The average Honda Pilot SUV weighs 4,000 pounds and has a horsepower of around 280. At 20 mph if the vehicle is coasting in neutral it will take at least 60 seconds to come to a stop on its own. If in automatic drive it will never stop unless something blocks it; at most it will slow to around 4 mph due to idle creep, a term for the default speed an automatic transmission car will go just because it is in drive.

Following Executive Order 14074 in February 2023, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) updated its use of force policy to align with the Department of Justice (DOJ) standards. However, there are operational difference between the two departments’ policies.

Under current DHS Policy, officers are prohibited from firing at the operator of a moving vehicle unless deadly force is justified under standard objective reasonableness (imminent threat of death or serious injury). DHS policy requires officers to consider the hazards posed to bystanders by an out-of-control conveyance before firing.

DOJ, however, instructs its officers that they may not fire at a moving vehicle unless a person in the vehicle is threatening the officer or others with deadly force by means other than the vehicle, or the vehicle itself is operated in a manner that “threatens death or serious injury and no other objectively reasonable defense exists.” Crucially, the DOJ policy explicitly mandates that reasonable means of defense “includes moving out of the path of the vehicle.”

While the use of deadly force standards are similar, DOJ explicitly codifies the tactic of “moving out of the path of the vehicle” as a required alternative to shooting, whereas DHS focuses on the risk assessment of the uncontrolled vehicle. Which is the more reasonable one?

To understand the divergence, I think we can analyze the DOJ policy as the rules for a civilian police force that is correctly oriented and organized around operating in city streets. One that understands that shooting at cars or firing warning shots endangers bystanders and creates chaos. The DHS policy adopts those same strict civilian rules for land-based enforcement but layers on military-style rules of engagement for its air and sea components, where “disabling fire” (shooting out an engine) or “warning shots” (firing across a bow) may be necessary tools to stop smugglers or threats in open water or airspace where bystanders are rare. The attitude of DHS may be impacted by its quasi-military view of its operations, a view that is unsuited for internal operations in the United States of America.

Referring back to the facts of the case, I judge reasonableness by the likelihood to resolve the issue. If I do X and my goal is Y, is it reasonable to believe X will accomplish Y? Given the timing and proximity, if Renee Good was actually trying to ram the ICE officer who killed her, he would have still been run over and would not have walked away. If you shoot the driver of an SUV accelerating at you from a few feet away the SUV is not stopping. In the real world, not Hollywood, shooting the driver is not going to make the wheels turn away from you if the driver is turning into you. Shooting them will not make their foot leap from the gas pedal to the brakes.

Consider syncope. It is exceedingly dangerous when a person suffers syncope, or fainting, while they are driving. It is unpredictable. If the driver’s leg is extended and their heel is planted on the floor, the loss of muscle control can make their leg limp and heavy. Then gravity does its thing and this will make them press down on the pedal aka flooring it. If they were turning one direction, they may turn the other direction or straighten out but this will take a few moments because the centrifugal force will take time to move their hands and arms in the direction the body leans, and that is if they were leaning into the turn, otherwise it will take longer. Either way, it will take longer than the distance between Renee Good and ICE allowed for.

Someone might argue that “the shooting does not stop the car instantly, but it stops the driver from steering it back toward the officer.” This is a claim that would matter only if there was more distance to make the turn back into the officer—which there was not—and only if the driver was in the process of making such a turn and had not already done so. None of that applies in this case. Shooting trades a potential threat for a guaranteed one: a dead driver cannot correct course; they become a body in an uncontrolled weapon.

Consider also the active behavior of the driver regarding the agents. Renee Good was responding to ICE agents coming from her left. If her intent was to attack and weaponize her vehicle she would have turned left directly into the primary threat or target. Instead, she turned right. This is consistent with evasion and flight, not attack and fight. Right was the pathway of escape. Furthermore, an agent coming from her right continuing to move in front of a vehicle that is reversing and then pulling forward is tactically unsound because the agent puts themself in the vehicle’s path. If the agent was indeed ‘bumped’ or struck, it was the result of stepping into a narrowing gap during a turn, not the result of a targeted attack. Additionally, the agents had the license plate of the vehicle and could follow up with local, state, and federal law enforcement to question or arrest Renee Good if warranted.

Given these facts, was shooting the driver of the vehicle a reasonable response to the belief they were attempting to hit you with their vehicle from a distance of around a yard? No. It was not reasonable, the DOJ policy of getting out of the way was the only reasonable action for agents from any agency to take. Shooting the driver would not save you because it would not stop the SUV and, if anything, would make it hit you faster. Then consider what actually happened:

1. Renee Good did not run over the ICE agent.

2. Renee Good’s vehicle did accelerate after previously moving slowly.

3. Renee Good’s vehicle only stopped after it crashed into another civilian vehicle that thankfully was unoccupied.

The shooting of Renee Good was unreasonable because it would not have solved the issue if she was in fact trying to run over ICE agents, and it put others at risk with no means of mitigating that risk. Further, her crash trajectory was to the right which is where she had turned the vehicle before she was shot.

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Receipts

https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/23_0206_s1_use-of-force-policy-update.pdf DHS 2023 Update

https://www.justice.gov/jm/1-16000-department-justice-policy-use-force

Wishcasting is a slang combo of "wishful" and "forecasting." It refers to the act of presenting a desired outcome as reality, despite a lack of objective evidence supporting it. Essentially, it is wishful thinking disguised as analysis. And, at heart, that is what most US administration friendly talking points were in 2025 regarding American standing and power. The trade war hurt China but hurt Americans more: China ended 2025 with a record high one trillion-dollar global trade surplus while the USA was forced to backdown, pause further tariff hikes and is projected to have ended 2025 with a one trillion-dollar global trade deficit.

2025 was the first year since 1890 when you could say China was clearly the most important single economy in the world because it defeated the US in a trade war started by the US administration on its own terms.1 1890 was when China lost its spot as the world’s largest economy; lost it to the United States of America.2 China’s economic position translates to leverage in economic conflicts, and the world noticed. In a trade war, domestic production capacity and internal market size (PPP) matter more than currency-adjusted comparisons (nominal GDP). American policymakers who thought they could win a trade war were engaging in wishful thinking based on misleading nominal GDP figures or simply manipulating the US market to serve ends other than enriching the American people.

Looking at GDP numbers, the US looks dominant, but for the point of looking at how economic might translates into a competition, I think we should consider what is being measured. I do not mean that the numbers are wrong, I mean that their importance can be misleading. Let’s look at the Federal Reserve definition of GDP: Real gross domestic product is the inflation adjusted value of the goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States.3

If the US Federal Reserve raises interest rates, the Dollar gets stronger. On paper, the US economy "grows" compared to Europe or China. But did American factories suddenly get more efficient? Did they produce more cars? Not necessarily. Let’s compare the United States, the European Union and the People’s Republic of China at ten-year intervals from 2005 to last year:

Nominal GDP

Country/Entity 2005 2015 2025

United States $13.04 Trillion $18.21 Trillion $30.62 Trillion

European Union $11.95 Trillion $13.66 Trillion $19.99 Trillion

China (PRC) $2.29 Trillion $11.06 Trillion $19.40 Trillion

• 2005: The US and EU were nearly equal. China was roughly the same size as the UK or Italy at the time. This was the unipolar moment when the US was truly a global hyperpower with no peers.

• 2015: The “Great Divergence” begins. The US pulls way ahead of the EU in dollar terms, largely due to the strengthening Dollar and the Eurozone’s slower recovery from the debt crisis. However, China’s economy had nearly quintupled (5X) in a decade.

• 2025: China has essentially caught up to the EU in nominal terms, while the US nominal figure has crossed $30 trillion, bolstered by significant price inflation and high-value service sectors, which makes the US look like a juggernaut.

However, another way to measure economies, and the one I think that is most important for Americans, is purchasing power parity, which the International Monetary Fund explains is: the rate at which the currency of one country would have to be converted into that of another country to buy the same amount of goods and services in each country.4 Put another way, it is hard to compare the economies of different countries. It can be done, but just because a thing can be done, does not mean the process is simple. Some things remain complex because there is a limit on how simplified you can make them, and you have to do the work. So, economists and financial statisticians have to compare by converting local money into a single currency like the US Dollar. Most people use "market rates," meaning how many dollars does X thing cost in say Nigeria versus Italy, but this can be misleading because prices for things like a ride in a taxi are much higher in rich countries than in poor ones. To get a clearer picture of how much people can actually afford, the IMF uses Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), which compares how many things—like a hamburger—you can actually buy with your money such as The Economist’s Big Mac index which has been going on since the Reagan years. The idea is that McDonald’s is a global chain, so measuring how many Big Macs someone can buy with X amount of their own currency in the USA or China or Germany is a good measurement because the thing being measured and the company involved are the same, so you are comparing Big Macs to Big Macs and not apples to oranges.5

Now, if we count purchasing power parity, we get these numbers for the same years:

Country/Entity 2005 2015 2025

USA $13.04TR $18.21TR $30.62TR

EU $12.35TR $19.45TR $29.18TR

PRC $6.53TR $19.72TR $41.02 Trillion

China, the US, and the EU were basically equal in 2015, and, in the post 2017 era, China dominated. For example, in a contest where countries urgently needed to secure resources against another country, and this would directly translate into their ability to settle political differences using other means, the Chinese could outspend America, something no country has been able to say since the 19th century. China is effectively a $41 Trillion economy—nearly 35% larger than the US in terms of actual output. The EU isn’t “failing”; it is more efficient value for money. It produces 95% of the US output while its citizens pay significantly less for the basics of life. Luxuries will not matter to a population who has little hope of ever enjoying them.

Looking at the International Monetary Fund numbers, the Communist Chinese control 19.8% of the world economy, the European Union controls 13.7% and the USA controls 14.5%. 19.8 is more than 14.5. Some want to take comfort in per capita measurements of China’s population/GDP versus the USA where America’s lower population makes it look stronger. That is not how you fight wars and buy weapons. If one country has 10 riflemen with 10 bullets each and ours has 3 guys with 15 bullets each, we have more bullets per capita but they still have 100 to our 45 and we are in trouble. More is still more, and it cannot be wished away. On other fronts, China has also pulled ahead.

Electric Vehicles —The Hungarian Dilemma

The USA based Tesla, led by Elon Musk, is getting smoked by China’s BYD and is only kept afloat by trade barriers keeping perfectly safe Chinese EVs that are sold in Europe, out of the American market.6 BYD sold 2.26 million cars last year and Musk only sold 1.64 million, a difference of over 600,000 vehicles globally. BYD was able to make an EV that effectively cost $15K and Musk could not or would not. But to put this in perspective, I will use a neutral market: Germany. In Germany the least expensive Tesla is the five-seat sedan Model 3 which retails starting at €36K, whereas BYD sells the four-seat hatchback Dolphin model starting at €19K. If you want go sedan to sedan, even with EU trade barriers on China, the BYD Seal performance model beats the performance edition of the Model 3 by 1200 Euros. That will change because Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Hungary will host the first BYD factory in Europe, scheduled to open second-quarter 2026. This will be good for Hungarian jobs, but it will mean that BYD will be safe from most EU trade restrictions and well placed to crush Tesla in Europe. European consumers have no reason to pay more for less to a US based multinational corporation versus saving money with a Chinese company.

Artificial Intelligence

Wall Street, the City of London, Amsterdam, Riyadh, etc., are saying that artificial intelligence is the future. Chinese AI is more efficient than ChatGPT. Period.7 DeepSeek trained its flagship V3 model for around $5.5 million. Training ChatGPT 4 and similar models in America costs somewhere between $100 million to $500 million. DeepSeek also test as well and, in some cases, better at coding. If the Chinese did the same thing for 20 to 100 times cheaper, then the current American method is bloated.

Executive MBAs

While the value of many university degree programs has come under fire in the US in recent years, one domain where companies repeatedly say the degree and education matter are Executive Master of Business Administration programs. In the Financial Times rankings for 2025, no USA-only program ranked in the top ten globally, and the oldest English university in the world, Oxford is down to number 15.8 Number one was the China/US joint program of The Olin School of Business at Washington University in St Louis, which is paired with Fudan University in Shanghai, China. While that means both countries can claim top honors, the other rankings tell a different story. China-only programs took 4th and 8th place, and a program partnered with China—but not the USA—took 2nd place. A program including the US but not China took 6th place. And 5th, 9th and 10th, places included both the US and China. On their own and with partners, the Chinese programs outranked the Americans, but it was close.

Going back to the Olin-Fudan joint number one ranking, even when America wins, it wins because it is tethered to Chinese talent. Academically, China has to be seen as at minimum an equal, and one that appears on the ascendant while the global consensus is that the USA is on the decline. If forced by the Americans to choose between America and China, the other major powers may not give the USA the answer it wants.

The point is, Americans who look down on China or hope the Chinese will just collapse of their own contradictions, like the Soviets, are wishcasting, and wishcasting is futile cope.9

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This year Outside the Academy has grown from 100 to over 270 subscribers. Thank you for your support. Based on what resonated with you, it appears I have so far achieved my goal of writing pieces that speak across the political tribes.

Back in 2018, the group More in Common produced a report called “The Hidden Tribes of America”1 Their research divided the US electorate into seven groups:

With the feedback I have received from you, my readership is made up of everyone from traditional liberals to traditional conservatives, and five out of seven is not bad. I’ll take it. That is heartening and amazing. I am at heart an institutional realist. The great historian Daryl Michael Scott told me over and over that “history doesn’t love anybody.” What he meant was that history does not play favorites, and any institution or society that behaves irresponsibly will get the consequences of their actions eventually, and they will not like it. He also meant that every group has moments of shame and honor in their past, and there is no avoiding that reality.

In 2025 reality caught up to America. We are no longer exceptional by default, and we in 2026 we will have to earn American exceptionalism back. And you intuit that.

This year you responded to my pieces that exposed critical failures in the American system and the realization that the American people have either wolves or Don Quixotes as leaders rather than shepherds. We are experiencing directly correlated context and stewardship collapses in politics, business, and civil society, including our religious organizations. I can categorize my top six essays into three pairs: The Anatomy of the Scam; The Architecture of Belonging; and The Audit of Our Reality.

I. The Anatomy of the Scam

I started exploring the idea of American people being sold out in “The Private Equitization of America.” Partisanship and gloating will not help in the face of an elite who are barely recognizable as American in their manner, principles, and ambitions. And in “When Truth Comes Late,” I explored the social politics of shame that keep us tethered to the sunken place of failed leadership. You had hopes that the bluster would fade and there would be a serious attempt to deal with American problems. What you got was chaos and governing that looked a lot like favors for the wealthy. This was my top essay this year. Thank you for your feedback on power and pain moral injury that comes for facing up to social and political deception.

II. The Architecture of Belonging

In my pieces on the protest/riots in L.A. and America’s ongoing obsession with race, I have basically the same thing to say: you defend what you belong to and what belongs to you. Protests work the more they situate themselves within what Americans are and want to be and means patriotic and law-abiding; if you are protesting injustice you have to make it clear that you are not the ones doing the injustice. And, race remains a tool used by external and internal foes to manipulate and weaken the American people. We do not have to let them keep getting away with this, and we can stop playing along. Of course, race does not equal ethnicity. I am very much looking forward to Irish American Heritage Month in March. Americans will overcome our institutional problems together or keep getting taken advantage of separately.

III. The Audit of Our Reality

The Charlie Kirk murder was a public trauma. Those few who praised it were rightly condemned, as it was right to call out those spreading misinformation. However, the matter was one of crime and should be treated as that, not as a call for cutting off contact with Americans who are to left or right of yourselves. That is what your opponents want and a clear rule of conflict is you do not give them what they want. Too many people on both sides saw a young man killed and looked for advantage and tried to shape perceptions. It is on us to audit what is happening around us and clearly call things what they are. A private citizen who was a famous activist and not a government official was murdered. The accused is another private citizen who held no government position or political party position. They were both young white males, born ten years apart. But one was a victim and the other is an alleged killer who not only committed an evil act but forced everyone else present to witness it. Kirk, his family and all the attendees are victims. This is awful, even in court earlier this month the prosecution moved to clarify the term “witness” with the judge in the case because there could be 3,000 potential witnesses.2 The pathway back to a lawbounded society is focusing the core matters; the facts of the case. Charlie Kirk had a right to life, one person took that life—for what appear to be political reasons which will hopefully come out in trial—that one person needs to face the full force of the law, swiftly, and we should not be taken in by those who want to use a horrible crime to turn us against one another.

I guess, belatedly, there was a theme: we have to relearn how to live together. How to live with difference, live with mistakes, and live in reality. And I really do think our unique American history is the manual to rediscovering the better angles of our nature, and also finding our reserve of indignation to demand a better 2026, and make it happen. But that is up to us, because history does not play favorites, and the arc of history does not bend toward a better America on its own, we have to bend it.

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Members of Congress framed the NDAA as a contrast to the administration’s new national security strategy, which harshly criticized Europe and questioned its role in the Ukraine war. Concerns have grown in Congress and among European allies that the Trump administration could scale back troop levels or weaken NATO commitments while the Pentagon’s global force posture review remains unreleased. US troop strength in Europe sits just under 80,000 and often shifts with rotations and exercises; since 2022, it has ranged from 75,000 to 105,000. Under the NDAA, US troop levels in Europe cannot drop below 76,000 for more than 45 days unless the top defense leaders—the SedDef and USEUCOM Commander— certify it serves US security interests and allies were consulted. Additionally, key weapons systems must stay in place. The bill also backs Ukraine and Baltic security initiatives, sets a minimum troop level in South Korea, and includes oversight provisions tied to Latin American operations. The specific penalty for Secretary Hegseth failing to provide the "double-tap" strike footage is a 25% reduction in his travel budget for Fiscal Year 2026.

Why even bother with this stage theater? Let’s look behind the curtain.

This whole episode is a sign of a Congress that does not know what it is doing and can barely be taken seriously. First, the defense bill raises the Pentagon’s budget to nearly a trillion dollars at a time when the deficit has ballooned. Congress postures as if it questions whether Secretary Hegseth has not shown himself competent with the budget he already has, yet Congress has given him more money. That is neither pushback nor curtailment. It is a mixed signal at best. Congress now threatens to cut his travel budget if he does not comply with their demands for footage. This is not a real threat; he could simply travel less or secure the funds from elsewhere. What will Congress do if he takes the money from another budget line item or piggybacks a ride with one of his subordinate commanders? The evidence suggests it will do nothing. It did nothing when the money clearly marked out for USAID was cut. Hegseth could rightly be expected to dismiss Congress. It would be far more effective to hold him in contempt of Congress for withholding data from the senior branch of the government. They will not do it, so he can safely ignore them. It is hard to blame him.

The worst of it is the European troop level “mandate.” What mandate? To evade it, all Hegseth has to do is have Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, Commander of U.S. European Command and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), certify with him that a reduction is in the national security interest of the USA and that they “consulted” NATO allies—whatever “consulted” is supposed to mean in this context.

This means they could remove the troops after making a few phone calls and signing a statement claiming, “this will make America great again.” Why should Hegseth respect a Congress that is unwilling to make him respect it? The problem in 2025 is that America lacks a real Congress, and as a result, it lacks a balanced government.

This is not a partisan critique as most Democratic Senators voted for a bill with illusory penalties for defying Congress, including Virginia’s senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner. If they thought this was good policy then fine, but Congress should not do is perform oversight theater. It is not only dishonest but it provokes contempt from the executive branch. It would better to pass a clear bill that simply agrees with the Trump Administration’s priorities and let the American people decide if they agree in the midterm elections. Instead we have oversight theater designed to confuse the citizens.

Receipts

https://www.ft.com/content/9bbfd46c-8fb7-4f31-9014-f88b2a00831f

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5656174-trump-signs-ndaa-act/

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/17/senate-ndaa-passage-trump-boat-strikes-00694738

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1191/vote_119_1_00648.htm

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/your-expert-guide-to-the-2026-national-defense-authorization-act/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/18/trump-ndaa-military-spending

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The Europeans and the Canadians continue to make moves that are reshaping predictions for the 21st century’s trajectory. Rather than a new American century it may be a European one. Few expected the Americans would become so unaware of the sources of their national prosperity that they would engage in actions that would resurrect their old geopolitical boogeyman: an assertive Europe.

Canada’s ambassador to the United States, Kirsten Hillman, says she will step down early next year.

This is a major departure as Canada and the United States head toward a high-stakes review of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) and as bilateral trade talks remain stuck. Hillman, a trade lawyer and career diplomat who helped renegotiate the continental pact during President Donald John Trump’s first term, said there is never a “perfect time” to leave but argued this is the right moment to put in place a team that can carry the CUSMA review “through to its conclusion.”

Hillman’s tenure was eventful, spanning Covidtide and the dramatic decline in US-Canada relations in 2025. After the announcement of her departure, she was praised by US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who called her “a class act.” Trade negotiations were disrupted in late October after Trump halted talks in anger over an Ontario-commissioned anti-tariff advertisement aired in the United States, and the review process now moving forward will determine whether Canada, the United States, and Mexico renew the pact or allow it to lapse. The Canadian federal government has no authority over the province of Ontario’s media strategy, and the US president should not expect that he can continually lash out at foreign governments and they will not retaliate. Such policies are a recipe for disaster. The enemy gets a vote, and in this case Trump has chosen to make an opponent out of Canada.

About three quarters of Canadian exports go to the USA, and Prime Minister Mark Carney aims to cut that down to 50% over the next decade by doubling non-US exports. Carney’s pivot to Europe is part of that strategy. And Europe a looks like a serious partner for trade and defense.

Europe Decoupling from Orbán and maybe Hungary

If there is one place where the European elite may wish they had not expanded to, it is the one led by Viktor Mihály Orbán. The European Union knows that Hungary does not want Ukraine in the bloc. However, the EU is moving ahead with plans for Ukraine’s accession to the European Union under Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union. It is clear from Article 49’s requirements that announcing the intention to bring Ukraine in is a challenge to Hungary.

First, after applying to join the EU, a candidate country has to get the Council of the EU to issue a positive opinion on the candidate. The next step requires the Council of the EU to vote unanimously in favor of moving forward with negotiations. That means that Hungary has a veto, and yet the EU apparatus is ignoring that reality and moving forward to set the stage for Ukrainian membership, including a ten-point plan to make Ukraine a suitable candidate.

The following is a condensed version of the list of reforms Ukraine must implement that was issued Dec. 10, 2025, by Marta Kos, the European Commissioner for Enlargement, and Taras Kachka, the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine:

1. Adopt comprehensive amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code and other legislation to ensure fast and high-quality justice…

2. Ensure that NABU (National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine) has effective access to impartial, timely and high-quality forensic examinations.

3. Conduct a comprehensive review of the selection and dismissal procedure of the Prosecutor General, with a view to aligning it with European best practice with the involvement of the Venice Commission.

4. Adopt a law, in line with European standards and after consultation with the Venice Commission, to ensure a transparent and merit-based selection process, appointments and transfers for prosecutors to managerial positions and other prosecutorial positions in the Prosecutor General’s Office, regional and district prosecutor’s offices, including clear criteria and a transparent, competitive, and meritocratic selection procedure that includes an assessment of professional competence and integrity.

5. Reform the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI): Conducting an independent comprehensive review of the SBI’s institutional framework…

6. Appoint without delays internationally vetted judges to the Constitutional Court and members of the High Council of Justice.

7. Extend, in close cooperation with the European Commission as regards the modalities, the involvement of international experts in the selection commission for the High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ).

8. Adopt the draft law on declarations of integrity of judges clarifying the content of the declarations, expansion of the time period covered, and improvement of the verification procedure…

9. Adopt the Anti-Corruption Strategy and the State Anti-Corruption Program by Q2 2026 and ensure high level of implementation.

10. Develop and strengthen internal control systems against high level corruption,

(bold in the original)

I have written about this before, but you may have noticed a theme in the ten EU requirements on Ukraine. The real problem is that as much as the West does not like Russia, Ukraine is more corrupt than Russia. Corruption has hobbled the Ukrainian war effort; if it was a less corrupt country, Russia’s war effort would have run into more trouble than it has already.

In 2022, as part of the propaganda to bolster Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy and treat him as a new Churchill—an unnecessary mistake, as Russiaphobia was enough to rally the West—Ukrainian corruption was ignored and forgotten. This was not good for the Ukrainian war effort because it meant that bad actors were allowed to burrow deeper into the state and take advantage of all the aid being thrown their way. The black market did very well.

There is a new edge in the way the Europeans speak. They are getting tough on Ukraine’s corruption and hardening their stance toward Hungary, behaving in a way they think threatens the interests of Europe. The EU’s actions lead to a conclusion that they expect to cow Orbán into submission or that he will lose the power to block Ukrainian membership either by losing the upcoming Hungarian elections or by other changes in how the EU operates. It is more likely that anti-Orbán European elites will do what they can to ensure his Fidesz party loses the elections expected in April 2026.

The EU realizes that there needs to be a political addendum to the military solution for Ukraine, which means EU membership will be part of a long-term European military response to Russia. Vladimir Putin may have been able to largely neutralize the USA as a dedicated foe, but he has done so to his peril. The US interest in Ukraine was always limited, as former president Barack Hussein Obama II recognized: in a contest between the USA and the Russian Federation, the Russians would always be willing to escalate more than the USA because they care more about Ukraine.

Fair enough. However, the Poles will care just as much as the Russians. The Swedes will, too. As will the Romanians, etc. The USA is across the Atlantic; the European Union is right there in the neighborhood. An assertive Europe that feels the need to operate independently of the Americans and, lacking the American nuclear umbrella, will turn to France to lead the effort to defend Europe from the menace to the East. France has always been ready to lead Europeans who wish to shelter under the protection of Paris.

Putin and Trump may be accidentally reassembling Napoleon’s Europe. French President Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron has for years positioned himself for role as Europe’s defender. With a year and half left in his presidency, and with domestic politics partially gridlocked, Macron has his chance to focus on foreign affairs as the shield of Europe.

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Receipts

https://www.dw.com/en/eu-to-move-ukraine-membership-forward-despite-hungary-veto/a-75137933

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2025/12/11/ukraine-eu-leaders-plan-bloc-membership/9351765474363/

https://www.ft.com/content/e50481a3-161c-4002-83e4-cae0be12799e

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy84vdngj2lo

https://apnews.com/article/canada-us-ambassador-hillman-trade-fda21c27093c2b763f7d8be7c8185ebc

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/09/canada-dc-envoy-trade-00683971

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/statement_25_3030

For much of American history, the Monroe Doctrine existed more as an ideal than as a practical reality. In the 1820s the United States did not have the power to keep the European great powers of Russia, Britain, and France out of the Americas. Even keeping the Spanish from reconquering Latin America was due to its aligning with British interests. If Spain lost its colonies from Mexico to Argentina, that left the British Empire—with control of Jamaica, the Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, and Canada, among others—as the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere, not the United States.

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was rightly worried that the British would intervene to support the rebel slaveholding Confederacy. While the British people had a reputation for abolitionism, the British government was led by Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, who despised Abraham Lincoln as a representative of the common people. Lord Palmerston was an elitist and represented the British establishment view of America. He not only hated that Lincoln represented democracy, but he also wanted Southern cotton for British industry and preferred a weak and divided America that could be manipulated to serve the economic interests of the Empire. What we would now call neocolonialism. The threat to America came from the idea of armed mediation.

Armed mediation is a diplomatic posture where a third power offers to broker peace while keeping (or mobilizing) armed force as leverage—essentially: “accept my terms, or I will intervene militarily.” The fear was the British and French would threaten to intervene in the Civil War in the name of “peace” because the conflict was so “bloody,” and the United States would have to let the South go or fight the rebels, the French, and the British. Of course, neither the British nor the French cared about the slaves or the principles of American democracy. When the Union won the war, the U.S. made sure to force the French out of Mexico to eliminate that threat, and they kept their eyes on Canada as the place the British would build up forces in the event of war with America.

Britain and America remained rivals throughout the 19th century, and America even sued and won an international case against Great Britain for its support of the Confederacy. But with industrialization and the naval buildup of the 1890s, the USA was finally able to enforce the Monroe Doctrine on its own as a credible threat. Europe took note. American national strategy has always seen European powers as the biggest threat to the USA because the Atlantic is smaller than the Pacific. Strengthening America and the Americas against European intervention had been the goal since President Monroe. Generations of American policymakers pursued that goal. We bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark to keep them away from Germany. We took over Greenland in World War Two to also keep it away from Germany, in both cases before we officially went to war with Germany.

During World War Two, the USA took ruthless advantage of British weakness to enact the Bases-for-Destroyers plan. The UK traded parts of its network of imperial bases for the destroyers it needed to survive, and in doing so, it removed the threat of the Royal Navy to the United States and allowed the Americans to become the dominant Atlantic power and undisputed master of the Western Hemisphere. It took more than a century, but the USA finally achieved immunity from European invasion and intervention for itself and the Americas. To enforce this victory, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was prepared to go to war in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

What made this victory complete was the end of the mutual USA–Canada threat. By saving Europe in the First and Second World Wars, without demanding conquests, the USA showed that it was not an imperial power like the Europeans. This gained the USA the esteem and respect of most of the world. That was PR you could not put a price tag on. The biggest gain was not the “Special Relationship” with the mother country, but the end of the rivalry with America’s brothers in Canada. Canada and the USA have the same roots in Anglo-French colonialism. Louisiana, Missouri, Vermont, Quebec were major French infusions into the Anglophone dominated USA and later British Canada, with Quebec maintaining the strongest distinction. Both the American and Canadian system are Westminster descended, with Canada operating much like the Americans did before independence, and a point I have made before is that Canada is what the USA would likely look like if the negotiations with Crown and Parliament had succeeded in the 1770s. After 1945 the American Republic and Dominion of Canada were on the best terms in their history and eventually we could trust that the border would be truly open and undefended.

This worked for both powers because the biggest threat to the USA would be if a hostile force had a foothold in Canada. But Canadians were no longer potential hostiles, solving a problem that America had to worry about since 1775.

And it has been thrown away.

Canada Joins EU’s SAFE Defense Program as First Non-European Partner

Canada has become the first country outside the European Union to join the bloc’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) initiative, a €150 billion loan program designed to accelerate European rearmament and coordinate joint defense procurement. This is real money for Canada. The agreement, finalized after months of challenging negotiations, demonstrates that the shift in Canadian defense policy I mentioned last week is a fact that Americans will have to deal with. Presuming that the EU will remain friendly with the US is not a good bet, and having Canada tied to the EU and its agenda is not in America’s interests and is the definition of provoking America last consequences.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney characterized the decision as part of a strategic pivot away from US defense suppliers, following President Donald John Trump’s trade actions and threats to Canada. I do not like it, but I understand the cold logic of the move. Carney emphasized that SAFE membership will open European markets to Canadian defense firms, attract EU investment, and help address capability gaps in the Canadian Armed Forces while providing new export opportunities for Canadian-made equipment. All things Canada needs to build its own ready-for-export, top-tier defense industry.

Under the agreement, Canada will gain access to jointly financed weapons procurement, and its defense firms will be eligible to compete for EU-supported contracts. While SAFE projects typically require most components to be produced within the EU, Canada has negotiated special terms allowing it to exceed the standard 35 percent cap on non-EU content, though there are conditions. But this means Carney can claim to have actually made a deal that will create real jobs in Canada.

The SAFE program prioritizes funding for missiles, drones, artillery, cyber capabilities, air and missile defense, and maritime and space security systems. That is the future of warfare, and with fewer foreign students coming to the USA, and with more being provoked by the USA, Canada may end up having the best minds rather than America. There is even a threat that Carney, if he plays it smart — and he is already being smart — can provoke a brain drain from the USA to Canada.

And going back to my concerns last week about the Canadian shift on fighter planes, the EU financing could impact future fighter jet purchases beyond the initial 16 F-35s Canada is going for. The guys up north are weighing whether or not to operate a mixed fighter fleet that could include Sweden’s Gripen alongside the F-35s. And as I noted, some are saying get a few F-35s and put the rest of the money into homegrown Canadian planes. Carney, as PM, is running circles around Keir Starmer, and it is not close. I have never seen a British PM so outclassed by his counterpart across the Atlantic. Maybe King Charles III should spend more time in Ottawa, because his best-governed realm is not Great Britain.

To be clear, I am not picking on Starmer or Labour. No, I am looking at Canada’s successful accession to SAFE, where the “E” stands for Europe, and the fact that Starmer failed to join SAFE despite the UK being a European country and United Nations Security Council permanent member. The Europeans respect Carney’s seriousness as a defense partner, in contrast with Starmer. The UK attempt to join failed because the British were dragging their feet on their financial contributions to the project. The EU asked for €4billion and the UK offered only €200 to €300 million. The EU dropped their ask for the UK to commit €2billion and the UK still would not meet it.

Population:

• Canada: about 40 million

• United Kingdom: about 67 million

GDP

• Canada: roughly $2.1 trillion USD

• United Kingdom: roughly $3.4 trillion USD

Well okay then.

So the UK failed to join SAFE because London and Brussels could not agree on how much Britain would pay to participate, with the EU asking for billions of while the UK offered only millions. The UK also wanted a higher share of non-EU content in SAFE-funded projects to favor its own arms industry, and the two sides could not bridge that gap. Carney built a whole bridge across the ocean while Starmer cannot cross the Channel.

At its core, the issue is that Canadian defense strategists argue that Canada must reduce its over-dependence on the United States after the Trump administration demonstrated that American reliability can no longer be assumed, while emphasizing that an immediate and complete decoupling would be neither possible nor wise. They frame Canada’s admission to the EU’s SAFE defense initiative as a significant first step toward strategic diversification. They are arguing that this is a historic turning point for Canada and acting accordingly. Most Americans are completely asleep to the problem.

https://x.com/vonderleyen/status/1995603653915541923?s=20

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Lightly edited December 6 2025, L’esprit de l’escalier

Receipts

https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/12/03/canada-could-use-eu-loans-for-next-gen-warplane-submarine-purchases/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/2/canada-joins-key-eu-defence-programme-as-pm-carney-pivots-away-from-us

https://www.politico.eu/article/canada-clinches-deal-to-join-europes-e150b-defense-scheme/

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-agrees-join-eu-initiative-surge-defense-spending-2025-12-01/

https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/eu-defence-industry/safe-security-action-europe_en

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-uk-talks-on-defense-deal-break-down/

In international relations, we use the word “decoupling” to describe the deliberate effort by one country or bloc to reduce how much it depends on another. The focus is on key areas of power and vulnerability, especially:

• trade (imports and exports)

• investment and finance

• technology and data flows

• supply chains and production

To the point, decoupling is about loosening tight economic and technological ties so that a crisis in one country does not automatically cascade into another, or so that one country cannot easily use those ties to coerce or weaken your country.

These days you most often see the term in debates over:

• the future of U.S.–China relations, like moving production out of China to places like Vietnam, India, Mexico or reshoring to the USA itself

• restricting technology exports in fields such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and 5G and screening or limiting Chinese investment in sensitive industries

• rethinking security alliances and dependencies

• reducing energy dependence, as when Europe tried to pull away from Russian gas after 2014 and especially after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

• reducing dependence on strategic and rare natural resources like minerals from countries and regions that might turn on you or are likely to become otherwise unstable

Decoupling is also linked the idea of the strategic dilemma. A dilemma is a difficult choice between two or more alternatives, neither of which is clearly preferable. It is a situation that often results in an uncomfortable or unpleasant outcome no matter what, but you are in a position where you have to pick one. The best bet is normally to pick the option that may provide short-term pain to long term benefit; especially if you think a bad situation is the new normal and a not temporary difficulty. Generally speaking, strategic problems tend to be long term. Such as if you are a weaker country you need long term solutions because the factors that make you vulnerable like geographic location or population size cannot be simply changed. However, if you are stronger, you can risk thinking and acting with a short term mindset. The more powerful you are the larger your acceptable margin for error, but repeated and compounding errors will weaken even the most powerful country.

It is important to understand what these terms mean and what they tell us about attitudes and intentions. When decoupling happens it is the complete opposite of a vote of confidence. It is a open or stealth declaration of concern or worry at best, and distrust and suspicion at worst. Stealth because you do not have to scream “I do not trust you!” No, instead you can simply do it while paying lip service to old relationships and flattering governments and administrations who do not pay attention to the how international relations have worked. Frankly, when you are dealing with a foreign leader or movement that does know, nor care to know, how great powers remain great powers, it is not your job to waste your government’s time attempting to wise them up. You can move on. This is an autumn where much of the Western world is deciding to move on from the USA and it may turn into a winter of American discontent, because much American prosperity has been built on the USA’s preeminence in the West.

America’s allies, know they are weaker than the United States, and if the USA is unreliable they have to decouple with an intentionality that will render them less vulnerable to American caused problems or to manipulation and blackmail due to dependency on the USA. This attitude is a problem for the USA, but a dilemma for its allies. The decisions they are being forced to make to solve their dilemmas will leave the USA and the American people weaker and poorer. Essentially the USA has put itself in the position of hoping their most important allies are too incompetent to pull off a successful decoupling. It does not matter who you are, but wish-casting for someone else to fail is a foolish and passive strategy. But that does not mean that the decisions will be easy.

True North, Canada Knows no King but Charles III

First, Canadian defense experts, active and retired are planning to secure their country against the United States and are doing so seriously. Here is their dilemma:

How do you stay militarily modern and interoperable with the US, without being permanently dependent on US industry and while also worrying about China getting everyone’s secrets anyway?

Many are worried about the eagerness of the USA to share the military equipment with governments that do not have a natural affinity for the West. The current US administration is eager to make peace in the Middle East, a region that most American actually want to have less to do with. But, in their efforts push their agenda in the Middle East, the US government is giving regimes that share little of America’s old values or principles access to top-tier military hardware. Yes, other western countries’ defense industries are doing the same, but those tended to be neutral countries rather than the leader NATO on whom all the other depended. Now this kind of arms dealing was always problematic, but is made more problematic by the claws of China in the region. The fear is that if you buy American equipment, and the Middle East also buys it, how long before the China is able to get all the secrets from their —easy to bribe— friends in the region? If so do you as a Western country like Canada really want to buy war-fighting kit that is exposed to the Chinese? Alternatively, you do not want to be cut off from top tier American tech yourself.

As I mention dedicated minds in Canada are considering what to do and many are advocating for a strong Canadian defense industry. For example, due to the current relationship breakdown among the North American neighbors sharing the world’s longest border, the US produced F-35 stealth jet is a less than optimal choice for Canada to buy, but it is currently better than alternative peer aircraft like the Swedish produced Saab JAS 39 Gripen E/F. In that case, Canada should still buy the F-35 to retain high-end capability and US/NATO interoperability, but simultaneously pursue long-term autonomy by building a serious domestic aerospace defense industry.

But, and this is the risk to America, Canadian strategists argue for buying fewer F-35s, using the budget savings to fund Canadian aerospace R&D and manufacturing. They want to deliberately trade current fleet size now for greater industrial and strategic autonomy over time. However, the Royal Canadian Air Force is too small to sustain a bleeding edge aerospace defense industry; they would have to compete on the global market with the USA and find markets to export Canadian hardware which would act as a subsidy for the Canadian R&D budget.

Bottom line: fewer sales and more competition for the US defense industry and the jobs dependent on it. The only way to forestall this would be to repair the relationship with Canada or hope they chicken-out and fail. It is a relationship that will not be repaired without trustworthy American leadership. So…

Across the Pond, Europe

In Europe, the adjustment to American untrustworthiness in the face of Russian aggression and increasing fear of China continues.

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced plans to reintroduce voluntary military service for youths. I know it sounds odd because military service is already voluntary in France. So let me unpack it in North American speak: what Macron is doing is recreating a social norm and expectation around national service, whereby it will become a more direct path that links hitting adulthood to then serving France. Sure they can do that already, but there is currently no formal program to make it a part of a limited service contract: in this case he proposes 10 months. Currently if you volunteer you sign a regular military contract of two-to-ten years of service. Under his proposed plan you would effectively have a voluntary draft for 18 year olds to serve a reduced term. But, and this is where I think Macron is showing his intelligence, he is deliberately creating a social expectation of service to your country. The ideal of service and sacrifice will be necessary to make the French military deterrent really credible. As Napoleon the Great’s favorite marching song went “Tremblez, ennemis de la France.”

Europe is also declaring orbital military independence from the USA without outright saying so.

European Space Agency (ESA) member states have agreed a record €22.1bn three-year budget. Critically this comes a new mandate for an explicit military role. Officially this is directed at Russia and China and in response to the lessons from the Ukraine war. But what are those lessons in 2025? Unsaid is that this is about being able to counter Russia and China without too much dependence on the USA. The European Space Agency is an intergovernmental organization of European countries that develops and coordinates space missions, satellites, and space science programs, and is basically like a European NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) in one and may be turning into a European Space Force too. They should go full star fleet.

Interestingly the Danish — who started 2025 with an unexpected American threat to seize Greenland — have been big boosters of the project, using their rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union to launch the idea for discussion at the Space for European Resilience conference last month. This has led to the new European Resilience from Space (ERS) project, which was granted about €1.2bn, including a plan to build a military-grade “system of systems” that links European national satellites. The national defense ministries of the member countries plan to appropriate more money for the program. The new plan will make military programs 5% of the ESA budget which will work out to €370 million per year. This should be seen as the beginning of something new and lasting. Yes, it is small compared to the US Space Force budget of $25 billion per year. But it is an initial investment to make Europe competitive in space.

Another King in the North?

The government of Frederik X, King of Denmark, led by Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark and Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen of Greenland has established a Night’s Watch. Okay, no warriors pledging to defend the realms of men, the Nattevagt or Night Watch is a special monitoring group of Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. While Greenland is an autonomous part of the Danish Realm with its own parliament for domestic issues, the responsibility for foreign relations belongs to the government based in Europe led by Ms. Frederiksen, the leader of the Social Democracy party. To secure the realm, literally during the night, the Night Watch team notes US President Donald John Trump’s activities, tweets, and statements, looking for any sign of threat, and producing a report at 7am the next day for the government. Denmark a NATO member should not think this is necessary. Again, the Europeans are demonstrating they do not trust America. Denmark, formerly a loyal ally, now believes — publicly— that the United States government would take advantage of the time zone difference to conqueror Greenland before the Realm government in Copenhagen could respond, basically an attack an sleeping country. De facto Denmark is not a US ally anymore. American voters should not shrug this off.

The false realism of the Trump-Vance team is a gift to US enemies. America’s opponents are salivating not trembling.

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Receipts

“Feds risk derailing major projects unless they chart a clearer course for defence procurement” https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2025/11/27/feds-risk-derailing-major-projects-unless-they-chart-a-clearer-course-for-defence-procurement-experts-say/483447/

“Gripen fighter jet purchase would allow Canada to assert sovereignty, says past chair of House Defence Committee McKay”. https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2025/11/26/gripen-fighter-jet-purchase-would-allow-canada-to-assert-sovereignty-says-past-chair-of-house-defence-committee-mckay/483330/

“Emmanuel Macron to relaunch French military service” https://www.ft.com/content/48d1567d-c029-4122-8ec3-6562ef80ae55

“European nations to fund military-grade surveillance network in space” https://www.ft.com/content/4d61c690-f78c-4aa1-8259-35025fb6c2d7

Europe turns to space to boost resilience https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Corporate_news/Europe_turns_to_space_to_boost_resilience

European satellite navigation opens new chapter at ESA’s Ministerial Council https://www.esa.int/Applications/Satellite_navigation/European_satellite_navigation_opens_new_chapter_at_ESA_s_Ministerial_Council

Denmark sets up night watch so Trump doesn’t seize Greenland while they sleep https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/press-review/20251128-denmark-sets-up-night-watch-so-trump-doesn-t-seize-greenland-while-they-sleep

Denmark sets up ‘night watch’ to monitor Trump after Greenland row https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/27/denmark-sets-up-night-watch-to-monitor-trump-since-greenland-row

The November 22 edition of The Economist leads with the article “Welcome to Anything Goes America: Where the loosening of rules and tolerance of corruption will lead.”1 It argues that there has been a moral and institutional collapse around treating corruption as clearly negative and wrong, because partisan polarization has dulled the political cost. No one polices their own side; Republicans and Democrats point fingers only at the other side. Many voters, who have no memory of what systemic corruption does to a country, then conclude that partisan hypocrisy means no one should be punished. The context is gone, and the consequences will not be recognized until a public catastrophe wrecks American lives.

Already this is a problem. Americans have been insulated from global opinion because of their power, but that insulation is slipping in both relative and absolute terms. This means that, more than at any time in a generation, Americans need the world to think well of them. Declining esteem for Americans and their government will ultimately make it harder for the USA to strike favorable deals and attract the talent that once made the global brain drain a net benefit. Some Americans may consider what was previously unthinkable —leaving the New World— and a reverse brain drain could happen. A $30 trillion economy can absorb a great deal of misrule, but when the key business question becomes “Do you know the president?” capital will misallocate on a massive scale.2 Firms that should lose will win. Firms that should win will stall. It will handcuff the invisible hand to the Oval Office. Over time this degrades American competitiveness and resilience.

It matters that government now occupies a larger share of the US economy and is more corrupt than before. Its behavior is of greater consequence for the average American. It also matters that the country is deeply in debt and that the self-described conservative party is opposed both to a balanced budget and to serious cuts in defense spending. Inflation, plus interests on the debt eating up more of the budget is going to kill the ability of Americans to invest in the future. All these factors will change the way the world reacts to America.

The Economist is not just describing another round of American political corruption. It is signaling a fundamental decay of institutional integrity, a shift toward making transactional governance normal across the whole system. By transactional governance I mean a way of running government where official decisions are treated as private deals and trades, not as duties owed to the public. That is the core insight. The presidency of the United States, and the wider federal apparatus that orbits it, are being treated as assets to be exploited. For the rest of the world, this is not a moral curiosity. It is a built-in weakness inside the largest economy and the most powerful military on earth. This is end of American exceptionalism. The actions of the US government have become what some call “third-world coded.”

For core US allies—the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and the major European states—the reality is blunt. They must ruthlessly diversify their foreign relations. That means hedging between the US and China, not simply following Washington. It may mean seeking greater autonomy through a rearmed Europe. But a militarily stronger Europe will not be a compliant Europe, rather, it would be much more assertive and would act in its own interests and not in America’s. While MAGA has viewed the security umbrella in transactional terms where Europe is thought to be taken advantage of the USA, the reality was that the American protection of Europe meant that the Americans set the terms of engagement. That is being surrendered with no gains to the American people.

Europe can see that US security guarantees, trade access, and diplomatic support can no longer be treated as treaty-backed constants. They are contingent on presidential whim and, in some cases, on the prospect of personal or familial enrichment. Allies should assume that nothing is settled until it is documented, and even then it is provisional and may be changed. So get the ink on paper, but then you cannot trust the paper? Sovereign states and blocs will play that game for a little bit but they take out an insurance policy against you. They will accelerate the construction of parallel structures: European strategic autonomy and deeper intra-Asian security ties. The United States is still an “ally” and all alliances are conditional, but before they were conditional based on shared interests, now they are based on personal benefits and that is untrustworthy. All of this is threatening to the United States and is driven by the anti-realism of a new elite, currently resident in the USA, who refuse to look at the world as it is rather than as their personal interests make them wish it to be. They are, in that sense, fundamentally un-American in their mores and historical knowledge. The habits that rule are not the habits that made America great, they are the behaviors that millions of Americans’ ancestor fled to get away from.

Over the longer term, allies should be expected to treat the United States as a declining hegemon, even as it appears to remain the most powerful single actor. And even when it is no longer the most powerful, expect them to flatter America and pretend that it remains indispensable while they quietly dispense with it. That includes reducing their sharing of critical intelligence. You never know when your ally withholds information if you do not have their info to begin with, and you cannot make people tell you their secrets. America should prepare to get ghosted.

For neutral governments such as India, Brazil, and Indonesia, a transactional America is a chance to profit from the gap between ideals and practice. When everything is negotiable, this is the moment to extract maximum concessions. Washington is signaling that what matters most is not shared values, but access, flattery, and deals that directly advantage the rulers even when they sellout the American people. The lack of coherent institutional memory or grand strategy in Washington creates space for duplicity. The American vice president is especially guilty of incoherent strategic thought and posturing. Even more than US allies, neutral states can play all sides, maintaining or even deepening relationships with China and Russia while feeding the United States symbolic wins and photo opportunities. So long as those wins flatter the White House and feed the narrative of American primacy, the underlying reality of hedging and diversification may be tolerated or ignored. Strategically, this environment favors agile middle rank powers with fewer commitments. Their goal would be to build leverage through economic ties that make a country too valuable to push aside, without ever depending on US security guarantees.

For rival governments in China, Russia, Mexico, Cuba, and North Korea, The Economist article is a gift. It confirms, in the voice of the West’s own elite media, that the presidency and the wider American state are debased. There are two options: push America over the brink or act like everything is fine and let the Americans ruin themselves. On the one hand it makes sense to accelerate campaigns that attack American legitimacy. It works to use state media, social media and international forums sell to your own and foreign audiences the line that America is a broken, immoral society. It undermines any American criticism of you. But it risks waking America up to the risks. However, keeping quiet also runs the risk America recovers before it does itself too much irreparable harm — much harm has already been done to America’s relationship with the Canadian people regardless of what the Canadian government says — so American rivals will have to use their opportunities wisely. China likely chooses the second strategy—why interrupt your enemy when they are destroying themselves? Russia, having less to lose and more to gain from chaos, may choose the first. This divergence in approach will shape global instability over the next decade.

China has a particular opportunity. Beijing can frame the contrast as “corrupt but competent” versus “corrupt and chaotic.” Both systems have flaws, but one delivers infrastructure, growth, and basic order, while the other treats regulatory decisions as contingent on whether a leader’s family benefits. Belt and Road projects can be marketed as stable institutional commitments compared to a Washington where firms quietly ask whether Trump will sign off if they buy his cryptocurrency or rent his properties. China appears to the nationalist country of the future, it is the US that is led by Temu nationalism.

All rivals will read this as a green light to push at the edges of what they can get away with. A transactional and distracted US leadership is less likely to respond decisively to small land grabs, hacks and online attacks, and quiet campaigns to sway public opinion and politics that fall below the threshold of open conflict. The signal is that Washington’s attention and will are for sale. That is an invitation to test the limits.

The end of the Post 9/11 Middle East

For Middle Eastern powers, already masters of transactional statecraft, this is familiar terrain with unprecedented upside. The United States has descended to their level of governance while retaining superpower capabilities. That is the core reality. They can work with that. Some better than others.

Turkey sits at the center of this shift. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is uniquely positioned to exploit a corrupt, personalized superpower. He understands strongman politics, has no real attachment to liberal norms, and already runs a hybrid regime that mirrors what America is becoming. His play is to work all sides at once: accept F-35 components while purchasing Russian S-400s. Turkey’s leverage is structural. It controls Incirlik Air Base and the Bosporus Straits. In a transactional America, these are not sacred NATO obligations. They are negotiating chips. Over time, Turkey will want to become the state that holds the balance of power in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean and it is plausible that, over the next decade, Turkey moves from being a flawed NATO ally like Hungary and into something more challenging: a de facto non-aligned power that still sits inside NATO’s shell, and may even test formal exit if the price is right. In this environment, Turkey wins the most. Erdoğan’s entire career has prepared him to deal with a transactional superpower. The sultan is game and ready to play.

Israel, by contrast, is drifting into a complacency trap. Israeli leaders assume unconditional US backing because of evangelical influence, the support of media moguls and AIPAC’s long standing relationships in Congress. That is now a dangerous assumption. Young America is not enamored with Israel even among many conservative Christians. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu likely believes that he has Trump locked in through personal rapport and shared donor networks. Even in a transactional America, Israel is not just another client. But ability of American leaders to keep exploiting their new regime of lawlessness requires at least some form of control over the GOP and if Israel is seen as threatening their hold over the right-wing, Israel may have cause to worry. Additionally the GOP’s leadership has provoked massive anger, shame, and resentment. The closer Israel is tied to a particular American political faction or party, the more Israel alienates the other. Israel and its supporters in the US will need to quickly cultivate new leaders, and lift up alternative voices that can speak to why American nationalists would want to maintain a relationship with Israel. Leaders who can create space for thoughtful conversations about Israel everywhere from college classrooms, to church conferences. Depending on the current US administration to get the rising generation of Americans on board with the Washington-Jerusalem partnership is a bold and unwise strategy.

The trajectory is bleak. Israel continues maximalist policies in the West Bank and Gaza under the assumption that US cover is permanent. A crisis comes: a regional war, a moment when Iran is close to a usable nuclear weapon, or a civilian casualty event that shocks even Republican voters. Trump will ask what is in it for him to stand firm. The evangelical base is weaker than Israeli strategists want to believe, and Trump has shown no durable loyalty to any constituency that cannot directly enrich him. The real risk is not open rupture but a sudden shift from automatic backing to hard, transactional conditions. In a crisis, that will feel like abandonment on the ground even if formal aid lines remain.

Saudi Arabia understands the new rules intuitively. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has already signaled that he knows how to play this game. The $2 billion investment into Jared Kushner’s fund was not charity. It was a down payment on a long-term transactional relationship. Riyadh will structure every major interaction with Washington as a business deal: Trump hotel licenses, crypto ventures, LIV Golf sponsorships, and media investments. The goal is to make the Trump family personally wealthy from the Saudi relationship and therefore personally invested in Saudi interests.

On nuclear issues, the message is that non-proliferation rules are negotiable if the price is right. Saudi Arabia can offer Trump a “historic” civil nuclear deal that allows him to claim statesman status while Riyadh acquires technology and infrastructure that can be repurposed for weapons. Bombs for them and not for Iran will be the whispered offer. No need to state such a thing in public. On Yemen, the bet is that Washington will look away from war crimes as long as the checks keep clearing. A gutted public-integrity apparatus and a shelved Foreign Corrupt Practices Act mean that those who wish to play fast and loose with the rules will be very tempted to do so.

It would make sense for Saudi Arabia to market itself as America’s primary Middle East partner, with the simple slogan: we pay, they cost. Saudi Arabia is the second-largest winner after Turkey, precisely because Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) grasps that money now outweighs democratic allies’ strategic arguments. He has spent years proving that the Western elite is morally hollow and that he can in fact buy them. He does not need to respect them, he only needs to know their price. From golf, to boxing and now pro-wrestling, MBS is deliberately forcing Americans to share their pastimes with Saudi Arabia; WrestleMania 43 will take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2027, marking the first time the event will be held outside of North America. While Israel grabs headlines, MBS is winning boardrooms and this week triumphantly met with President Trump in the White House.3 Saudi isolation is dead; MBS has taken advantage of American permissiveness to defeat all his detractors. Those who screamed about “Saudi blood-money” cannot avoid it because Saudi cash is flowing throughout the US economy.

Egypt enters this environment from a position of weakness. It currently receives roughly $1.4 billion in annual US military aid, a legacy of the Camp David Accords that has been treated as untouchable. In transactional America, nothing is untouchable unless someone is paying protection money. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi must shift from viewing US aid as an entitlement to seeing it as a subscription that requires renewal fees. Egypt will have to make itself useful to the new US order and control over Suez is not enough when the US leaders have not been shy about threatening weaker powers with interventions, and Egypt is most certainly the weakest of the five Middle Eastern powers. Egypt has to punch above its weight using geography, Gaza leverage, the Suez Canal, and anti-Iran positioning, because it cannot outbid its rivals. The danger of abandonment is high.

Egypt and Turkey’s competition will likely get worse as they compete over influence in Gaza, Libya, and the Eastern Mediterranean.

For Iran, like Russia 2025 has been a year confirmation that the Great Satan is corrupt and hypocritical. But that does not help Iran at all. The privilege of feeling smug about America will not defend your airspace as they found out earlier this year. President Trump has no deep commitment to regime change. Everything is negotiable if it can be sold as a personal triumph. Iran’s problem is, well itself: resentment, capacity and timing. Pro-Israel Americans have spent a generation obsessing over the Iranian nuclear program and Iran has done little to nothing to reduce the perception it is a threat to America as well as Israel. Additionally, sanctions, the absence of a sovereign wealth fund, and internal political constraints limit Iran’s ability to compete with Gulf states in buying American favor.

Does the Iranian regime have the strategic intelligence to know when to quit and make a deal? It may match America for strategic lack of awareness. Iran should offer the US another “historic Middle East Peace deal” to avoid being left in the cold while its rivals strike new agreements. And it has to try to keep itself out of the firing line of the US should the administration need to hit a foreign power to send a message or placate a domestic audience.

The new rules are simple and brutal. The world has dealt with corrupt powers before. What makes this moment unprecedented is the combination: first-world military capabilities paired with third-world governance patterns. Immense destructive power matched with transactional, personalized decision-making. Foreign governments are preparing for that reality. Americans should too.

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United States Senator from Virginia, Timothy Michael Kaine’s recent op-ed defending his vote to end the 38-day government shutdown presents his narrative of pragmatic leadership in the face of mounting human suffering.1 Kaine describes the problems of federal workers going without pay, food banks running low, and air traffic becoming dangerous. What he is arguing is basically clear: when faced with present harm and no realistic path to better terms, responsible leaders - like himself - must choose to end the suffering. Okay. But this framing, however emotionally persuasive at first glance, obscures a more troubling reality: the fight has been postponed not ended. The eight senators who broke the unity of the anti-MAGA opposition in the Senate made a choice that leaves many Democrats and conservatives wondering what was the point of the shutdown?

Kaine’s central claim is that holding out for healthcare concessions was essentially impossible. He invokes his presence at negotiations support this assessment. But the Wall Street Journal’s reporting reveals something more complex: the secret meetings that produced this deal appear to have deliberately bypassed Senate Minority Leader Charles Ellis Schumer, who believed a better deal was possible if Democrats held firm.2 Senators Cynthia Jeanne Shaheen, Margaret Wood Hassan, and Angus Stanley King Jr. met with Republicans like Majority Leader Sen. John Randolph Thune and Sen. Susan Margaret Collins while Schumer argued that President Donald John Trump would eventually engage and Democrats would secure better terms. Others see a more cynical outcome, believing that the Eight essentially took the fall for Schumer and those in the caucus who wanted to cave. It is a sign of how low Schumer’s stature has fallen with the Democratic Party base. But Kaine is also taking a risk: many federal employees in Virginia were willing to keep going to get a better deal and feel like they suffered from nothing now. Kaine does not face another election until 2030, whereas his colleague, Mark Robert Warner, Virginia’s senior US senator and also a Democrat, faces the voters next year and voted no. The division in the delegation may reflect the understanding that Kaine’s argument will be a hard sell to their voter base.

This matters because Kaine’s assessment of what was possible depended entirely on which negotiating track you were following. The centrists declared the strategy wasn’t working after 38 days, despite their party having just won a landslide electoral victory across the country last week, demonstrating public support for their position and opposition to the GOP. The WSJ notes that Republicans were surprised Democrats had held out as long as they did, suggesting the pressure was working, not failing. When Kaine claims there was no realistic path to better terms, he’s describing his subjective assessment that conveniently aligns with his preference to end immediate, visible suffering rather than endure it in pursuit of larger goals. Again one wonders if the suffering was ended or merely postponed.

There were real human costs to the shutdown lasting as long as it did. Federal workers without paychecks and many still working to sustain critical services because they would not let the country down despite the fact Congress was doing that, and SNAP families going hungry. And yet, goes the response to Kaine, what about the suffering that will come when the Affordable Care Act subsidies expire and millions see their health insurance premiums increase because the Republicans have for fifteen years failed to come up with a replacement for Obamacare but continue to complain about it?

Kaine acknowledges that Democrats got no guarantees on healthcare—only a promise to hold a vote. The WSJ is more blunt: Democrats got virtually nothing, and Republicans merely committed to voting by mid-December without promising any particular outcome. Senator Shaheen’s backup plan to trigger another shutdown in January when much of the funding expires is frankly odd, and maybe naive. If these eight senators could not hold out for 38 days in October and November, what makes anyone think they’ll hold firm in January or that the Republicans should take them seriously. The promise of a vote is asking to postpone your defeat if there is no indication that enough Republicans would vote for it or that Trump would not veto it. The deal is not good enough to justify the pain that has already been inflicted.

This is where Kaine’s argument collapses entirely. He’s created a dangerous precedent: Democrats will cave when human costs become visible, and Republicans need only wait them out. And that means that if Democrats are going to cave, then the Republicans can claim that they are responsible for the pain and are doing it for show. It undermines their entire approach.

Kaine warns that continuing the shutdown might have led Republicans to eliminate the Senate filibuster, but this threat rings hollow. If Republicans were willing to blow up the filibuster, they could have done so at any point. The nuclear option is in fact a legitimate tactic whether done by the Democrats or the Republicans. Since the GOP did not do so for the same 38 day period, that means it was not their preferred solution and the Democrats might have been able to hold out longer, in fact the GOP Senate leadership did not cave to President Trump asking them to kill the filibuster.3 But in polarized times, it may be wiser to return to the Constitution’s strict requirement of a mere majority being necessary to pass bills in the Senate with the vice president breaking ties.

The concept of the choiceless choice refers to situations where people face impossible decisions with no morally acceptable options. Was Kaine’s situation like this? He faced a difficult choice with clear strategic logic on both sides. He could have chosen to endure short-term, concentrated suffering in pursuit of long-term structural gains regarding healthcare. Instead, he chose promises about votes that may never deliver results. I think that is what bothers people most about the reopening: this could have happened three weeks ago with the result and no one had to miss a paycheck or a meal.

Kaine and his seven colleagues may have been motivated by genuine compassion. In doing so, they may have condemned millions to suffering that will unfold gradually in hospital billing departments rather than airport terminals. In January, when the funding runs out again and the healthcare vote has failed, we will discover whether these eight senators faced a choiceless choice or simply made a choice Democrats will come to regret. In the meantime many federal workers and families in Virginia feel like that they played the part of Tim Kaine’s Abel.

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Virginia is known for its competent government and low tolerance for chaos. In general, Virginians are allergic to maladministration.

For most of the 20th century, Virginia was a segregationist, poll-tax state that disenfranchised its poor, Blacks, and Southern Whites. Virginia was a state that experienced very little immigration from overseas and was culturally very much itself. Even now, it retains its political distinctiveness. Virginia prefers polished politicians. Other states distrust it; Virginians call it proper. The governor is only given one consecutive term—the only governor in the country who cannot run for reelection. Consequently, they have to show up ready to do their job, ready to govern, and having a coherent agenda. If not, they will not be remembered fondly.

Even during Jim Crow, the leaders of Virginia tended to at least be serious about governing. The giant of the times was Governor Byrd.

Harry Flood Byrd Sr. served as governor from 1926 to 1930. Byrd reorganized government, cut agencies, trimmed patronage—and kept control of the machine. He established state supervisory control over local road systems and increased the gasoline tax in 1927 to finance road expansion under his signature pay-as-you-go philosophy, expanding state highway mileage significantly without issuing bonds. His idea was simple and brilliant: make future infrastructure investment match revenue surpluses. So expand when you have extra money, the same way a private enterprise would reinvest profits. Republicans today could learn from Byrd. He used surpluses for projects, not tax cuts—so Virginia skipped bonds and stayed out of debt. He left office in 1930, having completed the first phase of a modern statewide road network and with a balanced budget that made pay-as-you-go the Virginia way for the next generation.

Because of Jim Crow, Virginia was a one-party state, but one man was dedicated to bringing the party of Lincoln to the Old Dominion. Abner Linwood Holton Jr. served as governor from 1970 to 1974 and ended the era of machine politics in Virginia while advancing integrated, modern governance. In 1970, Holton appointed a diverse cabinet and created the Secretary of Commerce and Resources office to modernize state planning. He led by example, and in 1971 he personally enrolled his children in integrated Richmond public schools. During 1972, Holton launched state environmental programs and strengthened pollution control measures while expanding public transit planning in metropolitan regions. In 1973, he signed legislation to advance regional cooperation authorities and increased funding for higher education and workforce development. Before leaving office in 1974, he established the framework for modern economic-development marketing and expanded women’s opportunities in government service. His daughter Anne, one of the kids sent to integrated schools, married the Democratic politician Tim Kaine, who later served as governor and is currently one of Virginia’s U.S. Senators. After being first daughter and first lady, Anne Holton herself was Virginia Secretary of Education from 2014–2016, continuing her father’s legacy of service to the Commonwealth. It can be said that Linwood Holton prepared Virginia for the 21st century. Holton was an old mountain-and-valley Republican, and his dedication to the inclusion of Virginia’s African American population, the oldest in the country, led some to esteem him as the “first governor of all Virginians.”

Virginia is known for leading the country, and it did so again in 1989 when it elected Lawrence Douglas Wilder as the first African American elected governor of any U.S. state. He served as governor from 1990 to 1994, and ironically, like the segregationist Harry Byrd, Wilder was a fiscal-stability architect during challenging economic times. Wilder initiated executive-branch streamlining for budget control, and in 1991 he implemented hiring freezes and reductions to close a $1.2 billion budget gap while preserving Virginia’s prized AAA bond rating through the Bush I recession without raising taxes. That’s a Virginian move. Then he put Virginia on course to routinely be rated one of the best-managed states when he championed passage of a constitutional amendment creating the Revenue Stabilization Fund, commonly known as the Rainy Day Fund, it keep us out of trouble. Like a family budge, the fund saves money during good times to be used when revenue falls short. Wilder came back a decade later to save Richmond City government and served as a highly rated crime fighting mayor from 2005–2009.

Virginia has been fortunate to have good, transformative governors when it needed them.

The Independent Voter Streak

Beginning with Republican John Nichols Dalton, Virginia started a new trend that held until 2013. Virginia elections for governor are held the year after the presidential election, when there are few other contests; only New Jersey also elects its governor in the off year before the congressional midterms. In 1976, Jimmy Carter won the White House, and the next year, Dalton won the governor’s mansion. And that is how it went for two generations, uninterrupted: the party that lost the presidential election won the governorship of Virginia. Democratic governors under Reagan and Bush were followed by Republican governors under Clinton, then Democrats under Bush and a Republican during Obama’s first term. A Democrat won during Obama’s second term. And then it returned—a Democrat under Trump 45—only for Glenn Youngkin to win in 2021, ironically defeating Terry McAuliffe, whose election in 2013 broke the pattern. McAuliffe could not do it a second time. And now, under Trump 47, a Democrat has won this week’s election. Perhaps we Virginians are really as independent as we believe, and we will choose the governor we think suits us, as the pattern holds even when Virginia votes for the winner of the presidential election.

In 2025, Virginia elected former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger as its first woman governor. Spanberger centered her campaign on economic and affordability issues that resonated with Virginians concerned about the cost of living and the potential impact of federal government disruptions on Virginia’s economy, which is heavily tied to federal employment and contracting. Her decisive victory over Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears was a clear rebuke to the national Republican Party, and also a reflection of the Virginia Republicans failure to focus on the concerns of Virginians.

Earle-Sears brought substantial government experience to the race, having served in the Virginia House of Delegates, on the Virginia Board of Education, and as lieutenant governor—giving her more direct state government experience than Spanberger, who had never held executive office or ever served at the state level. However, Earle-Sears struggled to find a coherent message that resonated with Virginia voters focused on economic stability and federal overreach. Despite her experience advantage, she was unable to translate her governmental background into a compelling case for leadership during a campaign dominated by concerns about affordability and the federal government’s impact on Virginia’s economy.

Republicans can win in Virginia again when they put forward a standard-bearer who treats Virginia as a commonwealth that needs governing, not a stage to perform culture war posturing. The focus must be housing, schools, infrastructure, jobs and justice. Find a leader with a new temperament, not a new slogan; one who shows the math, respects the law, keeps faith with people who do not vote the same way. One who knows our context and can walk from a church meeting, to college campus, and to a data center floor and speak plainly about what works. A governor-in-waiting who would rather balance a budget than trend for a day, who marries competence to charity, order to inclusion, and growth to prudence, will earn Virginia’s trust. The right candidate will speak with a neighbor’s voice and a scholar’s patience, answering hard questions from the public directly. Do that, and Virginians will answer.

Governor-elect Spanberger now faces the challenge that has defined Virginia’s most successful governors: arriving ready to govern from day one. She must work quickly with the General Assembly to enact an agenda to deal with the severe challenges of new digital economy and a polarized and chaotic federal government. Spanberger must now prove herself in state government and executive leadership, where Virginia’s expectations for competent administration remain as high as they were under Byrd, Holton, and Wilder. Whether she joins their ranks will depend on her ability to deliver the serious governance and clear accomplishments that Virginians demand. I wish her the best of luck.

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What really happened during the last year of the Joe Biden presidency? Will we ever get a full picture? If we had a more functional Congress we would have a real investigation.

Despite everything that has happened since 2015 the people hovering around official power in Washington, D.C. still do not seem to get it. Washington remains a place in America where truth is treated as a tactical mistake. Out in the country, people are thirsty for candor. They do not expect perfection from their leaders, but they want to be told the truth plainly—about age, failure, power, and trust. Inside official Washington, though, honesty is still a liability. The city runs on euphemism, and when someone finally speaks without it, the system reacts like a body rejecting a transplant. Karine Jean-Pierre’s interview in The New Yorker is the latest proof.1 And the thing I want to address this week, especially after my students dissected it for an hour.

Her story is simple on the surface: she believes President Biden was betrayed by his own party. She calls it indecent, a humiliation of a good man who deserved loyalty and respect. But her appeal is less about politics than about emotion. She speaks in the language of dignity and faith, not data. “This man is one of the most decent people I know,” she says, and for her that decency should have protected him from the party’s cold calculus. She tells it as a moral fable, where virtue is discarded by ambition and loyalty is confused for disloyalty. What she offers, really, is a plea for decency in a political culture that rewards cruelty. But that is not what the presidency is about, the president is not in fact a king, but a working chief executive. Can they do the job right or not should be our calculus.

Jean-Pierre’s emotional truth is clear. What is missing is political candor. She wants to condemn the way Biden was forced out but refuses to say whether she believes he could have governed another four years. When pressed, she retreats to the language of feeling—“I did not see anything that gave me concern.” It is the reflex of Washington itself: defend the person, dodge the question, and call the dodge a principle. The sincerity is perhaps real; the transparency is not, and we can see it. That’s the problem, it is a poison bargain, where Democrats are supposed to say nothing if they are on the same side. It goes for the GOP now as well.

Her identity shapes this dynamic in complex ways: she reads the Democratic Party’s treatment of both Biden and Kamala Harris through a lens of exclusion. She argues that the party has failed to stand up for vulnerable groups, including her own. That perspective is genuine and worth hearing, but in this interview it sometimes blurs rather than clarifies. Her grievances about how Black women are “not elevated, not protected, not taken seriously” are do not make sense given the rise of Harris and Stacey Yvonne Abrams in Georgia, and the claim they mixes uneasily with her defense of an aging white president. The reasoning does not flow, and the tension exposes how personal loyalty and identity politics often intersect in Washington to make something plain into something convoluted.

This is why the public is restless. Americans can smell spin the way miners smell gas. They know when they are being handled. From the pandemic to the campaign trail, they have watched officials choose message discipline over moral clarity. Jean-Pierre’s interview is not scandalous because she spoke out, it is tragic because she still would not. Her words expose how hard it has become, even for the well-intentioned, to tell the plain truth in a system that trains it out of you.

I remember the film The American President where this a discussion between the president and his advisor about the president’s failure to directly address his critic a politician named Bob Rumson, and therefore ceding the public conversation. The president’s approval rating is sliding, and he and his advisor debate what it means to provide leadership:

Lewis Rothschild (Michael J. Fox): They don’t have a choice! Bob Rumson is the only one doing the talking! People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they’ll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They’re so thirsty for it they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.

President Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas): Lewis, we’ve had Presidents who were beloved who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don’t drink the sand ‘cause they’re thirsty. They drink the sand ‘cause they don’t know the difference.

I don’t think it is true they don’t know the difference. Okay, most people do know the difference. But if everyone is selling sand then I guess you pick your favorite color and flavor of sand if that is all on offer. That does not mean you want sand. In a post-truth moment, the best liar wins—or the liar with enough people in on the deception. The only way to beat that is not a better spin but a better standard. Be the most candid truth teller in the room, without regard for the lies your side has told before. Tear the veil. Let the truth shine on everyone and every party. Do not ration it. Do not lawyer it. The Democrats and the rational Republicans must understand we are in the “people are so thirsty they will drink sand” moment. If leaders will not bring water, the public will drink whatever is there. So bring water, serve up ice cold truth.

In the Star Trek: Picard series there is an alien group of warrior nuns—wait, bear with me—and they bind themselves to lost causes to help those in need, but they have a rule: the Way of Absolute Candor. It is a wild, nerdy ride, but the point that the group—known as the Qowat Milat—makes is that honesty is the only ground on which trust can be built. It seems obvious and yet apparently in our Gotham on the Potomac it is not. D.C. treats candor as a communications risk—an offense, like “you have committed candor.” The Qowat Milat treat it as both a moral obligation and the most effective way to get things done, because lies waste time and destroy alliances. Keep lying and your cause is really lost. Best to speak the truth and get on with it. The District needs to get the message. The people are ready.

The students by the way were not having it with the interview, the next generation wants authenticity and candor badly.

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Well, I do not know about you, but this has been a week of too much news for me. To the point that I will keep today’s Hot Take brief. I will likely write more this weekend about other issues.

The demolition work at the White House requires a bit of context but suffice to say, the comparison’s to older work on the White House are not apt and partisanship will not work this time. In fact the MAGA Republicans are making the mistake the Democrats made in 2010 versus the Tea Party. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the US House claimed that the Tea Party was funded by the wealthiest people in the country and and dismissed them as an astroturfed protest movement rather than grassroots.1 MAGA is now doing against the No Kings Protests.

The reasons are cultural. The further along the political spectrum you are toward the American extremes, the harder it is for you to recognize how or why people may disagree with you. So you become convinced that the opposition is not organic and must be directed. Until you are shocked by an election result as happened in 2010.

Dr. Edward Lengel the former White House Historical Association’s chief historian during Donald John Trump’s first term has said the Founders would be aghast at what is happening to the White House. Now people might want to dismiss this as a “lefty” academic being angry but full disclosure that is not Ed, in fact I met Ed at a Bible study about a decade ago. Dr. Lengel does not care to score partisan points, he advocates for the Founders’ vision of the country. He is a George Washington expert, and he takes the Founding Fathers very seriously.2 He is concerned that current planned ballroom may herald alterations, perhaps structural the Executive Mansion itself. At the least it will alter the proportions and view the mansion. It will not look like a structure whose purpose is to serve as the residence of the Chief Magistrate so to speak. You can disagree with Lengel, but again, he is a serious scholar who cannot be dismissed. I think his warnings are legit.

King Pyrrhus of Epirus (reigning, with one interruption, 306–272 BC) was one of the most capable commanders of the Hellenistic world—a cousin of Alexander the Great with the same gifts and ambitions. After Alexander’s death, the Macedonian empire splintered among rival generals. Pyrrhus eventually seized the Macedonian throne and dreamed of a Greek empire of his own.

Yeah, that is not why we remember him.

He is remembered for his costly victories over the Roman Republic. During the Pyrrhic War (280–275 BC), the Greek colonies of southern Italy — which was then part of the Greek world known as Magna Graecia — called on him to defend them from Roman expansion. At the great battles of Heraclea and Asculum, Pyrrhus defeated the Romans but lost so many men that he remarked, “Another such victory and I am undone.” Ever since, a “Pyrrhic victory” has meant a triumph so ruinous it is scarcely a victory at all. And Rome of course conquered the Greeks in the end.

Though never defeated in battle, Pyrrhus was undone by his own ambition. His campaigns in Sicily and Italy drained his strength and shattered his army. He won every fight but lost the war for endurance. He did not know when to stop. Heed the warning: some victories destroy those who win them. That’s where the Republicans are headed. They won a 2 million vote, 1.5% presidential victory in 2024. That can shift far the other direction if they annoy enough voters or the Democrats begin to act less like scolds and more a like a party with a common vision for all Americans.

Some are beginning to break with Trump, the GOP leader. Trump has attack Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky but Massie has used it to raise several hundred thousand dollars for his reelection.3 That may herald bigger shift than first imagined because Trump won Kentucky 64%-34% in the most lopsided win for a Republican since the 1860s. U.S. Senator Rand Paul, also of Kentucky, is breaking with Trump on war powers and tariffs. They are taking big risks. Unless they are not and they can tell the mood is shifting back home. We will have to see.

The point is some decisions can undermine all the other ones. You can misuse a victory like Pyrrhus. And a good politicians knows that somethings provoke visceral reactions from voters, and are best avoided. The GOP appears to relish in the provocations destroying their historic gains among Latino/Hispanic voters. Some polls show they have lost nearly half their support among the demographic.4

In a democracy you have to win and maintain the support of the people for long term change. If you cannot do that, your accomplishments will be illusory. Is that what the Republicans want? If not, they need to rethink what they are doing. The loss of support is real.

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The USA has brought together a coalition to end the Gaza War. Israel was facing increasing isolation and while the Netanyahu government is trying the spin the cease fire as a victory of the IDF, the reality is Israel was facing the prospect of unprecedented sanctions. The USA, led by President Donald John Trump stopped the fighting, but Gaza remains disputed between Palestinian factions and not administratively unified with the Palestinian Authority which runs the West Bank areas where Palestinians have some autonomy. The question remains as to how to bring the Palestinians together before they can sit down with Israel and create a permanent solution.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) was created in 1994 under the Oslo Accords as the governing body of the autonomous regions in the West Bank. It holds de jure authority over Gaza but has exercised no de facto control there since 2007, when Hamas seized the strip by force. The PA operates under a Basic Law, an interim constitution. According to this constitution the Palestinian president is directly elected to a four-year term, limited to two terms, like the US President. He commands the security forces, manages foreign relations, can veto legislation, and may issue decrees when the legislature is not in session. The prime minister, appointed by the president, and the council of ministers hold primary executive authority but remain subject to confidence from the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) the parliament.

On paper, this division of powers could function, it looks similar to the French system. In practice, it has failed. The PLC has 132 members elected to four-year terms. A 2005 amendment created a mixed system for the 2006 vote. Hamas won 74 seats, a majority with about 44 percent of the vote, while Fatah the previous governing faction, won 41 percent. In 2007 the Basic Law shifted to full proportional representation. But, by then civil war broke the government. The outbreak of Fatah-Hamas violence led President Mahmoud Abbas to dismiss the government, declaring a state of emergency, and presidential rule by decree. During the fighting Gaza fell to Hamas and the authority of the PA in the strip was extinguished. Mahmoud Abbas won the presidency back in January 2005 with more than 60 percent of the vote. It was a four year term but with fighting the promised elections did not arrive. Likewise there have been no new votes for the PLC. How can he still lawfully be the president if his term should have ended in 2009? How can anyone claim either Fatah or Hamas represents the present will of the Palestinian people with no elections since 2006?

This is not a technicality. This is hitting the mute button on the people’s voice. The truth is simple and hard: we do not know what the Palestinians really want or what deal they would accept with Israel, because Palestinian factions have denied them the right to say so. The central problem is not hidden. The Palestinian people do not have a legitimate, representative authority that can speak for them and make binding decisions. Some diplomatic players may want to just make a deal, but long term deals require public buy-in.

This week I hosted a Palestinian scholar and an Israeli scholar in one of my classes. The conversation was real, and raw. No cameras, no press, just honest discussion with American students, future leaders of the nation. No scripts. Just students and two witnesses. The Palestinian scholar was clear: “we have the right the resist our occupation” and he is correct, that principle is a cornerstone of the American tradition. However he was equally clear that “Hamas is not the right kind of resistance and they have committed treason against the Palestinian people.” That moral clarity matters. Hamas brought calamity on the Palestinians. Its leaders should face judgment by the Palestinian people as enemies of society. He wants them put on trial. That day should come. Before it does, the people need a representative body capable of addressing the options for peace on their behalf.

I argue that because of the hard choices ahead to make a lasting peace, the USA proposed International Stabilization Force will need to secure the public square to allow normal politics to return to the Palestinian street. Palestinians need a summit or constituent assembly to form a popular government with a clear mandate. Everything else is commentary. If we care, then the USA should care enough to insist on the only path that honors their right to choose.

Consider there are only four options to consider for the future of the conflict.

The first is the status quo. That is not a real solution anymore, the limbo and dynamic paralysis ended on October 7th 2023. The frozen conflict cannot hold because Israel feels too threatened after Oct 7, and the world is not going to let up on the pressure. It is not sustainable and if the parties tried to keep the situation as is, it would backfire. Probably into option two.

The second option is to go back to war. That path promises only more funerals, more refugees, and a deeper moral debt that no nation can afford. And Israel holds all the military cards and will not be defeated in the field by the Palestinians.

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The Nobel Peace Prize was born from mistaken remembrance. From fear of a bad legacy. It is ironic that the US president is doing some good things in pursuit of…

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Schumer’s Shut Down? Not Really.

A government shutdown happens when Congress does not pass the yearly money bills or a short-term bill called a continuing resolution. When that happens, many federal offices close or slow down. Workers miss paychecks. Services stop or get delayed. This is not how government should run.

Right now Republicans control the government. They lead the Senate. They lead the House. They hold the White House. When one party controls all three, that party owns the outcome. MAGA is in charge of the government. If the shut down continues the public should hold the people in charge responsible. If many Americans still think Democrats caused this, that means Democrats have not explained the facts clearly. The Democrats led by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York are bad teachers.

Here is the key fact: the Senate’s 60-vote rule on cloture is not in the Constitution. It is a Senate rule called the filibuster rule. It says most bills need 60 votes to end debate before the final vote. With that rule in place, a minority can block or delay bills, including bills to reopen the government. There is a way around this rule. It is called the “nuclear option.” Or what I call the Constitutional Option. This option is a simple majority vote to set a new Senate precedent about how cloture works. In plain terms, 51 senators can decide that ending debate on a certain kind of bill will only need a simple majority, not 60 votes. The Senate has already done this for presidential nominations in the past. It can do the same for budget legislation. It is legal because the Constitution lets each chamber set its own rules. So if the GOP wants pass the Bill the Democrats should tell them to go for it.

If Republicans chose this path, the steps are straightforward. First, they bring a clean bill to reopen the government to the Senate floor. “Clean” means the bill funds agencies without unrelated add-ons. Second, a Republican senator raises a point of order that cloture on funding bills should be by a simple majority. The presiding officer will say the current rule requires 60. Third, Republicans appeal that ruling and vote by simple majority to overturn it. That vote creates a new precedent. From that moment, ending debate on that category of bills takes 51 votes. The Republicans have 53 Seats in the Senate. Then they can take the final vote and pass the bill with Republican votes alone. All the Democrats could put together is 45 votes against it, they cannot block so they lose and the GOP wins. The House concurs. The President signs it. The shutdown ends. Simple. The Republicans can do this anytime they want to.

They are not doing that, why? Because, what the Republicans want to do, to the government is unpopular, and they want the Democrats to have their fingerprints on the knife to the American social contract. The GOP does not want to take solo responsibility and the blame for their actions.

110th Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History

This past week I presented my paper “In Search of the Black American Conservative Tradition, 1776-1949” as part of the panel “Black Conservative Thought and Black Ethnocentrism.” It was well received at the top African American history association. ASALH regularly draws over 1,000 attendees, including a large proportion of community members—not just academics—and that’s the appeal. At ASALH, you’re not just dealing with the ivory tower crowd; you must be able to present your research to everyday people. To me, ASALH is the real test of my ideas because I believe that if ideas cannot survive outside the academy, then they have no real-world value. This is why I love speaking to groups like the Colonial Dames and the Daughters of the American Revolution. The plan now is to turn this paper into one part of an edited volume exploring the unique tradition of African American thought related to their place within the American nation and state. Stay tuned for updates on the project. It is important to note that by conservatism I do not mean the Republican Party or MAGA. The tradition I am researching is older, non-partisan, and creative rather than reactionary.

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USA

The Black-White Income Gap Narrows for Whom? ADOS (“American Descendants of Slavery”) and FBA (“Foundational Black American”) are lineage-based identities for people whose ancestors endured U.S. chattel slavery; ADOS frames the case mostly in policy terms (eligibility and reparations), while FBA places more weight on a distinct native Black American culture alongside lineage. Supporters see lineage specificity as necessary precision, while critics worry that it can feel exclusionary and turn debates into gatekeeping rather than solutions. There is also concern that Black Americans are being conflated with Africans or dismissed in hiring in favor of immigrants who approach America as a new destination rather than as a homeland that owes them any favors.

The Economist1 argues that rising Black immigration—especially from Africa—is subtly narrowing the Black–white wage gap in America. It opens with a Kofi Annan anecdote to show that “Black” in the U.S. is not a single experience, then notes that more than a quarter of Black workers are foreign-born or the children of immigrants, with Africans now comprising nearly half of Black immigrants. Of course, The Economist is confused about how Black Americans view the term “Black,” and it is a sign of troubling presumptuousness. Many “black” African immigrants do not see themselves as “Black” Americans. There is no need to impose this identity, and journalistic commentators should be more circumspect about category collapse.

We must work to prevent this becoming another divisive flash point. We do not need a Black replacement theory spreading online.

The headline claim that the Black-White wage gap is shrinking can be true in aggregate and still be misused. If recent African immigrants arrive with higher formal education and tighter professional networks and settle in opportunity-rich neighborhoods, their earnings can lift the overall “Black” average relative to whites. But that tells us more about who migrates and where they land than it does about the unresolved, lineage-specific harms borne by American descendants of slavery.

Some fear the “model minority” bias is a hazard. Celebrating immigrant success is fine; weaponizing it to imply cultural deficiency among native Black Americans is not analysis; it’s a category error. Migration is selective: people who cross oceans are atypical by definition, and those from upper-class, educated backgrounds import their critiques of America—critiques directed toward changes that natives do not desire. Neighborhoods are not equal, and information networks steer families toward better schools and safer ZIP codes. When those factors are in play, the right takeaway is to scale the conditions—school quality, safety, health education—rather than moralize about communities that have faced a century of blocked asset-building and recent decades of bad domestic policy that affect white Americans as well.

The competition from overseas highlights how white resentment politics that target Black Americans close doors to allies who also face competition from abroad—workers who come to the USA without the baggage of generational American policy failures. Bad policy breeds bad habits; this has left many Americans competing uphill against well-prepared, English-speaking arrivals from upper-middle-class backgrounds. Giving in to provoked internal American division allows the Elons of the world to prevent white American workers from collaborating with other Americans to address this through constructive policy that would improve life outcomes for the native-born population.

Visa for $100K? Additionally, the Trump administration’s currently confused policies will not help American competitiveness. A presidential proclamation restricts the entry of new H-1B workers for 12 months (with national-interest exceptions) unless the sponsoring employer pays an extra $100,000 per petition for workers outside the U.S.2 Agencies were told to verify payments, consider raising prevailing wages, and reprioritize who gets H-1Bs. By allowing exceptions, the president can do what he likes to do—dish out favors—which will likely undercut the whole policy. Likewise, if workers cannot come to the U.S. and we do not create a pipeline to develop American talent, businesses will just offshore more jobs and go to where the workers are.

Buying Residency? Patriotic Americans see the new “Gold Card” created by the Trump administration as positioning America more like an Eastern regime stereotyped in Bond films. A “Gold Card” that fast-tracks green cards in exchange for seven-figure “gifts” reads like immigration for sale: it privileges cash over merit or need, invites queue-jumping by the already advantaged, and risks laundering reputations or opaque funds behind a philanthropic fig leaf while families facing long waits and high-skilled applicants sit in backlogs. Pay $1–2 million and get into America. It blurs the line between public purpose and private influence by tying life outcomes to the ability to pay, mocking the idea that rules apply equally and that status is earned, not bought. It also misaligns immigration with national needs—importing capital rather than critical skills—while sending a damaging signal that U.S. residency is a luxury good, not a covenant of responsibility, contribution, and allegiance. The structure creates soft spots for elite capture and foreign leverage, especially if corporate “sponsors” can transfer a slot to different individuals, and it distracts from reforms that would better serve the country: investing in Americans.3

ICE freezing the American heart. Let’s be frank: there are apparently many Americans who hate the idea of compassion and empathy, and hate that Americans, by and large, want to be good, compassionate people even though they struggle, as all nations do. That is the divide. Securing lasting political objectives requires character, and the lack of character stains those objectives. The behavior of American immigration police is turning Americans against the enforcement of the law. And it is not hard to see why in this tweet from Pro Publica reporter.

Consequently, polls now reflect the undoing of all the work to build a consensus around being a nation that enforces its borders. Law must be just both in principle and in application to ensure the support of the people, which is the ultimate security of the law. Two-thirds of Americans now support giving illegal aliens a pathway to legal status rather than deportation.4 Americans do not like tactics that seem callous, brutal and cruel.

Comey at You Fast. A grand jury in Alexandria indicted the former FBI director on two counts—lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional inquiry—stemming from his 2020 Senate Judiciary testimony about FBI-authorized leaks tied to the Russia case. He says he’s innocent and will surrender; arraignment is set for Oct. 9. The politics are the story. The filing landed days after Trump publicly leaned on the DOJ, then cheered the indictment and teased that “there will be others.”5 Who’s next? Legally, expect motions on materiality and selective prosecution. But let’s also admit the other side of the rot. The rank-and-file members of the Democratic Party are fed up; they believe congressional Democrats and Joe Biden effectively outsourced their post–Jan. 6 response to a doomed second impeachment and state cases—New York included—with irregularities of their own. Many Democrats now grumble that Trump arresting Merrick Garland, too, would “serve him right.” Democrats are angry at what they see as a lethargic party. MAGA Republicans, however, call the charging of James Comey his just deserts for a director they view as disloyal to Trump and too soft on Hillary Clinton and other allegedly criminal Democrats. Many Democrats won’t rush to defend Comey either; they still blame him for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss.

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Iron Dome is Israel’s frontline air defense system, built to intercept short-range rockets, artillery shells, and drones. Developed by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems with U.S. funding support, it became operational in 2011 and has since been credited with saving thousands of lives. The system uses mobile batteries, each with radar units to detect incoming fire and interceptor missiles to destroy threats in the air before they reach populated areas. What makes Iron Dome distinctive is its selectivity: the radar calculates where each rocket will land, and it only fires if the target is a city, base, or critical infrastructure. This makes it more efficient and less costly than trying to shoot down every launch.

In conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah, Iron Dome has claimed interception rates above 85–90%, making it one of the most combat-tested missile defense systems in the world. Its success has also made it an export product and a political symbol—proof of Israel’s technological edge.

Israel’s Aid Dilemma Could Become America’s Next Campaign Flashpoint

The current U.S.–Israel military aid agreement, a 10-year memorandum signed in 2016, runs out in 2028. That deadline sounds distant, but in practice it means the next two years are decisive. Unless Israel secures a new deal soon, the question of renewing billions in U.S. military support could spill directly into the presidential campaign season of 2027–28.

That timing matters. Public opinion in the United States is shifting in ways that make unconditional aid a riskier issue than in the past. Younger Americans—including not only secular Democrats but also younger Christian conservatives—are increasingly skeptical of military support. Polls show a steady erosion in support for Israel, with many voters questioning whether American weapons should continue to flow without conditions.

Israel has to be concerned about a potential worst case scenario where the politics of aid become toxic for American politicians. Potential 2028 presidential candidates serving in Congress or in the Trump administration would be forced to take explicit stands on aid to Israel in a climate where neither party can assume the support of its voters on the issue. Governors and out-of-office hopefuls might dodge the issue, but sitting members of Congress would face unavoidable votes or debates. What was once a bipartisan consensus could fracture into a campaign liability.

Here is the strategic cost: Prime Minister Netanyahu’s choices in recent years—especially the conduct of the Gaza war—have weakened American support across party lines. If the result is a stalled or reduced aid package, Israel risks not only political isolation but also uncertainty over access to the American weapons it has long relied on. That is a game changer.

Two things can be true at once: many among the American elite think Israel remains a vital ally in a turbulent region, and the regular American voter is increasingly weary of open-ended commitments abroad. The danger is that a delayed negotiation allows this tension to harden into a wedge issue just as the next presidential cycle heats up.

Foreign Policy Problems for the American “Order”

The United States suffered a series of foreign policy setbacks that have not received appropriate attention from the American public, who have been overwhelmed by news related to fallout from the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

America was rejected by the Danes. Denmark is choosing to buy French and Italian defense missiles instead of the Patriot system. The US president is seen as unreliable and this will hurt the US defense sector and the manufacturing jobs associated with it.

Nationalism is not a Western, European, or American exclusive. South Koreans are angry at the treatment of its nationals who were arrested by US immigration agents at a Hyundai-LG factory in the State of Georgia. The Koreans claim guns were drawn on them and people back in South Korea are demanding their government stand up to the disrespect. $350 billion of investment in the USA by South Korea may be put on hold in retaliation.

America’s Middle East Woes

By backing Israel seemingly no matter what the government of Binyamin Netanyahu does, the United States has given the impression that that the attack on Qatar is okay and that Israel may defy the US security umbrella. While supporters of Israel will frame the Israeli attack on Hamas as an attack that happened in Qatar and not one on Qatar, the world disagrees. The attack was the violation of the air space of Qatar, and the killing of individuals in Qatar, and the destruction of a building in Qatar and it is Qatar that has to deal with the rubble. Israel has embarrassed the United States President Donald John Trump.

Qatar is asking for a new “enhanced” defense agreement with the United States, while left unsaid it appears to be a desire for a clear American response plan to future attacks by Israel. The ruler of Qatar, Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani was clear, however, that the Israel attack “expedites the need for a renewed strategic defense agreement between us and the United States.” How should that be viewed?

Pakistan’s Big Bomb Brotherhood. Saudi Arabia has signed an unprecedented defense agreement with Pakistan. Pakistan is the only Muslim nuclear power. Saudi Arabia is the wealthiest Muslim state in the world, with a more than $1Trillion economy. The former head of the Pakistani Senate’s defense committee was clear that the deal is an exchange of economic infusion for military support. India will have to be concerned because Pakistani economic dysfunction is a strategic weakness that gives India an advantage along with its manpower. But if Pakistani military power is paired with Saudi funding, then Pakistan can build a larger more sophisticated force to field against India while potentially replacing the USA as the nuclear protector of the Saudi monarchy. Additionally, the deal could lead to a transfer of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia which would grant it the ability to make energy policy with more independence from the USA.

The Defense Minister of Pakistan has said the nuclear program could be made available to Saudi Arabia.

Kallol Bhattacherjee, foreign affairs journalist at The Hindu, one of the oldest and best respected newspapers in India blames the Israeli attack on Qatar for bringing Saudi Arabia and Pakistan closer together.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Israel was destroying its international reputation.

The French President also said that he will recognize the State of Palestine to separate the Palestinian people as victims, from Hamas as a organization. How this will work is unclear, but it may mean something along the lines of condemning Israeli military operations in Gaza as being against the State of Palestine and not against Hamas and organizing international opposition to the war against “Palestine.”

Despite all the warning signs Israeli officials were supposedly shocked when visiting the USA in September to find that Republicans and Democrats are now concerned that Israel is angering their constituents.

43% of Americans think Israel is committing genocide according to a YouGov/Economist poll, and according to Quinnipiac is 50%!

Internationally, America is being blamed for enabling Netanyahu’s war, the Israeli opposition is worried that Netanyahu is ruining Israel’s story as a successful democracy in the Middle East, and many young Americans fear their country being labelled as complicit in Israeli activity. This is problem for US supporters of Israel, especially those who wish to engage students and who think peace can be achieved between Palestinians and Israelis.

Türkiye (Turkey), successor to the once-dominant Ottoman Empire, commands the most powerful military in the Middle East today. Its army dwarfs others in manpower, its drone program—having studied the Russo-Ukrainian war closely—has adapted to the new rules of modern warfare, and its missile production lines are running at a scale no neighbor can match. Unlike others in the region, Türkiye is no longer waiting on foreign suppliers—it is building its own shield and its own deterrent. That reality should unsettle those who assumed Israel would always set the pace. As relations between Ankara and Jerusalem fracture, the question is no longer whether Türkiye can catch up, but how it will choose to use the advantage it already holds.

Türkiye has cut trade ties with Israel. Rear Adm. Zeki Aktürk, the Defense Ministry spokesperson, has warned that Israel is reckless enough to drag the entire region—including Türkiye—into war. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has ruled as prime minister and now president since 2002, will not be intimidated. Yet he is concerned that if Israel is willing to strike Qatar, it might strike Türkiye as well, given that Hamas leaders have been welcomed there.

But would Netanyahu risk striking Türkiye, a NATO member? If he did, and President Donald Trump failed to respond, it could mark the collapse of the NATO alliance and the permanent weakening of American power globally. Erdoğan is not waiting to find out. He has a plan to deter Israel—and it is called Steel Dome.

Çelik Kubbe The neo-Ottoman Steel Dome?

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Responding to the murder of Charlie Kirk is a test of whether we prefer justice over spectacle. Choose Justice. Respect the mourning of your opponents. Punish the guilty.

Tyler James Robinson, a 22-year-old from Washington, Utah, with no criminal record, and as far as we know, he was not on anyone’s watchlist, is the suspected assassin of the political activist, Charlie Kirk. Robinson was turned in by his family and a family friend who did the right thing. Because of Robinson’s actions, two families are broken and suffering, his own and his victim’s.

In June, Minnesota Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated at home; Minnesota Senator John Hoffman and his wife were shot and survived. The same day Kirk was killed, two students were shot at Evergreen High School in Colorado; the 16‑year‑old shooter took his own life.

Social media is easily exploited by the irresponsibly self‑righteous, and by bad actors from abroad who stir up problems they will never face. It seems every time political violence hits the news—whether the assassinations of Melissa Hortman and her husband (the attacker also killed their golden retriever, Gilbert) or of Charlie Kirk—someone raises the specter of a new American civil war. Cynical commentators and agitators wave the banner of Red vs. Blue, invoking the ghost of 1861 as if history is bound to repeat itself in neatly color‑coded lines of the Blue and the Gray. But this narrative is not only wrong; it is dangerous. It is, in fact, a trap.

If violence were to escalate, it would resemble not Gettysburg, but Belfast. The Troubles in Northern Ireland offer the more realistic parallel: neighborhood against neighborhood, extremists striking at public figures, ordinary citizens caught in the crossfire. Collateral damage everywhere. Criminals taking advantage of the chaos to pose as “freedom fighters” while they loot and steal. And our foreign enemies would not sit by; they are not sitting by now. We face disguised provocations by troll farms in China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. And if violence exploded, their black ops agents would add to it. Anyone who wishes for that or speaks of violent domestic conflict as “fixing” something or “solving” things is a threat to your liberty.

The truth of how to handle what is happening is more straightforward.

Violence is crime. Domestic political murder is assassination, not a call to civil war. You do not let terrorists claim the romantic mantle of revolutionary; you denigrate them as base criminals and fiercely prosecute them. And criminals should be punished, swiftly, openly, and justly, to protect the rest of us. That should end the matter.

As a young man, George Washington copied his famous 110 Rules of Civility. Two are especially worth remembering today. Rule 22: “Show not yourself glad at the Misfortune of another though he were your enemy.” And, rule 23: “When you see a Crime punished, you may be inwardly Pleased; but always show Pity to the Suffering Offender.” These are not words of weakness, but of wisdom.

Pity does not mean indulgence; justice should never be sadism. Punish the wicked and be satisfied with justice. If convicted throw the book at Robinson. Concerning the murders of Melissa Hortman and Charlie Kirk, their politics do not matter, justice does. Nothing about their killings should be used for partisan advantage.

That does not mean Americans who opposed Charlie Kirk’s views have lost the right to speak out. That would be the rejection of Kirk’s whole approach of bringing debate to campuses. Rather, none of those disagreements is relevant to trying, convicting, and punishing a killer. Reports indicate the suspect in Melissa Hortman’s June 14, 2025 murder—the same day as the No King’s Protests and the U.S. Army parade in D.C.—kept a list of Democratic‑aligned targets. National leaders and institutions did not sustain the attention that assassination demanded, failing to launch a sustained conversation about violence in our politics and society. Let’s not fail now. And yet, those who opposed Hortman’s politics peacefully should be allowed to continue. As with hecklers, we must not permit a murderer’s veto on our speech and political liberties.

The phrase “waving the Bloody Shirt” was one of the major rhetorical devices of nineteenth-century American politics. It worked for a reason: we want to remember those we lost and punish someone for it. It referred to the Republican Party’s tactic of invoking the memory of Union soldier sacrifices to delegitimize Democrats and to reinforce their own identity as the party of Union and emancipation, particularly among Northern veterans and their families. There was a point to it during Reconstruction. However, this history is a warning about how partisan actors can exploit violence and memory.

People on the political extremes tend to flirt with violent rhetoric, act appalled when violence happens, and blame the “other” side. But on the question of promoting or fantasizing about violence, there are only two sides: for or against. The GOP of the 1870s could exploit the real connection of the Democrats to the Confederate traitors and the KKK. A problem for would‑be bloody‑shirt wavers today is that no faction has clean hands; no one can point fingers without hypocrisy.

We must reject the vulgar maneuvers that turn crimes into partisan symbols. Weaponizing wounds may deliver short-term advantage, but it boomerangs. Offer condolences to the Kirk and Hortman families. Then let the law work—charge, try, and punish those responsible.

Enough. Bloody shirts require bloody bodies; no family wants a martyr more than a life.

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US - Missing the Point

US President Donald John Trump issued an executive order changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.1 Congress, not EOs, creates and names departments. An EO is an internal rebrand that burns money on new stationery with zero taxpayer payoff. Additionally, his information regarding the Defense Department is incorrect: “We won the First World War, we won the Second World War, we won everything before that and in between. And then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to the Department of Defense. So, we’re going Department of War,” said the president.

• Not quite, folks. The Department of Defense was not a rebrand of the War Department; the War Department became the Department of the Army. And the first Secretary of Defense, James Vincent Forrestal, was the Secretary of the Navy when he took over DoD and had to drop the navy gig. Forrestal was one of those who opposed the DoD consolidation, as it was taking a winning combination of service competition and independence and creating something else entirely. The new name signaled the larger mistake: forced unification of distinct services that did not need it. Instead of clear, separate, accountable cabinet voices for the services, we have one secretary and one department under the president where the Army, Navy, Air Force (and the Marine Corps and Space Force in the latter two, respectively) fight over roles, missions, and money. The name change sold “unity,” but the real product was bureaucracy. But, that is not what Trump is attacking; he is attacking “wokeness” and the name, so once again the US will get conservative-coded branding without actual problem-solving. But I think people get that this is going to be the pattern.

• How to watch this responsibly. Focus on (a) competency at the highest levels of DoD (b) any follow-on legislation by the Republican controlled Congress, (c) will this do anything to clean up procurement and promote readiness against China, North Korea, Iran, Russia and others aligning to against MAGA America. If none of those happen, the rename is mostly virtue signalling.

Listening To The Law with ACB

"I don't think that we are currently in a constitutional crisis," Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett said at an event for her new book Listening To The Law.2 Interestingly, Steven Lubet, Williams Memorial Professor Emeritus at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, took issue with a section of Barrett’s book where she gives her interpretation of the Bible’s report of King Solomon’s trial of the two mother’s claiming the same child in which he famously offered to slice the child in half and give each woman a piece.3

Morbidity in America

The world watched the Senate grilling of Health Sec. Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. on vaccine policy and CDC leadership. The most prominent member of the Kennedy family since the death of Senator Edward Moore Kennedy, RFK Jr. is seen by foreign observers as weakening the United States, degrading its health infrastructure to the extent it may fail to meet first-world status and in fact the situtation described reminds me more of the strains of a second-world country. Le Monde claims Kennedy’s actions threaten the American “vaccination ecosystem.” 4

Why this matters: The USA is a nation-state, a common market, and a health ecosystem. We function better than China and the EU because of Americans can freely move across state lines and have a relatively easy time adjusting to a new home. Mixed rules mean families, schools, doctors — and critically— health networks and insurance companies will have to navigate more complicated jab requirements across state lines. This will impact distribution, but also our socializing through community, school, travel, and work.

World Politics

David Lammy is the new Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, succeeding Angela Rayner after she was found to have acted improperly regarding the taxes on her second home.5 A panel found that there was no evidence that she was trying to cheat on her taxes; rather, she did not do enough due diligence to comply. Ms. Rayner apologized for her actions. The government of PM Keir Starmer continues to lose support at a historic rate only 14 months after winning a landslide election.6

Culture

The fashion house Giorgio Armani S.p.A. reached the milestone of 50 years in business. Founded in 1975, the Italian company has become a global luxury brand worn by celebrities from Hollywood to Hong Kong.7

Giorgio Armani (July 11, 1934 – September 4, 2025) died aged 91. You read that right: Armani, the man, achieved a half-century of success in business and then retired from life. What a legend. His final interview was given just a week before his death, which mentioned plans for a 50th-anniversary celebration of the company later in September, which will now certainly be turned into a memorial for the brand’s founder.“If what I created 50 years ago is still appreciated by an audience that wasn’t even born at the time, this is the ultimate reward.”8

Faith & Spirituality

Sainted Millennial — On Sunday, the Catholic Church will canonize Carlo Acutis (May 3, 1991 – October 12, 2006), an Italian teen who died in 2006 and coded a website cataloging Eucharistic miracles.9 Acutis’ canonization was originally scheduled for April 27, but was delayed when Pope Francis died on April 21. His story mixes sneakers—pilgrims can visit his glass coffin in Assisi, through which Acutis can be seen wearing them—coding, and ancient devotion at a time when churches work to reach the digital-native generations; he was one who reached the world. He will be the first official Roman Catholic saint from the Millennial Generation.10 This will be a major milestone for the new Pope Leo XIV as this will be the first canonization of his pontificate. Is it irony or coincidence that Carlo Acutis’s high school was the Leo XIII Institute?

Carlo Acutis born in London, UK, died aged 15 in Monza, Italy, after a short illness during which he was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia.

Requiescat in Pace

Outside the Academy News - over 200 subscribers, thank you!

Thank you for subscribing. If you find this work valuable consider becoming a paid subscriber. After months of planning and prep I have new features debuting over the coming weeks.

• The first episode of the podcast is almost ready and I will wade into the history of Africa. The OTA podcast is a paid subscriber only show—monthly to start, delivering clear, source-driven stories on big historical arcs.

• Class Notes are provided! Short, shareable primers on core world-history and Western-civ concepts—permanently outside the paywall for students and teachers. I will post the first one on Monday.

• The Bookshelf is sorted. A new study hub with curated reading lists, book reviews, and study guides for paid subscribers. The first list is up - books on Nationalism - and will be updated with commentary and additional lists regularly.

• Talk Nerdy To Me is an occasional feature where I’ll review hard alt-history (stories with a clear point of divergence, tighter internal logic and more historically coherent consequences), soft alt-history (stories using the past more freely as a palette for character, theme, or atmosphere), and genre fiction. I’ll examine consequences, context, and craft while reading worlds like Star Trek, Middle-earth, The Wheel of Time, and Dracula from the inside out. And I’ll throw in the occasional historical film review—like Ridley Scott’s Napoleon.

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Presidential ‘rescissions’ vs. Congress’s power of the purse: what can a president actually cancel?

What does it mean to declare a city a ‘dangerous combat zone’?

Security norms for ex-officials: who gets protection, when, and why it matters for democratic transitions.

A Very High Church, The Acid Test of Anglicanism

But first, it has been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, 2005 and, in a way, it never left, the legacy runs deep in the South. The storm reshaped the Gulf Coast’s economy and culture—and its memory still weighs heavy two decades on. It began as a tropical depression over the Bahamas on August 23 and strengthened fast: tropical storm by the 24th, Category 1 by the 25th with 75-mile-per-hour winds as it closed in on Miami. Katrina made its first landfall that day between Miami and Hollywood. Crossing Florida knocked it down to a tropical storm, but warm Gulf waters rebuilt it—Category 2 by August 26, Category 3 by August 27. The Bahamas and Cuba were spared the onslaught. The United States was not.

A generation has now grown up having never known New Orleans before Katrina. One that has come of age with the legacy and the burden, who have had to think about what takes to build resilience and what happens when you wait too long.

By the morning of August 28, Katrina had exploded into a Category 5 with winds over 160 mph, threatening Louisiana, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle. Hours later it ranked among the most powerful Atlantic storms on record, with winds topping 170 mph. The surge told the story. More than 26 feet of water slammed Gulfport and Biloxi.

It ripped through, Lake Borgne and Lake Pontchartrain, overwhelming New Orleans’s levees. Ten inches of rain and that surge proved too much. Initial failures flooded roughly a fifth of the city; by August 30, about 80 percent of New Orleans lay underwater. Many residents evacuated. Tens of thousands did not. They crowded into the Superdome and the Convention Center when the city’s support systems failed. By September 1, some 30,000 people were sheltering under the torn Superdome roof and another 25,000 at the convention center. Food and water ran short. Sanitation collapsed. Bacteria-laden floodwater turned a natural disaster into a public health disaster.

Nearly 1,400 people died. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finished pumping the city dry on October 11—forty-three days after landfall. Damage exceeded $125 billion, the highest for any American natural disaster. Between 2005 and 2011, New Orleans’s population fell by 29 percent. Katrina was the storm. The aftermath was the lingering disaster. Some problems are too big for localities and too big for states. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) coordinates the United States response to disasters that overwhelm state and local resources. Weakening it when you are a great and large nation with many needs is leaving tools in the shed when fixing needs to happen.

U.S. politics & economy

White House vs. Congress: President Trump moved to block $4.9–$5B in already-approved foreign aid, escalating a spending fight with Congress that may not be much of a fight as the Republicans in Congress have shown little independence of mind or character.1 Expect lawfare over “rescission” powers. POTUS is asking the Supreme Court to issue a ruling saying he does not have to cut checks.2 Rescission means the revocation, cancellation, or repeal of a law, order, or agreement. A big word for presidents putting a stop on checks authorized by Congress. The Trump administration and the Supreme Court are producing a confused matrix of policies and decisions. They cannot say they are moving against the administrative state and also allow the president practice rescission and make tariffs unilaterally.

Security precedent for the Exes: President Donald John Trump revoked Secret Service protection for his 2024 opponent former Vice President Kamala Devi Harris, ending an extension granted in 2024.3 Normally Vice Presidents are covered for six months after leaving office, presidents may grant extensions and Biden did so before leaving office. This is another example of what I have argued is the problem with many optional and discretionary powers, they presume normal times of fair play and those are the times in which we find ourselves. The implication of the decision is threatening opponents’ safety with procedural plausible deniability. A potential Democrat controlled Congress may have something to say about that.

Markets & rates: Core inflation and Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) is roughly in line with what you would expect for a profligate and irresponsible nation that refuses to make taxes and spending line up, meaning inflation rose again. Stocks are down, and traders still hope that they will see a Fed cut next month.45 However, attacks on the government accounting and statistics staff mean that discerning market watchers are wary of trusting official stats from the Trump Administration after POTUS fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because POTUS did not like the numbers.6 When economic data becomes politicized and harder to trust you have something closer to Sovietism than Americanism.

World politics

Canada: The Trump tariffs threaten to push Canada into a recession. A recession in a major American trading partner with deep ties to the northern states will likely impact the US economy, potentially triggering economic trouble from Maine to Washington State.7

Gaza: Israel declared Gaza City a “dangerous combat zone.”8 The IDF has cancelled the daily 10-hour humanitarian pauses in their operations that had allowed aid to get through to civilians.9 It is now estimated that 60,000 people have died in Gaza since Israel launched its hunt for Hamas.10 49 hostages from the Oct 7 2023 attack on Israel remain held by Hamas.

Ukraine: There have been 220.10 24-hour periods since Donald Trump returned to the presidency and promised to end the Russia-Ukraine War aka the 7th War of the Post-Soviet. 23 Ukrainians were killed in a major Russian strike on Kyiv; Ukraine calls for more air defenses.11 The European Union denounced Russia again.

Thailand: Political instability continues. The sixth prime minister in 19 years has been removed from office in Thailand.12 The Constitutional Court removed PM Paetongtarn Shinawatra over a Cambodia border dispute. The Shinawatra family, are a billionaire Hakka Chinese family in Thailand that has produced three Thai prime ministers, all ousted from power after repeatedly clashing with the royalist-military establishment. The other three PMs ousted in recent years have been members of the Shinawatra political faction. Paetongtarn Shinawatra was accused of not sticking up for Thailand in her phone call with the former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen to discuss recent border problems. The call was leaked which led to her downfall. Her opponents attacked her as sounding overly pliant and submissive when speaking to Hun Sen which was unbefitting Thailand’s head of government.13

Faith & spirituality

Why are authorities in the State of Israel targeting a 25 year-old Anglican Palestinian woman? The Church of England bishops of Chelmsford, Gloucester, Norwich, and Southwark wrote a letter urging Israel’s Ofer Military Court not to impose another prison term on Layan Nasir, a 25-year-old Palestinian Anglican from Birzeit.14 Nasir was first arrested in 2021, held two months, then spent two years in deferred hearings; in 2024 she spent eight months in administrative detention—detention without charge or trial on security grounds.15 The court is now seeking an eight-month sentence tied to the 2021 case, citing alleged involvement with the Democratic Progressive Student Pole (DPSP), a left-wing Birzeit student bloc designated “unlawful” by Israel on 21 Oct 2020. Israeli authorities describe DPSP as the student wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine PFLP), a Palestinian militant group; rights groups dispute the linkage and say the order suppresses student organizing. Nasir’s lawyer sought a plea to avoid prison; prosecutors have refused. The bishops call a further sentence a “travesty,” say they’ve pressed UK and Israeli authorities for a fair, non-custodial outcome, and note a church briefing that warns prison conditions are extreme and Nasir would be the only Christian detainee which would put her life in danger.

Why this matters: Israel has unwisely disregarded Western principles of due process regarding Layan Nasir. As her case rises in prominence, Israel risks harming its reputation with the largest global Protestant communion. It is not too late for calmer, wiser minds to prevail.16

The Higher Calling: Rev. Hunt Priest, an Episcopal priest was defrocked over promoting psychedelics.17 After a 13 month long process of investigation and discipline, the Episcopal Bishop of Georgia, concluded that Mr. Priest was guilty of “conduct unbecoming to a member of the clergy” and “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation”. Mr. Priest started taking psychedelics in 2016 after joining a rather odd study conducted by Johns Hopkins University and New York University researchers were religious leaders were asked to try psilocybin, a naturally occurring psychedelic compound found in certain species of mushrooms, often called "magic mushrooms" which has a history of use in non-Christian spiritual ceremonies and is now being studied for potential therapeutic applications. Mr. Priest left his church to start a “Christian” psychedelic society he called Ligare which the organization says is a Latin word meaning “to join, or link; classically understood as the linking of human and divine.” Whatever a Christian psychedelic society is supposed to mean, the complaint was brought by one of Mr. Priest’s former interns who alleged that Mr. Priest was not being upfront about the risks involved.

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