This episode explores a central paradox of 2026: global instability is accelerating just as Donald Trump’s political power appears to be weakening. Using Francis Fukuyama’s argument that Trump has already reached “peak power,” we examine how domestic resistance, electoral headwinds, and institutional pushback are eroding his ability to govern—even as his policies continue to fuel conflict at home and abroad.

Drawing on recent analyses from the Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, and the European Council on Foreign Relations, the episode asks whether a weakened U.S. president can survive mounting domestic and international crises—and what this means for allies, especially Europe and Ukraine, in a world no longer anchored by reliable American leadership.

Bibliography

Chatham House. 2025. The World in 2026. Video podcast. December 19, 2025.
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2025/12/world-2026-chatham-house-video-podcast.

Council on Foreign Relations. 2025. Conflicts to Watch in 2026. New York: Council on Foreign Relations.
https://www.cfr.org/report/conflicts-watch-2026.

European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). 2025. “Only Europe Can Save Ukraine from Putin and Trump — But Will It?” December 2025.
https://ecfr.eu/article/only-europe-can-save-ukraine-from-putin-and-trump-but-will-it/.

Fukuyama, Francis. 2025. “Don’t Panic, Trump Is Flagging.” Persuasion, December 17, 2025.

This episode unpacks the seismic shift in U.S. foreign policy revealed in Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy. It explains how “America First” reshapes alliances, unsettles Europe, reassures autocrats, and risks weakening the foundations of U.S. global power.

Bibliography

– National Security Strategy of the United States of America (2025). The White House.

– Emily Harding, “The National Security Strategy: The Good, the Not So Great, and the Alarm Bells,” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 5 December 2025. CSIS+1

– Laurel Rapp, “Trump’s new national security strategy: Cut deals, hammer Europe, and tread gently around autocrats,” Chatham House, 9 December 2025. chathamhouse.org+1

– Carl Bildt, “Reading Trump’s National Security Strategy: Europe through a distorted lens,” European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), 9 December 2025. European Council on Foreign Relations+1

– Christopher Caldwell, “Trump Is Not Attacking Europe. He’s Attacking Something Else,” The New York Times, 11 December 2025 (referenced via social share). Mastodon hosted on mastodon.social

– “Danish Intelligence Report Raises Concerns About U.S.,” reported in The New York Times, summarized via Political Wire, 11 December 2025. Political Wire

This week’s analysis looks at the future of Europe and Russia in a moment that feels similar to the film Casablanca. While Russia shows military strength and active sabotage in Europe, it also faces deep long-term weaknesses. At the same time, the United States is divided: part of America continues to defend Europe, while the MAGA movement prefers nationalist politics and even supports far-right groups inside the EU.

Europe is now deciding whether it should keep depending on the United States or become a real strategic power of its own. Using recent investigations, expert opinions, and international news, the lesson explains how today’s choices will shape the balance between democracy, security, and authoritarian influence in the years ahead.

Bibliography

• De Vries, Catherine, and Ilke Toygür. “How Europeans Can Go Beyond ‘Limiting Unpredictability’ and Respond to the MAGA Doctrine.” European Council on Foreign Relations, 13 November 2025.
• Friedman, Thomas L. “The ‘Useful Idiots’ From America Whom Putin Is Playing Like a Flute.” The New York Times, 4 December 2025.
• “German Parliament Backs Controversial Military Service Law Amid Russian Threat.” Reuters, 5 December 2025.
• Shear, Michael D., Jeanna Smialek, and Lara Jakes. “Trump Administration Says Europe Faces ‘Civilizational Erasure’.” The New York Times, 5 December 2025 (summarised with additional reporting from Reuters/AP/Euronews).
• “Russia’s Putin Found ‘Morally Responsible’ for Nerve Agent Death in UK.” Reuters, 4 December 2025; see also Hansard, “Dawn Sturgess Inquiry.” UK Parliament, 4 December 2025.

This analysis explores the unfolding Ukraine peace negotiations through the lens of Archilochus’s metaphor of the fox and the hedgehog. The U.S.–Russia 28-point proposal, pushed by Donald Trump, is dissected as a tactical, transactional “fox” document—rich in clauses, deals, and improvisations—while Vladimir Putin’s approach is interpreted as the relentless, single-minded logic of the “hedgehog,” focused on Ukrainian subordination and territorial control. The text explains the differences between the U.S. plan and European counter-proposals, identifies the clauses that jeopardize Ukrainian security, and examines how European leaders now face a decisive moment: whether to passively accept a flawed settlement or actively reshape the geopolitical terms of peace. The piece concludes with a forecast of the likely outcomes over the coming year, stressing the dangers of a bad peace and the strategic importance of European agency.

In an age where the A.I. race resembles a high-tech version of Dr. Strangelove, the world is building its own digital Doomsday Machine—vast data centers, trillion-dollar bets, and political deals that nobody fully controls. While U.S. giants like Nvidia fuel an explosive boom, China quietly advances with cheaper, faster, and surprisingly powerful open-source models. The result is a global competition shaped by cost, strategy, and geopolitical tension. This thread explores how Chinese A.I. is challenging U.S. dominance, why analysts fear an A.I. bubble, and how both nations risk locking themselves inside an unstoppable technological arms race.

This episode reads the Chilean far right’s comeback through the lens of Zero Day (Netflix, 2025), transforming the thriller’s theme of repetition and blurred reality into a metaphor for Chile’s political unconscious. Figures like José Antonio Kast and Johannes Kaiser are seen as symptoms of a nation caught in a loop — replaying the trauma of dictatorship in digital form. Drawing on Freud’s notion of the uncanny and the concept of political repetition, the text explores how fear, nostalgia, and misinformation resurrect the ghost of Pinochet not through violence, but through routine. The piece closes by calling for symbolic renewal — education, art, and memory — as the only ways to break Chile’s endless “zero day.”

This episode looks at the life and legacy of Dick Cheney, the most powerful U.S. vice president of modern times. Using John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and Machiavelli’s “The Prince” as guides, it explores how Cheney believed that in times of crisis, power must be strong—even if moral limits are stretched. The episode explains how his actions after 9/11 expanded presidential authority, how those powers outlived the emergency, and how, in his final years, Cheney surprised many by defending democracy against Donald Trump. The piece asks a simple moral question: should leaders seek to reign in crisis or serve the law that restrains them?

This episode explores the emerging nuclear confrontation between Russia, the United States, and China through the lens of The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. It connects current geopolitical events — Putin’s test of the Poseidon underwater nuclear drone, Trump’s call for U.S. nuclear testing, and China’s rapid nuclear expansion — to the novel’s idea of an unstable three-body system where no balance is possible.

The analysis argues that each power represents a distinct force of deterrence: Russia’s spectacle of destruction, America’s theatre of parity, and China’s silent strategic patience. Together, they form a chaotic triad that mirrors both Mearsheimer’s theory of great-power insecurity and Liu Cixin’s vision of cosmic instability.

In the end, the piece suggests that humanity has entered a new “nuclear era of the Real,” where fear and uncertainty themselves — not actual war — govern international order.