The Beginning Of The End For Europe's Old Security Order

   What is going on in Ukraine is absolutely terrible for Europe which is why the continent cannot contemplate a end to the war. Like it or not, as explained bellow, a new world is being born and "Europe’s tragedy is not that it is being excluded from the negotiations shaping its own future, but that it does not yet fully grasp the depth of its exclusion."

by J.Ricardo Martins via journal-neo.su,

Europe’s long-standing security framework is undergoing profound strain, increasingly overshadowed by economic instruments that shape geopolitical influence.

This analysis examines how geoeconomic logics are reshaping Europe’s strategic posture and challenging the foundations of its traditional security order.

1. The Unraveling: How Europe Lost Control of Its Own Security Architecture

The photograph of Steve Witkoff with Vladimir Putin in Moscow is not merely another episode in the long chronicle of American informal diplomacy. It is a symbol of something far more consequential: the definitive erosion of the Euro-Atlantic security architecture that has anchored Europe since 1945. Europe now finds itself a spectator to a negotiation that directly concerns its future but in which it has no meaningful voice.

For decades, European leaders assumed that their security environment was guaranteed through three pillars: American military supremacy, NATO cohesion, and a Russia that could be simultaneously contained and marginalised. The war in Ukraine temporarily sustained this illusion. The European Union interpreted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as validation of the post-1991 Atlantic order, proof that Europe needed more NATO, more American leadership, more defence spending, and more ideological alignment with Washington.

Europe’s tragedy is not that it is being excluded from the negotiations shaping its own future, but that it does not yet fully grasp the depth of its exclusion

But as the conflict entered its later stages, and as new political dynamics emerged in Washington, a deeper reality became visible: Europe’s vision of security was not aligned with America’s long-term strategic trajectory.

Washington seeks to contain China; Europe seeks to contain Russia. Washington looked to the Indo-Pacific; Europe clung to its Eastern frontier. Washington viewed Russia as a potential co-player in global resource extraction, Arctic development, and strategic balancing; Europe continued to frame Russia as a permanent existential enemy.

The result is a form of strategic misalignment, with Europe still operating inside an architecture that Washington no longer fully believes in.

The American Pivot, the European Panic

Donald Trump’s return to the international stage accelerated this divergence dramatically. Trump’s strategic re-imagination of Russia, as an asset rather than an adversary placed Europe in a state of near-panic. His willingness to undermine NATO commitments, his explicit distrust of European leaders, and his understanding of geopolitics as business diplomacy all contribute to Europe’s strategic anxiety.

Trump’s humiliation of Europe is deliberate. By sending Witkoff, an adviser with no diplomatic obligations, to Moscow repeatedly while ignoring Kyiv, Trump signals that the centre of gravity has moved. The peace process will not be mediated through Brussels, Berlin, or Paris; it will be mediated through a Washington–Moscow axis, bypassing European institutions entirely.

Europe’s refusal to speak with Moscow is interpreted in the Kremlin not as principled resistance but as strategic self-sabotage. And Washington, sensing opportunity, is willing to exploit this fracture.

As many analysts warned—both sympathetic and critical—Europe is discovering too late that its security cannot be maintained through moral rhetoric, sanctions, or rearmament without industrial foundations. Europe wants to contain Russia, but it no longer has the political, military, or economic tools to do so.

2. The Dealmakers: How Trump, Putin, and Business Networks Are Writing Europe Out of Its Own Future

Shadow Diplomacy as the New Geopolitics

Witkoff’s shuttle diplomacy represents a structural shift: diplomacy is no longer the domain of foreign ministries but of political families, corporate intermediaries, and resource-based alliances. This is why Kushner’s presence in Moscow matters profoundly. The December talks were not simply high-level negotiations; they were the emergence of a new system of geopolitical conduct, in which trust between individual power networks outweighs institutional protocols.

The Trump–Putin paradigm is built on three principles: (i) commercial logic over ideological confrontation; (ii) resource extraction as the foundation of geopolitical stability; and (iii) bilateral trust over multilateral institutions.

This is profoundly humiliating for Europe, which traditionally sought legitimacy via multilateralism. For Washington and Moscow, however, Europe’s exclusion is not an oversight but a feature. The old European security architecture depended on Europe’s centrality. The new one does not.

The Economic Heart of the New Architecture

The emerging Washington–Moscow understanding is grounded in four economic pillars:

– Arctic and Northern Sea Route Resource Extraction: Joint participation in Arctic minerals, hydrocarbons, and rare earths is central. The US is far behind Russia in icebreaker capacity and Arctic infrastructure, and cooperation is a pragmatic solution.

– Energy Corridors and Post-War Reconstruction: American investors eye Russian energy as an undervalued frontier market. Simultaneously, reconstruction of Ukraine (potentially funded by frozen Russian assets) creates massive opportunities for US construction and energy firms.

– Reintegrating Russian hydrocarbons into global markets: This is a long-term American objective, both to stabilise global energy prices and to manage China’s growing leverage over Russia.

– Replacing NATO’s military logic with economic interdependence: This is the core of Trump’s thinking: build a Washington–Moscow axis rooted in profitability, thereby reducing the incentive for armed confrontation.

Why Europeans Are Desperate

Because Europe has tied its industrial base to sanctions, decarbonisation, and American military dependency, it is now structurally weaker than both Washington and Moscow in the emerging configuration.

Europe is discovering three painful truths:

– It cannot defend itself without the US. NATO’s European pillars lack ammunition, industrial capacity, and high-end military technology.

– Sanctions have weakened Europe more than Russia. Energy-intensive industries in Germany, Austria, and Italy are relocating to the US. Deindustrialisation is underway in Europe.

– The peace negotiations will not include Europe as a co-author. Europe will receive the final document, but not be invited to shape it.

This is why European strategists are furious: the security architecture that defined the continent is being rewritten over their heads.

3. After Ukraine: What the New European Security Order Might Look Like

Will NATO survive as Europe’s central pillar?

NATO will not disappear. It remains too deeply institutionalised, too symbolically powerful for Europeans, and too useful for Washington’s basing structures and arms exports. But it will be downgraded, transformed from the core of the European security order into a secondary framework, increasingly dependent on: US political will, a fragmented European defence sector, reduced American enthusiasm for European commitments, and a US–Russia modus vivendi that Europe does not control.

Under a Trump presidency, NATO has become a transactional umbrella, not a strategic alliance. Its credibility will depend entirely on the personal relationship between Trump and Putin—and Europe hates this because it strips the continent of agency.

The Impact of the War and the Coming Peace on Europe’s Architectural Future

The conflict in Ukraine revealed Europe’s structural vulnerabilities: lack of ammunition, lack of production capacity, overreliance on sanctions, and strategic incoherence. The peace will reveal something even more uncomfortable: Europe cannot enforce the consequences of the settlement on its own.

If the US and Russia craft the final settlement, Europe must either accept it or refuse and confront the consequences alone. Neither Paris nor Berlin is prepared for the latter scenario.

Ukraine, tragically, will be the ultimate pressure point. Its sovereignty will be negotiated by outsiders. Europe knows this but cannot alter it.

Can Europe Hold the Architecture Without the US?

The honest answer is no, not in the short or medium term. Europe lacks nuclear deterrence autonomy, military-industrial depth, cohesive political will, strategic consensus, energy security, technological parity with the US, and the capacity to contain Russia without American leadership.

The idea of European strategic autonomy remains aspirational rhetoric. The EU has military instruments, but not a military. It has ambitions, but not the industrial base to sustain them.

The Asian Century and the Decline of Europe

The more Washington and Moscow converge economically, the more Europe’s global relevance declines. The Russia–China axis strengthens, India emerges as a balancing pole, and the BRICS expand their economic and political weight. Europe becomes a peninsula of a Eurasian supercontinent that it does not control, increasingly marginal to global power centres.

Whether Asia can provide stability depends on the trust networks forming between Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi, Riyadh, and Tehran. Europe is not part of those networks.

Conclusion: A Continent in Suspension

Europe’s tragedy is not that it is being excluded from the negotiations shaping its own future, but that it does not yet fully grasp the depth of its exclusion.

The Moscow meetings are not a negotiation between equals; it is a negotiation between systems of power. Trump and Putin understand one another because they speak the language of transactional geopolitics. Europe speaks the language of norms, laws, and bureaucratic procedures—in a world that is no longer governed by them.

A new European security architecture is being drafted, and it is not being drafted in Brussels. It is being drafted in Washington and Moscow.

Europe must confront a stark question: Can a continent that has lost strategic agency recover it before the next geopolitical cycle closes?

Your Mind Can Bend Time - Here's How

   Well, not exactly but still, time is not what we believe it is. To understand this, we need to start with the Bell theorem which stipulate that my time is different than yours and the two can only be reconciled at the speed of light but not faster. (Except for the spooky action at a distance of quantum entanglement but let's not get into this. It is proven but nobody truly understands why!) 

  And then, worse, far worse, Einstein theory of relativity has consequences. One of these is called the Pole and Barn Paradox. Take a 10m long pole and sent it at close to the speed of light through a barn which is only 5m wide. Well, when you close the two doors, at one instant t, the pole fits within the barn. This of course is well explained by relativity as the pole actually shrinks in size as its speed approaches the speed of light. But there is another way to understand it: The pole has now a 45 degree angle in time which explains why it is now no longer than 5m and therefore fits within the two doors of the barn. In other word; there is no instant t. Only t1 and t2.)

  Understand this paradox and suddenly your concept of "time" will change completely. Time in reality is not a dimension because it is infinitely malleable. In other words, as Einstein proved, time is not absolute but relative, to space but more fundamentally to what happens within this space. 

  So unlike what we have been enticed to believe, time travel is not possible. The future does not exist yet. It depends on events which have not happened yet and which are still uncertain. As for the past, it is worse: There is no past! Only a chain of events in one specific place. When you look at the stars, you see them now as they were when light started its journey. Well, our present and their present cannot be reconciled faster than the speed of light as we explained before, which has a direct consequence. For a star 300 light-year away from us, their present and our present will never be connected faster than in 300 years. The Universe does not understand the concept of an instant t. 

  Time is local, not global. 

by Makai Allbert via The Epoch Times

A minute is always a minute, except when it isn’t.

This idea was put to the test in a 2023 Harvard study. Researchers induced minor bruising on participants’ forearms and then had them sit in rooms where the clocks ran at normal speed, half-speed, or double-speed.

Illustration by The Epoch Times/Shutterstock

Crucially, the actual elapsed time was identical across all conditions—28 minutes—but the clocks ticked at different rates.

The results surprised the researchers. Wounds healed faster when people thought more time had passed, and slower when they thought less time had passed. “Personally, I didn’t think it would work,” lead author Peter Aungle told The Epoch Times. “And then it did work!”

A century ago, Albert Einstein demonstrated that time is relative—not fixed. He explained the idea with a simple, humorous example: “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”

Now, psychologists and neuroscientists are finding that our sense of time is not only inherently subjective but also highly malleable.

We can’t stop the clock, but by understanding how we perceive time, we can make minutes feel longer, heal faster, and even expand our memories.

How the Mind Affects Reality

The Harvard healing experiment is a pivotal piece of evidence that mind and body are not only connected, but may be one and the same. “We weren’t really manipulating time itself. We were manipulating expectations,” Aungle said.

“If they [people] think more time has passed, they expect more healing—and those expectations can shape the body.”

Illustration by The Epoch Times.

Most people think of mind-body effects only in terms of emotion, he added. Yet, “psychology is embedded in everything the body does. I would argue the mind influences every physiological outcome to some degree.”

Expectations are not the only time bender. While believing time has sped up aids healing, high-arousal negative emotions, such as fear, significantly dilate our perception of time, making it feel slower.

In one study, participants watched frightening clips from “The Shining” or “Scream.” Afterward, a blue circle was presented in the center of the computer screen. Participants perceived that the circle lasted longer after watching frightening movies than after watching neutral or sad films.

Sylvie Droit-Volet, the lead researcher of the study, told The Epoch Times that subjective expansion is likely because “fear accelerates the internal clock, making time seem to pass more quickly and prompting action”—the fight or flight response.

Because the internal clock is ticking faster, measuring more units of time per second, the external world appears to move in slow motion. The time dilation allows the brain to process information with higher resolution during life-threatening situations.

Slowing Time

We can also make time feel longer in positive ways, such as by seeking out moments of awe.

A 2012 study published in Psychological Science found that feeling awe, whether from a story or a memory, makes time feel more abundant.

Awe acts as a reset button for the brain. It brings people intensely into the present moment. According to the “extended-now theory,” focusing on the present moment elongates time perception because we are not mentally rushing toward the future. By filling the present with vastness, awe offsets the feeling that time is slipping away, making life feel more satisfying.

The study also found that people who felt awe were less impatient, more willing to help others, and preferred experiences over material products.

We can also slow our perception of time through the practice of savoring.

“Savoring is putting a highlighter pen on our experiences,” psychologist Tamar Chansky told The Epoch Times. Savoring does not require extra duration, but rather a shift in attention.

For the time-starved, Chansky suggested taking “two more bites” of an experience—whether tasting coffee or looking out a window—to engage the brain’s awareness. This simple act creates “invisible, little expanders” within our finite days. It is a way of feeding the spirit without requiring a restructuring of one’s schedule, she said.

“We could rush through a whole day so easily ... and we might feel somewhat or even very productive at the end of the day, but we might not feel good. So finding these little pockets ... helps us to feel that expansion within.”

Chansky’s insight aligns with research findings that training attention, such as through meditation, can change how we perceive time.

Experienced meditators feel time passes more slowly during meditation and in their daily lives than people who do not meditate.

Being in nature also slows our experience of time.

In one study, participants overestimated the duration of a walk by nearly two minutes when it took place in nature, whereas their estimates were accurate for urban walks. Nature exposure increases mindfulness and reduces stress, states that are theoretically linked to a slowing of the internal clock. If you need to “buy” yourself a little time, you can find it in the wild. “Time grows on trees,” the study concluded.

Memories and Time

Why do childhood summers feel endless while adult years appear to fly by? The answer lies in how our brains process novelty. Our brains measure time based on how many new memories are created.

When we encounter unexpected stimuli, our brains process more information, leading to a subjective expansion of that duration. In experiments where a low-probability stimulus—called an oddball—appears in a stream of repetitive standard stimuli, the oddball, or novelty, is consistently judged to last longer.

Illustration by The Epoch Times.

“The more unique, meaningful, or changing experiences we have, the longer the stretch of time feels in memory,” Marc Wittmann, a research fellow at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Germany, said. On the other hand, routine compresses time in memory by halting the recording of details it already knows. When neurons fire repeatedly in response to the same stimulus, their response diminishes; they become efficient but record less data.

Therefore, to stretch your subjective life, introduce variation.

“A fulfilled and varied life is a long life,” Wittmann told The Epoch Times. This effect is not about simply filling a schedule with busyness—it is about “deep emotional resonance with the world.” A hundred days of routine collapse into a single memory unit in the brain; a week of travel or new experiences remains distinct and expansive.

Wittmann’s recent research adds a nuance: cognitive capacity also plays a role. As we age, the perception that the last decade flew by is partly due to cognitive decline, which affects our ability to encode complex memories. However, this effect is moderate. People who stay mentally and physically fit and continue to seek novel, emotionally rewarding experiences can subjectively expand their sense of time, regardless of age.

Read the rest here...

Prediction Consensus: What The Experts See Coming In 2026

   The role of "predictions" has always been either to reassure people, investors in this case, or panic them. And if it is called a consensus, i.e. an average, you can be absolutely certain that nothing is been predicted. More of the same on steroid.

   The difficulty of predicting is not in tracing linear trends. Anybody can do that, especially economists. Nor in identifying breaking points which is just a tad more difficult. Here usually, you just get the timing wrong. No, the complexity is in understanding interference between unrelated factors and the phenomenon of emergence. This is what almost nobody can do well. 

 

   This is also why our lives are worth living. If the reductionists were right, then the whole would just be the sum of the parts and knowing these, accurate predictions would indeed be possible. Conversely, if the constructivists or post modern, the main source of the woke ideology, were right, then everything being a social construct, nothing much would make sense beyond the meaning we give to things, what they call "the narrative" and our society would dissolve into meaninglessness. Why bother since there is no "meaning" beyond that which is assigned arbitrarily? Which is in fact one of the main demons our Western societies are grappling with currently.

 

   Thankfully, thanks to the work of Thomas Kuhn and his Paradigm Shift, we now understand that reality is more complex. It is composed of phases of emergence, development or arm race and maturation before complexity gives rise to a new paradigm, or the emergence of a new level which itself will follow these rules. This is what happens in nature and consequently, this is also what happens to human societies. 

 

   Unfortunately the behavior of complex systems can have three outcomes: Stabilize as a cycle and vegetate, exhaust resources and crash, or give rise to a new emergent paradigm and "escape" in a new orthogonal direction. We tend to be very good at predicting the first two outcomes but abysmally bad at predicting the third which mostly we understand only a-posteriori, that is after it happens.    

   Let's take just one example: The war in Ukraine in 2026. It could go on. That's the first scenario. It could stop because one side has exhausted its resources, that is the second scenario... or we could look at it as a lesson. See that more and more, humans are being replaced by drones and robots and in doing so, understand that it is necessarily the party with access to more resources which will win future wars. How is this different to the second scenario? Well, now the process becomes measurable and therefore predictable. You do not need to start a war for AI to help you predict the outcome. Could we therefore be approaching the end of wars? Very unlikely unfortunately but more positively, it means that from now on, major powers will be less and less in a position to confront each others directly. Is this a "progress"? Well, if it results in fewer wars, maybe but more importantly, this is a paradigm shift towards a more peaceful future which maybe, we could understand in 2026.

Prediction Consensus: What The Experts See Coming In 2026

For the seventh straight year, Visual Capitalist sifted through the forecast landscape to bring you the Prediction Consensus, a synthesis of what analysts, thought leaders, and industry experts expect for the year ahead.

This year, Nick Routley analyzed over 2,000 individual predictions from a wide variety of sources including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, the IMF, The Economist, Deloitte, Microsoft, Gartner, and dozens more.

By mapping where these forecasts overlap, we’ve distilled the noise into 25 high-conviction themes displayed in our “Bingo Card” format, with the number of dabs reflecting the volume of supporting predictions.

To get the full analysis of the Prediction Consensus and to see what’s ahead for 2026, become a member of VC+ or purchase the full Global Forecast Series report and package.

The General Vibe of 2026

If 2025 was a year of adjustment - markets recalibrating to higher rates, geopolitics reshuffling around a second Trump administration and tariffs, and AI moving from hype to deployment - then 2026 is shaping up as a year of consolidation and consequence.

The consensus mood is cautiously optimistic but shot through with uncertainty. Morgan Stanley describes 2026 as “The Year of Risk Reboot,” a period where market focus shifts from macro anxieties to micro fundamentals, creating fertile ground for risk assets. The policy backdrop is unusually supportive: fiscal stimulus, continued (if slower) monetary easing, and deregulation form what analysts call a “policy triumvirate” rarely seen outside of recessions.

Yet The Economist strikes a more sober tone, warning that 2026 will be defined by uncertainty as Trump’s reshaping of geopolitical norms continues to ripple worldwide. The old rules-based order is drifting further, and the line between war and peace grows ever more blurred through gray-zone provocations, cyber incursions, and an ambient rivalry between nations.

In short: risk assets may thrive, but the world beneath them remains turbulent.

AI: Once Again, the Big Story

For the third consecutive year, artificial intelligence dominates the prediction landscape, but the narrative has evolved. Where 2024 forecasts centered on whether AI hype was justified and 2025 focused on deployment at scale, the 2026 conversation is about integration and consequences.

From Tool to Partner

Across industries, AI is moving beyond answering questions to actively collaborating with people and amplifying their expertise.

This is the year of the agentic AI build-out. Deloitte predicts that by year-end 2026, as many as 75% of companies may be investing in agentic AI (autonomous systems that can plan, act, and adapt with limited human oversight). These AI agents are set to become “digital colleagues,” helping small teams punch above their weight. Microsoft envisions a future where a three-person marketing team can launch a global campaign in days, with AI handling data crunching and content generation while humans steer strategy.

After years of anticipation, productivity gains from AI are finally expected to materialize in measurable ways. Morgan Stanley points to AI-driven efficiency as one of six key drivers of their bullish earnings outlook. Software and internet companies are expected to see generative AI revenue grow more than 20-fold over the next three years.

Of course, AI will impact the job market in other ways as well. Professional and knowledge-worker classes that previously felt insulated are now beginning to feel anxiety around job security.

Market Predictions: Riding the AI Wave

Conveniently, AI also dominates the market story. The consensus is unmistakably bullish, though tempered by valuation concerns and awareness of concentration risks.

S&P 500: Double-Digit Gains Expected

Wall Street strategists are clustered in a tight range for year-end 2026 S&P 500 targets:

The bull case from JPMorgan sees the index potentially topping 8,000 if the Fed eases more than expected. Morgan Stanley calls it their most bullish outlook in years, driven by returning operating leverage, AI efficiency gains, accommodative tax and regulatory policy, and contained interest rates.

Importantly, analysts expect earnings to do the heavy lifting in 2026. Bank of America’s Savita Subramanian projects 14% EPS growth but notes that P/E multiples may actually contract by 10 points, meaning the market climbs a wall of valuation skepticism. Morgan Stanley forecasts S&P 500 EPS of $317 in 2026 (17% growth).

Gold’s Super-Cycle Continues

Gold remains a favorite. Morgan Stanley targets $4,500 per ounce—about 9% upside from current levels. The World Gold Council notes that gold achieved over 50 all-time highs in 2025 and may post its fourth-strongest annual return since 1971.

The drivers are structural: central bank buying, geopolitical hedging, and concerns about fiscal sustainability. In a “doom loop” scenario of accelerating fiscal deterioration, gold could surge 15-30% from current levels.

Economic Predictions: Soft Landing, With Caveats

The IMF projects global growth at 3.2% in 2025 and 3.1% in 2026—below the pre-pandemic average of 3.7% but not recessionary. Morgan Stanley expects similar numbers: 3.0% global growth in 2025, 3.2% in 2026 and 2027.

Advanced economies are expected to grow around 1.5-1.6%, while emerging markets hold above 4%. The consensus is a soft landing: growth moderates, inflation continues its gradual descent, and central banks ease policy—but not aggressively.

The “Higher for Longer” Era Fades

Central bank policy is expected to continue normalizing. Morgan Stanley’s base case has the Fed cutting to 3.0-3.25% by mid-year and then pausing for an extended period. The BoE is expected to bring rates to 2.75% before pausing. The ECB, facing below-target inflation and sluggish growth, may cut further than markets currently price.

Japan remains the outlier: the only major developed market central bank potentially hiking, with the BoJ expected to reach 0.75% by December before pausing.

Geopolitical & Trade Predictions: Tariffs and Tensions

Tariffs Become the New Normal

Perhaps no theme generates more consensus than this: the tariff regime is here to stay. Trump’s reciprocal tariffs are bringing in close to $300 billion in revenue annually, and while they may face legal challenges (Barclays expects the Supreme Court to deem them illegal), the effective tariff rate has peaked at 12.1%—the highest since 1934.

The economic impact is being absorbed more gracefully than many feared. UBS expects a “soft patch” in early 2026 as tariffs affect U.S. prices, followed by a broadening and strengthening of growth from Q2 onward. But the structural shift is profound: trade may reroute permanently, supply chains are diversifying, and the U.S. is explicitly using tariffs as a tool of economic leverage.

China Leans on Exports and Manufacturing

Facing deflation, a property crisis, and slowing domestic growth, China is pivoting to manufacturing and export dominance. The country is positioning itself as a more reliable partner, particularly in the Global South, striking trade agreements as the U.S. retreats from multilateralism.

Morgan Stanley expects China’s real GDP to expand 5% in 2026, helped by front-loaded government support. But the strategy creates global tensions: industrial overcapacity could flood world markets, and tariff battles may intensify.

Gray-Zone Provocations Increase

The Economist warns that Russia and China will test American commitment to allies through “gray-zone” provocations in northern Europe and the South China Sea. Tensions will rise in the Arctic, in orbit, on the sea floor, and in cyberspace.

This “ambient rivalry” short of outright war but beyond normal peacetime friction is expected to accelerate. Great-power competition will increasingly involve space-based intelligence, drone technology, and AI-powered cyber operations.

Assessing the Consensus

History teaches humility about forecasting. Previous years have contained unforeseen developments, and there’s no reason to expect 2026 to unfold precisely as consensus expects.

What’s valuable isn’t the specific predictions, but themes where informed observers are concentrating their attention. Examples include the transition from AI experimentation to building out infrastructure to support its widespread use. Or stablecoins becoming mainstream financial instruments.

Some of these themes will prove accurate; others will be derailed by events. But taken together, they sketch the landscape that institutions, investors, and policymakers are navigating as they position for the year ahead.

Stockman: The Real Story Behind The Russia–Ukraine War... And What Happens Next

  And here's the bigger picture of the Ukraine conflict by david Stockman. Frankly, you may want these mindless Eurocrats to read this although their reaction would probably be to add David Stockman to the naughty list.  

  As discussed earlier, the outcome of the conflict will probably depend of the current fight between the realist (Trump) and the shadow Imperialists of the Deep State, spearheaded by the British. What comes out of this fight is far from obvious. Trump is powerful and resourceful but he has no long term strategy, just sneaky business (well Las Vegas style) tactics to rely on and the team around him is abysmally incompetent. Remember the words of Sun Tsu about Tactic without strategy: The noise before defeat!  

Authored by David Stockman via InternationalMan.com,

Notwithstanding the historic fluidity of borders, there is no case whatsoever that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was “unprovoked” and unrelated to NATO’s own transparent provocations in the region.

The details are arrayed below, but the larger issue needs be addressed first.

Namely, is there any reason to believe that Russia is an expansionist power looking to gobble up neighbors which were not integral parts of its own historic evolution, as is the case with Ukraine?

After all, if despite Rubio’s treachery President Trump does manage to strike a Ukraine peace and partition deal with Putin you can be sure that the neocons will come charging in with a false Munich appeasement analogy.

The answer, however, is a resounding no!

Our firm rebuke of the hoary Munich analogy as it has been falsely applied to Putin is based on what might be called the double-digit rule. To wit, the true expansionary hegemons of modern history have spent huge parts of their GDP on defense because that’s what it takes to support the military infrastructure and logistics required for invasion and occupation of foreign lands.

For instance, here are the figures for military spending by Nazi Germany from 1935–1944 expressed as a percent of GDP. This is what an aggressive hegemon looks like in the ramp-up to war: German military spending had already reach 23% of GDP, even before its invasion of Poland in September 1939 and its subsequent commencement of actual military campaigns of invasion and occupation.

Not surprisingly, the same kind of claim on resources occurred when the United States took it upon itself to counter the aggression of Germany and Japan on a global basis. By 1944 defense spending was equal to 40% of America’s GDP, and would have totaled more than $2 trillion per year in present day dollars of purchasing power.

Military Spending As A Percent Of GDP In Nazi Germany

• 1935: 8%.
• 1936: 13%.
• 1937: 13%.
• 1938: 17%.
• 1939: 23%.
• 1940: 38%.
• 1941: 47%.
• 1942: 55%.
• 1943: 61%.
• 1944: 75%

By contrast, during the final year before Washington/NATO triggered the Ukraine proxy war in February 2022, the Russian military budget was $65 billion, which amounted to just 3.5% of its GDP.

Moreover, the prior years showed no build-up of the kind that has always accompanied historic aggressors. For the period 1992 to 2022, for instance, the average military spending by Russia was 3.8% of GDP– with a minimum of 2.7% in 1998 and a maximum of 5.4% in 2016.

Needless to say, you don’t invade the Baltics or Poland—to say nothing of Germany, France, the Benelux and crossing the English Channel—on 3.5% of GDP! Not even remotely.

Since full scale war broke out in 2022 Russian military spending has increased significantly to 6% of GDP, but all of that is being consumed by the Demolition Derby in Ukraine—barely 100 miles from its own border.

That is, even at 6% of GDP Russia has not yet been able to subdue its own historic borderlands. So if Russia self-evidently does not have the economic and military capacity to conquer its non-Ukrainian neighbors in its own region, let alone Europe proper, what is the war really about?

In short, it is rooted in territorial disputes and civil strife in lands which have been vassals or integral parts of greater Russia for several centuries. As indicated, Ukraine actually means “borderlands” in the Russian language, connoting stateless areas that were first assembled into a coherent polity by Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev by force of arms after 1920.

In fact, prior to the communist takeover of Russia, no country that even faintly resembled today’s Ukrainian borders had ever existed. So what NATO’s proxy war actually amounts to is an insensible attempt to enforce the dead hand of the Soviet presidium, as we amplify below.

For avoidance of doubt here are sequential maps that tell the story, and which make mincemeat of the Washington/NATO sanctity of borders malarkey. The first of these is a 220-year-old map from 1800, where the yellow area depicts the approximate territory of the five regions—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia plus Crimea—that will be allowed to go their own way, including back to Mother Russia, if the key ingredients of the Donald’s 28-point peace place can be resurrected.

As it has happened, these regions have voted overwhelmingly during referendums in 2023 and 2014, respectively, to separate from Ukraine in favor of affiliation with Russia.

Collectively, the five regions were historically known as the aforementioned Novorossiya or “New Russia” and had been acquired by Russian rulers, including Catherine the Great between 1734 and 1791.

The red markings within the yellow areas of the map designate the year of Russian acquisition. Self-evidently, therefore, the Russian Empire had gradually gained control over this vast area north of the Black Sea before the end of the 18th century. To that end, it had signed peace treaties with the Cossack Hetmanate (1734) and with the Ottoman Empire at the conclusion of the various Russo-Turkish Wars of that era.

Pursuant to this expansion drive – which included massive Russian investment and the in-migration of large Russian populations to the region – Russia established the “Novorossiysk Governaorate” in 1764. The latter was originally to be named after the Empress Catherine, but she decreed that it should be called “New Russia” instead.

The Provinces Of Ukraine Slated For Partition By The Trump Plan Were Part Of Russia Before The US Constitution Was Even Written

Map: © Роман Днепр, CC BY-SA 3.0

Completing the assemblage of New Russia, Catherine forcefully liquidated its aforementioned century-long Cossack ally known as the Zaporizhian Sich (present day Zaporizhia) in 1775 and annexed its territory to Novorossiya, thus eliminating the independent rule of the Ukrainian Cossacks. Later in 1783 she acquired Crimea from the Turks, which was also added to Novorossiya, as shown in yellow area of the map above.

During this formative period, the infamous shadow ruler under Catherine, Prince Grigori Potemkin, directed the sweeping settlement and Russification of these lands. Effectively, Catherine had granted him the powers of an absolute ruler over the area from 1774 onward.

The spirit and importance of “New Russia” at this time is aptly captured by the historian Willard Sunderland,

“The old steppe was Asian and stateless; the current one was state-determined and claimed for European-Russian civilization. The world of comparison was now even more obviously that of the Western empires. Consequently, it was all the more clear that the Russian empire merited its own “New Russia” to go along with everyone else’s New Spain, New France and New England. The adoption of the name of New Russia was in fact the most powerful statement imaginable of Russia’s national coming of age.

In fact, the passage of time solidified the borders of Novorossiya even more completely. One century later the light-yellow area of the 1897 map below gave an unmistakable message: To wit, in the late Russian Empire there was no doubt as to the paternity of the lands adjacent to the Azov Sea and the Black Sea: They were now part of the 125 years-old “New Russia”.

Where’s Waldo—Ukraine—on This Map

After the Russian Revolution, of course, the pieces and parts in this region of the old Czarist Empire were bundled-up into a convenient administrative entity by the new red rulers of Moscow, who christened it the “Ukrainian SSR” (Soviet Socialist Republic). In a like manner, they created similar administrative entities in Belorussia, Georgia, Moldavia, Turkmenistan etc.—ultimately confecting 15 such faux “republics”.

During the course of this communist state-building, here is how and when these brutal tyrants attached each piece of today’s Ukrainian map to the territories acquired or seized by the Russian Czars over 1654-1917 (yellow area):

• The old Novorossiya of the Donbas and Black Sea rim was added to the Ukraine SSR by Lenin in 1922.

• The western territory around Lviv that been known as Little Poland and Galicia were captured by Stalin in 1939 and thereafter when he and Hitler carved up Poland.

• Upon the death of the bloody Stalin in 1954, Khrushchev made a deal with his Presidium allies to transfer Crimea from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR in return for their support in the battle for succession.

In a word, Ukraine is the bastard spawn of communist blood and iron. Yet during the last decade the Washington and the NATO warhawks have spent upwards of $300 billion to ensure that the handiwork of autocratic Czars and Commissars remains intact into the 21st century and presumably beyond.

It is ironic, therefore, that the historically illiterate Donald Trump has the good sense to dispense with one of the stupidest crusades that the War Party on the Potomac has yet concocted. So doing, he would enable the failed handiwork of communist tyrants to be made right with history—an outcome that can now happen if and only if the Donald gets the Rubio digression back on track.

Modern Ukraine: Born In Communist Blood and Iron

Image: © Sven Teschke et al., CC BY-SA 3.0.

Of course, had the above-mentioned 20th century communist trio been noble benefactors of mankind, perhaps their subsequent map-making handiwork and reassignment of Novorossiya to Ukraine might have been justified. Under this benign counterfactual, they would have presumably combined peoples of like ethnic, linguistic, religious and politico-cultural history into a cohesive natural polity and state. That is, a nation worth perpetuating, defending and perhaps even dying for.

Alas, the reason that Trump is right to attempt to end this bloody catastrophe via partition is that the very opposite was true. From 1922 to 1991 modern Ukraine was held together by the monopoly on violence of its brutally totalitarian rulers. And that became more than evident when the Kremlin temporarily lost control of Ukraine during the military battles of World War II. During that especially bloody interlude, the communist administrative entity called Ukraine came apart at the seams.

That is, local Ukrainian nationalists joined Hitler’s Wehrmacht in its depredations against Jews, Poles, Roma and Russians when it first swept through the country from the west on its way to Stalingrad; and then, in turn, the Russian populations from the Donbas and south campaigned with the Red Army during its vengeance-wreaking return from the east after winning the bloody 1943 battle of Stalingrad that turned the course of WWII.

Not surprisingly, therefore, virtually from the minute it came out from under the communist yoke when the Soviet Union was swept into the dustbin of history in 1991, Ukraine has been engulfed in political and actual civil war. The elections which did occur were essentially 50/50 at the national level but reflected dueling 80/20 vote breakouts within the regions. That is, the Ukrainian nationalist candidates tended to get vote margins of 80% + in the West/Central areas, while Russian-sympathizing candidates got similar pluralities in the mainly Russian-speaking East and South.

This pattern transpired because once the iron-hand of totalitarian rule ended in 1991, the deep and historically rooted conflict between Ukrainian nationalism, language and politics of the central and western regions of the country and the Russian language and historical religious and political affinities of the Donbas and south came rushing to the surface.

Accordingly, so-called democracy barely survived these contests until February 2014 when one of Washington’s “color revolutions” finally “succeeded”. That is to say, the Washington fomented and financed nationalist-led coupe d état ended the fragile post-communist equilibrium.

That’s the true meaning of the Maidan coup. It ended the tenuous cohesion that kept the artificial state of Ukraine intact for barely two decades after the Soviet demise. So save for Washington’s destructive intervention, the partition of a communist-confected state that had never been built to last would have materialized all on its own–perhaps like in Czechoslovakia—-and likely sooner than later.

At the end of the day, therefore, the necessary impending partition of the rogue state of Ukraine is not a case at all of legitimate sovereign borders being violated. Nor does it involve an assault on the hypocritical notion of a “rules-based international order” that has not actually ever existed and which, instead, has been a cover for Washington’s global hegemony all along.

But the lessons are nonetheless profound. History accumulates and eventually leads to destructive, but wholly unnecessary outcomes.

That is the case today with the utterly foolish action of Washington during the 1990s and 2000s to bring former Warsaw Pact Nations, and even breakaway Soviet Republics into a NATO alliance whose mission was over and done in 1991.

It should have been dismantled then and there. When the old Soviet monster with its 50,000 tanks and 7,000 nuclear warheads disappeared into the dustbin of history, there was no longer a threat to the east. There was no “front line” to defend.

At that point Washington should have and easily could have led the world to disarmament and to a revival of the lasting peace that had disappeared in the “Guns of August” in 1914.

But now the NATO section 5 mutual defense commitment to these 31 nations is equivalent to a stupid charity that the nearly bankrupt Federal government cannot afford in any case.

There is absolutely nothing in it for the enhancement of America’s homeland security, and huge incentives for the politicians of these nations to caterwaul against Russia rather than seek peaceful accommodation.

So here is the historic moment before us: The Donald now needs to tell Rubio in no uncertain terms to take a hike and then return to the essence of the 28-point plan and agree with Putin to a partition of Ukraine.

So doing, he would not only end the utter stupidity of NATO’s proxy war on Russia, but in the process accomplish something more of literally epic proportions: Namely,the defenestration of the neocons, official Washington, NATO, the rules based international order and all the other globalist humbug that has saddled America with $1.5 trillion per year Warfare State and Global Empire that it cannot afford and doesn’t need.

"Common Sense" Is Back: UK Finally Scraps Non-Crime Hate Incident Laws Nationwide

   Wait, you mean no more pre-crimes and thought crimes in the UK? 

   Finally a step in the right direction while Big Brother thought "1984" was an instruction manual? Amazing. Does it mean all hopes are not lost? That hell can wait another year until Dante takes up for a tour?  

   Let's not get carried away with optimism. The Deep State is still there, lurking in the shadow, busy undermining every effort by the Trump administration to arrange a soft landing in Ukraine. Now, this latest trick of Trump to have the anti-corruption team investigate everyone around Zelinski while he is on his way to Florida is pure genius, Godfather-style I mean. The MI6 office will be busy this weekend, and for once, not investigating a guy who wrote a mean Twit.   

"Common Sense" Is Back: UK Finally Scraps Non-Crime Hate Incident Laws Nationwide

Police chiefs will reportedly seek to scrap non-crime hate incidents in plans they will present to the Home Secretary next month.

The Telegraph reports that police leaders have decided that NCHIs are no longer “fit for purpose” after warnings that recording them undermines freedom of speech and diverts officers away from fighting crime.

Under the plans, NCHIs will be replaced with a new “common sense” system, where only a fraction of such incidents will be recorded under the most serious category of anti-social behaviour.

An NCHI falls short of being criminal but is perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards a person with a particular characteristic.

They stay on police records indefinitely and can come up in background checks.

The move to scrap them follows high-profile cases such as that of Graham Linehan, the Father Ted co-creator, whose arrest for a series of posts on X was criticized by the Trump administration as a “departure from democracy”.

The plans will be published next month by the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and are expected to be backed by Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary.

Lord Herbert, the chairman of the College of Policing, told The Telegraph:

“NCHIs will go as a concept. That system will be scrapped and replaced with a completely different system."

“There will be no recording of anything like it on crime databases. Instead, only the most serious category of what will be treated as anti-social behaviour will be recorded. It’s a sea change.”

Their exclusion from crime databases means any incidents will no longer have to be declared as part of checks in job applications.

Police forces would be instructed not to log “hate” incidents on crime databases, instead treating them as “intelligence” reports.

Police guidance on the recording of NCHIs was first published in 2005, following recommendations by an inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence - the London teenager who was stabbed to death in a racist attack in 1993.

As The BBC reports, Lord Herbert said "an explosion of social media" in the years since they were introduced has meant police had been drawn into monitoring "mere disputes" online.

Officers do not want to be "policing tweets", he told BBC Radio 4's Today program.

Last year, The Telegraph reported that 43 police forces in England and Wales had recorded more than 133,000 NCHIs since 2014.

US, China and the Future of the Global Order by Kishore Mahbubani

  The raw, un-edulcolored view of the West and especially Europe by Kishore Mahbubani from Singapore. I agree, mostly. 

  Does this make Singapore a paradise? Not quite but reality is always messy and complex. 

  The inability of Europe to talk to Russia or to understand China makes it unable to change and evolve. Maybe that's what it means for a society to be "old"?

  A profound and knowledgeable analysis well worth listening to below:   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQxnxbuweUc