Peace in our time, January 26, 2026

Written on Friday and posted today so I apologize if anything happened over the weekend.

I’m starting to run out of positive angles on the development and Zelensky’s veritable broadside against Europe was bad for creativity. As someone who has followed the entire war every day since the week before the start of the war, I can confirm that he is right.

This undergrade was not very uplifting.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cjrzjqg8dlwt

Zelensky raised about ten points where the common thread was that Europe is passive, cowardly, and afraid.

The USA will continue to do what is best for them, and if they are willing to torpedo Japan to save their petrodollar status, then they are prepared to do a lot.

When I put everything together about Japan, I find it hard to see anything else – Buffet parks his liquid assets in Yen because the dollar is in turmoil, Trump asks Japan firmly but kindly not to defend Taiwan – and China then attacks Japan’s financial markets with all the ammunition they have, which one thought they would use against the USA. At first, I thought it was China’s way of getting to the USA through Japan before I realized that the Yen is a competitor to the USD in the safe haven sport during a crisis, which Buffet just spoke to us about in plain language.

The other day, I had a discussion with an Italian colleague, not the thoroughly corrupt Sicilian, but the one I will be working alongside when the project starts in the spring. He is sensible as he is something as endangered as a decent Italian – Rule A1 on all my projects with a mosaic of nationalities and different cultures, wills, and motivations is to find the decent ones who are reasonably sensible and stick with them, then be honest, transparent, and build trust. It usually works, and I think I have found the candidate for this project, so I make an effort not to mock Italy too much even though it’s difficult.

Mr. Milano believed that the EU is young and that over time we will become stronger, which he is right about – the EU we see today is light-years stronger than the EU was just 30 years ago, but before we are cremated, the EU will probably be some kind of federal entity. We need patience, was his pizza baker wisdom, one step at a time, and everyone contributes their spaghetti straws to the stack over a couple of Roman centuries (they died young).

I’m not sure what my contribution to the stack would be, and I’m starting to get old, I float on top of some kind of international boat and I’m not directly affected by downturns in Europe, but I become a bit resigned when open goals are missed, and above all, my projects are also sensitive to major global crises, so I don’t like this at all. The project will start in about a month so we have time to get started, which is a lifeline because job offers don’t exactly rain down in blood-red crises – Lex my work life.

In 1999, I started studying a bit late, entered the qualified job market in 2004, and started working in the UK right away. I weathered the 2008 crisis in Angola on various projects until 2016, and during COVID, I took a job in Sweden, which was basically the only country that didn’t shut down. I was, however, stuck in Kuwait with a salary and nothing to do for the first eight months, but after I managed to fly home, the project shut down a few months later, and COWI closed its Dubai office through which I was employed, so good timing.

It is clear that we are heading back to a world order where the strong do as they please, and the hope was that the EU could be a positive counterbalance to that.

The massacre of the Kurds upsets me enormously – a bit like Rwanda in the 90s where they argued about whether it was genocide until the genocide was carried out. Then they concluded that the correct term was genocide and that it should be stopped – the message went directly to 800,000 machete-murdered Tutsis that they were saved.

Srebrenica is another modern classic – “we save you by mass murdering you,” and the Dutch soldiers sued the state for mental suffering over all the criticism they received after they handed over 10,000 Bosnians to the Serbian mass murderers they had gathered so they could save their own skin.

It upsets me that the EU is rolling over and falling asleep, the only thing the USA has done is not actively help the Kurds if we want to be picky. Europe, which claims to stand up for so much that is good in the world, has not even learned to spell Rojava yet, and the media refuses to discuss the genocide – Europe is dead silent.

Yes, everyone else is trying to divide the EU because a weak, divided, and terrified EU is good for them, that is clear – but it is no longer 1945 and we ARE de facto strong together – safety in numbers as the termites usually say until those special ants show up and chew through the population.

What will probably happen in the near future is a financial crash, and with what Europe has shown in recent years – do you think we will be able to resist the attempts of the USA, China, and Russia to push all the muck onto us?

Will we have to go through a 2008 again just because we can’t organize ourselves decently – PIIGS were, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain. The crisis that started in the USA, they managed to quickly export to mainly Europe, China managed to get through it somewhat but Russia was also hit hard, right?

I maintain that the USA will do what is good for them despite the constant criticism one receives for daring to write that, but if they have now burned Japan as a safe haven, then only the UK and the EU are left in case of a new financial crisis.

And Trump has apparently managed to goad the UK into a fight now, I saw.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/trump-starmer-greenland-chagos-pmqs-b2904769.html

I forgot about Chagos in the last post, you know it better as Diego Garcia, which we know is a quite vital airbase for the USA out of reach of Chinese missiles.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cp8yd7z4r24t

Abnormal is called the USA’s attack, and the USA has also previously greenlighted the process, so the UK is quite puzzled about what is going on – they should read Johan No.1.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/donald-trump-chagos-greenland-darren-jones-b2903714.html

The UK is very vulnerable thanks to BREXIT, which Russia managed to push through with a little boost from 2015, which was also their design. The UK is no longer the financial center it once was, their energy production does not cover the country’s needs, their industrial production is low, and like all of Europe, they have an ambition to reduce agriculture even though the reasons are highly unclear just like with us.

The UK recently got a trade deal with the USA painted as a vital lifeline, so if the USA in a highly justified rage over some invented injustice, after first cornering Kier Starmer into a corner he can only box his way out of for his political survival in Labour, cuts that deal – what happens then?

Probably blood-red crisis in the former Empire and the capital flees in panic.

UK-US has an Economic Prosperity Deal (EPD), a framework that has partially come into effect, but the USA has recently paused a £40 billion deal. That’s roughly what I manage to gather.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-suspends-technology-deal-with-uk-ft-says-2025-12-16

The USA’s strategy seems ridiculously simple and predictable (which is not at all the same as being able to counter it) – they know that a financial crisis is on the way and that they are in a bad position because they are sitting on an AI bubble, the petrodollar is under attack, they have a mountain of national debt, and something with bond markets.

The plan is to take all the other safe havens where capital can go, burn them down, and salt the earth so that capital has no choice but to return to the USA as a safe haven when the crisis hits – the USA is doing what is best for them at the expense of the rest of us.

The UK, the USA can probably handle on their own, I don’t find any targeted attacks on the UK from China other than China threatening to cancel all trade agreements because the UK visited Taiwan last summer – but that is within the scope of understandable behavior from them.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/02/china-threatened-to-cancel-key-trade-talks-after-uk-ministers-taiwan-visit-in-june

At least Russia’s effort will be to cut undersea cables to the UK, and considering that the UK has already been close to blackout in the winter, a couple of cut undersea cables could cause significant trouble.

We know from the Baltic Sea that cutting undersea cables is risk-free as they cut a total of 11 cables with us and we did nothing.

https://tvpworld.com/90694771/uk-warns-of-russian-deep-sea-sabotage-threat-financial-times

https://tvpworld.com/89160695/russian-spy-ship-yantar-monitored-europes-key-underwater-infrastructure-report

We also know that the shadow fleet is cruising untouched along our coasts and in the Baltic Sea – hundreds of ships.

The UK will not be able to handle canceled agreements from the USA and cut undersea cables from Russia, so it will probably be an easy decision for the capital – if that’s not enough, Trump will pile on with a 100% tariff because Kier Starmer had the audacity to wake up in the morning, and he won’t back down.

Then we have the EU as the last refuge for capital in case of crisis alongside the USA, and here it probably takes more than a few cut undersea cables.

The Zulu warriors often used the bull formation – a frontal attack and then two flank envelopments that always went as planned, pushing the opponents together towards the center and then standing completely surrounded and crowded with their long spears pointing straight up as the Zulus advanced from all sides with short stabbing spears under the shield instead. It worked every time for a long time because the Zulus were a well-trained military force with uniform training where everyone pulled in the same direction, and all the opponents were groups of warriors from different tribes who pooled together to face the attacks and couldn’t learn from others’ mistakes because the Zulus took no prisoners.

Russia will need to open a conflict area with Europe that creates enough unrest – my guess has been the Baltics, our Supreme Commander believes it will be Gotland, and there are surely more opportunities for Russia that we have not identified yet – they probably steer clear of Finland since they are not completely devoid of historical knowledge.

My thought has been for Russia to try to stay under NATO Article 5, but as this develops, the question is whether Article 5 even still exists, but if so, it would be a collective violent response from Europe that RU needs to try to stay under.

Operation Baltikum, as you have already read about – on a beautiful spring day, we are awakened to the abhorrent tones of little green men in the Baltics, and a swarm of drones over the Fuldagapet without nationality markings chirping in Russian. That was my main track, and then I presented some backtracks over a few posts.

With the same fervent patriotism as demands for violent responses from sitting governments, the fringe parties and individual politicians in established parties stand up as one and demand peace in our time and votes of no confidence – throughout the EU.

Budget balance is shouted from the podiums by all sorts of politicians no one realized were on Russia’s payroll, and not our sons’ blood this time – never again shall we have war, peace in our time.

After a negotiated ceasefire in Ukraine, Russia has been able to move its entire drone arsenal up to the border with Poland and the Baltics. Since Europe slept through the Ukraine war, our brigades have no defense against Drone War 2025 – one Supreme Commander after another is faced with the fact that sending their own country’s brigades across the border is tantamount to termination and forfeiture of pension.

Each country’s Supreme Commander does the next best thing and tries to persuade all other countries’ Supreme Commanders to send their brigades across the border instead – and then silence prevails. The lonely Balts are left standing, glancing towards the border for help that will never come, crumpling up the papers with signed agreements from all European countries in triplicate and bitterly regretting that they never mined the border against Russia and that they trusted us.

Ukraine has its negotiated ceasefire, which has led to a huge debate of betrayal within the defense forces actively driven by Russia, and the country cannot physically muster the strength to resume hostilities. Above all, the USA has promised huge investments if there are no new hostilities, and Zelensky has already fallen politically. This happened immediately after the ceasefire agreement was signed because Trump demanded it, so there is no leadership that can restart anything – it is politically uncertain just as planned.

Country after country in Europe decides that agreements entered into with the Baltics absolutely apply and announces that they will not send any forces to help, but wish the Balts good luck in their just fight for freedom. Of course, we send ammunition to the artillery in the wrong caliber to maintain a fine tradition from Sweden during the Finnish Winter War.

In the second week, all solar panels in Europe short-circuit, and the major power outage spreads starting in Spain – just as the USA has told us, there was a Chinese kill-switch in all solar panels, which we never bothered to check. A collective outcry rises from the villa lawns in SE4 where the investor joy in Chinese solar panels has been particularly great to the delight of northern Sweden, before the stocks in all Chinese-built wind turbines seize up and a matching outcry is heard from the northern forests. This happens simultaneously as our hydroelectric power plants are subjected to IT attacks that open the floodgates wide open for a few days and the number of technicians dropping wrenches in sensitive places in our nuclear power plants skyrockets. France blames it on too warm cooling water in the rivers again, worked last time.

Trump comes out and informs Europe that they will now face 100% tariffs on everything as all the ice cream in all embassy refrigerators has melted throughout Europe – the USA simply cannot accept such a flagrant violation of all agreements and the right to life, and he won’t back down.

Voila – the capital in Europe goes into total panic and scurries off to the USA, again. Just like with the Zulus, it works every time because the opponents are not trained together and use uniform tactics – every country in Europe tries to do the best they can, but unfortunately, the banking system is just as integrated as the power grid, and the cascading effects are enormous.

Ukraine is now in a political chaos that has completely paralyzed them, and the military is furious. Europe is in a deep economic downturn, Russia is diligently rebuilding its military after American investments in their oil and LNG, the USA doesn’t know what to do with all the capital flowing into the country, and China is starting to eye Taiwan.

As I see it, in Europe we have two weapons at our disposal before we become divided, weak, and scared (again) in the next 80 years:

1- that Ukraine chooses war, which they don’t seem to be doing because we are the worse option right now, even though they have been begging us on their knees for four long years. After Zelensky’s broadside and Budanov’s entry into politics, it is clear that there will be a negotiated ceasefire.

Yes, Europe has echoed that we also want a ceasefire, but the dissonance between a just peace and our support for Ukraine to regain its land to the point where we now applaud them for just giving up Donbass will be complete.

2- that we dump the US national debt at the right time, apparently we have 9 trillion USD in Europe. This could be countered by the USA if they find (force) buyers and if the FED then writes off its share of the debt, for example?

The question is how much of the national debt lies with the private sector in Europe, and if the timing is wrong, our private institutions will buy up everything they can when we dump our dollars, leading to a EUR sell-off as a consequence. Can we trust the top advisors who are supposed to manage the coordinated attack and ensure that they are not just waiting to dump EUR and buy USD, or that they are not already overbought by the USA through bribes?

It will definitely end with us not daring when everything is weighed together.

I want to clarify that whichever path Ukraine chooses, it is good for them – they have no responsibility for anything and have made a great sacrifice for the team over 4 long years. The heavy responsibility rests on Europe’s shoulders, and there will be a great dissonance when Trump must be praised for peace in Ukraine because Europe was simply incapable – we were worse than Trump, however physically impossible that may seem.

For those of us who have followed the Ukraine war since 2022, we have been saying since the start of the war that giving Russia any piece of land is a win for Putin, and with the break he would then get, he/Russia will only prepare for round two – that is likely.

Ukraine was never the main target but a sub-goal that was supposed to take a few weeks, but with Trump’s help and Europe’s total incapacity, it worked out anyway, even though Russia went and lost the war all on its own several times.

I am starting to understand why Budanov entered politics – the war is soon over, the puzzle pieces are starting to fall into place.

Read the last paragraph.

We have the politicians we deserve, but Napoleon is spinning in his grave right now. Yes, I will be perceived as a warmonger in the future, but to reach our Chamberlain moment after a four-year Ukrainian sacrifice and then become the scapegoat in a financial crisis we are not responsible for is so infinitely unnecessary, and Europe will face difficult years because we had weak politicians in good times.