hope that rather than war, the destruction tomorrow could be that of the Western imperialist system, thereby giving way to a truly better, more just and peaceful world.
This is the first part of Mats Alexandersson’s series on war, peace, and security. The next three parts will be published during September and October on the Clarté blog.
For a long time, the United States has united economic, financial, military, and political power to secure a U.S.-centered capitalist world order. This has often been legitimized with what has been called liberal hegemony: a rhetoric in which democracy, individual rights, market economy, and international rules are presented as universal norms. But in practice, these principles have repeatedly been subordinated to the demand to preserve American supremacy and prevent rival great powers from dominating strategic regions.
What has come to be called the rules-based world order has therefore also functioned as a self-image and a language of power. The United States has ascribed to itself a special historical task: to guarantee stability, open markets, and security in the world economy. This belief in an American superiority with a special historical task has become a kind of meta-ideology. Behind this universalism, however, a more tangible class and power interest has operated, in which the American state’s geopolitical role has ultimately served the expansion and security of capital.
Two figures clearly demonstrate this line. Henry Kissinger made American realpolitik visible in its most brutal form. In Chile, the United States helped undermine Salvador Allende’s democratically elected government and subsequently supported Pinochet’s dictatorship. The same logic recurred in Cambodia, East Timor, and support for Pakistan’s military regime: democracy and human life had to give way to geopolitical control.
When Zbigniew Brzezinski in The Grand Chessboard in 1997 more sophisticatedly formulated that no rival must be allowed to dominate Eurasia, this practice became an explicit doctrine.1 The line from Kissinger to Brzezinski is therefore clear: from secret intervention to open strategy for global supremacy. It is in this development that today’s bloc formation, war economy, and growing risk of great-power war must be understood.
The painting “Die Namenlosen” (1916) by the Austrian painter Albin Egger-Lienz.
Why Eurasia is gaining additional significance
Today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio constitutes a central node in the U.S. foreign and security policy apparatus, where the White House, the Pentagon, intelligence services, NATO, and financial policy bodies cooperate. At the same time, the strategic environment is increasingly shaped by the technology and defense industry: AI, cloud, satellite, semiconductor, and weapons companies influence the technology of war, information flows, and investments. American hegemony therefore appears not only as state exercise of power, but as an intertwined military, digital, and financial system.
On Brzezinski’s map, Europe was never peripheral. In The Grand Chessboard, Eurasia is described as the decisive geopolitical playing field, and Europe as the United States’ most important bridgehead on the continent. An integrated Europe, bound to the United States through the transatlantic link and NATO, would strengthen American influence in western Eurasia. Europe therefore appears less as an independent power pole than as a strategic platform in a U.S.-led order.
This logic becomes clearest in Brzezinski’s view of Russia and Ukraine. He argued that Russia’s most important geostrategic option lay in a Western orientation, but on terms that did not make the country an equal power pole. Ukraine was given a key role as a “geopolitical pivot”: without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire, while control over Ukraine would once again give the country decisive strategic weight. Here the limitation of the great-power perspective is also visible: Ukraine has been reduced to a piece in a larger power game, despite its own political agency and right to self-determination.
Brzezinski advocated a geopolitical pluralism in Eurasia, that is, an order in which no single power may dominate the entire continent. In practice, this meant that the United States should support regional counterweights, alliances, and independent states in order to limit both a revanchist Russia and a rising China. That model can be interpreted as a strategy for balance of power, but also as a manual for playing regional actors against one another in order to preserve American supremacy.
The same approach characterized Brzezinski’s analysis of Central Asia and the Caucasus, which he described as the “Eurasian Balkans”: an area where energy, transport routes, weak states, and ethnic conflicts make the region an object of great-power rivalry. The region thus becomes primarily of strategic value to external powers, not through the local societies’ own goals. Superpower thinking turns smaller countries into objects of geopolitics rather than equal political subjects.
There is rearmament for war
The historical retrospective is needed to understand today’s situation. The war in Ukraine, Europe’s rearmament, and the growing fear of a Russian conflict with NATO cannot be explained solely as the consequence of an isolated conflict. They must also be seen against the background of the U.S.-led security order that emerged after the Cold War — an order whose goal has been to preserve American dominance in Eurasia. Today, this policy has had contradictory consequences: Russia, China, and Iran have moved closer to one another, Europe’s room for maneuver has been limited, and the risk of great-power conflict has increased.
Brzezinski’s book formulated this strategy unusually openly. The United States was to prevent a rival power or coalition from gathering sufficient strength to dominate Eurasia. This meant limiting a resurrected Russia, preventing China from becoming an equal competitor, and keeping Europe politically and militarily tied to the United States. In this perspective, NATO is not only a defense alliance, but also a tool for American power projection in Europe and its neighborhood.
The Eurasian counterweight
Cooperation between China, Russia, and Iran is more than a temporary reaction to sanctions and individual wars. China contributes industry, capital, and market; Russia contributes energy, raw materials, military capability, and geographical depth; Iran contributes regional weight and a strategic location. Their interests are not identical, and the cooperation contains clear contradictions. But the relationship between China and Russia has acquired a material foundation that makes it more durable than many Western assessments previously assumed.
Here lies an ironic consequence. A policy intended to prevent a Eurasian counterweight may have helped create it. At the same time, the United States faces its own economic tensions: large budget deficits, growing national debt, and high interest rates increase vulnerability. The dollar’s status as a reserve currency continues to provide room for maneuver, but does not eliminate the risk of a crisis of confidence. The cost of such a crisis would likely be passed on to ordinary wage earners through inflation, cutbacks, and deteriorating public services.
Europe’s dilemma
Economist Jeffrey Sachs has argued that Europe has historically had significant economic complementarity with Russia: European industry and technology could be linked to Russian energy, raw materials, and market. According to Sachs, sanctions, conflict policy, and dependence on the United States have broken this possibility and weakened Europe’s strategic independence.2
That assessment is disputed, not least because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has drastically changed the conditions for economic cooperation. But it raises a necessary question: Can Europe formulate its own security policy, or is the continent reduced to an arena for other powers’ conflict? Sachs advocates direct diplomacy with Moscow, a clearer separation between EU foreign policy and NATO, and a European defense that is more independent and less dependent on the United States.
The risk of war
The acute danger is escalation. There is no simple or risk-free path to a military defeat for Russia, but policy continues to sharpen the confrontation. If the goal slides from Ukraine’s defense to a lasting weakening or subjugation of Russia, the risk increases that the proxy war turns into a direct conflict between nuclear powers.
Peace cannot be built through uninterrupted rearmament or by forcing one side into capitulation. A sustainable peace requires diplomacy, recognized security interests, and an international order in which no great power is given the right to dominate others. Public opinion in Europe and the United States can become decisive: when the costs of the arms race, social cutbacks, and the risk of war become clear, pressure can grow for a different course.
Le perdite dell’Ucraina diventano sempre più difficili da nascondere di fronte ai crescenti problemi di mobilitazione e alla carenza di risorse umane. Le dichiarazioni di Tusk e Budanov sollevano il velo sulla portata della crisi, che potrebbe portare a un ulteriore inasprimento della mobilitazione.
Lo scorso maggio, Anne Keast-Butler, direttrice del Government Communications Headquarters (Gchq) britannico, ha dichiarato che, alla fine di maggio, le forze armate russe avevano subito quasi mezzo milione di morti e circa un milione tra feriti e dispersi.
Richard Knighton, Capo di Stato Maggiore delle forze armate britanniche, ha fornito ulteriori dettagli. Secondo le sue valutazioni, enunciate l’11 settembre, l’esercito russo avrebbe riportato una quota preponderante delle perdite a partire dal gennaio 2023. Cioè da quando «la Russia ha conquistato appena il 2% del territorio ucraino […]. Credo che queste cifre mostrino chiaramente lo spreco insensato e futile di vite umane a fronte di progressi così scarsi e per un obiettivo così illegittimo del presidente Putin», ha affermato Knighton.
Per lo Stato Maggiore di Londra, le perdite totali subite dalla Russia in Ucraina supererebbero l’ammontare complessivo dei caduti registrati dalle forze armate sovietiche e russe in tutti i conflitti combattuti dalla seconda metà del XX Secolo.
Le stime dell’alto comando britannico risultano sostanzialmente convergenti con quelle formulate dal Center for Strategic and International Studies (Csis) statunitense, che all’inizio di luglio quantificava in 1,4 milioni di unità il totale delle vittime riportato dalla Russia, tra cui circa 450.000 morti.
Mediaziona, testata indipendente russa che, con la collaborazione della «Bbc», tiene dall’inizio del conflitto il conto dei caduti russi sulla base dell’analisi di registri cimiteriali, necrologi e post sui social network, fornisce una stima di quasi 260.000 morti e oltre 350.000 feriti al 21 settembre.
Quanto alle perdite ucraine, è molto più difficile reperire stime pubbliche all’interno dei Paesi membri della Nato. Un delle poche eccezioni era costituita dal Csis, che a giugno stimava 125.000-150.000 morti e 400.000-500.000 feriti.
Qualcosa è tuttavia cominciato a cambiare. Lo scorso 17 settembre, nel corso di un intervento pronunciato davanti alla Camera Bassa del Parlamento polacco, il primo ministro Tusk ha affermato, sulla base di informazioni ottenute dal governo ucraino, che, «di recente, l’Ucraina ha registrato 27.000 tra morti e feriti al mese; si tratta, purtroppo, di cifre record nel senso più triste del termine per questa guerra. A questo ritmo, l’inverno in Ucraina potrebbe rivelarsi catastrofico».
Tusk ha imputato il netto peggioramento della situazione sul fronte bellico alle «nuove capacità tecnologiche della Russia», a partire dai droni dotati di motore a reazione impiegati con sempre maggiore frequenza dalle forze armate russe.
Non è chiaro se il dato numerico indicato dal premier polacco si riferisca al periodo estivo o a un lasso di tempo più lungo, ma risulta perfettamente compatibile con il quadro tratteggiato soltanto poche settimane prima da Budanov, che in qualità di capo del gabinetto del presidente Zelensky ed ex direttore del Gur aveva quantificato in almeno 30.000 persone al mese l’ammontare minimo degli ucraini da mobilitare per reggere l’urto russo.
Le valutazioni relative alle perdite riportate dall’Ucraina formulate da Tusk e Budanov non collimano affatto con le stime riferite dal presidente Zelensky, che a luglio aveva parlato di 50.000 caduti e 400.000 feriti subiti dall’Ucraina a partire dal febbraio 2022, e risultano profondamente discordanti rispetto alla narrazione propinata in tutto l’Occidente fin dall’inizio del conflitto.
Con qualche eccezione. In un’intervista rilasciata a «Sky News Australia» nell’ottobre dello scorso anno (segnalata in Italia soltanto da «Analisi Difesa»), James Carden, specialista di questioni geostrategiche con trascorsi come consigliere del Dipartimento di Stato per le relazioni russo-statunitensi sotto l’amministrazione Obama, dichiarò che «dalle mie fonti risulta che il rapporto di perdite tra ucraini e russi è di 36 a 1. Sono le perdite ucraine ad essere vicine a un milione. La guerra d’attrito attuata fin dall’inizio dai russi è stata un successo, sono gli ucraini ad essere sull’orlo del disastro».
Nel novembre 2022, la stessa presidente della Commissione Europea Ursula Von der Leyen si lasciò sfuggire che l’Ucraina aveva subito fino a quel momento circa «oltre 20.000 caduti civili e 100.000 soldati». Senonché, il filmato originale del discorso fu rimosso e sostituito con una versione “epurata” dallo scottante riferimento alle perdite ucraine.
Resta quindi da capire il perché due dei più strenui sostenitori dello sforzo bellico ucraino come Tusk e Budanov abbiano deciso proprio ora di sollevare il velo su una realtà molto meno edificante rispetto a quella descritta da governi e giornali sia negli Stati Uniti che in Europa.
Una infusione di pessimismo risulta funzionale per un verso a “predisporre” l’opinione pubblica ad accettare nuovi e ben più gravosi sacrifici per sostenere l’Ucraina, identificata a tutt’oggi come “scudo d’Europa” dal presidente Zelensky e dai suoi collaboratori.
Per l’alto, a legittimare l’adozione di misure che restringano il perimetro legislativo per il conferimento dello status di rifugiati agli ucraini in età di servizio militare. Si tratta, in altri termini, di aprire il varco a provvedimenti implicanti il rimpatrio forzato, prodromico al reclutamento nelle fila dell’esercito, di almeno una parte dei cittadini ucraini riparati presso i Paesi membri dell’Unione Europea. A partire proprio dalla Polonia, che di concerto con Russia e Germania ospita il maggior numero di rifugiati ucraini divenuti nel corso dei mesi oggetto di crescente risentimento popolare.
Budanov, dal canto suo, ha riconosciuto il forte malcontento suscitato in seno all’opinione pubblica ucraina dai sempre più ricorrenti episodi di mobilitazione forzata, e posto contestualmente l’accento sulla necessità che lo Stato adotti un approccio più costruttivo.
A tale scopo, il viceministro della Difesa Liubov Halan ha annunciato un’imminente riforma dei Centri territoriali di reclutamento che sembra tuttavia discostarsi profondamente dalle raccomandazioni dell’ex direttore del Gur.
Lo si evince dalle affermazioni di Roman Kostenko, che in qualità di segretario della Commissione Parlamentare per la Sicurezza Nazionale, la Difesa e l’Intelligence ha proclamato l’introduzione di “modifiche radicali” alle procedure di mobilitazione, comprendenti una possibile abbassamento dei requisiti per la coscrizione relativi all’età contestualmente al passaggio a un modello di reclutamento più “estensivo” reso impellente anche dalla portata sempre più imponente del fenomeno dei cosiddetti “imboscati”.
Già nel gennaio di quest’anno, l’allora ministro della Difesa Fedorov aveva dichiarato alla Verkhovna Rada di aver ereditato oltre 200.000 casi di “abbandono arbitrario del reparto” (un reato distinto dalla diserzione perché presuppone l’intenzione di tornare a combattere da parte dell’inosservante) e più di due milioni di cittadini ricercati per renitenza alla leva.
Le donne restano, quantomeno per ora, escluse dalla riforma del meccanismo di coscrizione, come specificato dalla Verkhovna Rada attraverso una nota che sottolineava l’assenza di iniziative legislative e perfino di discussioni interne riguardo la mobilitazione femminile. Il pronunciamento del Parlamento ucraino fa seguito alle dichiarazioni di Keith Kellogg, generale a riposo ed ex inviato speciale dell’amministrazione Trump per l’Ucraina e la Russia secondo cui Kiev dovrebbe procedere al coinvolgimento delle donne, in quanto «combattono bene quanto gli uomini». Negli stessi giorni in cui Kellogg forniva i suoi suggerimenti, il «Telegraph» descriveva il servizio militare femminile in Ucraina come una vittoria per il femminismo, riportando le dichiarazioni di un’operatrice di droni favorevole alla leva femminile.
La proposta di mobilitare la componente femminile della società ucraina era già stata discussa all’inizio del 2026, dopo che una donna comandante di unità di droni aveva appoggiato pubblicamente l’idea sull’onda del clamore popolare suscitato dalle convocazioni militari recapitate per errore a una decina abbondante di donne ucraine. Nei primi giorni di agosto, è stata presentata una petizione che sollecita la coscrizione delle donne senza figli, sponsorizzata dall’ex ministro della Difesa Alekseij Reznikov secondo cui, «così come Israele, possiamo sopravvivere solo se tutti accettano di dover difendere l’Ucraina […]. Il reclutamento delle donne, raddoppierebbe le nostre risorse per la mobilitazione».
Non basta rendere sicuri i singoli sistemi di intelligenza artificiale, bisogna guardare alle loro interazioni. È una lezione lasciata dalla crisi finanziaria: comportamenti individualmente razionali possono produrre risultati collettivamente disastrosi.
Russland hat die NATO davor gewarnt, die Lage um die russische Exklave Kaliningrad weiter zu eskalieren. Für diese Warnung gibt es handfeste Gründe, das Publikum der deutschen Mainstream-Medien jedoch nicht kennt. Entsprechend leicht war es für den Spiegel, die russische Warnung in ein vollkommen falsches Licht zu stellen. Schauen wir uns daher zunächst den Grund […]
European NATO members should have been able to attack Iran instead of relying on the US and Israel, according to Secretary-General Mark Rutte, the head of the self-described defensive alliance.
Iran has been attacked twice in two years, both times over allegations that it seeks to develop nuclear weapons, which Tehran rejects as false. Speaking at the Euronews Defence & Space Summit on Friday, Rutte endorsed the idea that European nations should acquire the military capabilities needed to carry out such wars of aggression themselves.
In the future, “the Europeans will be able to take care of their backyard themselves. It should be us doing this, not the Americans,” he said.
“Europe was not able to take out the nuclear capability of Iran. We couldn’t. We didn’t have the capabilities. In 10 years, we can and we should,” he added, referring to multi-billion euro rearmament efforts now underway in European members of the military bloc.
Earlier in the day, the NATO chief dismissed Russian concerns over hostile rhetoric by some members of the bloc regarding the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Region.
“Basically what we said is, ‘hey, listen, we are a defensive alliance, and stop the nuclear threat’,” he told journalists when asked about a formal warning Moscow had sent to Brussels.
Russia cited remarks by Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who proposed in September deploying additional troops near the Russian border so that Moscow would be “uncertain of what we will do.” Moscow said it would use its “entire available arsenal” to defend Russian territory from a possible attack by NATO states.
NATO was created in the early years of the Cold War, ensuring a continued US military presence in Western Europe. The Soviet Union later established its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, which no longer exists.
While NATO describes itself as a defensive alliance, it has carried out military attacks against other countries, including the UK- and French-led 2011 intervention in Libya, after which the North African state was balkanized.
Russia considers NATO’s eastward expansion since the end of the Cold War a major national security threat and has cited it as one of the principal causes of the Ukraine conflict.
Rutte’s argument in support of the US-Israeli attacks on Iran echoed remarks by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said in June 2025 that the Israelis were doing “[the] dirty work for us.”
It falls to alternative parties like Germany’s AfD to push for peace.
Britain’s Labour Party is not traditionally thought of as a bastion of militarism or authoritarianism. Yet listening to some of what its top figures have been saying recently might cause one to doubt the conventional wisdom on that.
Consider what Labour Party strategist Paul Richards said in a GB News interview earlier this month. Asked how the UK might respond to an increased Russian threat, Richards—who has worked for two Labour governments—gave a disturbing answer. “We’d have to lock some people up,” he said, “some of the pro-Russian voices, people who say there isn’t a threat, [and say] ‘Don’t fight for your country, don’t go to war for Burnham.’”
His comments are not a one-off. They reflect a worrying trend among Britain’s political mainstream—the old parties, media, and think tanks—which has increasingly adopted a siege mentality informed by the far-fetched expectation of imminent war with Russia.
Nor is the trend restricted to Britain. It spans the entire Western world. And it helps explain why the centrist political forces previously seen as “reasonable” are losing ground to the supposed “fringe.” Apocalyptic millenarianism is no longer the domain of radical obscurantists, but of people like NATO’s secretary-general Mark Rutte, who in 2025 seemed to foretell with relish a conflict between Europe and Russia on the scale of the SecondWorld War. “Imagine it,” he said, “a conflict reaching every home, every workplace, destruction, mass mobilisation, millions displaced, widespread suffering and extreme losses.”
It is politicians branded as far right or far left radicals who, surprisingly, have emerged as the main opposition to this unhinged bellicosity.
What’s largely prompting this trend is the very logic of the liberals competing with the populists. Western societies display a demand for performative “toughness,” which caters both to the infantilism of their political classes and the gamification of war in faroff countries.
Things seem to have begun in earnest in 2016, when the prospect of liberals losing to rivals like Donald Trump led the former to embrace conspiracy theories like Russiagate and double down on foreign policy hawkishness as a way of evading responsibility for their own failures. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine served a similar function, providing a theater for “toughness” even as the West has gotten bogged down in what has increasingly turned into a proxy conflict.
Trying to outdo the populists along a different axis, rather than doing the hard work of opposing them with value-based positions, has led the centrists into a trap. It left a vacuum in the center, into which the populists—ever alert to political opportunities—have deftly stepped.
Here is how it plays out in Germany. When the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered an embarrassing defeat in Saxony-Anhalt earlier this month, the party’s leader and premier in North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Wüst, said the government should consider banning the AfD (which won the election by a landslide). Wüst is eyed as a potential replacement for the unpopular chancellor Friedrich Merz.
The CDU went on to suffer additional defeats in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and in Berlin. The former is particularly symbolic, because this is where the Nord Stream gas pipelines make landfall—a fact that makes this state a direct beneficiary of the German-Russian joint venture to supply cheap Russian gas to the German economy.
When Nord Stream 2 was blown up in September 2022, the immediate consensus in the West was that Moscow was responsible. Yet the culprits turned out not to be Russian, but Ukrainian. German police investigators eventually charged individuals associated with Ukraine’s military intelligence service for the attack. (It’s worth noting that this Ukrainian spy agency was rebuilt in 2015 with considerable assistance from America’s CIA.)
Germany’s rejection of Russian gas supplies after Putin’s all-out invasion in Ukraine can be seen as a noble gesture, perhaps, but it had dire consequences for the country’s economy, which contracted in 2023 and 2024 before showing anemic growth in 2025. Even more importantly, it hit every household in Germany with skyrocketing heating and power bills. Interestingly, Germany wasn’t receiving Russian gas at the time of the explosion, which means the attack was aimed at preventing the resumption of supplies after the end of war rather than interrupting ongoing exports.
The German government has never properly addressed the issue at the federal level. On the eve of September elections, Merz’s sharp reaction to the Leipzig drone incident, which he instantly blamed on Russia, contrasted sharply with the virtual absence of a response to the perpetrators of the Nord Stream attack.
Voters in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania slaughtered Merz’s party, excluding it entirely from the state’s legislature for the first time in nearly 80 years. The big winner was the AfD—a party unafraid to ask questions about Nord Stream and which muses about restoring gas supplies after the Ukraine War ends. Voters also largely spared the Social Democrats, under whose leadership Nord Stream was built in the first place (although they had to disown it after Russia’s invasion).
The early days of tension between post-Soviet Russia and the West, which culminated in the war in Ukraine, were marked by squabbles over pipeline projects delivering gas to Europe (remember South Stream or Nabucco?). The unyielding opposition of centrist politicians to such projects has led voters to wonder whether their political establishment is more interested in catering to armsmakers and shale gas producers than in providing for its citizens. It’s hard to think of a better illustration of NATO’s unofficial mission to “keep the Germans down and the Russians out” than the fate of Nord Stream.
The perception of abandonment is what fuels the popularity of the AfD’s sovereigntist stance. And despite accusations of extremism, it is the AfD who sounds the most moderate and reasonable on the vital issues of war and peace.
Indeed, their foreign policy stance provides AfD leaders with one bulletproof rebuttal to accusations of fascism. A defining component of the fascist ideology is aggressive militarism—a trait exhibited by the German political establishment, not its hard-right challengers. The AfD fills the shoes of the old-school left-wing peaceniks when it comes to Ukraine, while the Merz government staunchly supports further escalation while discreetly undermining Trump’s efforts to bring the conflict to a close. The AfD also condemns the war on Iran (which Merz initially supported, before making a U-turn under public pressure).
(Ex-)centrists also advocate an enormous defense spending hike Germany can ill afford, as well as compulsory military service (this latter move has sparked youth protests across the country). The way mainstream German politicians are courting the far right in Ukraine—members of Azov movement prominently featured at the prestigious Munich Security Conference this year, for example—make the charges of nazism levelled against the AfD look especially lame.
Opposing Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which the AfD does, is one thing. Supporting an endless proxy war with a nuclear-armed great power—and committing to fight this “to the last Ukrainian”—is quite another.
And the polls suggest German voters have little appetite for risking their country’s future in such a gambit.
The AfD and other insurgent parties thrive when their opponents lean into hawkishness and authoritarianism, but so far there is little evidence the establishment understands this. Indeed, European political elites are doubling down. They recently invited Zelensky’s former press secretary, Iulia Mendel, to speak in front of the European Parliament. But Mendel is a vocal critic of her former boss, and so the parliament’s centrist leadership banned her from entering after Zelensky’s government imposed sanctions on her (an extrajudicial punishment he is routinely applying to political rivals). By banning Mendel from speaking and turning a blind eye on Zelensky’s abuse of power, the center once again chooses delusion and bellicosity over a genuine commitment to democracy.
Meanwhile, alternatives like the AfD will continue to fill the vacant space left in the middle of the political spectrum.
Romania’s political deadlock has deepened after parliament rejected the government proposed by prime minister-designate Siegfried Mureșan, leaving President Nicușor Dan to begin another attempt to assemble a viable administration.
The joint sitting of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies on Wednesday, 30th September, had been convened specifically to consider Mureșan’s programme and proposed Cabinet.
His government received 182 votes in favour and 15 against. It required at least 233 votes to take office.
Of Romania’s 464 MPs and senators, 321 were present and 197 valid votes were cast. PSD legislators attended but did not vote, while AUR members were absent from the chamber, according to the official result reported by Romania’s national news agency.
The result extends a crisis that has occupied Romanian politics for much of the year.
President Dan had nominated Mureșan after previous attempts to establish a stable government failed. Mureșan’s proposed coalition brought together the centre-right National Liberal Party, PNL, the Save Romania Union, USR, and the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania, UDMR.
Without support from the Social Democratic Party, PSD, that combination did not have the parliamentary numbers needed for investiture.
After the vote, Mureșan said his three-party grouping had presented a programme intended to end the crisis and accused the parties responsible for bringing down the previous administration of prolonging the instability.
The political breakdown began after the government of Ilie Bolojan lost a no-confidence vote in May.
The subsequent search for a replacement has produced repeated nominations without restoring a stable majority. In June, President Dan turned to Adrian Veștea after an earlier nominee withdrew, while another confidence-vote attempt exposed the same underlying parliamentary arithmetic.
Mureșan was the latest effort to break the impasse.
The president must now decide whether another candidate has a realistic prospect of assembling the necessary 233 votes.
Romanian constitutional procedures also raise the possibility of early elections if repeated attempts to form a government fail. A review of the procedure following Wednesday’s vote notes that the president can make another nomination and that dissolution of parliament can become an option under the constitutional conditions governing failed investiture attempts.
Dan has previously warned against rushing towards another election, arguing that it could extend political uncertainty rather than resolve it.
The crisis is unfolding while Romania faces substantial fiscal pressure.
Successive governments have been required to address one of the largest budget deficits in the European Union while delivering reforms connected to EU funding and maintaining investment.
A prolonged period under an administration without a full parliamentary mandate would reduce the political room available for unpopular fiscal decisions.
Romania’s strategic position also gives the domestic crisis a wider European dimension.
The country sits on NATO’s south-eastern flank, shares a border with Ukraine and hosts allied military infrastructure. The Black Sea and Danube corridor have become increasingly important for European security and trade since Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Foreign and defence policy has therefore remained an important consideration during the government crisis.
Dan has stressed that Romania’s pro-Western orientation will continue despite the domestic deadlock.
The most immediate political question now concerns the PSD.
Party leader Sorin Grindeanu said after the vote that Romania urgently needed a government with full powers and that his party was prepared to assume responsibility for the country’s recovery.
Any new government able to command a reliable majority may therefore require either direct PSD participation or an arrangement under which Social Democrat MPs provide parliamentary support.
The alternative would be another attempt to construct a majority without them — something the past several months have shown to be difficult.
Wednesday’s result has not changed the parliamentary numbers. It has simply returned the decision to the Cotroceni Palace.
President Dan must now determine whether another coalition can be built from the existing parliament or whether Romania is moving closer to an early election.
Russia has warned NATO it would be ready to resort to nuclear weapons if the Western alliance attempted to cut off Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave that borders the Baltic Sea.
Increased NATO military exercises near Russia’s Kaliningrad Region and aggressive rhetoric from members of the US-led bloc are raising the risk of a direct armed conflict, Moscow has warned.
Russia has sent NATO a warning stressing its determination to protect the Russian exclave in the Baltic region “with its entire available arsenal,” according to a statement published on Monday by the Russian Embassy in Belgium, which hosts the bloc’s headquarters.
The message alluded to remarks made earlier this month by Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who said there are “hardly any troops” in Kaliningrad Region and urged NATO to increase its military posture near Russia’s borders so that Moscow would be “uncertain of what we will do.”
NATO spokesperson Allison Hart confirmed receiving the Russian message and accused Moscow of irresponsible rhetoric.
”We strongly denounce the threat of force, including any irresponsible nuclear rhetoric,” she said.
Western officials have frequently described Russian statements invoking its nuclear deterrent as “blackmail,” while presenting NATO’s own nuclear-sharing arrangements as a pillar of collective defense.
France has offered to discuss the possible deployment of its nuclear weapons in other European NATO countries, arguing that this could reduce the bloc’s dependence on the US. Under NATO’s existing nuclear-sharing arrangements, American nuclear bombs are stored in several European countries, while personnel from non-nuclear member states train for missions involving their potential use.
Russia has repeatedly rejected Western claims that it intends to attack NATO before the end of the decade, describing such warnings as warmongering aimed at persuading voters to support sharply higher military spending.
Moscow, in turn, views NATO’s military preparations as potentially paving the way for an attack on Russia. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has repeatedly warned that any such conflict would be extremely brief, implying that Moscow could resort to nuclear weapons.
The Russian Embassy in Ireland used more direct language, saying on Tuesday that Moscow is prepared to use nuclear weapons in response to an attempted NATO blockade of Kaliningrad Region and may consider pre-emptive military action in such a crisis.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday it was “natural for our diplomats to try and remind hotheads in Europe about our doctrinal documents,” in response to the rhetoric coming from Poland and other nations.
Nos últimos dias, a classe política europeia elevou ao máximo o tom de discursos claramente coordenados – e compartilhados: “A guerra com a Rússia está chegando; a Rússia pretende atacar a OTAN; precisamos nos preparar; estocar água engarrafada, comida enlatada e estar prontos para enviar seus filhos para o serviço militar obrigatório” – “Muitos morrerão; mas é seu dever defender o país”.
Que absurdo! Para reforçar o argumento, líderes europeus, incluindo o Alto Representante da UE, Kallas, e o chanceler alemão, Merz, vestiram-se recentemente de camuflagem de campo para sinalizar “prontidão de defesa” durante a Cúpula Europeia do Ártico, em 14 de setembro. (Esses políticos europeus podem ser vistos em uniformes militares aqui).
Eles parecem absurdos. No entanto, isso não pode desviar a atenção da pergunta: o que exatamente é essa histeria que toma conta dos tecnocratas europeus?
À primeira vista, a mensagem unânime de que a Rússia está prestes a atacar a Europa e que a guerra está chegando não faz sentido algum. A Europa não tem nem os homens, nem as munições, nem os recursos financeiros, nem a capacidade industrial para travar uma guerra contra o que hoje pode ser considerado uma das principais “grandes potências” militares, bem como o Estado que possui o maior arsenal de armas nucleares.
“Entre os principais divulgadores dessa narrativa infundada [de um suposto ataque russo] estão os líderes dos países bálticos. Por exemplo, nesta semana, o presidente da Letônia, Edgars Rinkevics, chegou a afirmar que os ‘ataques’ russos à UE e à OTAN já começaram. Os países bálticos estão até mesmo divulgando planos de preparação para emergências para suas populações, alegando um cenário no estilo de ‘Red Dawn’”[/Amanhecer violento (1984), película dirigida por John Milius, cujo roteiro aborda a história de um grupo de estudantes estadunidenses que luta contra a invasão do exército soviético em solo americano. – nota da tradutora]
“Não estamos falando de uma guerra convencional. Estamos falando de todos os tipos de provocações, todos os tipos de atos de sabotagem, todos os tipos de testes, e definitivamente isso é algo que já está acontecendo neste exato momento”, afirma o líder letão.
“O primeiro-ministro polonês, Donald Tusk, declarou esta semana que a Rússia poderia lançar ataques esporádicos, fingindo que são ‘acidentais’, a fim de ‘paralisar ou, pelo menos, enfraquecer a motivação dos países da OTAN’, conforme citado pela Associated Press. “Existe um risco real de que drones ou outros tipos de projéteis entrem no território de um ou vários países do flanco oriental e cheguem até a causar destruição”, acrescentou Tusk, alertando: “Moscou pode chegar ao ponto de lançar algum tipo de ataque aéreo no território da OTAN nos próximos meses para mostrar que o compromisso de defesa comum do Artigo 5º da aliança militar não passa de algumas palavras em um pedaço de papel.”
No entanto, apesar de todas as evidências acumuladas, os líderes europeus continuam se animando para estarem psicologicamente preparados para acionar o Artigo 5º contra uma grande potência nuclear.
Na esteira desse alarde, o ministro das Relações Exteriores, Sergey Lavrov, advertiu explicitamente:
“Gostaria de enfatizar que não temos interesse em nos envolver nisso [atacar a Europa], mas se a Europa, que fala diariamente em se preparar para a guerra contra a Rússia, atacar a Rússia, será uma guerra completamente diferente – e será muito curta”.
O que se esconde por trás desse aparente absurdo? Por um lado, fica claro que a elite governante de Bruxelas vê seus erros estratégicos (apoio irrestrito à Ucrânia, o sacrifício do modelo econômico europeu em nome da pressão sobre a Rússia, seu apoio à guerra contra o Irã e sua indiferença ao sofrimento no Oriente Médio) voltando como bumerangue.
Seu alarmismo em relação à Rússia cheira a desespero, em vez de reflexão cuidadosa e diligência quanto aos riscos muito reais de incitar a guerra dessa maneira. O Establishment, sem dúvida, percebe que a crise energética decorrente da guerra dos EUA e de Israel contra o Irã não está mais “por vir”, mas já chegou.
Eles podem ver o custo de vida disparando, os empregos desaparecendo e o colapso iminente dos mercados – principalmente no mercado de títulos (cujo nível de juros define o valor de todos os outros ativos de risco). Percebendo isso, esses políticos em perigo podem ter concluído que incitar o medo é a única maneira de desviar a atenção de seus próprios fracassos e, talvez, lhes permitir a esperança de que possam sobreviver ao ciclo eleitoral.
A sobrevivência é uma motivação fundamental, mas é provável também que a psiquê das elites seja sustentada por duas proposições que são falsas, embora pareçam plausíveis para a classe política.
A primeira falácia é que a Rússia lançou uma guerra preventiva em fevereiro de 2022 para tomar Kiev e cerca de 60% da Ucrânia.
Eventos anteriores na Síria explicam a realidade: a Rússia entrou oficialmente no conflito civil sírio em setembro de 2015, atendendo a um pedido do presidente Assad. A intervenção russa revelou-se de alcance limitado – um destacamento aéreo muito restrito (28 a 34 aeronaves) e o mínimo de forças especiais de combate (a contribuição da Rússia consistiu principalmente em conselheiros militares, controladores aéreos avançados e polícia militar).
A presença da Rússia na Síria foi intencionalmente simbólica – uma demonstração de intenção séria, em vez de um desejo de se envolver em uma guerra terrestre. Na verdade, o objetivo de Moscou era evitar o combate terrestre direto. No entanto, os ataques aéreos russos – com o apoio das tropas terrestres iranianas – ajudaram o Exército sírio a expulsar as forças jihadistas de Aleppo. Isso levou a uma trégua mediada pela Rússia e pela Turquia no final de 2016 e ao processo de paz de Astana, iniciado logo em seguida.
A abordagem de Putin em relação a Aleppo definiu claramente o modelo para suas táticas iniciais no que diz respeito à Ucrânia. A Rússia mobilizou cerca de 15.000 a 30.000 homens nos arredores de Kiev, durante o ataque inicial no início de 2022. A narrativa europeia de que essa força tinha como objetivo tomar Kiev no início de 2022 é risível – 40.000 soldados talvez consigam lotar uma praça da cidade, mas será que conseguem tomar uma cidade com mais de três milhões de habitantes? Ridículo.
No entanto, comentaristas europeus e americanos – incluindo o comentarista norte-americano Robert Pape – afirmam que, como a tentativa de tomar Kiev fracassou, somada à conclusão implícita de que Putin esperava que sua demonstração simbólica de “intenção séria” fizesse a OTAN recuar, isso sugere – segundo Pape – que Putin está preso em uma armadilha de escalada. Pape argumenta que Putin buscava uma vitória rápida em 2022, mas, tendo fracassado, está “preso” por agora ter que subir uma escada de escalada com perspectivas de sucesso cada vez piores – por isso, Putin fracassa. “É apenas uma questão de tempo”.
Longe de ser um fracasso, a demonstração de força de Moscou na Síria, por menor que tenha sido, funcionou – Astana foi o modelo inspirado na Síria. No final de março de 2022, o Processo de Istambul havia produzido o Comunicado de Istambul, um marco para um acordo com a Ucrânia. Essa última iniciativa fracassou por um único motivo – Boris Johnson a sabotou – e a Rússia foi forçada a se reorganizar, o que fez com sucesso, embora ao preço de uma longa guerra de desgaste e da perda desnecessária de centenas de milhares de vidas ucranianas.
Não, foi Boris Johnson quem levou a Europa a uma armadilha de escalada.
Os europeus, ao que parece, basearam sua “história de sucesso” na guerra contra a Rússia, em primeiro lugar, na noção do suposto fracasso de Kiev e, em segundo lugar, na confiança exagerada nas sanções financeiras. O ex-ministro das Finanças francês, Le Maire, em um momento de euforia, declarou “guerra econômica e financeira total contra a Rússia”. Ele insistiu que as sanções sufocariam e levariam ao colapso a economia russa – na prática, a Rússia, após 2007, mudou para um modelo econômico nacional (autossuficiente) e continua prosperando.
Então, quem armadilhou quem? A premissa central imaginária do Ocidente de que a Rússia foi empurrada para a escalada a partir do momento em que o plano inexistente de tomar Kiev fracassou virou a situação de cabeça para baixo.
Foi a análise equivocada do Ocidente que o prendeu em uma espiral de ações que correm o risco de, inadvertidamente, levar a Europa a uma guerra com a Rússia – uma guerra que nenhum europeu deseja.
James Jatras, a veteran U.S. foreign policy analyst, discusses how the recent security deal between Trump and Denmark over Greenland is really about easing tensions within NATO.
And keeping the Western military bloc hard-focused on Russia.
The signing of a new security agreement with Danish PM Mette Frederiksen on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on September 22 looked odd. Frederiksen was photographed smiling with Trump, yet only a few months ago, the Danish leader and other European governments were in uproar over Trump’s threats to annex Greenland.
The Arctic island has an abundance of untapped mineral and rare-earth metals. Trump has framed the annexation as a benign move by the U.S. for protection against Russia and China. He previously ridiculed Denmark’s defenses as amounting to “two dogsleds.”
Recall that earlier this year Trump was threatening to withdraw from NATO if the U.S. was not given full control over Greenland. The Europeans then sprang to Copenhagen’s support and pledged to send troops to Greenland to defend Danish sovereignty.
But with the new security deal, all the recriminations seem to have disappeared. Danish PM Federiksen is smiling like a “Cheshire Cat,” and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailed the renewed strengthening of the NATO bloc.
Jatras contends that Trump does not acquire any significant access to Greenland’s vast natural resources after this new deal. Denmark still retains sovereignty over the Arctic island, albeit describing it as a self-ruling territory under Greenlander administration.
What Trump gets is more U.S. militarization of the Arctic territory, which is actually what the European NATO members want.
Washington is planning to increase American military bases in Greenland and install an anti-missile defense shield called Golden Dome. This militarization will exacerbate already fraught tensions with Moscow because it potentially makes Russia more vulnerable to a nuclear attack from a new front in the Arctic.
The European NATO leaders don’t like Trump, notes Jatras, but they are worried that his maverick behavior is undermining the unity of the transatlantic alliance, which is, in turn, weakening the anti-Russia agenda.
By giving Trump the appearance of increased security control over Greenland, Denmark and the other European NATO hawks gain a more unified alliance whose top priority is to ramp up the anti-Russia agenda, as seen primarily with the proxy war in Ukraine.
In this interview, we discuss other issues: the dearth of diplomacy in Washington since the end of the Cold War, the duplicity in the Trump administration claiming it wants peace with Moscow yet doing nothing to pursue that, indeed doing the opposite, like ending arms control treaties and militarizing the Arctic.
Jatras is pessimistic about the prospects of the political class in the U.S. and Europe finding a breakthrough out of increasingly dangerous relations with Russia. He sees the only way forward as the total internal collapse in the West, leading to a new political leadership. The current dynamic and lack of diplomacy in the West are leading to war.
Trump’s plan for militarizing the Arctic at the cajoling of Europeans is another ominous sign among many.
When Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan agreed to a mutual defense pact in August, it was principally seen as a political commitment. The “Mecca alliance,” as it was dubbed, stipulated that an armed attack on one would be treated as an attack on all three, accompanied by deeper military cooperation. That pact is no longer […]
As its war on multipolarism expands, Washington is converting the Western economy to arms production, draining its client states, and eroding its own social foundations — repeating the terminal trajectory of the British Empire. For decades, the US has leveraged its many client states as extensions of its own military, economic, financial, and political power, […]
In a recent phone call, Donald Trump urged Volodymyr Zelensky to stop Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries. Whether a request or a demand, this appears, certainly at first glance, fundamentally different from the Biden administration’s policy of restricting the use of US long-range missiles to hit targets inside Russia. The US president has justified […]
This story is a part of the weekly newsletter about security, defence, and tech in the eastern flank of Nato, How we cee it.
Over the past few weeks, a new wave of fear has engulfed Europe. A number of intelligence and government officials have spoken out, saying Russia could possibly attack a Nato country within months, not years.
On 18 September, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk warned that Russia is planning hybrid strikes with drones or rockets on European countries that support Ukraine, such as Poland.
Two days later, Czech intelligence chief Michal Koudelka told the Guardian that, as well as increased drone activity, a small-scale invasion of Nato territory bordering Russia could be part of the Kremlin’s plans.
Then, last Thursday, Denmark’s defence intelligence service said that Russia is likely to intensify its hybrid war against the West in the coming months, with more frequent attacks against Nato countries.
On the same day, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski said, according to TVP World: “We are receiving information … that Russia is preparing something big this year.”
This is not the first time a wave of comments like this has appeared. A similar situation arose last year, when various officials in Europe took turns escalating their rhetoric about the Russian threat.
It is possible that they are speaking out again because new information has surfaced within the intelligence community. The communication goal could be letting Russia know that they know. Much like CIA director John Ratcliffe’s visit to Moscow last month, this could be an effort to make sure Russia doesn’t miscalculate.
The warnings also come in a different context from last year, when the Baltic countries were sounding the alarm. Russia has noticeably been turning up the temperature of its activity around Europe.
Back in July, a cruise missile crashed in Poland. According to experts, it was not a misguided missile, but one deliberately aimed at Poland. Then, in early August, a drone carrying an explosive device was discovered at Leipzig/Halle Airport in eastern Germany, close to Ukrainian cargo planes.
Germany’s interior minister Alexander Dobrindt said the Leipzig airport attack followed the “well-established pattern of Russian hybrid operations in Europe,” the BBC reported.
According to German investigators, who spoke to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the incident was also connected to other events, such as an attempted arson attack on a drone manufacturer in eastern Slovakia, and an arson attack in Munich on September 3, when several incendiary devices were thrown from a passing car onto a construction site near the headquarters of defence firms Rohde & Schwarz and Helsing.
In fact, there have been so many different incidents recently that the semi-regular drone incursions into Romania and the Baltics have become almost normalised and struggle to make headlines anymore.
Hypothetical scenarios abound
Scenarios of where Russia could take its hybrid attacks next are as abundant as onlookers’ creativity allows. They range from small attacks on factories, through the seizure of a small piece of land by an elite drone unit, all the way to the capture of the Suwałki corridor – a strategic piece of land between the Baltic states and mainland Europe.
Most recently, the CIA warned that while all eyes had so far been on the Baltics, Russia may be preparing a drone strike against Spain, France, and Italy.
According to Marko Mihkelson, chairman of the Estonian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, the snowball of speculation about an imminent Russian attack on Europe is gathering pace.
But as he sees it, isolated facts are being mixed with wishful thinking, worst-case scenarios and, at times, little more than the need to grab attention.
As he wrote in an opinion piece for the Estonian news agency ERR: “Russia understands that it can confuse and paralyse us through information operations alone. Constant speculation about the Baltic states and Poland risks creating the impression that this is primarily a problem for two or three countries on Russia’s doorstep, while the rest of Europe can somehow remain untouched.”
According to Mihkelson, Russia’s campaign against the West would not necessarily begin with a conventional attack.
It could start by undermining Nato from within: interfering in elections, amplifying polarising narratives, exploiting political divisions, and spreading fear. It could seek to isolate Ukraine by limiting Western support, and then test Nato’s willingness to stand together.
As for worries that Russia will attempt to grab land from the Baltics or Poland, there are no significant material or military changes to note along the borders.
Belarus did hold a four-day military exercise near its border with the Suwałki corridor in mid-September, but that is nothing close to the signals we were getting from Russia just before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Back then, physical military infrastructure was being constructed ahead of the attack.
There are also no significant changes in the Russian military’s posture to launch a land attack against the Baltics.
Estonian government officials confirm this. According to Estonia’s minister of defence, Martin Herem, its assessment of the Russian threat remains unchanged.
That means Russia’s main effort remains focused on its war in Ukraine, and neither Estonia, Denmark, nor other Nato allies currently see a threat requiring raised military readiness.
Military experts in Lithuania also see no signs of new escalation. This doesn’t mean Russia won’t continue to be dangerous. It means that Russia has been engaged in provocations against Nato countries for years already, and similar behaviour will continue.
“No one is currently planning to conquer us – not at this moment, nor this year. In this case, specific, very precise attacks or provocations are more likely, designed not so much to cause physical damage as to sow serious panic in people’s minds,” Deividas Šlekys, a professor at Vilnius University’s Institute of Political Science and International Relations, told the Lithuanian wire LRT on Monday (28 September).
And so, while last autumn it was the Baltic states sounding the alarm about a potential Russian attack, now their officials are looking to calm the panic about their aggressive neighbour.
Less than two months after his government hosted the NATO summit — which was framed as proof of Turkey’s pivotal role in transatlantic security — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has proposed full Turkish membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, an entity that has been described as being anti-NATO or a “rogue NATO.” The apparent contradiction […]
The following are excerpts from my speech in Istanbul on September 26, 2026.
The unipolar world order has collapsed, and we should conduct a post-mortem to reflect on what went wrong and to understand the current turbulent transition of the world. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama famously published his article on the ‘End of History,’ which was largely adopted as an ideological guide by the political West. The world only had one superpower and one ideology, and the expectation was that the world would unify under US leadership and liberal democratic values. The dominance of the US would end international anarchy and security competition, as there was only one centre of power, and the US hegemon would elevate the role of liberal democracy to form an inclusive community of universal values. For more than three decades, the West produced a new generation of politicians who believed that the collective hegemony of the West was for the benefit of all mankind, and they were the administrators who would manage the transition from the chaotic world of the past to perpetual peace. So what went wrong?
The Contradiction of Hegemonic Universalism
The unipolar moment was always destined to be a temporary phenomenon, as the US would predictably exhaust its resources and incentivise rising powers to collectively balance the US. However, there is also an inherent contradiction in hegemonic universalism, as universal values are linked to one entity of power. A hegemon claims to represent universal values such as freedom, democracy, and human rights, albeit this universalism is promoted through a particular historical, cultural, and geopolitical order.
Universal values advocating for equality are used to institutionalise a dominant position for the US. Universal values advocating for inclusion are used to build exclusive blocs such as NATO rather than developing an inclusive pan-European security architecture. John Herz noted as early as 1950 that the more democratic states were at home, the more they seemed to insist on a dominant position in international institutions to defend liberal values from the rule of the majority. Liberal values build on the idea that tolerance is imperative, as all people and states have different ideas about the good life and their own path to development, yet the universality of values suggests that all states must develop along the same path, and the political West, as the champion of liberal democracy, is the civilizational teacher seeking to “socialize” the rest of the world. Liberalism has subsequently been promoted as a hegemonic norm.
The Revisionism of Hegemonic Universalism
The modern world order was established with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, in which a hegemonic system legitimised with universalist claims was replaced with a multipolar system based on the cultural distinctiveness of states. The past 80 years have been a historical anomaly, with a bipolar system that collapsed and gave way to a unipolar system with one centre of power. The normal situation of the world has been a multipolar Westphalian system with a power equilibrium.
Over the past decades, hegemonic universalism transformed European states as national competencies were transferred to the US. US military dominance meant that Europe largely outsourced its security and foreign policy to the US within the format of the alliance system. US economic dominance meant that the international economic architecture, with banks, currencies, payment systems, and trade agreements, was largely administered by the US. Civil society in Europe and beyond has been managed by “non-governmental organizations” financed by the US government and cooperating closely with US intelligence services. The European political system is premised on the idea that loyalty to international institutions is more vital and moral than national interests, as Europe’s linkage to the US within the political West is the main source of stability and prosperity.
Return of Civilizational Distinctiveness
The hegemon is now gone, and the universal claims are rejected by the wider world. A multipolar world is already here, and the rising powers are demanding a return to a Westphalian world order of sovereign equals based on civilizational distinctiveness. As Xi Jinping insists, all civilizations have their own path to development, and no aspiring hegemon has the right to tell others how to develop. The return of rhetoric about civilizational states across the Eurasian continent signifies a rejection of unipolarity and universalism. New institutions such as the SCO and BRICS attempt to accommodate the multipolar world, yet new members are joining faster than institutional efficiency can adjust to.
The US has reluctantly already begun adjusting to these new realities, as it recognises it cannot be everywhere and must prioritise, while the language of liberal universalism is being replaced with national interests. New political forces are rising in the US that want to scale back the empire to save the republic, as a strategic retreat would allow the US to rebuild its strength and end the collective balancing by other great powers. What makes Europe so dangerous today is its weakness and panic due to the failure of finding a new role in the multipolar system. Security can no longer be based on the dominance of the collective West; there is no clear economic model; and the claims of representing universal values are no longer convincing. Yet the Europeans are not willing to recognise new realities and adjust accordingly by diversifying economic and political connectivity. The available evidence suggests that this will be a very turbulent transition from unipolar universalism to multipolar distinctiveness, and the new world will more likely be born through war than diplomacy
There have been many tipping points in history; to name just a few examples:
The Peace of Westphalia in 1648
The French Revolution of 1789
The Congress of Vienna in 1815
World War I in 1918
World War II in 1945
Many of these turning points led to shifts in power in Europe. These were merely transfers of power within the world we now call the “Collective” West. Examples include the collapse of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian Tsarist Empire at the end of World War I.
These shifts in power were significant, yet what is happening now cannot be compared to past turning points, as they encompass the entire globe. The reins of power are not being handed over within the West; rather, there will be a shift in power toward the East and the “Global South.”
From Tipping Point to Entropy
The scale, the number of nations involved, the geographic scope, and the speed at which the current geopolitical crises are unfolding are truly astonishing.
Ukraine as a War Platform for the U.S., NATO, the EU, and Russia
Russia Will Prevail Militarily
Looking at the military reports from the front lines, it becomes clear to any observer that Russia will achieve its military objectives. While Russia might have relinquished the Donbas, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia had a peace agreement been successfully concluded in the spring of 2022, such an agreement is unrealistic under the current circumstances, as Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson have been part of the Russian Federation since September 2022. It is currently unclear how far the Russian military advance will go. I have commented on this in my article “The Summer Peace Died,” to which I refer. For the situation on the front lines, I once again refer to Military Summary; I have been following this channel for nearly five years, and it provides objective reporting.
Catastrophic Mobilization Situation in Ukraine
There are thousands of videos showing young men being hunted down like animals on the streets throughout Ukraine in order to forcibly recruit them. Recently, however, videos have also been circulating that show some of those forcibly recruited being transported to the front lines without uniforms and even in handcuffs, like criminals—to prevent them from escaping. I’ll leave it to the readers to ponder the combat effectiveness of these men against battle-hardened and motivated Russian soldiers.
Armed guards transport mobilized Ukrainian men to frontline in order to prevent them from deserting. This is described as normal by the Ukrainian officer. Videos also show them in handcuffs. Zelensky & Western politicians call this freedom & democracy. pic.twitter.com/f6AGyuMpRX
The latest move by the Ukrainian military leadership is to forcibly conscript women. Given this situation, it’s no surprise that Scott Ritter stated that the Ukrainians are losing 30 times more soldiers than Russia. We hear nothing in the West about this inhumane treatment of their own soldiers in Ukraine.
Ukrainian volunteers, who later disappeared without a trace, are said to have used drones and artificial intelligence to count the number of soldiers’ graves throughout Ukraine. They counted 2,000,054 graves. Added to this are the dead buried by their own people in mass graves and the wounded—the Ukrainians’ losses do indeed appear to be astronomical. Nevertheless, Zelenskyy claims that only 50,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed. A few weeks ago, I attended a funeral in Russia. The soldiers’ graves are easily identifiable by the Russian flag and the flag of the fallen soldier’s unit. There were soldiers’ graves, but no sea of flags like in Ukraine.
Ukrainian volunteers, who later disappeared without a trace, reportedly used drones and artificial intelligence to count military graves across Ukraine. Their estimate was 2,000,054 graves. Yet Zelensky claims that only 50,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed. Does that mean pic.twitter.com/LeplE4H3n6
Military Victory Does Not Solve Russia’s Geopolitical Problem
Whatever needs to be achieved militarily, Russia will achieve it; however, this does not resolve Russia’s geopolitical problem on its western border, because the goal is not new territories, but peace in the West—a goal that Russia has literally been striving for centuries and has never been able to achieve. Time and again, Russia has been attacked from the West and has regularly paid a high price in blood, money, and industrial capacity—resources diverted to military spending rather than civilian purposes. As a result, Russia’s social development has been repeatedly set back.
If Russia wants to keep pace with the major powers in terms of its civilian economy in a sustainable manner, reliably securing its western border is an absolute prerequisite. Although Russia is the only industrialized nation in the world that is self-sufficient and thus capable of waging a war lasting decades, such a confrontation would massively hinder the country from achieving its actual development goals.
The U.S.’s Lack of Credibility in Negotiations with Russia
The U.S.’s lack of credibility in the eyes of Russia is multifaceted. On September 15, Foreign Minister Lavrov said, verbatim:
“If the Americans hadn’t backed away from the Anchorage agreements, if Europe hadn’t pulled them away from those agreements, we would have been living without war for a year now.” – Sergey Lavrov, September 15, 2026
Under this agreement, Russia would have made major concessions. Russia would have retained the Donbas, frozen the conflict in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, and relinquished further territories. Objectively speaking, this was a bad deal for Russia, but it demonstrated the Russians’ considerable willingness to compromise. The Russians assumed that this verbal agreement was binding as a gentlemen’s agreement. However, gentlemen’s agreements should only be made with gentlemen. The Americans taught the Russians otherwise. The Russians are dismayed about this incident and have had to admit that no agreements are possible with the U.S. government. Personally, I’m surprised by the fact that this realization came so late. Even written agreements with the U.S. government are not to be trusted. This was evident in the breach of the Memorandum of Understanding that the Americans signed with Iran in June. Thus, one must conclude that this conflict—or any conflict in which the U.S. is directly or indirectly involved—must be fought to the bitter end. A bitter lesson for every contractual partner of the U.S.
The Risk of Escalation is Significant
Ukraine is desperately trying to officially draw NATO into this military conflict. It is astonishing that European countries—above all Germany and the United Kingdom—are not only signaling their willingness to do so, but are actually doing everything they can to prepare their people for a war with Russia.
Instead of naming many people, we’ll use Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg—former cabinet minister and Member of Parliament for North East Somerset—as an example. In this excerpt from an interview, he compares the situation with Russia—without naming it—to the situations during World War I and World War II:
European leaders are currently pivoting from “this is not our war” to “it’s your duty to die in a war with Russia.” pic.twitter.com/h2M0CBpk0g
Young people are thus being called to arms to prepare for war against Russia. In Germany, such efforts have failed miserably. Of the more than 300,000 young Germans surveyed, only 0.17% volunteered to serve in the Bundeswehr. Furthermore, it came to light a few days ago that the Bundeswehr itself could not even find 5,000 volunteers for a battalion in Latvia.
It is incomprehensible what these European countries are up to besides spreading propaganda. Even combined, the European countries do not possess military forces that would give them even the slightest chance of standing up to the Russian armed forces. The Russians are by no means impressed by this farce in Europe—they are disgusted by it. I assume that this war propaganda in Europe serves only to perpetuate the anti-Russian narrative.
Both President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov have repeatedly emphasized that they have no interest in attacking NATO targets outside Ukraine. However, if European countries are foolish enough to send even small European military contingents to Ukraine, the situation could change abruptly.
The greatest risk of escalation at the moment is that the Europeans, presumably in collaboration with the Americans, are planning a false flag attack in Europe in order to somehow trigger Article 5 of the NATO Charter. According to geopolitical analyst Warren Thornton, preparations for false flag attacks are in full swing. He writes on X:
THE FALSE FLAG
These are the areas that are the targets. The Mallorca airport in Spain. The Sorrento Continental Hotel in Italy. The Promenade De Anglais, Nice. The area to be launched from west of Sardinia. The agencies involved CIA, French Naval Intelligence Services and the… pic.twitter.com/ThDYyuZBOz
I can’t say whether this theory is correct, but it’s by no means far-fetched that the Europeans would attempt something so outrageous.
U.S. Military Campaigns in the Middle East Beginning in 2001
Looking back over the past 25 years, the U.S. has sought to reshape the Middle East according to the Wolfowitz Doctrine since 2001. None of the wars the U.S. launched during this period (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, etc.) were successful. In fact, it was already evident back then that the hegemon lacked the resources, military strategy, strength, and credibility needed to act successfully. However, if one’s view is that the actual intent was destabilization and chaos, then they were extremely successful. Nevertheless, they returned to the plan in collaboration with Israel, apparently after Israel had succeeded in completely undermining American policy.
Israel: Genocide and Greater Israel
The immediate starting signal for the “Genocide” and “Greater Israel” projects was given on October 7, 2023, when a military operation by Hamas was turned into a false flagattack to justify the genocide against women, children, and other civilians in Gaza and, later, in the West Bank and Lebanon. This, in turn, served as the starting signal for the continuation of the Greater Israel project; initially, Syria and Lebanon were attacked. Although the Western press not only downplays Israel’s genocidal and imperialist actions but also fully supports and fuels them—including through the media of “neutral” Switzerland—Israel is viewed with increasing criticism by the general public in the Western world. According to Pew Research, 60% of Americans view Israel negatively. The Western media thus conveys an image that finds no resonance among the general public.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium to address the plenary session on Thursday, delegates to the UN General Assembly left the hall in droves.
NEW
UN General Assembly delegates stage a mass walkout as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu takes the podium to address the hall pic.twitter.com/EcTpBBvjjM
It is important to me to continually remind my Western readers of what is actually happening in Gaza right before our eyes—eyes that many choose to close.
Major Escalation in the Middle East—Loss of Control
Starting in February 2026, events began to accelerate even further. Since then, everything has gone wrong for the West and Israel in the Middle East. The Global South has already wrested the initiative from the West. While Iran initially limited itself to responding to American-Israeli aggression, it is now the Iranians and the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement who are setting the pace.
Ansar Allah managed to bring the entire western coast of Yemen under its control in a very short time and thus controls not only the Bab al-Mandab Strait but also the island of Perim Mayyun off the coast. With virtually no Western media coverage, the advance continues, and it is quite possible that Aden will soon be captured.
Furthermore, the Saudis’ East-West pipeline was paralyzed and targets near Riyadh were attacked. So far, the Saudis have been unable to mount a serious military response to this large-scale attack, as they do not seem capable of doing so on their own, and repeated calls for help to Trump and others have been in vain. The Mecca Alliance, which unites Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey in a military alliance, also appears to be a thing of the past, as even these “friends” refused to provide assistance.
President Macron’s grand announcement that he will send troops to Saudi Arabia won’t change any of that. “Arabia” is called Saudi Arabia because this country is ruled by a family—a tribe—the Sauds. A tribe that is protected by the Americans. However, there are approximately 100 other tribes within Saudi Arabia. It’s very possible that they could join forces with Ansar Allah and overthrow the House of Saud. The House of Saud no longer has any income and seems unable to continue buying off—as it has done until now—all those who could pose a threat to them. There’s a chance that the Saud house of cards will collapse, and if that happens, I wouldn’t give a penny for the remaining Gulf states.
Alastair Crooke also pointed out on several occasions that this dynamic could spill over into Iraq, another millennia-old civilization alongside Iran. If that happens, Kuwait will likely fall as well. Another smoldering conflict can also be detected in Jordan. It is therefore quite possible that the entire structure in the Middle East established by the British a good 100 years ago could collapse within a few months, without the Americans being able to stop this tsunami in any way. Arabia to the Arabs, Persia to the Persians, and the Americans out for good. If this happens, Israel will go from perpetrator to target; one certainly cannot speak of it as a victim in this context. How the emerging great powers of the Middle East will deal with the genocidal Zionists should be left to those who have suffered the greatest losses, for Palestinians are Arabs.
Europe
Chaos is once again rearing its head in Europe. Germany is the first country—once the world’s leading exporter and the major power in the EU—that is in danger of becoming politically ungovernable. The Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has been labeled as far-right and Hitler-like by the previously dominant parties and excluded from government participation by a so-called firewall, not only won landslide victories in two state elections in eastern Germany but also leads the CDU by a clear margin in national polls (30% to 20%). Chancellor Merz’s approval rating stands at 10 percent—a barometer that reveals the people’s dissatisfaction and would have driven any truly democratic chancellor to resign. Whether the Germans, in light of this political situation, will clench their fists and do nothing, as they have in the past, remains uncertain. The chancellor’s downfall would be good for Germany. The AfD is the only major party seeking dialogue and peace with Russia, which is not only desperately needed by this once-thriving industrial nation but is also a prerequisite without which it cannot survive economically. The alternative to real and fundamental political change in Germany is the war against Russia sought by Chancellor Merz and the ruling political elites. The last time Germany went to war against Russia in 1941, Adolf Hitler sent 3.7 million soldiers eastward and failed, despite the Germans’ genocidal behavior, which cost the lives of approximately 17 million civilians. As already explained above, the Federal Republic of Germany today finds itself unable to assemble a brigade of 5,000 volunteer soldiers for the Baltic states. This does not seem to concern the chancellor, which is a clear sign of the madness that has taken hold of him. This is strong evidence that he is acting in the interests of a power located outside Germany. One would be a naughty person to believe that this has anything to do with his BlackRock past. Those who managed to install him as chancellor can pat themselves on the back, as they’ve snagged a puppet at the bargain price of a few million.
The following clip shows how the new leadership in Berlin is presenting itself—the Left has taken over. No words needed:
The situation in the rest of Europe is no more encouraging. The presidential election in France will take place in April 2027. Macron is no longer eligible to run, and Marine Le Pen has a significant lead over the other candidates. The situation is thus similar to that in Germany: a party that is denounced as far-right by the parties currently in power, yet is the most popular among the people. Le Pen’s position on peace with Russia is unclear—she seems to be speaking with a forked tongue: on the one hand, she wants a negotiated peace, but at the same time supports the training of Ukrainian troops. A seasoned politician who positions herself to capture as many votes as possible. France’s financial situation is grim, with no silver lining. The rise in the interest rate on 10-year French bonds over the past twelve months has been even steeper than in any other European country.
Trump
President Trump’s policies only seem difficult to understand at first glance. His constant flip-flopping on Ukraine, Iran, and Israel is counterproductive and damaging to the U.S.’s reputation on the world stage. The reason behind Trump’s current actions is the midterm elections in November. Trump is struggling with the high oil prices he himself has caused, which he can prevent from spiraling out of control by manipulating the futures markets. However, actual market prices are 30% to 50% higher than the manipulated, fantasy futures prices. The fact that futures prices are indeed manipulated is evident, for example, in diesel prices at gas stations, which are moving in only one direction and have reached unprecedented levels worldwide. Diesel is the lifeblood of the American economy, and high prices are one of the biggest drivers of inflation, since virtually all goods are transported by trucks, agriculture depends on it, and large parts of industry rely on diesel. Trump’s latest farce: He’s blaming Zelenskyy for the high diesel prices because Ukraine is attacking Russian refineries; he’s doing this solely to divert attention from the biggest price drivers—the blockades of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab.
Somehow, Trump wants to turn things around, but it seems that he will lose the midterm elections coming up in about six weeks. According to Polymarket, an American online prediction market where users bet on the outcomes of future events—with market prices reflecting collective probability estimates—the probability that the Republicans will lose their majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate stands at 66%. Should this come to pass, Trump will likely face impeachment proceedings. He then runs the risk of going from a lame duck to a dead duck and being replaced by his turncoat vice president, Vance—not a promising outlook for the United States.
Trump’s latest appearance this week before the UN General Assembly was a testament to his psychopathic nature: He announced—nota bene after the election—that he would either make Iran a rich country or obliterate it completely.
Trump is every bit as bad as Adolf Hitler. In his speech at the Berlin Sportpalast on September 4, 1940, Hitler said, “We will wipe out their cities.” Trump wants to wipe out a 5,000-year-old civilization—without any legal basis, of course—acting like a god. In doing so, Trump is publicly calling for the genocide of an entire civilization. One might wonder whether he belongs in prison or in a psychiatric hospital, but the fact that he can make such statements before a global audience with impunity shows the depths to which Western civilization has sunk. I refer to a speech I gave in Switzerland on September 3.
The Financial Markets
I have made numerous comments on the instability of the financial markets. Now my dire predictions seem to be coming true. In addition to the overvaluations in the stock markets, I have repeatedly pointed out the unsustainable situation in the bond markets. Among the more astute market participants, fear is beginning to set in. Mr. Bessent has lost control of interest rates. On August 28, 2026, I looked at the average interest rate the U.S. had to pay on its debt; at that time, it stood at 3.35% (May), resulting in an annual interest burden of 1,340 billion. Today, this average interest rate stands at 3.49% (August); the debt mountain currently stands at 40,070 billion, meaning it has already increased by another 70 billion. Annual interest payments have thus risen by 56 billion to 1,396 billion per year in this short period of time.
Over the past 28 days, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond has risen from 4.722% to 5.185%, an increase of 0.46%. It does not appear that this trend will change. If this pace continues, not only will the government bond market collapse, but so will the towering mountains of debt in the AI sector. The same picture is emerging in Europe and Japan as well. The question isn’t whether the collapse will happen, but when—and who the U.S. will let go first: the Japanese or the Europeans. That is my personal opinion. When it comes to timing, I’m regularly wrong, which has taught me not to be active in these markets. I have the great privilege of meeting regularly with one of the world’s most successful investors. At our last meeting, he agreed with me in principle but remarked that I couldn’t possibly imagine what tricks and means the Americans still have at their disposal to delay the inevitable.
The scale of this crisis will dwarf anything humanity has ever seen. Compared to today, the 2008 crisis was a stroll through a sunny park with a delicious picnic. Such a collapse in the West will also affect the countries concerned’s geopolitical freedom of action; suddenly, everyone will be very preoccupied with their own problems. No one knows whether this will lead to an escalation in the geopolitical arena. What is certain, however, is that the “experts”—who are still driving the markets forward with their jubilant cheers—will solemnly declare that this simply could not have been foreseen—as always.
Entropy
All of these individual tectonic shifts lead to what can be described as entropy, a term from thermodynamics. Applied to geopolitics, I describe the situation as a massive, irreversible state of disorder and uncertainty within the various international systems. Existing power structures, rules, institutions, and hierarchies are losing their cohesive power, and a new order that would promise stability is not in sight.
For the collective West, which until recently held the reins firmly in its hands, is unwilling to make compromises so as not to jeopardize its position as a hegemon.
The Global South, taken by surprise by the rapid pace of events, has not yet devised a coherent, unified, and effective policy to wrest power from the West.
It appears that the Global South, under the military dominance of Russia, China, and—most recently, Iran as the fourth major military power—is in the process of adapting to the new circumstances and coordinating its efforts, which will ultimately lead to its victory.
How long this will take, however, and whether the West will use nuclear weapons to maintain its hegemony remains to be seen—though I would like to express my doubts on this point. So far, only Adolf Hitler believed that Germany should go down with him. Let’s hope that cooler heads are in control of the apocalyptic buttons.
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