China's Belt and Road investment in Africa surged 283% in 2025 as birth rates hit record lows at home. A country losing millions of people is building in the continent with the world's youngest workforce.

Trump's First Year Back: The World Tilts Toward Beijing

Central bankers do not sign public letters. They do not intervene in other countries' domestic politics. But in January 2026, twelve of them did exactly that to defend Jerome Powell. The dollar's dominance in global finance made the Fed's independence their fight too.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has remained silent on Donald Trump's threats to annex Greenland. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen sought support in Berlin and Paris while NATO headquarters in Brussels said nothing. This essay examines why Rutte cannot speak when one member threatens another.

The US trade deficit narrowed to $29.4 billion in October 2025—the smallest gap since mid-2009 and a thirty-nine percent narrowing from September 2025. Economists surveyed by Reuters expected approximately $59 billion.

On Wednesday, 7 January 2026, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that he had ‘determined’ the military budget for 2027 should be $1.5 trillion—not $1 trillion—for ‘the Good’ of the country in ‘these very troubled and dangerous’ times.

US Special Forces entered Caracas on Saturday night and seized Nicolás Maduro at the door of a safe room inside a military base. Thirty-two Cuban military and intelligence personnel died in the operation.

The year ended. The wars did not.

The old bargain—American security in exchange for European alignment—had rested on a belief that the relationship was permanent. That belief ended.

The inauguration was not a beginning. It was a consequence.

Nations have mechanisms to guard against the leader behaving like a king. In the case of the USA, courts and Congress must be the guards. But when they fail, authoritarianism slowly takes hold.