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Horn of Africa

This part of Africa is playing an increasingly important role in the context of the war in Iran. For whoever controls the ports in Somalia and Somaliland controls the ‘Gate of Tears’, the Bab-al-Mandab Strait – the alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

On 26 December 2025, Israel became the first UN member state to officially recognise Somaliland’s independence. This significant decision has fundamentally altered the balance of power in the Horn of Africa and has led Somalia and numerous international organisations to take action against it. Two powerful, competing geopolitical blocs have formed over the construction and expansion of the strategic port of Berbera in Somaliland

[1] The pro-Somaliland bloc. Alongside Hargeysa (the capital of Somaliland) stands a coalition of states that are investing in port infrastructure, seeking access to the sea, or striving for military control over the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait:

[a] United Arab Emirates: The key financial and logistical driver. The UAE’s state-owned logistics giant – DP World – operates the port of Berber, has invested millions of dollars in its modernisation and is reaping ever-greater profits from it. The UAE regards this region as its key geopolitical and logistical base for extending its influence deeper into Africa and exploiting the resources of the African continent (including through its support for the paramilitary group RSF in Sudan).

[b] Ethiopia: A country with a population of over 120 million, which lost its access to the sea following its separation from Eritrea. In return for a promise to recognise Somaliland’s independence, Addis Ababa signed a lease agreement for 20 km of coastline around Berbera, with a view to building its own commercial port and a naval base. For Ethiopia, this is a matter of vital independence from the port in Djibouti.

[c] Israel wants to establish an intelligence and military base right in the Gulf of Aden in order to monitor naval movements, counter attacks by the Yemeni Houthis and limit Iran’s influence.

[d] Taiwan: Maintains close diplomatic ties with Somaliland (neither state enjoys full international recognition) and provides technological support to Hargeysa.

[2] The Pro-Somalia bloc (Mogadishu Coalition). Standing alongside the Federal Government in Mogadishu (Somalia) are states that oppose the violation of Somalia’s territorial integrity, as well as the regional rivals of the UAE and Ethiopia:

[a] Egypt: Somalia’s most vocal and resolute ally. Cairo regards Ethiopia’s plans to build a naval base as a direct threat to its national security. Egypt is already embroiled in a deep-seated conflict with Ethiopia over the waters of the Nile (the Grand Dam) – and now fears that Ethiopian warships could undermine Egyptian dominance in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. In early 2026, Egypt deployed more than 1,000 soldiers to Somalia and stepped up military cooperation with Mogadishu.

[b] Turkey: Somalia’s most important military and economic partner for more than a decade. Ankara operates the largest foreign military base in Mogadishu, trains the Somali army and has signed an agreement to defend Somalia’s territorial waters. Turkey defends Somalia’s sovereignty, as the destabilisation of the country would jeopardise its substantial investments there.

[c] Saudi Arabia: Riyadh is strongly opposed to the destruction of Somalia. The Saudis are competing with the UAE for influence in the Arab world and in the Red Sea; for this reason, they signed a military cooperation agreement with Somalia in February 2026 to counter the influence of the former bloc.

[d] Qatar, Iran and the Yemeni Houthis: Qatar provides financial support to the administration in Mogadishu (in opposition to the UAE). Iran opposes Israel’s presence in this region, and the Houthi rebels have officially declared that the infrastructure in Somaliland (including the port) will be their military target should Israeli forces appear there.

It is a high-stakes game in which the outcome will determine whether the Berbera port becomes an autonomous gateway to the world for Ethiopia and a base for Israel and the UAE, or whether Mogadishu – with the help of the Egyptian and Turkish military – can block these plans by invoking international law and the inviolability of borders. It is also a matter of survival for Djibouti, the tiny country in the Horn of Africa that depends entirely on its port and for which the expansion of the port in Berbera would spell disaster. The next war could therefore break out in this very region of the world.

Paradoxes of today’s economy

[1] The globalisation paradox (the Rodrik trilemma, named after the economist Daniel Rodrik)

It is impossible to maintain hyper-globalisation, democratic politics and national sovereignty at the same time, because:

[a] if we integrate fully into the global market, we must abandon national regulations;

[b] if we wish to retain our national laws, this slows down the global economy, on which our national economy also depends;

[c] the paradox: states are desperately trying to achieve all three objectives at the same time, which leads to political tensions.

[2] The productivity paradox (Solow paradox, named after Robert Solow)

We are experiencing the greatest technological revolution in history (artificial intelligence, automation, digitalisation), yet the statistics show no significant rise in global productivity. Although technology is speeding everything up, per capita economic growth in many industrialised countries is slower than it was during the pre-digital decades of the 20th century.

The latest invention, AI, is not creating jobs in its own sector. Since the launch of ChatGPT, employment in the technology sector has not been rising but falling. The graph below shows two lines since ChatGPT was released.

The white line represents employment in the education and healthcare sectors. The blue line represents employment in the information and technology sectors. Since November 2022, employment in the US IT sector has fallen by 11 per cent: the sector has lost 332,000 jobs and shrunk to 2.78 million employees. At the same time, the education and healthcare sector grew by 13 per cent, adding 3.16 million jobs. Employment in the technology sector is now below pre-pandemic levels. The sector that develops tools for work automation is itself losing jobs at the fastest rate. This decline is, in part, due to simple cost optimisation. Technology companies began cutting jobs following the pandemic-driven boom. However, the scale and duration of this trend suggest that AI is indeed replacing staff in those areas where the technology is being implemented most rapidly. For the rest of the economy and those who have been made redundant, this is a warning sign of what might happen in the future.

[3] The Green Paradox (described by the German economist Hans Werner)

To combat climate change, governments around the world are announcing stricter environmental regulations for the future. The paradox is that these announcements often have the opposite effect:

[a] Owners of fossil fuels (oil, coal) fear that their resources will soon be worthless.

[b] They increase production in the short term in order to sell off their stocks quickly, which causes CO₂ emissions to rise temporarily.

This paradox is best illustrated by the United Arab Emirates’ recent withdrawal from OPEC. The UAE has sufficient capacity to produce more oil and wants to offload it as quickly as possible, without being constrained by OPEC limits, in order to facilitate its transition to a service and tourism-based economy.

[4] We in the West are supposedly living in the best of times in history, but… where is all the money?

This chart shows Bloomberg data comparing the share of corporate profits in the US economy (left) with the share of wages in the US economy. This is one of those charts that tells us more about the economy than most macroeconomic reports and analyses.

The line on the left reaches a level in the first quarter of 2026 that is unprecedented since 1950. On the right, the share of wages in national income falls to its lowest level in history.

For most of the US’s post-war history, both figures moved in opposite directions, albeit within certain limits. What happens in 2026 is that both sides simultaneously reach extremes. Companies have never had such a large slice of the pie. Employees have never had so little – at least not since these statistics began.

There are several mechanisms behind this. Firstly, automation reduces labour costs. Secondly, market concentration in many sectors enables companies to maintain high margins, and the AI boom generates the greatest profits for companies that employ relatively few people in relation to their valuation.

This is not merely a question of social justice. A consumption-driven economy faces a problem whereby consumers or workers are left with ever-decreasing incomes to spend.

Joseph de Maistre envisaged the fall of the EU long before its inception

Last time we analysed why the European Union must collapse. We arrived at the conclusion that the European Union must collapse because it was born in the sick head of Henri de Saint-Simon. You will have remembered that the same person came with the idea of socialism and you will have remembered that we pointed to the fact that socialism has collapsed across the globe. Then you will have remembered that the same person – Henri de Saint-Simone – was also the author of the idea of uniting the European countries into one body politic. Now, if you have invented something that has not worked, that has spectacularly failed, then why should the other thing invented by the same author work? That was the basic question that we put at that time in that text. We should at least be on our guard.

This text will point to yet another reason why the European Union must necessarily collapse. In this text, too, what we are going to discuss is not something new by any means, but something that was said more than 200 years ago by yet another political thinker. His name was Joseph de Maistre. Who was Joseph de Maistre?

Well, Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) was a diplomat who served in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. Though he was born on the Island of Sardinia, he had mixed – French and Italian – origin. His native tongue was French, not Italian. He was well educated, well read, and he mingled in the circles of the educated people, the upper classes, the aristocracy. At first, he supported the French Revolution, but it was for a very short time. The moment he saw what the revolutionists did, as soon as he learned about all the cruelty, about all the destruction, about all the havoc that the revolution played with France, he changed course. He began to fervently defend conservative ideas. In this respect he wrote in the philosophical spirit of the Irish-English political thinker Edmund Burke.

Joseph de Maistre wrote extensively and drew not only on books, but also on experience. He also acted as a senator in the Kingdom of the Piedmont-Sardinia and for many years (1803-1817) he was Ambassador to St Petersburg, to Tsar Alexander I. It was there, in the northern Russian capital, that he wrote a famous treatise in the form of a dialogue in which he discussed important societal, religious, philosophical, and political themes. One of the things that was most striking about this text was Joseph de Maistre’s defence of the death penalty. Joseph de Maistre defended the capital punishment and argued that without the capital punishment society was doomed. What he wrote, of course, stands to reason. You cannot abolish the capital punishment completely in the sense that you cannot prevent one human being from killing another human being. Once we admit this simple fact of life, then the following picture presents itself before our eyes: if the government, the state, the sovereign – whoever holds the reins of power – renounces the death penalty, and if the death penalty cannot be eliminated because – as we said above – one human being can always kill another human being, then the highest authority belongs to that person or that group or that organization that can administer and will administer the death penalty. If it is not the government, then – by necessity – it will be gangs, the mafia, common criminals, and so on, and so forth.

Now, it is not true as contemporary intellectuals maintain that people do not fear the death penalty. Rather, the truth is that the death penalty is the penalty that is most feared by everyone and anyone everywhere and at any time in history. Thus, if people fear the death penalty automatically they fear those who administer this penalty. If it is not the government who administers the death penalty but gangs, the mafia, organized crime or just anybody, then the common citizen will be obedient to the said gangs or the mafia or just anybody who will not refrain from killing him. The common citizen will not fear the impotent government or the courts or the police.

That is why Joseph de Maistre in his famous book entitled The Saint Petersburg Dialogues, (1821), praised very much the executioner. According to Joseph de Maistre the executioner had a very important, an almost religious function to perform. The executioner may not be liked by the people, and yet he is a necessary constituent of any healthy society. Because people are not rational, nor are they good of nature, as the French Enlightenment philosophers tended to think; rather, people need to be controlled by fear of being punished, and – as we said above – what people fear most is the capital punishment. Without this punishment, Joseph de Maistre wrote, society will be thrown into chaos, while all the societal bonds will be severed.

Consider what is happening in the western world represented by the European Union, where the capital punishment has been abolished long ago. Individuals who engage in criminal activities and are caught by the police are put on trial and sent to prison. What expects them in prison? A severe punishment? Torture? Boring life? Lack of medical care? None of the above. We all have heard or read about hundreds of cases of murderers or serial killers who have been sent to prison where they are taken good care of, where they can lead a good life, playing computer games, watching television, hitting the gym and enjoying all the other human rights. How unjust that is, just think of it! A law abiding has been killed, maimed (had his face permanently distorted by acid!), and the perpetrator is put into something that is legally known as a prison, but resembles a four or five-star hotel! Feel the emotions of the victim of the crime and those of the perpetrator!

Common European citizens are aware of all this. Common citizens fear the gangs and the criminals and do not fear the law enforcing officers. Faced with a dilemma to cooperate with the police or to be obedient to the gangs, they really have no choice. What is even worse, common law-abiding citizens know that the criminals do not fear the police. Worse! Common European citizens are aware that it is the police officers who fear the criminals, the gangs, and the mafia. And why do the police officers fear the criminals? First, because the criminals can kill the police officers without facing the death penalty. Second, because if a policeman shoots a criminal dead, it is the policeman who is put on trial and very often sent to prison while the criminal’s family is awarded lavish compensation.

As you can see, in today’s Western world represented by the European Union everything has been put upside down and turned inside out. The perpetrators are awarded with hotels, while the victims are killed through the application of the capital punishment administered by… the perpetrators. It really is ridiculous: the European countries claim that they have abolished the death penalty, and yet the capital punishment is administered again and again, here and there… To be accurate, we are facing a ban on the death penalty carried out by the legal powers, but there is – because there cannot be – a total abolition of this punishment. If it is not the legal state authority that administers the capital punishment, then it is the criminal underworld. If, consequently, the reins of power are held by the criminal underworld, then society is torn between gangs and the legal powers, while governments only make believe that they rule.

Of course the collapse of European society, its descent into chaos, as Joseph de Maistre envisaged it, will have a temporary character. Governments will become weaker and weaker, while gangs will become stronger and stronger, and eventually gangs will create new societal structures and replace legal governments. Once they take over power they will surely administer the capital punishment.

And you know what? Generations will pass and again the cycle will repeat itself. More and more intellectuals, the do-gooders and other Samaritans will again dig up the idea of abolishing the capital punishment, arguing that it is inhumane, arguing that it is barbaric. When such people come to power, they will again abolish the capital punishment and the story will repeat itself.

Because you must know that the European Union is not the first political entity that has abolished the capital punishment. The death penalty has been abolished now and again in different corners of the world, and even – hard to believe! – even by the Bolsheviks in Soviet Russia. Yes, there was such – even if short-long lived – period in the history of the Soviet Union. Somehow they soon saw that without the capital punishment society tended to be unruly. All forms of government learn it, sooner or later, or… are replaced by those who understand what Joseph de Maistre wrote about.

Socialism and the European Union were invented by the same man – do you know?

How do we know that the European Union must collapse? Very simply. If we only know who the founder, the theorist of the idea of the European Union was and if we take a closer look at the other projects that the same person made up in his mind.

The European Union – the idea of uniting the nations of Europe in order to suppress future wars and in order to make them grow and prosper in fraternity – this idea was made up by one Henri de Saint-Simone (1760-1825). He was a French aristocrat born into a wealthy family. Naturally, he enjoyed the privileges of his class, but he grew to become rather left-minded. During the French Revolution he renounced all his privileges and wanted to become a simple citizen (or maybe not that simple). He was against the aristocracy (his social class) and the gentry, and he supported the revolution wholeheartedly. Like all revolutionists, he wanted to improve the life of the common people, or at least that’s what he said he wished for.

Somehow during the revolution he amassed a lot of money because he speculated in real estate. Sadly, later on his speculations proved to be a big failure and so he landed up in prison. After he had been released, he had no money and relied on the support of his… former servants. Never mind that, he still wrote extensively. He wrote about how to improve society in general, and how to improve international relations.

One of his ideas was that there should be a United Europe. What made him think that a United Europe would be a good idea? Simply because after the Napoleonic Wars, when Europe was in shambles and ruin, people looked around for a solution to the problem of constant wars. One of those simplest ideas was to create one state – supreme transnational state – a European state. Henri de Saint-Simone wrote about how this supranational European state should be organized. It was in 1814, during the Vienna Congress, when the powers that had defeated Napoleon gathered in order to create peace in Europe and to draw new borders, it was during that time that Henri de Saint-Simone published his little book that was entitled The Reorganization of European Society. It was a perfect blueprint for the future European Union, the European Union as we know it today.

Why was it a perfect blueprint? Simply because he envisioned the things that you can see now: first, the supranational European parliament that we have today; second, the rights of the European supranational government and parliament that would be tasked with coordinating transnational economic undertakings; third, the right of this European parliament or European government to settle disputes between nations in order to prevent war; fourth, the idea that the European supranational government or parliament would be endowed with the right to levy its own taxes; fifth, that the supranational administrative structures would be tasked with overseeing education across Europe and fostering a shared European public morality. How about that? Aren’t we witnessing something like that nowadays?

What is the most striking is that he also envisaged the state that would initiate the creation of this European Union. True, Henri de Saint-Simone did not think it would be France and Germany but rather France and Great Britain, but that’s a detail. This franco-English core would later be joined by Germany and Italy, and then the rest of the European continent.

As you can see nowadays, all those ideas have come true. We have a European Union, we have a European parliament, and we have a European government that can decide about the fate of the nations that are the member states of the European Union. It really is so that this European supranational government and the European supranational parliament settle disputes between member-states and allocate money and they levy taxes (contributions from the member-states to the European budget). The commissioners, as we know, also try to impose a new kind of morality across Europe, a morality of libertarianism, a morality which suppresses national (patriotic) sentiments and foments rainbow sexuality.

Why did we claim at the beginning of this article that the European Union is doomed to fail, that the collapse of the European Union is inevitable? Well, simply because we know the author of this project and simply because we also know that apart from the idea of uniting the European nations the same Henri de Saint-Simone also theorised about socialism. Yes, you heard it right. Henri de Saint-Simone was one among the first one created theories about socialism – utopian socialism as it was later called by the likes of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. But they heavily quoted Henri de Saint-Simone and recognized him as a precursor of the idea of a socialist society. Henri de Saint-Simone’s ideas were taken over and developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and then by the Bolsheviks in Soviet Russia.

Henri de Saint-Simone’s ideas were as follows. He viewed society as an amalgam of two classes: the industrialists (engineers, managers, craftsmen, and also… artists) and the idlers (the latter included, of course, the aristocracy, the noblemen and the clergy). Henri de Saint-Simone postulated that society should be governed by the industrialists, by people who work, people who have ideas, people who manage labour. Such society would be governed by a government experts. That future society’s motto would be From each according to his ability, to each according to his work. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

This Saint-Simonian socialism, processed by Karl Marx and developed by the likes of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, this socialism eventually came into being. It was born in Russia in 1917, and then it was exported to Eastern Europe and to some other countries in Africa, Asia (like China like North Korea) and also to the American continent (Cuba). This real socialism existed for a couple of decades to eventually collapse across the whole globe, and to collapse spectacularly with nobody shedding a tear after it. it collapsed because Henri de Saint-Simone’s project was false at its core. It failed because it tried to impose a fantasy upon reality, a fantasy of demanding from each according to his ability and granting to each according to his work.

If Henri de Saint-Simone failed in envisaging socialist society, it stands to reason that also his ideas about a United Europe were false at the core and as such are doomed. There is no doubt about that. The European Union is coming apart at the seams because the European parliament and the European government are acting against European interests: they want to wage wars they, import people from other continents, they suppress national feelings, and they try to create new morality. All of these things will contribute to a big failure of this project. Just as socialism collapsed across continents, so will the European Union because both socialism and the European Union were birthed in the sick mind of the same Henri de Saint-Simone, a real-estate fraudster who ended up in poverty.

So tactless! So thoughtless! So impolitic!

It has happened again: on Monday, June 8, 2026, at approximately 10:30 p.m, an immigrant from Africa (the authorities do not even know whether he is Sudanese or Somali) attacked a white man in broad daylight and attempted to gouge out the white man’s eyes and chop off his head with a machete. That understandably sparked violence across Belfast, with cars being set ablaze, shop windows smashed and the usual stuff. Now the BBC was – as usual – quick to present its understanding of what had happened.

Well, the BBC admits in a sentence or two – often quoting the local or national authorities or the emergency services representatives – that the crime was heinous and horrific, but the most part of a lengthy text targets the (white) protestors and how heinous and horrific their reaction to the attempted murder was. That’s also the usual response on the part of the mainstream mass media. The BBC is not concerned so much about the repetitiveness of the event (immigrants have been known for such acts of violence for decades now, not merely in the United Kingdom but across the West, where they have been invited, taken care of and granted asylum) or about the frustration, anger, and fear of the indigenous population. No, the BBC is concerned about – yes! yes! – racism. What stands out in the text is that protests that broke out in Belfast were racially-motivated. We can read the usual yada yada yada about unwarranted pogroms carried out by masked thugs, which is not tolerable and so on, and so forth.

Right at the beginning of the quoted article it is the family of the victim (the man who lost one eye, and has multiple injuries, and whose condition is serious) that is quoted to have said that they do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility. Have the family of the victim been coerced to say such words right after the attempted murder? One just cannot believe a member of the victim’s family to be quick to say something like – and we quote after the BBC – We have many migrants who make a deeply valuable contribution to our country, including in our healthcare system and hospitality sector and we depend on them to make our country work. That’s the hackneyed statement the likes of which we’ve heard hundreds of times, always after incidents like this one. How is it possible for a member of the victim’s family to say such a mantra immediately after experiencing such a heinous crime? Unbelievable.

The lengthy text (with very little valuable content) goes on to say that the police and the authorities have called on the people not to share video footage of the event because that will cause further trauma to the injured man’s loved ones. Are they, the injured man’s loved one, watching it? Judging by the quote mentioned above, they are above such things, they are only thinking about how to immediately remind their compatriots of the valuable contribution of the immigrants which makes their country work! How could such paragons of virtue be traumatized? One can be almost certain the victim’s family (again: coerced? intimidated? bribed?) will issue another statement forgiving the perpetrator his act, calling for leniency of the court verdict, and even justifying it, putting all the blame on present and past racism! They are also likely to protest deportation if such were to be decided by the court!

Then much is said in the adduced text about unsubstantiated pogroms of black people in Belfast, who are of course innocent and have absolutely nothing to do with the feeling of insecurity on the part of the white Irish. Even words of a local pastor defending the local blacks are quoted: They’re good Christian people and they’re getting put out [of their homes by masked protestors] just because they’re black.

Well, the authorities – the ruling class – men and women who have graduated from high-standard schools and universities should know better. History shows again and again that a bad act done by a few members of a community will inevitably be chalked up to the whole community. That’s how human psyche works, that’s the human defensive mechanism. You may be bitten by one dog only, and that makes you be wary of all dogs; you may be scratched by one cat only, and that makes you be wary of all cats. When America was under the so-called terrorist attack in 2001, with the World Trade Center, the Pentagon being hit while the White House narrowly escaped that fate, when there was no knowing what else might be attacked, the national flight controller ordered all planes to land at the nearest airport. That’s precisely how we act feeling threatened: we do not analyse individually who is guilty; rather, we view the whole group or class or cohort that is somehow associated with the perpetrator as if the group, the class, the cohort, were made up of such perpetrators. The survival imperative does not allow for thoughtful analysis; the survival imperative impels us to act quickly and, in a sense, blindly. You cannot fight this survival imperative because it is hard wired biologically.

That’s also why soldiers of whatever army shoot indiscriminately at civilians the moment one civilian opens fire at them: the soldiers are fighting for mere survival. There is no time to discriminate among the civilians who carry arms and who do not; there is no time to assess the situation. When a fraction of a second decides whether you will stay alive or die, instinct kicks in. That’s all there is to it.

The BBC article says that the crowds should not take their frustration at the murder out on innocent people. But the BBC does not ask the question why the crowds take their frustration out on the innocent people. Why, the answer is plain: such heinous crimes have been repeated across the Western world and always committed by Third World immigrants. More to it, on each and every occasion the authorities have been ineffective, indolent, powerless, helpless – you name it. They only keep talking about peace and tolerance, about understanding and values, while the crimes have continued to multiply and the perpetrators have been treated mildly. The common people have witnessed it time and time again, and so the common people have decided to act on their own. Is this so hard to understand? If the authorities – the police, the courts of law – are inefficient, then an alternative “authorities, police and courts” will emerge as sure as death and taxes. Let us reiterate it: weak, ineffective authorities set the stage for the emergence of alternative authorities. To use again a military comparison: a sergeant will command a unit for all practical purposes if a lieutenant, a nominal commander, turns out to be incompetent. That’s the way things are, have always been, will always be. How is it possible that those who wield the reins of power do not understand it?

How is it possible that they do not understand that making the victim’s family say, just in the aftermath of the attempted murder, that, We have many migrants who make a deeply valuable contribution to our country, including in our healthcare system and hospitality sector and we depend on them to make our country work is equivalent to rubbing salt in the wound? People see – either as eyewitnesses or watching the video footage – a black immigrant dissecting their compatriot in the street in broad daylight (and this is by far not the only act of public decapitation in the last decades!), and almost simultaneously they are told that the immigrants – the likes of the perpetrator – deeply contribute to the British healthcare system! How can one be so tactless? so thoughtless? so impolitic?

Sit down at the negotiating table, you paranoid wimp!

On 4 June 2026 the President of Ukraine published an Open Letter to the President of the Russian Federation. In this letter, Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposes talks on putting an end to the ongoing war. The letter (which we recommend reading it in full) has been written in a tone that is fraught with threats and personal insults while depicting Ukraine’s leader as the one who holds moral high ground. The text also presents Ukraine as holding the winning hand in the conflict. The last mentioned is a quirky idea. If Ukraine’s about to win, why should Ukraine’s president suggest peace talks? It is by definition the losing party that sues for peace, is it not? But never mind that.

Consider first Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s claim that this war is your personal choice — a war without a real cause. For those who strive to remain unbiased, the cause is plain to see: NATO expansion and the resultant encirclement of the Russian Federation. The idea that Ukraine might become a NATO member-state would compel even such a dissident as Navalny – if he were alive and held the reins of power – to respond to it militarily. That’s game theory! You cannot allow your competitor to gradually encircle, bleed and eventually entrap your state. Think about the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the reaction of the United States to the Soviets deploying their missiles so close to America. It would have triggered the World War Three had the Soviets not backed out. (Remember that the decision of the deployment of Russian rockets in Cuba had been provoked by the deployment of American missiles in Turkey!). The decision on the part of the United States and the collective West to suggest NATO membership for Ukraine set the alarm bells ringing in the Kremlin.

In the letter, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy uses language that is challenging and defying, aimed at ridiculing the Russian leader. Ukraine’s president says, among others, Do not be afraid to take the path out of this war. Rather than looking for words and phrases that might subtly make the Russian president consider peace talks, Ukraine’s president chooses to look down on him – much like an elder brother looks down on a younger one – implying timidity to force him into action.

This defiance is followed by unveiled threats when Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy brings up Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s electoral loss. Why did Viktor Orban lose? Because he dared to support Russia and all those who support Russia are fighting a losing battle, or – to use Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s own words: Orban shows how those who choose to help Russia in its war against us end in disgrace.

The again Volodymyr Zelenskyy resorts to ridicule and scoff, saying to Vladimir Putin, you would not have been able to cope with it without North Korea’s help. You are the first ruler of Russia to turn to Pyongyang for assistance. And today you are fully dependent on China — also for the first time in Russia’s history. Aha, North Korea is a pariah state, and it is precisely this pariah state on whose aid the Russian president relies! How humiliating, how demeaning, how degrading!

As if denying reality and anticipating Putin’s arguments, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy goes on to say that the world has not grown tired of Ukraine, as you long hoped it would. Really? Wishful thinking pure.

To top it all, Volodymyr Zelenskyy claims that Russian losses are a few times larger than those of Ukraine. If that were the case, why on earth should Ukraine’s President propose peace talks? Why should Russian troops be still operating on Ukraine’s terrain rather than the other way around?

Finally, the Ukrainian President points to Vladimir Putin’s age – age is beginning to take its toll (does Putin seem senile to you the way Trump does or, especially, Biden did?) – and doubles down on the Russian leader with a final and personal threat: you (…) will have to fight much harder for your own existence — not Russia’s, but your own. You might think that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is magnanimously extending his helping hand to rescue his Russian counterpart from the latter’s personal catastrophe!

There is nothing, virtually nothing in the letter that sounds like Volodymyr Zelenskyy genuinely wants peace. The tone is aggressive and scornful, and much of its content is simply mendacious. You do not invite your opponent to a negotiating table, telling him that he is a senile, carven coward relying on a pariah state, aging and fighting for mere survival.

If the open letter is not a genuine invitation to talks, then what is it?

Give a Thing and Take a Thing, to Wear the Devil’s Golden Ring

They were just the two of them: Czech and Lech. They wandered the terrain along the Carpathian Mountain chain and eventually made a stop on a plain on both sides of the Moldau/Vltava River. There they settled and grew in numbers: two extended families, that of Czech, and that of Lech. With the passage of time, as they populated the new land, it turned out that there was little room for two families whose numbers were constantly rising. One of the brothers – Lech – decided to part with Czech and look for a new land to settle. His family moved north, crossing the Giant Mountains (Sudeten) and wended its way through primordial forests, till they spotted a big white eagle spreading its magnificent wings over an impressive nest. That’s the place we want to settle, said the forefather Lech, and so his extended family struck root in the country that later came to be known as Greater Poland. Centuries later it was here that a strong dynasty was established whose successive leaders managed to gradually join the neighbouring tribes – offshoots of the original Lech family – into one political entity, giving rise to what later was to be known as Poland. The white eagle became the country’s national emblem and has remained so till this day.

No wonder then that Order of the White Eagle is the name of the highest decoration that a Polish monarch or president can bestow. It traces its origin back to the year 1705, and its motto reads pro fide, lege et rege, or for faith, law and king.

Throughout its history the order has been given to a number of individuals, Polish and foreign. After Poland had been partitioned by Austria, Prussia and Russia, the Russian Empire adopted the order as its own and its monarch continued bestowing it. Russian emperors were simultaneously Polish kings during that time.

After World War Two, though the order was not officially abolished, it was not conferred by the so-called communist authorities. The Polish government in exile (representing the anti-communist political forces) continued to bestow it.

With the fall of communism in Eastern Europe (1989), the Polish authorities resumed the bestowal of the order, decorating both Polish citizens and foreign individuals. The order is conferred by Poland’s president who is aided in this task by a special Chapter of the Order of the White Eagle. Each Polish president is a recipient of this order ex officio.

Among the foreign recipients of the order is Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He received it in April 2023 when Andrzej Duda was Poland’s president. Why did he receive the order? Officially because Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a champion for freedom and democracy and the human rights and all that blah, blah, blah. In fact, he was given this decoration because he is the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army which fights against Russia, and there is nothing more pleasing to the majority of the Polish people than to reward anti-Russian political conduct.

But there is a big snag. Though Poland supports Ukraine in its fights against Russia with all its might, there are historical events that divide the two nations. During the Second World War the Ukrainian Insurgent Army UPA (Українська повстанська армія, УПА) and its ideological background – The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists OUN (Організація українських націоналістів, ОУН) – decided to ethnically cleanse the territories with mixed Polish-Ukrainian population. The year 1943 was an especially terrible year, which came down in history as the Volhynia Massacre, during which an estimated 100.000 Polish people were murdered and tortured. It was the time when the whole of pre-war Poland was under German occupation, the time when Ukrainian political leaders flirted with the Third Reich and provided Germany with Ukrainian auxiliary military units, the time when Ukrainian elites hoped for creating a Ukrainian state, free of national minorities. The Volhynia Massacre has become an iconic symbol of the events, but the ethnic cleansing continued for three years in between 1943 and 1945, spreading to East Galicia (today’s area around the city of Lvov) and today’s easternmost Poland.

Now the past is the past. The Volhynia Massacre is not the only one such event in human history. What makes it politically explosive is the fact that the Ukrainian political elites have not even attempted to condemn the event, nor have they decided to denounce the then political leaders and ideologues. To the contrary, Ukrainian nationalism is based on the veneration of the instigators and perpetrators of the massacres. Ukrainian cities and towns have monuments and commemorative plaques devoted to as well as streets or squares named after the same instigators and perpetrators. Though Kiev receives as much support from Poland as it is physically possible, Ukraine’s authorities show no willingness to apologise for the evil done to the Poles by Ukrainian past generations. When – to top it all – recently President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decided to name a military unit after the “Heroes of the UPA” (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), Polish President Karol Nawrocki said that enough is enough, and made a suggestion to strip the Ukrainian leader of the decoration of the White Eagle.

But why was Volodymyr Zelenskyy conferred this order in the first place? Did the Polish elites not know that their Ukrainian counterparts kept venerating the OUN/UPA leaders and ideologues? Did they not know that Ukrainian cities and towns are peppered with OUN/UPA memorabilia? Did the Polish elites not sense that Ukrainian politicians were reluctant to take any steps towards historical reconciliation? Was President Andrzej Duda, President Karol Nawrocki’s predecessor, not aware of all this when in April 2023 he was decorating President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with the Order of the White Eagle? Of course, he knew everything and was aware of everything, and for all that he continued supporting Ukrainian chauvinists, thus marring the memory of the tens of thousands of his compatriots who had been maimed, tortured, dismembered, crucified, burnt alive, murdered, expelled from their homes, from their villages, and, and, and. President Andrzej Duda represented the same political faction as President Incumbent Karol Nawrocki. Now President Karol Nawrocki wants to strip Volodymyr Zelenskyy of the order. Well, it’s like having the right hand giving a gift and the left hand taking it back. In their total helplessness the Polish authorities are exposing themselves to ridicule.

Besides, why all this fuss over the bestowal of the said order? Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is by no means the only one recipient of the White Eagle unworthy of the honour. Let us survey the list of the recipients of this decoration. Who do we find there?

We have mentioned the partitions of Poland, the time when the Polish state as a political entity was annulled by the three neighbouring powers of Prussia, Austria and Russia. Poland – or to be accurate: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – collapsed also due to the high treason of some members of its nobility. Many of these traitors received the Order of the White Eagle prior to or after the act of treason. Did they deserve the order? During the time of Congress Poland – a semi-independent Polish state created on the lands of the Russian partition in 1815 – it was the Russian tsars who received the said decoration ex officio, as Polish heads of state. Among other recipients was General Ivan Paskevich, who suppressed the 1930-31 Polish national uprising, or Adam Wirtemberski, who while commanding Russian troops shelled the Puławy Palace, where Polish insurgents found refuge. Adam Wirtemberski had the palace bombed knowing full-well that among its residents was his own mother, Maria, a Polish patriot… Did he deserve the decoration?

Pre-war Poland awarded the Order of the White Eagle to August Hlond, Primate of Poland, who later (1939), when Germany attacked his country, fled abroad in a cowardly way, leaving the Polish Catholics alone face to face with the German occupiers.

Also today’s Poland has conferred this order to very many individuals, also foreigners, whose merits are – to put it mildly – doubtful. Who do we see among the recipients? We can see Valdas Adamkus or François Hollande or Helmut Kohl, whose only merit was that they were presidents or Prime Minister of, respectively, Lithuania, France, and Germany. (How does that relate to Poland and Poland’s interests?) Also, quite a few monarchs were recipients of the Order of the White Eagle: Queen Mathilde of Belgium, Queen Paola of Belgium, Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, Queen Sonja of Norway, Queen Sofía of Spain (what a propensity for queens!), or Emperor of Japan Akihito.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is by no means the only Ukrainian president who received this said order. The other recipients are President Leonid Kuchma (1997), President Viktor Yushchenko (2005), and President Petro Poroshenko (2014). Why did they get this decoration? It looks like they were awarded the order ex officio, just like their Polish counterparts (four Ukrainian presidents were decorated out of just six in total!).

Virtuti Militari (for Military Virtue) is Poland’s highest decoration for heroism and courage. Between the Second World War and the fall of communism (1945-1989) in Poland it was considered to be the highest order, since the Order of the White Eagle, though not abolished, was not granted any more. Now in the year 1974 the communist authorities conferred Virtuti Militari on Leonid Brezhnev, Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the leader of the USSR. That gesture on the part of the Polish authorities met with a widespread and strong disapproval among the Polish people. Why should a foreign leader, a leader of a country that was regarded as Poland’s overlord be decorated with Virtuti Militari? When communism collapsed, the bestowal of the cross was annulled in 1990. Leonid Brezhnev, the recipient, had been dead for eight years… The decision of stripping Leonid Brezhnev of Virtuti Militari was signed by the then President of Poland Wojciech Jaruzelski, a communist by conviction, Leonid Brezhnev’s erstwhile political friend… What a comedy!

They call stripping of such an order an act of historical justice, but such decisions are rather acts of childishness: it is giving a thing and taking a thing to wear the devil’s golden ring. One cannot erase the fact that unworthy recipients were considered worthy at the time of bestowal; you cannot undo history. Damnatio memoriae or condemnation of memory – because that’s what it is all about – has been practised in the past many times across cultures and continents. In some cases damnatio memoriae is somehow understandable, when representatives of a new political system want to undo, unsay, or offset what their predecessors have done. In the case of the revocation of the bestowal of the said Order of the White Eagle on Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy we are facing ridicule pure: while Poland’s political system has not undergone a change, Poland’s current president wishes to undo what his predecessor did, a predecessor who belonged to the same political persuasion! What does that say about political leaders and political ruling elites?

Whether President Karol Nawrocki will be successful in stripping President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of his Order of the White Eagle remains to be seen. The decision to become effective needs to be countersigned by Poland’s prime minister, and he is a strong political opponent of the current head of state. He may choose not to oblige the president. The Prime Minister has already said that such the proposal on the part of the Polish president to strip Volodymyr Zelenskyy of his order plays into the hands of the Kremlin: a dispute between Warsaw and Kiev is precisely what Moscow is looking forward to. If (in a few days’ time) Poland’s Prime Minister blocks the president’s initiative, then Karol Nawrocki will suffer a dent on his political prestige. Why put forward a proposal that is not going to be pushed through?

The Treasure of the Appalachians

The US Geological Survey (USGS) has published a report that could have a significant impact on the geopolitical dynamics between the US and China. It turns out that the Appalachian Mountains contain 2.3 million tonnes of lithium oxide. To better understand the significance of this information, suffice it to say that such a quantity would meet the US’s demand for this rare metal for around 328 years. To date, the country has operated only one small mine, and more than 50% of its lithium is imported from Chile, Argentina and Australia, whilst the raw material itself is still sent to China for processing. Indeed, China processes 60% of all lithium, which serves as a means of exerting pressure on other countries, including the US. In recent years, Beijing has repeatedly introduced export controls on, among other things, lithium processing technology, the manufacture of LFP cathodes (which contain directly recycled lithium) and high-energy lithium-ion batteries. As a result, Beijing has a real influence on the cost, availability and delivery times of battery components worldwide.

The discovery by the US authorities now appears to mark a breakthrough, but the devil is in the detail. The first problem is the nature of the deposits found. These are so-called pegmatites, i.e. hard rocks, from which the extraction and processing of lithium is much more expensive and difficult than from brine. What matters, however, is that mining would be economically viable. The greatest hopes lie in the Kings Mountain region, where companies such as Albemarle and Piedmont Lithium are already developing their projects. The biggest problem, however, remains time. The construction of mines and the commissioning of lithium extraction and recycling plants is a process that will take at least 10 to 15 years. Consequently, the significance of this discovery remains moderate in the short term.

So where exactly do the real benefits for the US lie? First and foremost, we need to adopt a longer-term approach here in the context of competition with China. This competition will not end in two or three years. A new world order will emerge over the coming decades, and from that timeframe, the discovery of such vast lithium deposits is already significant. This is a milestone that completely transforms the US’s vision of raw material security in relation to lithium and offers real hope of weakening Chinese influence, even in the area of control over battery production. It is also a positive signal for American companies in this sector.