After Orbán, Hungary Is Falling Out of Love with Russia

By Charles Hilu

Saturday, October 24, 2026

 

In the leadup to this year’s elections in Hungary, then–Prime Minister Viktor Orbán castigated Ukrainian leaders for calling on the country to give up its importation of cheap Russian energy.

 

“Anyone who says this is an enemy of Hungary, so Ukraine is our enemy,” Orbán said at a February rally. Since taking office in 2010, Orbán has pursued closer relations with Russia, refusing to reverse course even after Russia invaded Ukraine despite the demands of erstwhile allies in the European Union and NATO.

 

In April, months after Orbán declared Ukraine an enemy, his Fidesz party lost in a landslide to its rival Tisza, led by eventual Prime Minister Péter Magyar. Under Tisza control, Hungary is looking to reverse the legacy of Orbán’s love affair with Russia while stopping short of embracing Ukraine fully.

 

“We basically promised to the Hungarian people that we will keep Hungary out of harm’s way,” Márton Hajdu, a Tisza official who chairs the Hungarian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said in an interview with National Review in the Hungarian Embassy in Washington, D.C. “But we, by virtue of rebuilding our international relations and our partnership and our cooperation with our allies, will not be holding up anyone from helping Ukraine, whatever they wish to [do], and that’s where we stand right now.”

 

While he was clear that Russia was the aggressor in the war, Hajdu ruled out the possibility of supplying troops or weapons to Ukraine. But Hungary is open to cooperating with Ukraine, he said, on non-military matters, so long as officials in Kyiv protect the rights of ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine, which has long been a sticking point between the two countries.

 

“Our promise to the Hungarian people was that you don’t have to be worried about Ukraine, and that explains why we have to be so categorical about our relationship with Ukraine,” Hajdu said.

 

Hajdu’s comments indicate that — though Putin will no longer have an ally in Hungary, which shares an eastern border with Ukraine — Kyiv has not necessarily found a new cheerleader. They also reflect the legacy of 16 straight years of Orbán’s rule on public opinion, something that cannot be undone overnight.

 

During his time in power, Orbán repeatedly clashed with his allies in the EU as he deepened Hungary’s relationship with Russia, often opposing EU measures to support Ukraine or sanction Putin. He also made Hungary dependent on Russia for energy, even increasing the share of Hungarian imports that Russian oil made up as the Ukraine war raged.

 

One of Tisza’s first priorities has been to reverse course on Russia. In a speech to NATO allies this year, Magyar broke with Orbán’s line, stating clearly that “Ukraine is the victim, and Russia is the brutal aggressor.” According to Hajdu, the party is also attempting to repair the relationship with those EU and NATO allies alienated by Orbán.

 

“During the 16 years of Orbán’s rule — but in particular in the last few years — basically, Hungary became an obstructive force, a veto-wielding government in almost all of our foreign policy relations,” Hajdu told NR.

 

But while it is becoming friendlier to the West, there are limits to how much Tisza can help Ukraine.

 

“Hungary has stopped being Putin’s Trojan Horse in the EU,” Dalibor Rohac, director of research at GLOBSEC, a European foreign policy think tank, told NR. “It’s not holding Ukraine hostage for Putin’s benefit anymore, which was a common pattern by the previous government. But that doesn’t mean that it has become Ukraine’s advocate.

 

That’s mostly due to the fact that the Hungarian population that elected Tisza still has some reservations about Ukraine. A poll from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) released soon after the Hungarian election found that Hungarians generally oppose allowing the shipment of military aid to Ukraine through Hungary, providing financial support to Ukraine, and especially, giving military aid to the country. Hajdu indicated much of that is due to a hangover from Orbán and his control of the discourse in Hungary.

 

“Orbán and his friends had an 80-percent cloud over the Hungarian media,” he said. “Public media was under their fist, and also his oligarchs owned a lot of private media. And this allowed them to tell a narrative to the Hungarian people in which Ukraine was a national security threat.”

 

It’s that public sentiment in part that has led Hungary to continue to oppose fast-tracking Ukraine’s joining the EU. Hajdu argued that the promise of an accelerated accession was “always a mirage” and “unrealistic.”

 

“The EU enlargement is one of the most regulated processes inside the European Union. It has its own rhythm, it has its own rules, and departing from the merit-based approach would be suicide, both for the European Union and for Ukraine.”

 

Asked about the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO once the war is over, Hajdu said that the prospect of both NATO and EU accession for Ukraine is a discussion for the distant future and emphasized that the region’s main priority should be bringing a just end to the war.

 

“Let’s assume that we reach at a certain point a just and sustainable peace,” Hajdu said. “Then it will take years, if not decades, in which we have to talk about Ukraine reconstruction, reforms, military cooperation, all sorts of things before any of these can be realistically discussed.”

 

But Tisza officials are showing some willingness to buck public opinion on certain issues. While Hungary still opposes accelerated EU accession for Ukraine, Magyar in June lifted the country’s Orbán-era opposition to beginning formal talks with Kyiv to bring Ukraine into the EU through the ordinary process — despite a majority of Hungarians opposing Ukrainian accession in the ECFR poll.

 

Tisza may soon be forced to confront public opinion on the issue of Russian oil. Per the ECFR, 53 percent of Hungarians want the country to keep buying oil from Putin, but recent legislative moves in the United States could make relying on Russian oil, which makes up over 90 percent of Hungarian oil imports, untenable.

 

The recently passed Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 gives President Donald Trump new powers to sanction those who import their energy from Moscow. On a trip to Washington, D.C., last month, Hajdu asked lawmakers not to impose tariffs on Hungary while it attempts to wean itself off of that energy source. Trump last week broadly waived the sanctions the bill would have imposed.

 

Speaking to NR, Hajdu was reluctant to commit to completely cutting off imports of Russian energy, but he was clear that he hoped to decrease them.

 

“What is absolutely certain at this stage is that, for the protection of our own national interest and security, we need to stop — or decrease and then stop — our unilateral dependence on Russia for energy,” he said.

 

Broadly, Hajdu expressed an interest in cooperation with the United States. He insisted there was no awkwardness on Hungary’s part, even given the fact that Vice President JD Vance went to Hungary to campaign for Orbán in the leadup to this year’s election.

 

“We look for something durable, something value- and interest-based, not something that is down to personalities or any kind of personal emotions,” Hajdu said.

What the French Protests Can Teach Americans

By Jonah Goldberg

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

 

On Monday, France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez admitted that police have “lost control” as some cities continue to see massive waves of looting and mayhem. Social media brims with images of stores being ransacked, cars burning, and mask-wearing goons running wild. In Limoges, the beautiful Hôtel de Ville was burnt to the ground.

 

But the chaos, as is so often the case, began peacefully. And many supporters and leaders of the protests have condemned the violence. I think that violence has more to do with France’s miserable record of assimilating immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East than with budget cuts. Call me cynical, but I don’t believe the goons pillaging Louis Vuitton stores are planning to resell the handbags to buy better school supplies or to bolster their teachers’ salaries.

 

The initial protests were about budget cuts, primarily in education. As allied groups joined in—socialist and communist parties, labor unions, etc.—the argument expanded to generalized complaints about France’s “austerity” policies. In short, they argued, as they have for generations, that the government should spend more on pensions and other entitlements.

 

The problem is that France can’t afford it. It’s borrowed money to pay for its lavish government sector for a very long time. It has run consecutive budget deficits—i.e., took in less than it spent—for more than half a century. In 1974, public debt was around 15 percent of GDP. Today it’s at 116  percent. Government spending now makes up 57 percent of the GDP (compared with 23 percent of GDP for the U.S.), and France spends three times as much on “social protection” —including pensions and family benefits—as does the United States, and more than any other country in Europe and the OECD.

 

Naturally, the blame for this sorry state of affairs, according to some supporters of the protests, falls on capitalism. Famous French economist Thomas Piketty says the country’s woes are the result of the state pursuing the “capitalist logic” of underinvesting in the public sector and undertaxing the wealthy. In terms of personal income taxes alone—France has massive payroll and consumption taxes as well—the top 10 percent of French taxpayers provide 74 percent of the revenue. The top 1 percent provide a third. France also has the highest corporate tax rates of any country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

 

I’m hard-pressed to see how just a bit more taxing and spending will solve France’s problems.

 

I have real sympathy for the nonviolent French youth. Their economy is moribund in large part because retirees have a stranglehold on the state’s finances, consuming 14 percent of GDP. (Social Security and Medicare account for 9.4 percent of U.S. GDP. One reason education spending is so tight: A third of the education budget goes toward Education Ministry pensions.  

 

I don’t think retirees should be thrown to the wolves, but such a system is objectively unsustainable. Yet, in 2023, when French President Emmanuel Macron introduced reforms to bump the retirement age from 62 to 64, the resulting protests paralyzed the country (that modest reform was suspended last month). France is now caught in what economists call the “dependency trap,” producing too few workers to pay for the lifestyles of its older generations.

 

When protesters talk about feeling “hopeless,” what they often mean is that the gravy train will run out before they get to partake in it. I don’t blame them for being resentful, but it’s difficult to see how this is a failure of capitalism or “neoliberalism.” As Margaret Thatcher famously said, socialist governments “always run out of other people’s money.”

 

The most obvious answer to France’s problems is economic growth—much easier said than done, of course. The reason that’s so hard for France isn’t because the government is “unresponsive” to the people and their concerns., It’s because it’s too responsive. For decades, the French have demanded the economic policies that got them into this mess, and the government appeased them.

 

France is an outlier in its poor economic performance and lavish social spending, but its problems are recognizable across the West, including in America. The U.S. economy has grown twice as fast as France’s over the last quarter-century, but the demands for less “capitalism” from young Americans echo those protesting in Paris.

 

France has the sort of universal health insurance many insist would solve everyone’s problems here. It hasn’t spared France from political turmoil. Our own Social Security and Medicare aren’t far from insolvency, but demands for higher benefits and “Medicare for All” only grow louder.

 

The French canary in the coal mine is a good reminder that the best solution to some crises is to avoid them in the first place.

The EU’s Inexplicable Aggression Toward America’s Tech Industry

By Josh Hodges

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

 

Last month, the American AI company Anthropic reported that Chinese operators had circumvented its security safeguards to develop military software, including air-defense suppression tools simulating strikes on Taiwanese targets. Chinese AI labs have also siphoned off Claude’s capabilities to train rival models. Months before that, the EU sanctioned two China-based companies for their roles in cyberattacks across six member states. And in January, a San Francisco jury convicted a former Google engineer of stealing AI trade secrets for China’s benefit.

 

China is coming for Western technology, and neither the United States nor Europe can claim they haven’t been warned. The EU’s own sanctions show that its leaders understand the danger of an authoritarian adversary willing to hack and steal its way to technological dominance over the West and, ultimately, the world.

 

Given that threat, Europe has every reason to stand alongside the American companies that China is targeting. Instead, the EU increasingly treats those companies as enemies.

 

On September 21, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission fined Google, whose AI trade secrets had been stolen for China’s benefit, nearly $500 million over its handling of users’ location data under EU privacy rules. That came barely two months after the separate European Commission fined Google nearly $1 billion over its search rankings and restrictions on purchases outside Google Play.

 

European penalties against America’s leading technology companies now total roughly $18 billion, with Google’s alone accounting for nearly $12 billion. According to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, the EU’s fines against Google account for “over 2 percent of the EU’s budget,” effectively making the company a larger financial contributor to the bloc than many EU member states. In late September, France’s Minister for Europe proposed using €4.6 billion in Google fines to cut what member states pay into the EU budget.

 

The rest of America’s technology sector is getting much the same treatment as Google. EU officials have already used the Digital Services Act to investigate how X moderates speech, while House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan has accused them of pressuring the platform to censor political speech the European Union disfavored. The European Commission ultimately fined X $140 million over its blue-check system, advertising database, and refusal to give them sufficient access to its data.

 

Similarly, Apple was fined $570 million by the European Commission over the App Store’s management of outside purchases, on top of a $2 billion penalty involving music-streaming apps the year before. Meta was fined another $228 million over its advertising model.

 

In June, the European Commission went further, preliminarily designating Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure under the Digital Markets Act — even though it conceded that neither meets the law’s quantitative thresholds. That move would subject both cloud services to European regulations backed by fines of up to 10 percent of the companies’ annual revenue.

 

Meanwhile, potential changes to the Digital Networks Act described in a leaked January draft raised the prospect of requiring American platforms to subsidize European telecom companies through “network usage fees.” Doing so would directly contradict the EU’s explicit promise in its 2025 trade commitment to the United States that it would not adopt such fees.

 

In its quest for “digital sovereignty,” Europe has become shamelessly determined to bleed America’s technology industry dry. Never mind that it’s targeting a democratic ally’s companies already under attack from China, or that these are the very companies whose technology European businesses and broader economy have depended on for years.

 

Even the commission has struggled to replace American technology with European alternatives. This summer the European Commission rolled out a “sovereign” backup to Microsoft Teams. Its staff kept using Teams. One official called the replacement “absolute shit,” Politico reported; another conceded that if American technology went dark, the U.S. would “instantly win the war.”

 

When Europe’s homegrown alternatives inevitably fall short, the fallback won’t be European; it will be a choice between America and China. Europe has a direct stake in keeping American companies strong, both for its own economy and for the West’s broader economic and national security.

 

Beijing, of course, isn’t complaining about Europe’s aggression toward U.S. tech companies.

 

Chinese state-owned outlets have praised the EU’s fine against X as evidence of the bloc’s willingness to confront major technology companies. They’ve also characterized European investigations into Google and Meta as flashpoints in the transatlantic relationship and described the bloc’s technology disputes with Washington as “a new focal point of transatlantic conflict.”

 

But Beijing’s support for that scrutiny disappears as soon as Chinese companies are involved. Any EU proposals to remove or even investigate high-risk Chinese suppliers are framed under the same media apparatus as “naked protectionism” and “unreasonable suppression.”

 

Beijing clearly wants European markets open to Chinese companies and European regulators occupied with American ones. And its state media is perfectly willing to encourage the fights that help make that possible. All the while, Chinese operators will keep trying to hack into and steal from companies on both sides of the Atlantic. European leaders should recognize whose interests they are serving. Burdening American companies gives their Chinese competitors more room to advance, while the resulting disputes give Beijing more opportunities to divide the allies.

 

Europe has another reason to reconsider its approach: The United States still holds substantial advantages in the global AI race. American firms drew $286 billion in private AI investment last year, 23 times China’s total, according to Stanford’s 2026 AI Index. The United States hosts roughly three-quarters of the world’s AI computing power; China, about 15 percent. And where Chinese labs have closed the gap, they’ve often done it by copying: According to Anthropic, a single Alibaba campaign used fraudulent accounts to generate more than 151 million exchanges with Claude between May and July this year to train its own models. China’s frontier is, in no small part, built on the back of America’s technology and innovation.

 

The EU claims to understand the danger of Chinese technological dominance. It cannot expect to prevent that outcome while relentlessly penalizing the American companies best positioned to compete. Each new fight with those companies is another opening for Beijing, and Europe has already given it far too many.

Eurozone Crisis 2.0?

By John Gustavsson

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

 

Although the unrest in France is unlikely to grow into another French Revolution, it could in retrospect prove to be a pivotal moment in triggering the next eurozone debt crisis. French bond yields have risen sharply in the middle of a global bond selloff, and the difference between French and German yields are now greater than at any point since the early 2010s. Other eurozone countries, largely untouched by the crisis 15 years ago, are now also in the danger zone. One thing is clear: Another eurozone debt crisis would not look like the first one.

 

The eurozone crisis of the early 2010s followed the global financial crisis of 2008. The trigger varied by country: Ireland and Spain saw collapsing housing and credit bubbles, while long-standing fiscal problems and fudged numbers resurfaced in Greece. During the boom years, the common currency delivered an artificially strong euro and unusually cheap borrowing to countries that had previously faced higher interest rates and frequent devaluations of their pre-euro national currencies. When the crisis hit, these now over-indebted countries were unable to set their own interest rates and depreciate their currencies, as they no longer had their own currencies. Rising sovereign yields threatened bank balance sheets (many of which held large amounts of domestic government debt), prompting bank bailouts that further increased public debt and deepened the spiral. Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and especially Greece lost normal market access.

 

Facing the risk of contagion that could destroy the currency altogether, the European Commission, reinforced by market interventions by the European Central Bank, orchestrated a series of bailouts funded by the vehicles underwritten by eurozone members and the International Monetary Fund. The eurozone was saved, but underneath the surface, structural problems remained.

 

Though countries such as Ireland staged a strong recovery, in much of continental Europe, growth remained sluggish and deficits remained stubbornly high. The EU’s rule against deficits above 3 percent of GDP continue to be ignored, with France’s deficit running over 5 percent for the past three years. Neighboring Belgium is doing about as poorly, with Italy only slightly better. Less indebted but still vulnerable countries include the likes of Finland and Slovakia. History suggests that investors, if forced to reevaluate one formerly safe haven (e.g., France), will soon take a much closer look at others.

 

Some American observers have noted that French debt-to-GDP and French ten-year yields are still below American levels. This, however, is cold comfort: America can sustain a higher level of government debt on account of the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency. Also, and while this is far from a get-out-of-jail-free card, technically, the United States cannot be forced to default, since its debt is issued in a currency that it prints. This is not true for France, or any of the other countries that use the euro.

 

A debt crisis is not by any means a sure thing. What is sure, however, is that such a crisis, were it to happen, would look very different than the one during the early 2010s.

 

To begin with, a debt crisis would realistically require Thatcherite welfare and tax reforms. Whereas the first eurozone crisis was first and foremost a financial crisis caused by an unsustainable surge in cheap credit overheating peripheral eurozone economies, a new crisis would be a truly economic crisis caused by a decade or more of accumulating structural issues: a loss of competitiveness causing a long slog with little economic growth resulting in little growth in tax revenues, combined with an aging population and an underemployed migrant population. The recent French riots, though not explicitly in response to cuts, have reminded French — and European — politicians of just how dangerous public anger can be, especially coming from the aforementioned immigrant population. France has only implemented modest tightening, and there has already been serious trouble. No doubt this will make many policymakers hesitate to support broader reforms.

 

The upcoming French presidential election in April next year does not make it easier. The two candidates most likely to make it into the run-off are Jean-Luc Mélenchon, from the far left LFI, and the populist right National Rally’s Marine Le Pen. The former has indicated he would partially default on France’s debt, even openly mocking the idea of “reassuring the markets.” Of the two, Le Pen would be the better alternative, but even she has so far resisted calls to raise the retirement age, even suggesting she may lower it back from 64 to 62, or even down to 60 for certain groups. She does promise other spending cuts, but these may not be enough — even if she’s able to pass them at all.

 

Second, this crisis would be different because France, in particular, may just be too big to fail. In the aftermath of the eurozone crisis, several measures were implemented to prevent a repeat: The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is supposed to provide funds for countries in financial turmoil but does not have anywhere close to unlimited resources, and conditions would be attached. Outright Monetary Transactions — the purchase on the secondary market by the ECB of the short-term bonds of a country in trouble — is another backstop, but again this is supposed to have fiscal conditions attached to it. Aiding a country flagrantly violating EU deficit rules would make a mockery of those rules and would encourage others to ignore them, setting the stage for future crises.

 

An important distinction between the 2010s crisis and what might be coming is that the Greeks and Irish were genuinely concerned that, if they did not yield to the EU’s harsh demands for austerity, they might be kicked out of the club. The French, on the other hand, know that the club does not exist without them in it. Does that mean that France will get off scot-free? Not so fast.

 

Nobody in Germany requested an encore. During the last crisis, the Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) — then known as a “professor’s party” with a strong, classically liberal strain — was formed to oppose the bailout of Greece and other troubled member states, arguing that Germany should cut its losses and let them fail. The AfD remains a broadly euroskeptic party, and if another debt crisis occurred, and Germany once again agreed to bail out other members of the eurozone, it just might strike a definitive deathblow to the country’s political mainstream — and even more so if a hypothetical French, Belgian, or Italian bailout didn’t come with the tough conditions imposed on Ireland and Greece last time around. These countries were effectively placed under administration, with years of national budgets having to be approved by an unelected troika of the European Commission, the ECB, and the IMF. France is not a country that likes being pushed around (and it’s not too keen on living within its means, either, having run a budget deficit every year since 1974). French voters might very well prefer default to subjecting themselves to troika rule.

 

The ECB, having assured investors that the eurozone crisis was a one-time thing, would find its credibility seriously questioned. It could drastically lower interest rates to try to ease the burden on France and other troubled nations, but as always this would come with the risk of higher inflation. With inflation already on a steady upward trend since this summer, and with several countries more worried about inflation than deficits, this balancing act will only get harder.

 

Making matters worse politically is the fact that the European Union has explicitly endorsed deficit spending for the purpose of rearmament. During the first half of the 2010s, military spending was on the chopping block as European policymakers looked for easy cuts to balance budgets. For geopolitical reasons, that won’t be an option if another debt crisis kicks off, but convincing voters to accept continued rearmament while slashing social welfare will still be a hard sell.

 

Brussels has also encouraged heavy government spending on decarbonization. Without expensive subsidies, tax credits, and government investment into green sectors, the EU’s already unrealistic climate goals would be completely out of reach. Unfortunately, the sunk cost is too great: Too many industries and too many jobs have been lost, and too much political capital invested in the transition, for Brussels to turn around and say, “Forget net zero, save your economies.” After all, a debt crisis is nothing compared with an uninhabitable planet — which is what Brussels has told Europeans is at stake if they don’t go green.

 

In 2012 the message from Brussels was a simple “Don’t spend beyond your means,” something voters, however much they hated austerity, fundamentally agreed with. This time, the message would be far more muddled: “Deficit spending is bad, except for in these areas which we in Brussels deem worthy.”

 

On top of this, the EU is planning to raise membership fees. While the hike, if passed, is not going to be anywhere close to a main deficit driver, it will present an easy political target (“Why is the EU getting more, while our retirees and unemployed receive less?”), further hurting the EU’s credibility with ordinary Europeans.

 

How it ends is hard to predict. Wealth taxes, which most of Europe already abolished for good reason, would almost certainly stage a comeback as left-wing populism surged. Eurobonds — joint bonds issued by the eurozone — were first discussed during the first eurozone crisis. The proposal was revived during the Covid-19 pandemic, and such bonds would certainly be hotly debated once again.

 

Supporters of EU centralization will argue that the problem is the EU’s lack of authority to directly intervene in the day-to-day fiscal affairs of its member states, that if Brussels had the power to force countries to raise taxes or reduce spending, national budgets could be balanced. Euroskeptics will, in turn, point to the growth-hampering bureaucracy imposed by the union to make the case that Brussels already has its fingers in too many pies. The skeptics are right, but “less EU” is only part of the Thatcherite package that Europe will need to get out of its low-growth, high-debt slog.

 

A debt crisis is not inevitable. Though bond yields have risen, no eurozone country has lost market access. If the next French president, likely Marine Le Pen, were to rise to the challenge of taking on France’s entrenched interests and win, this may even provide political cover and embolden other European leaders to follow suit. Otherwise, markets will eventually, like in the 2010s, force Europe to do what its leaders will not. To quote the words of the economist Herb Stein, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

France: Debt and Disorder

By Andrew Stuttaford

Sunday, October 18, 2026

 

Writing about the growing market jitters over the state of France’s finances in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, Stacy Meichtry and Chelsey Dulaney pointed to, among other factors, “concerns that France has become so ungovernable that its political system can no longer take corrective action.”

 

News of the disorder in Paris and other French cities, let alone the images of the destruction of the town hall in Limoges, over 200 miles southwest of the French capital, will not ease those concerns. The trouble may have begun with protests over school conditions, but the scale of the disturbances that have ensued are, to say the least, evidence of profound dysfunction and are hardly likely to encourage the current French government to cut back on spending.

 

Five-year French sovereign credit default swap spreads (essentially the price paid to insure against a French default) have soared recently to around 80 basis points, against just over 30bp in late August. This is the highest they have been since the ebbing of the eurozone crisis (during which the spreads were as high as 250bp). Even at 80bp, the expectations of a French default are still very low, but the movement in the price of insuring against it is worth noting as another indication of deteriorating market sentiment. The yield on France’s benchmark ten-year OAT (government bond), which has been rising, as have yields elsewhere, since the beginning of the Iran war, started to move up sharply in August and has now reached 4.8 percent, the highest level in over 20 years.

 

Given the state of France’s finances, that’s not helpful. France’s government debt stands at around €3.6 trillion, meaning that it has a debt/GDP ratio of around 120 percent. Its budget deficit is about 5.4 percent, far above the “rules-based” eurozone stipulation of 3 percent. Cutting that further (it has been falling since the pandemic peak) is a feat that may elude the weak minority government now in place in Paris.

 

Moreover, as the WSJ’s Meichtry and Dulaney explain:

 

France has more than $1 trillion in debt coming due by 2030, and next year is set to sell a record of about $380 billion in debt into a market where once-reliable sources of demand have evaporated. France’s central bank is no longer buying government bonds and is instead letting its portfolio shrink as bonds mature. Once-steady investors like Japanese asset managers have also stepped back. Hedge funds that have stepped into the void have been burned by the recent volatility.

 

Oh yes, there is a French presidential election next year, for which the frontrunner is Marine Le Pen of the populist-right RN. She has said that she wants to reverse (or more) the leisurely planned increase in France’s pension age to 64. Meanwhile, at least until the current riots, her most likely opponent has been Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the far-left LFI. If that changes on the back of the LFI’s “association” (perceived or otherwise) with the drama playing out in France’s streets, Le Pen may face a less divisive opponent. In all other respects, it is hard to imagine that she has not been helped by the current disorder.

 

France, of course, is in the eurozone, meaning that a French debt crisis could spread elsewhere through a currency union distinguished mainly by shoddy construction and economic illiteracy. Heading off, to use the dread word, contagion will be something that Brussels and the European Central Bank will be intent on doing. The way things are headed, their ability to do so may soon be put to the test.

Why We Spaniards Want to Oust Pedro Sánchez

By Itxu Díaz

Saturday, October 10, 2026

Lately, I haven’t been able to get the words of William F. Buckley Jr. out of my head: “The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.” Last Monday, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that the country’s general election would be brought forward to November 29. As a sociologist, I usually place limited value on casual observation, but I confess I haven’t seen such joy on the streets as I have this week in a long time. Sánchez has done something worse than govern poorly: He has managed to exasperate the Spanish people.

There is a common joke in Spain: If your mobile phone gets stolen in Madrid or Barcelona, you’re best off looking for it that same afternoon in a souk in Rabat. While he wasn’t physically pickpocketed, Pedro Sánchez himself had his phone infected with Pegasus spyware in 2021, likely an attack from Moroccan intelligence services. No one knows what is in those two-and-a-half gigabytes of data (it is unlikely to be treatises on apologetics), but all of Spain is convinced that ever since then, most of the strange decisions he has made have been conditioned by that espionage, including his historic shift in position on Western Sahara in Morocco’s favor and his silence toward Rabat following the migrant invasion of Ceuta this summer. Someday we will know if the mobile phone holds the key to this early election call.

In any case, the hard part is finding a reason not to call an early election. Today, Sánchez’s popularity among his own voters is low, but the hatred he stirs up among non-voters has reached unprecedented levels. His authoritarian exercise of power and his allergy to telling the truth (he calls it “changing his mind”) have turned him into meme fodder.

Sánchez’s socialist-communist government has been a disaster on all fronts: Spain suffered the worst pandemic management in the entire OECD, as confirmed by The Economist; Sánchez has hounded taxpayers with more than a hundred tax hikes since taking office in 2018, a period during which prices rose by more than 20 percent and the cost of the shopping basket surged by nearly 40 percent.

Furthermore, housing prices have risen by 50 percent over the last eight years. Hyper-regulation is a recipe for misery: Since 2018, Spain’s population has grown by 3.3 million due to mass immigration, yet new construction permits have barely exceeded 700,000 during that same period. The government has also wreaked havoc on the rental market with policies targeting landlords, such as eviction bans and price caps; you know you’ll be living at Mom and Dad’s place until you’re at least 50 the moment you hear a politician claim that the solution to the severe housing shortage is for the government to set the price.

Sánchez has proven disastrous even when faced with outside events, such as the floods in Valencia, when he tried to manipulate the disaster to blame the conservative regional government; the total blackout that left Spain in the dark for 15 hours following a reckless attempt to force green energy into the grid; or the train crash in Adamuz (Córdoba), which claimed 39 lives and exposed unprecedented infrastructure safety flaws due to a lack of maintenance. This occurred in the very same week that we learned that the minister in charge of infrastructure, who was later imprisoned, would pick prostitutes from a catalog one night and land them jobs at state-owned companies the next morning — like Pretty Woman, but with other people’s money.

It is often said that corruption does not influence elections in Spain, a fact that might seem surprising elsewhere. However, Sánchez’s case is unique: He is not merely an isolated “bad apple” in his government. His closest ministers and aides have gone to prison, while his wife and brother remain under investigation for corruption. This week, the Spanish newspaper El Debate revealed that government emissaries offered tax breaks to drug traffickers in exchange for assassinating the judge presiding over the case against Sánchez’s brother. With prostitutes, poverty, corruption, and crime, Sánchez has made it difficult at times to distinguish between Madrid and Havana.

Spain now has a historic opportunity to oust the only government in the West that includes communist ministers. However, for that change to happen, free and democratic elections are required. Sánchez’s repeated attempts to alter the electoral roll, via a law that would allow descendants of Spaniards living abroad to vote in Spain — a measure currently stalled by the Supreme Court — have kept the opposition on high alert to ensure a fair process.

Given the polls, which show the conservative PP and Vox holding a majority, it would take something very strange to prevent Sánchez from being ousted from La Moncloa next month. Yet strange things are already happening: Trade unions, for instance, silent for the past eight years, have just called a general strike protesting the prospect of a right-wing government.

The last time polls predicted a major electoral disaster for the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), back in 2004, a mysterious group of Islamists blew up several trains in Madrid two days before the election. Socialists then staged massive protests across Spain, not against the terrorists but against the right-wing government, which they falsely accused of having dragged Spain into the invasion of Iraq. They pulled off an electoral upset. That is why there’s another recurring joke in Spain: Whenever Sánchez is in trouble, you should stock up on tons of toilet paper, candles, and non-perishable food, and avoid taking trains.

In short, Sánchez has not only ruined the Spanish economy, the business environment, entrepreneurship, legal certainty, public safety, and the prospect of buying or renting a home, but he has also eroded democratic coexistence, repeatedly interfered with the judiciary, and shattered public trust in institutions. Ousting Sánchez from La Moncloa is not merely a national priority; it is the only way for Spain to regain its status as a reliable partner, both within the EU and in its relations with the United States. Sánchez is a wretched figure who, through sheer lack of scruples, has held an entire great nation hostage for eight years, a nation now desperate to free itself from the yoke of communists and socialists and shine once more in freedom.

Britain’s Inertia Is a Warning to America

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Thursday, September 24, 2026

 

In recent years, I have been privy to the curious trend of Europeans who, having been assiduously fed all manner of nonsense about life in the United States, have come to understand that their presumptions were all wrong. In yesterday’s London Telegraph, Allister Heath describes this phenomenon rather well. Beneath the pull-no-punches headline, “I saw a breathtaking glimpse of what Britain could have become,” Heath offers a blunt challenge to the smug among his fellow countrymen:

 

If you want to comprehend the scale of Britain’s decline, our economic, geopolitical and technological humiliation, the magnitude of the self-sabotage inflicted upon our nation by our incompetent political class, head to one of America’s booming Republican-run Red States.

 

It will guarantee a shock to your system, and jolt you out of any residual complacency. It will simultaneously energise you and plunge you into depression. You will be blown away by the growth, the clatter of construction, the siege of cranes across the skyline, the massive cars, the energy, drive and ambition, the wealth, abundance and cheap energy, the entrepreneurial go-getting, the ostentatious celebration of success.

 

I was born in Britain, and I live in Florida (the state that Heath visited), so I have seen this from both sides. And I can tell you, unequivocally, that the author’s assessment is correct. The juxtaposition of the two places is increasingly stark, and yet, because distance serves as a shroud, this is obvious only to those of us who have visited both regularly over time. Most British people have not, and because of this, Heath concludes, it has become possible for them to lie “to [themselves] about the depth of the hole [they] have jumped into,” and to remain unaware that, irrespective of their healthy self-conception, they are actually “poor and increasingly backwards.”

 

I take no pleasure in confirming this. I am the only member of my family who emigrated to the United States, and while I am indeed an unreconstructed Americaphile, I bear no ill will toward my country of birth, nor toward my parents, my sister, or the rest of my kin that still lives there. It’s just that . . . well, Britain has got it wrong.

 

Heath contends that Britain never truly recovered from Covid, but I’d put the decline a little earlier: Britain, like the rest of Europe, never truly recovered from the 2008 financial crash. In that year, the economies of Europe and the economy of the United States were the same size. Now, the economy of the United States is about 150 percent the size of the economies of Europe. And why wouldn’t it be, given that the countries of Europe haven’t actually done anything useful. Britain is a welfare state. That’s what it exists to be. That is its purpose, its role, its ambition. Neither its bureaucrats nor its people care about growth, innovation, or success — except insofar as they can use those things to pay for more welfare. Its National Health Service — which is awful — is seen not as a system that exists to serve people but as a political end in its own right. (If the British government wants the public to do something, it insists that it is necessary to “save the NHS.”) Its unbelievably lavish social spending is, bizarrely, widely described as “austerity.” Its vaunted attacks on “inequality” have stagnated wages and made everyone poorer. Its refusal to use its energy reserves — or abandon its ridiculous “net zero” aims — has made the price of energy a permanent crisis. The whiny are lauded; the useless are celebrated; and the handful of aspirational figures who are left are regarded as too pushy, too aggressive, too American to be trusted. The result is that Britain has become drab, lazy, inert, and, worst of all, fatally complacent.

 

As an American, do you feel good reading Heath’s description of the United States? I do. I also feel alarmed. There’s nothing written in the stars that guarantees that our country must be this way. On the contrary: America’s position in the world is the product of choices it has made. America, The Telegraph notes, values “success.” If it ceases to, it will get less of it. Relative to Britain, America has low taxes and no VAT. If that changes, so will the dynamism of its economy. America has no single-payer health-care system to permanently corrupt its politics and devour the energy and treasure of the middle class. If it introduces one, it will decline inexorably. America has a constitutional order that features a strong separation of powers, encourages gridlock, and entrenches protections of individual rights. If it deconstructs that system, it will collapse into dysfunction, infighting, and mediocrity. Like Britain, America faces the demographic trend of an aging population relying on a relatively smaller share of workers for the payment of government benefits; but unlike Britain, it has not yet enshrined the “triple lock” guarantee that ineluctably increases pension payouts and makes other reform impossible. If it does, it will fatally harm the group that is pulling the wagon.

 

Allister Heath is depressed by contemplating what Britain “could have become.” He is right to be. Americans should thank him for the compliment and then turn to worrying about what America could become, too — if, but only if, it follows the same path.

Russia Is Going to Do Something Really Stupid and Dangerous

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, September 24, 2026

 

Why would the Trump administration invite Vladimir Putin back onto American soil? “We think it’s an opportunity for him to engage not just with the president, but with other world leaders,” Marco Rubio said of the White House’s offer to host Putin in Miami for this year’s G-20 summit. For its part, the Kremlin remains noncommittal.

 

The offer comes as the administration, at least when it comes to the war in Europe, is once again giving appeasement a try. The president is dispatching his all-purpose negotiating duo, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, to Moscow to cajole Putin while its principals, including Trump himself, scold the Ukrainians for so effectively imposing pain and pressure on their invaders’ homeland. If only Ukraine would give up the highly defensible Donbas, Kushner muses publicly. Then we’d have peace in our time.

 

The last time the president welcomed the Russian despot to America, it went about as well as almost all bilateral summitry with Moscow’s representatives typically goes. Which is to say, poorly. Putin presented his unacceptable terms to the president — surely, his final territorial demands in Europe. But Europeans with some historical education, along with Trump’s more sensible advisers, persuaded the president to walk. And to Trump’s credit, he did. But “the spirit of Anchorage” has been invoked by the Russians ever since, mostly to hector America and the West for failing to live down to the Kremlin’s expectations.

 

More curiously, the invitation comes against the backdrop of Russian “grey zone” attacks on NATO members. Indications suggest that Moscow plans to do something even stupider and more reckless in the near future.

 

An alarming report published this week in the Spanish daily newspaper El Mundo revealed that, according to what the CIA conveyed to Lithuanian intelligence, Moscow is preparing an ambitious attack on Western Europe. The U.S. has reportedly observed unusual container ship traffic emanating from Russia, and some suspect those containers could be loaded with small explosive suicide drones that would be deployed against targets in Spain, France, or Italy. Russia’s goal would be to destabilize these countries ahead of their respective elections next year, potentially activating indigenous “radical forces” in these countries that would pressure their government to abandon Kyiv.

 

This threat was reportedly relayed to Europe around the time CIA director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced visit to Moscow, and the Continent is taking it seriously. “The nature of Russian aggression and threats in Europe is changing,” French President Emmanuel Macron said last week after he convened an emergency meeting of his Defense Council. “No one is safe.” The E.U.’s chief military adviser, General Seán Clancy, warned that Moscow’s “activity is now becoming almost ever-present” in Europe. “There is a low but growing risk that Russia will launch a limited military attack against one or several NATO countries bordering Russia,” the head of Danish intelligence, Thomas Ahrenkiel, said this week. Indeed, even though the threat from Russia probably doesn’t rise to the level of a ground operation inside NATO territory, the prospect cannot be ruled out.

 

That’s the sequence of events that you talk yourself into when little is going your way, and you need to radically revise the status quo, even at the risk of inviting unpredictable consequences. Russia is heedless of the potential for miscalculation — for one of its attacks to require a response from the NATO alliance, hazarding a cascading cycle of violence. Indeed, the Kremlin’s appetite for risk is only growing.

 

Russian forces are executing strikes on passenger trains near the Polish border with the aim of intimidating the high-ranking Western officials who transit into Ukraine via Poland. Acts of sabotage in Europe believed to be directed by Russia have become a near-daily occurrence. Russian assets have penetrated deep into European airspace, likely to test the Atlantic Alliance’s response to a coordinated incursion. The German government believes the Kremlin was behind an attempted explosive drone attack on the Leipzig/Halle Airport last month — an operation nearly as brazen as the 2024 plot in which Russian operatives allegedly attempted to plant explosive devices on U.S.-bound cargo planes designed to explode over the Atlantic Ocean. This month, the Justice Department implicated Russians with connections to Moscow’s domestic and military security services in a scheme to recruit Americans to conduct acts of sabotage and even assassinations on the Kremlin’s behalf.

 

In response to all this, the White House is extending a hand of friendship in Putin’s direction. Clearly, the Trump administration is as bereft of innovative solutions to the crisis in Europe as Putin seems to be. But Moscow is likely to interpret the administration’s overture as a signal that its pressure campaign is working. That will only embolden the Kremlin, which should be the opposite of the West’s intentions.

 

Perhaps the administration wants to talk while the time for talking isn’t yet behind us. It seems, however, that they’re mostly talking to themselves. Vladimir Putin isn’t listening.

Ireland Is in the Grip of “Paddystinian” Tyranny

By John McGuirk & Sarah Ryan

Saturday, September 19, 2026

 

On this week’s podcast – and thanks to all of you pushing it towards being one of our biggest yet – Sarah and I discussed something that we both feel and have felt for a while: That talking about Ireland, Israel, and Palestine in this country is just not worth it.

 

This is now, after all, a country where the President’s own sister can be quoted on CNN saying that the White House should be “flattened” - an explicit call for violence - and not one Irish politician or media outlet can even dare comment on the propriety of it, for fear of the backlash they would get.

 

There is no room for reasoned discussion. It does not exist. Express dissent from the RTE/Irish Times/Siptu/Simon Harris view of the world, and you will not, I promise, get a reasoned argument as to why the Palestinian leadership repeatedly failed to turn the extraordinary concessions on offer during the Clinton peace process into a lasting settlement; or a convincing explanation of why Israel would be safer if it just tore down the border and let the Palestinians wander around Israel proper, at will.

 

What you will get is roared at. If it’s online, you’ll get a hundred tweets from the same, endless anonymous accounts, calling you a Zionist or a bootlicker or, in some of the more honest cases, a Jew-lover. If it’s in person, you’ll get the horrified how-could-you-think-that, replete with the performative gasp, that is not actually a question at all, but an indictment. (They rarely want, it turns out, to hear how, or why, you could think that).

 

Paddystinianism (worth remembering, that was a term invented by “Paddystinians” themselves, not a term of abuse) is not a set of political beliefs. It is an identity. It cannot be reasoned with. It does not want to discuss, or debate, or persuade. What it wants to do, like all identities, is to express itself, endlessly, and at any cost.

 

It has become intertwined with something that has always been a feature of Irish identity since independence – a desire to express moral superiority over the rest of the world, but particularly over the British, Americans, and Europeans. And it shares much with the former expression of that instinct; the 1950s and 60s uber-Catholicism of John Charles McQuaid’s Ireland, which loved to ban books and films, denounce pornography and communism, and make sure that RTE never showed anything of which it disapproved.

 

Ironically enough, the last time there were widespread calls for the Irish national team not to play a game, it was in 1955, when McQuaid demanded that the FAI withdraw from a match against Yugoslavia over its communism and hostility to the Church.

 

That match, like the Israel games, went ahead anyway – because the FAI, to its considerable credit, refused to submit to the pressure.

 

McQuaid urged Catholics to boycott the game. Radio Éireann did not broadcast it. The Army band stayed away. The state withheld official representation. Players were pressured not to take part. FAI secretary Joe Wickham was reportedly denounced from the pulpit in his own parish as “a Judas who had sold Christ the King for a mere game of football.” (Lots of things change in Ireland, but some little undertones always remain.)

 

And 22,000 supporters attended the game anyway, in Dalymount Park, defying McQuaid.

 

In today’s Ireland, by contrast, the FAI cannot stage its nominal home game against Israel in Dublin. Whatever euphemisms are employed about “operational challenges”, the authorities clearly do not believe this fixture can safely and normally be staged in the capital.

 

Another thing has happened: The Irish media have given up any pretence, whatever, of objectivity or fairness or impartiality. Here’s the Journal’s sports department, this morning, plaintively begging their readers not to punish them for covering a sports match:

 

 

 

 

 

RTE, for its part, cannot cover the matches fully because of an impending staff revolt. An Irish Independent report this morning quoted an RTE Union representative saying that “There is no middle ground on this. Silence is treachery”.

 

Consider that statement: “Silence is treachery”. That is the view of a great many of the Paddystinian cult – not that you are permitted to go about your business, keeping your views to yourself, but that you are treasonous if you do not affirm their views loudly, and publicly.

 

Nor are these empty threats. They will, in fact, go after you, regardless of how big you are. Witness what happened to Ed Sheeran this week, when a national newspaper published an article by one of its own senior editors saying that he should never be welcomed in Ireland again. In that context, read this tweet by luvvie and actor and general pain in the arse Liam Cunningham:

 

 

This has moved well beyond the stage of these people simply being loud, annoying, and rather pointless. We’re now at the stage where they are openly attempting to rule the country by fear of consequence, should you differ from them.

 

The great irony of all of this is that none of it – not one iota of it – does a single solitary thing to help the Palestinian cause.

 

Hamas played its cards on October 7th, and the result was a crushing and soul-destroying military defeat, and what appears to be the permanent loss of yet more land, as customarily happens in war (look at a map of Germany in 1913, and the same map today, if you don’t believe me).

 

It is all the culmination, in many ways, of decades of Palestinian political failure. Their leaders have repeatedly chosen maximalism over settlements that might have produced a Palestinian state, and the consequences have repeatedly been borne by ordinary Palestinians.

 

Nothing that Ireland does or can do will change that.

 

What is happening, however, is that Irish people are now being subjected to a campaign of coercion, repression, and tolerated abuse by supporters of that cause, which goes entirely unchallenged in the public domain.

 

And across the country, in offices, schools, workplaces, and in the public domain, a lot of Irish people have internalised the lesson: You do not challenge the Paddystinians. The price is too high. The cost is too great. It’s not worth it.

 

When you hear people “speaking out” on this, you may well be hearing sincere conviction. But increasingly, you’re just hearing people who don’t want to be the next Ed Sheeran, as Liam Cunningham charmingly put it.

 

Say the line. Put your head down. Hope they leave you alone.

 

Of course, they won’t.

 

Why would they?

 

It’s working.

 

 

Canada’s EU Romance Is a Mistake

By John Gustavsson

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

 

Last week, the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, surprised the world by announcing an offer to make Canada the first “associate member” of the European Union. What makes an “associate member” is not legally defined in any of the EU’s treaties, but there is no doubt that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney appears determined to embrace the EU as he seeks to reduce his country’s dependence on the North American market. After Donald Trump’s threats to turn Canada into the 51st state, Carney’s approach may seem reasonable — and, judging from the PM’s approval ratings, Canadians are, so far, on board.

 

Yet running to Brussels would be as big a mistake for Canada as it was for Britain.

 

Whatever Canada’s new relationship with the EU ends up looking like, it will be a much cozier relationship than before. Whereas Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, never missed an opportunity to emphasize Canada as an indigenous land and apologize for the sins of the settlers, Carney seems to have rediscovered his country’s European heritage, going as far as to label it “the most European of non-European countries.”

 

On Canada Day, CBC/Radio-Canada announced that the country would compete in the 2027 Eurovision Song Contest, by far the biggest music competition in the world, with around 160 million viewers. Joining the ESC is not cheap; indeed, several countries decline to participate every year citing the cost. Fortunately, Carney had increased the public broadcaster’s budget for this very purpose.

 

In May, Carney became the first non-European leader ever to attend the semiannual European Political Community summit, an intergovernmental summit attended by leaders of 48 European countries. Last year, he signed a Strategic Partnership of the Future with the EU, covering areas including trade and climate transition, as well as a security and defense partnership. An “associate membership” in the EU — whatever that term ends up meaning — could be seen as a logical next step, fitting with Carney’s ambition to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports over the next ten years.

 

Carney increasingly looks like an insecure high schooler trying to hang with the cool kids. But, much like in high school, the cool kids are not really all that cool.

 

First, Europe struggles with economic growth. Since the global financial crisis, the wealth gap between America and the EU — and especially the western EU — has widened, as Europe has struggled with weak and inconsistent growth. Economic shocks like those brought on by the war in Ukraine and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have contributed, but taxation, an ill-conceived common currency, and regulatory policy in areas such as energy, climate, and tech, bear the brunt of the blame. It would make more sense for Canada to diversify by adding more members and deepening ties with the faster-growing Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade pact that has nearly eliminated tariffs among signatory countries following the United States’ withdrawal from the preceding Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017.

 

Supporters of Carney’s European adventures may counter that there is no need to choose — that Canada can diversify elsewhere while still deepening ties with Europe. But it is not that simple. Brussels rarely gives deep market access without pulling partners toward its rule book. If “associate membership” turns into dynamic alignment, Canada, while still formally able to sign other foreign trade agreements, would find those deals harder to use: Goods and data would still have to clear European process rules, including rules written after the ink is dry.

 

Nowhere is this more dangerous than on climate policy. Whereas Carney has begun the process of rolling back his predecessor’s unrealistic goals, the EU is still charging full steam ahead, even implementing climate tariffs (the “carbon-border adjustment mechanism”) on its trade partners. That the EU climate regime is not exactly suitable for an oil-, gas-, and minerals-producing country should go without saying.

 

It may seem counterintuitive that Europe would ever try to force its environmentalism on Canada, seeing as how Canada’s minerals and natural gas — two sectors that EU rules could devastate, if applied to Canada — are part of what makes the country attractive to the EU. But in Brussels, the link between overregulation and underinvestment is not properly understood. Sure, policymakers want rare earths and natural gas — but since that’s never stopped them from overregulating those industries almost to extinction in Europe, Canada should not assume it will get a free pass. The mere threat of future regulatory alignment with the EU could deter investment into Canada’s extractive industries.

 

For Canada’s tech sector, the EU poses an even bigger threat. The EU prides itself on a “regulate first, ask questions later” approach that has strangled innovation in the union. If Canada is pushed to adapt EU tech regulations, the effect would be even worse than in Europe, since geographical proximity means Canada’s tech sector competes with the U.S. and Silicon Valley more directly than Europe’s does.

 

The same is true for the auto and chemicals industries as well as many other sectors, and geographical proximity makes it easier not just for businesses but also for skilled Canadians in affected sectors to move to the United States, something more and more of them are already doing.

 

Carney may feel emboldened by polls showing that large majorities of Canadians favor closer ties with the EU, with one poll even showing 57 percent would support full membership. But the idea of greater integration with the EU and the reality of such a path are starkly different. Brits once overwhelmingly voted in favor of EU membership, but decades of clashes between Britain’s Anglo-Saxon worldview and Brussels’s continental ways eventually led to a bitter divorce. And more than a European nation, Canada — with apologies to Quebec — is first and foremost a British nation, and that is something Carney ought to consider before he traps his country in a union that neither he nor his voters fully understand.

 

Of course, Trump was wrong to ever suggest that Canada should become America’s 51st state. It would be nothing short of tragic if Canada, in its rush to safeguard its sovereignty, merely ended up giving it away to another foreign bidder.

America’s Allies Are No Longer Waiting for Trump to Leave

By Vivian Salama

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

 

In 1917, as Canadian troops fought at Vimy Ridge in northern France, Lieutenant Leslie Miller collected acorns from the battlefield and carried them home to Ontario. Saplings from the resulting oaks were sent back to France about a century later, and became a living link between the two countries. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recounted that story in Strasbourg last week to the European Parliament as he proposed an alliance that went far beyond trade to encompass defense, energy, critical minerals, and artificial intelligence.

 

The pitch was part of a broader transformation under way among America’s allies. For years, the strategy among U.S. allies was to wait President Trump out. Now many are preparing for a world in which the United States is no longer indispensable—not simply during Trump’s presidency but afterward as well, regardless of who occupies the White House. They are building military capabilities, diversifying trade, developing new domestic industries, and forging relationships that reduce their dependence on Washington.

 

This isn’t a coordinated revolt against America or a wholesale turn toward China. Most U.S. partners see Washington as an essential partner and don’t fully trust Beijing. But nations that were once firmly in the American orbit are concluding that they cannot rely on the U.S. to provide the same leadership, markets, technology, and military protection that it has for decades. And that, foreign officials told me, is true no matter who wins the presidency in 2028.

 

The shift may be the most consequential legacy of Trump’s foreign policy. Since his first term, he has demanded that allies become more self-reliant. In his second term, Trump has accelerated the emergence of a world in which American influence is less central—and China has more room to maneuver. Beijing benefits if Europe, Canada, Japan, or South Korea becomes more willing to engage and less certain that Washington is the power around which all strategic decisions must revolve. And the shift undercuts the delicate strategic balance Washington seeks with Beijing itself—an issue Trump will confront when he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week.

 

The changes are already visible, including in rising European defense spending, Canada’s commercial outreach to China, and Japan’s efforts to become a larger arms supplier. Taken together, these trends point to a reordering of the international system that stretches far beyond Trump. “Trump brought with him an earthquake, but we’d be foolish not to prepare for aftershocks,” a senior European official told me. “The fact is, we’ll be setting ourselves up for failure if we assume that everything will go back to the way it was after Trump leaves office. The world is changing, and we can see very clearly now that America is changing too.”

 

That belief is altering the calculations of governments that spent decades organizing their security and economic policies around the United States. What was once viewed as institutional hedging until the 2028 election has morphed into a longer-term effort to build alternatives. This theme of finding alternatives to Washington has become so prevalent that it’s likely to dominate discussions at the United Nations General Assembly this week.

 

Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative in the Biden administration, told me that she and other senior officials were sent on an “apology tour” following Trump’s first term to convince allies that the America they knew had returned and that President Biden was committed to protecting the relationships. (The reference was a throwback to the Barack Obama–era “apology tour,” as some later called it when he traveled the world after taking office to apologize for past American actions, military interventions, and foreign-policy decisions.) But the message dissipated over the next few years amid the political divisiveness in the U.S., Tai recalled. Foreign diplomats relayed to her and other top Biden officials a nervousness “that what you kind of hoped was an aberration is actually going to come back,” she told me. With Trump’s second term, “everything is more over the top than even in the first administration,” Tai said. “The insults are more insulting, the jabs are drawing more blood, and my gut is that there is not a second time for America to declare that it’s back.”

 

***

 

Whether the next president is a Democrat or a Republican, allies see cause for concern. Officials from countries around the world have told me that they worry that Vice President Vance’s vision of a less interventionist America could become a lasting conservative doctrine. “Our real fear is that after Trump comes J. D. Vance, and he has made clear that he is not a friend of Europe’s,” one senior European official told me. Others see calls from the Democratic Socialists of America to “defund the Department of War” as evidence that skepticism about America’s traditional global role is no longer confined to one side of the political spectrum. Progressive Democrats are also embracing tools championed by Trump, including certain tariffs and other protectionist measures. As president, Biden kept most of the tariffs Trump imposed during his first term, even as his “America Is Back” mantra sought to reassure allies they still had America’s support. A dramatic reset of U.S. relations with allies appears unavoidable.

 

Even more moderate Democrats are moving toward a foreign policy closer to “America First,” reflecting growing skepticism of overseas interventions and a desire to prioritize domestic needs. Representative Ro Khanna, a progressive and a potential 2028 presidential contender, told me that the U.S. needs an economic agenda focused on rebuilding America’s manufacturing base through an industrial investment bank, expanded trade schools, and investment in hollowed-out communities—though, he added, it would be a mistake for allies to discount the U.S. as a partner in the post-Trump era. He favors keeping overseas markets open and using tariffs selectively.

 

But what once appeared to allies like temporary political turbulence is now looking like a more lasting change in Washington’s priorities. Just ask the Canadians. For decades, Washington and Ottawa have been the closest of allies. Although they have been frequently at odds over trade, their militaries have operated together, their intelligence services have cooperated closely, and their economies have been deeply integrated. Yet Trump has repeatedly suggested that Canada would be better off as part of the U.S., while imposing and threatening tariffs on Canadian goods. Last month, his administration imposed 50 percent tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian products.

 

Carney, who has called for what he calls “middle powers” such as Canada to become more self-reliant, has responded accordingly. In January, he traveled to Beijing—the first visit for a Canadian prime minister since 2017—and announced a new strategic partnership focused on trade, energy, and agriculture. Canada subsequently secured renewed Chinese-market access for canola, seafood, and beef and set a goal of increasing exports to China by 50 percent by 2030. Canada also became the first non-European country to participate in the European Union’s new Security Action for Europe defense-financing program, giving Canadian companies access to European defense contracts and deepening military ties.

 

Earlier this month, the EU proposed making Canada its first “associate member,” a status that would reflect the closeness of the relationship and give Ottawa—as well as, perhaps, other nations—an alternative to the U.S. and China. Trump has taken notice of their deepening ties, but in ways one imagines Carney might see as a form of respect. The president recently told reporters, “A lot of people say, Who’s the toughest one to deal with? Is it China, sir? Is it China? Is it Vietnam? I said, No, actually, it’s Canada. Canada has felt emboldened.”

 

***

 

The American decision to pull back from its alliances has created opportunities for China, particularly in the Pacific region. The U.S. has few allies stronger than Australia, which during the Biden administration agreed to a deal with the U.S. and the United Kingdom to receive a supply of nuclear-powered submarine technology. But China is Australia’s largest trading partner, and the Australian government has been trying to bolster its relationship with Beijing in other areas as well, including energy and climate. “The United States—not by accident or circumstance, but by design—has become a less dependable ally,” former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told my colleague David Frum in a recent interview. America’s “traditional allies have got to hedge.”

 

Japan, meanwhile, has eased its arms-export rules. The country has largely isolated itself from global arms markets since the end of World War II, and the shift has sparked interest in countries around the world that have long relied heavily on U.S. weapons sales. Japan and South Korea, longtime rivals, have also been drawing closer to each other as they confront both a powerful China and the unpredictability of the Trump administration.

 

That unpredictability was on display with recent annual joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea. Known as Ulchi Freedom Shield—the name evokes a seventh-century Korean general celebrated for repelling a Chinese invasion—the exercises have been held for decades. But hours before this year’s exercises were due to begin, Trump blindsided officials by announcing on social media that he was ordering a substantial pullback in U.S. participation. He argued that the drills were costly and sent a signal that was “totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea. Trump continues to praise the country’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, despite the leaders’ failure to reach a rapprochement during Trump’s first term.

 

U.S. and South Korean forces, as well as those from other countries, were confused about how and whether to proceed with the exercises. They ultimately went ahead but on a much smaller scale, with the 11-day schedule cut to five and major field-training activities scaled back. “It was an absolute clusterfuck,” a U.S. official told me as the mess was unfolding. In the meantime, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has moved aggressively to deepen ties with Beijing. His January state visit to China included a summit with Xi and a business forum attended by about 600 Korean and Chinese business leaders. Fourteen government-to-government memorandums were signed during the visit. With Seoul stuck on Trump’s bad side, that may be just the beginning.

 

Experts told me that even if these countries don’t open the floodgates to Chinese cooperation, Beijing still stands to gain. Every weapons system current U.S. allies build themselves, every supply chain they diversify, and every new relationship they develop gives Beijing another opening—a possibility that even Trump allies acknowledge. “We have to make sure that China doesn’t take advantage of the situation in the short term,” Richard Grenell, who has held a number of positions in both Trump administrations, including as ambassador to Germany, told me. “But I’m not worried about the long term, because what we hear over and over from world leaders is that dealing with China is not worth the price they pay.”

 

Last year, European leaders traveled to Beijing with major complaints about China’s growing industrial output, their limited access to its markets, and the massive trade imbalance. But the summit also reaffirmed a collective desire among European nations for deeper engagement with Beijing, despite the Chinese government’s obvious weaknesses as a prospective alternative to the United States as a global superpower. Their appetite for closeness reflects evolving public opinions around the globe. This year, a Pew Research Center survey in 36 countries found that for the first time, China was viewed more positively than the U.S. in a majority of the countries surveyed. In Canada, 44 percent of respondents expressed a favorable view of China, compared with 33 percent for the United States. China also overtook the U.S. in overall favorability in several European countries.

 

I asked William Taylor, who twice served as head of the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, whether Europeans feel that they can just buy time until Trump leaves office in 2029, when things might presumably snap back. “They’re not sure that it’s going to snap back,” Taylor responded.

 

The economic stakes of these shifts are substantial. Trade wars with allies raise costs for American consumers. U.S. defense companies could eventually lose market share as allies develop their own industries and buy more from one another. And the more that countries diversify their supply chains and commercial relationships, the less leverage Washington enjoys. “Our old relationship of steadily deepening integration with the United States is over,” Carney said, weeks after assuming office last year. “While this is a tragedy, it is also the new reality.” Trump’s biggest impact during his second term may be that America’s allies are now planning for that reality to outlast him.