Is Trump inadvertently saving Europe from itself?

Whisper it, but Europe is changing.

UK prime minister Keir Starmer announced yesterday that his country will commit 2.5% of GDP to defence, which will later be increased to 3%.

Germany's Merz, who won the elections on Sunday and is likely to become the new chancellor, has warned that NATO might soon be dead and vowed to make Europe 'independent' from America.

France's Macron is considering extending its nuclear shield to Germany.

If you haven't noticed, Europe is preparing for war. It doesn't mean that a war is definitely coming, but it does mean that if war does come, Europe might be prepared. And the best way to avoid a war is to have strong deterrents in place, anyway. I've ranted extensively about Europe's (especially Germany's) inability to protect itself, and seeing Europe's leaders talk defence seriously is refreshing. It is, of course, not a coincidence that all of this is happening right after Trump's radical change of rhetoric about Ukraine. Trump has managed the impossible: he's going to make Europeans spend on defence.

I guess all we can do for now is wait and see what happens. Is a European army on the cards? How would a new European defence setup look like, and how would it relate to the EU? Who would a European army take orders from? Will EU's president Ursula von der Leyen seize the opportunity to centralise even more power to Brussels?

Is CANZUK the UK's natural home?

We've all heard about CANZUK. Or have we? There has been some recent interest in the concept of CANZUK - an alliance between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. The reason for this recent uptick in interest (which can interestingly be verified on Google Trends) is, considering the unprovoked trade war started by the US against Canada, not accidental. The world order is changing, and so the Anglosphere needs to adapt, too. The US has not only become an unreliable partner -- Americans have shown the world that they are willing to put in charge a dangerous man freelancing as a clown, twice. It is clear that the pax americana is coming to an end, and western democracies need to realign and decouple from America - fast. This isn't to say that America has become an enemy, not at all. It is still a strong Western ally, but its support for NATO, freedom, democracy and the West in general cannot be taken for granted anymore. And so the countries that still care about western valu...

Italy’s love for the big state is a cultural remnant of fascism

Today we are going to make Italians mad. And no, we will not be breaking spaghetti – something that my Italian family has been doing for generations, no, centuries, before TikTok videos started circulating claiming that Italians don’t break spaghetti. We do, in fact, break our spaghetti, just like any sane person with a functioning brain would do when the spaghetti clearly doesn't fit into the pot. I actually used to sometimes not break my spaghetti, but now I always do so out of spite: it gives me both physical and emotional pleasure to know that the Italian gods are frowning upon my heartless breaking of spaghetti. As much as I would love to talk about how only people living in a hopeless country could get brutally angry about other people’s freedom to break spaghetti, and how this relates to Italy still being a fundamentally fascist-loving country at heart, the topic I suggest for today is the following: the link between Italians loving the big state and Italy having experienc...

If you want to see AfD fail in Germany, you should want it to be part of government

Let’s start by saying what this post isn’t: this isn’t an article in support of AfD. It also isn’t an article against AfD per se. This is a post about what I think is the reality of the political landscape in Germany, how AfD fits into it, and why its detractors might want to see it in a coalition government sooner rather than later. Ever since AfD was born it has drawn criticism from all sides of Germany’s political spectrum. Everyone has been quick to criticise it every step of the way (a way that has been punctuated by many mistakes, if we’re honest), and German conservatives (CDU and CSU alike) have stayed well clear of forming alliances with AfD in order to keep their reputations intact. There is something about AfD that to many Germans sounds a lot like an echo from a past they have been working hard to apologise for: AfD’s rhetoric around immigrants, as well as some of its members’ comments on whether all Nazis were criminals , have mostly been met with fear and a substantial do...

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