This little Substack–the very one you subscribe to–got a shout out in the Financial Times yesterday. Edward Luce, whose work I’ve always liked and read regularly–called me a “respected pundit” in his newsletter. It is always nice to see the word “respected” attached to one’s name, particularly in the most respected newspaper in the world! It’s especially nice to be described that way as a woman. We are used to being called insulting things like “hard working”. So thank you to Edward Luce for that. The word “pundit” naturally carries some negative connotations, but I will shoulder them with dignity.

All of that said, Luce mentioned me and linked to this Substack because he disagreed with my latest post here about the end of the right-wing populist decade. He believes that it’s premature to recite a funeral oration for right-wing populism now.

I think Luce makes some good points. For one, he writes that populism could have just as easily been declared dead in 2020, when Trump was defeated by Joe Biden and Covid was raging. He reminds his readers that some people asserted that Covid would spell the end of populism. Of course, that didn’t happen. Instead, the pandemic gave right-wing populism new life. Right-wing populists depicted vaccine mandates and lockdowns as the social engineering work of corrupt medical-pharma elites (or some such thing).

However, I do think there are some significant differences between the first and second Trump administrations that warrant examination. First, Trump’s polling numbers have never been as low as they are now. They are historically abysmal. This means that he’s being more thoroughly discredited in his second administration than he was just six years ago. Further, his supposedly “populist” policies now read as a litany of failures. The spectacle of cruelty and violence that was the first year of ICE raids has been dialed back following mass public backlash. Tariffs–the cornerstone of Trumpian economic populism–were determined to be largely illegal by the Supreme Court. (As the Guardian’s diplomatic correspondent Patrick Wintour wrote last year, “this is the time to declare economic populism, and not free trade, dead”).

The same goes for this administration’s conduct of foreign policy, which many opponents were far too quick to label “isolationist”. On Iran, that generational fixation of boomer neoconservatives, Trump has demonstrated a conventional hawkishness. “Operation Epic Fury” sent the swamp into fits of ecstasy. On Ukraine, he has also been far more conventional than his detractors feared, or as last year’s confrontation with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office appeared to portend. (Ross Douthat even described Trump’s Ukraine policy as a success in the New York Times last week). According to MAGA populists’ own criteria, then, Trump’s second administration has been a resounding failure. MAGA’s internal dynamics also track with this interpretation. Steve Bannon and others associated with the movement’s more traditionally populist wing have been sidelined, while those in the more neocon and Silicon Valley crowd have gotten much closer to the inner circle. Those in the neocon and Tech Right camps are closer to conventional conservatives or overt elitism than they are populist. (Have you heard all the Silicon Valley gloating about AI creating a “permanent underclass” lately?)

Luce also writes that Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform has been leading the polls in the UK for the past year. While this is certainly true, there are also signs that the party’s momentum is already slowing down. First, one analysis from yesterday’s regional and municipal elections indicated that Reform’s vote share was 27%. While this was still enough to defeat Labor, the result also represents a drop of five percentage points from last year’s local elections, when Reform secured a full 32 percent of the vote.

Indeed, there is already fatigue about Farage on the far-right. If you follow discussions on the political fringe as I do, you’ll see that Farage is now viewed by many as an establishment stooge. Part of this is the toxicity of the Trump brand, surely–Farage is an ally of the US president. But some on the far-right now depict him as pro-immigration. The emergence of an even more far-right outfit, Restore, is symptomatic of this. You may be tempted to conclude that the founding of another far-right party indicates that right-wing populism is alive and well, but I actually think it could go either way. When Restore published its first big video a few months ago, the admiring response from supporters was how “un-MAGA” it was; rather than clownish, personality-driven populism of the Farage variety, its message was delivered with a grim seriousness. It did not feel the need to justify itself in terms of opposition to the libs or Brussels; its somber mood drew on the British virtue of the stiff upper lip, of a simple “doing what needs to be done” (in this case, the mass deportations of human beings). I was struck by the tonal shift, which is why I concluded my last post by saying that whatever right-wing politics come next could prove even worse: less buffoonish and more effective.

To be sure, the aforementioned video is not entirely devoid of populist features. In it, party leader Rupert Lowe speaks directly to the camera, promising that candidates for Restore would come “from outside the political establishment”. But then, he takes a decidedly un-Trumpian turn. The candidates, he says, “will be from science, from the military, from medicine, from business, from education.” This is not your crackpot MAGA uncle’s populism; this is something more sober, more formal, and, potentially at least, more lethal.

Luce also makes an important point about immigration. There is no question that immigration will continue to produce a backlash on both sides of the Atlantic, and particularly in Britain. As long as right-wing politicians continue to blame “liberal elites” or “globalists” for immigration policies, then that backlash will have a populist character and speak in a populist vernacular. But once again, I think there has been a subtle shift in the way Muslim immigration in particular has been talked about and even opposed since October 7th. Prior to October 2023, opponents of immigration invoked “globalist” elites (and the implication was often that they were Jewish, with George Soros as the ultimate villain). Now, right-wing commentators are just as likely to invoke a supposed crisis of anti-semitism as a reason to stop Muslim immigration. Many will claim there is no distinction here. They will say that all of it is anti-immigration, and for many commentators, that’s all that really matters. But I detect in these slight shifts a growing rhetorical foregrounding of elite foreign policy concerns over those of the “masses”–and a downgrading of “the people”.

Finally, Luce notes correctly that the conditions that proved fertile ground for the millennium’s first populist backlash, like the diminished middle class and new technologies that fueled polarization, are worse now than they were at the onset of the populist decade. AI, he writes, is poised to intensify the ongoing destruction of the public square. I think this is possibly true, but there are also some other terrifying trends that point in different directions. Earlier I mentioned the Silicon Valley elites who now boast of AI’s creation of a “permanent underclass”. Their project is one not of populism but unabashed elitism, and in some cases, even monarchism. There is no pretense to caring about “the people” or even the nation (as I have written before, the Silicon Valley tech right abhors the nation state). Rather, they envision a world that is rigidly hierarchical, authoritarian, stratified according to IQ, and sustained by permanent war, social atomization, internet pacification, and mass surveillance. Of course, this still sounds fanciful, but it is what the Silicon Valley right wants. And this means there are still new and nightmarish directions for right-wing politics to go. Declaring the populist decade dead may not be the optimistic prognosis some might think.

Finally, I think it’s important to recall that populism is cyclical. It comes and goes. It goes into hiding for years or even decades, and then reemerges at a moment of crisis. The right-wing populism of the last decade had a very particular set of features, affects, and aesthetics, and I do think that it has already reached its peak and is dying a slow but steady death–albeit on slightly different time tables in different countries. Whether right-wing populism mutates to survive in a new form–which it certainly could–or disappears altogether remains to be seen. But the 2016 MAGA-style right-wing populism of Trump and Brexit has never looked more geriatric and feeble.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about Orbán’s loss in the April 12th Hungarian election. I posited that Orbán’s loss, coupled with Trump’s abysmal polling numbers, hinted at a possible growing fatigue with right-wing populism. A few people misinterpreted what I wrote–they thought I was talking about right-wing politics. Nothing could be further from the truth: I think right-wing politics are here to stay. But what I do think might be nearing the end of its life cycle is a certain brand of MAGA-style right-wing populism. (As I was finishing up this post, I got a notification that someone else had just published a similar thing minutes earlier–apparently others are coming to similar conclusions).

This year marks the 10-year anniversary of Trump’s electoral victory against Hillary Clinton and the Brexit referendum, twin shocks that announced the entrance of right-wing populism into the mainstream of global power politics. In the decade since, we’ve heard perhaps too much about right-wing populists, a veritable freak show that has spanned Bolsonaro in Brazil to Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. Even so, a brief refresher might be in order. There are political scientists who dedicate their lives to the study of populism, but I’m going to brutally oversimplify things by saying that populism is an approach to politics; some even describe it as a “tactic”. Either way, its essential feature is that it positions “the people” against “the elite”. Trump and the backers of Brexit harnessed the dissatisfaction of the “losers of globalization” and popular resentment for the 2007-2008 financial crisis and hitched them to a right-wing populist project. A decade ago, it was wildly successful.

Today, I’m not so sure it would be. Trump’s disapproval numbers appear bottomless–62% by the most recent poll–a record low. There is also ample buyer’s remorse for Brexit. According to a poll published earlier this year, 58% of British people think it was wrong to leave the European Union, and just 30% think it was right.

The populist decade has died many small deaths, and there are several causes for its demise. First, it has died slowly through co-optation and neutralization. Right-wing populists running on an anti-establishment, even “anti-systemic” platform have tended to embrace establishment-friendly policies once in power. Trump has gone about systematically obliterating every “populist” campaign promise he ever made–none more than his “no new wars” pledge. But he’s not the only one. Populist right-wing parties across Europe have also become “domesticated” in office: welfare chauvinists have become “business-friendly” Thatcherite neoliberals (such as the Sweden Democrats) and Euroskeptics have become pro-EU Atlanticists (like Giorgia Meloni in Italy). Even old Nigel Farage is in the midst of a transformation. In 2017, he condemned Trump’s bombing of Syria. Nine years later, he is telling the New Statesman that Iran potentially poses “a greater danger to Britain than Russia” (or at least he was in the war’s first weeks). These leaders and parties may retain elements of a populist-right presentation, but their policies are often closer to the conventional center-right.

Another factor contributing to the demise of the populist decade: these parties, personalities, and policies have been in power long enough now that they have started to become the elite–or at least, an elite. Populism is an effective strategy for unseating entrenched power, but after it’s been in power a while itself, it tends to become everything it hates. It’s a similar problem that revolutionaries face after coming to power and attempting to sustain their rule: you can only maintain that insurgent energy for so long. Eventually you become just another sclerotic regime. Trump and his analogues on the other side of the Atlantic continue to invoke the “globalist elite” boogeyman, but are probably getting diminishing returns out of it. They may lament that the left has captured many elite institutions like culture, media and the academy, but they have also cultivated something of their own right-wing counter-elite through think tanks, publications, and powerful networks in Silicon Valley. Eventually, “the people” start noticing that the right-wing populists are sending their kids to fancy schools and driving nice cars too.

A third and final point I’ll make is about Zionism and the populist right post-October 7th. Before October 7th, right-wing populists might have still been able to claim that they aim to put “the people” above elite concerns. But with the full-scale mobilization of the security-military-intelligence-media-surveillance apparatus to insulate Israel and its supporters from reality, they can no longer pretend that they care for the masses–or even America–first. The privileging of Israel above all else has meant the populist right is now preoccupied with minoritarian concerns rather than the majority. Further, right-wing veneration of Israel is usually predicated on it being a country of “high IQ elites” that needs defending against “brown thirdworldist biomass”, to use the crude online vernacular. Support for Israel is also increasingly unpopular with “the people”, meaning it has become a top-down elite project. There is nothing “populist” about a policy that sends gas and food prices soaring so that Israel can achieve regional hegemony.

But as I hinted at earlier, populism isn’t the only vehicle for right-wing politics. I suspect that after years of Trump’s buffoonish incompetence, there might be an appetite for a serious, effective, technocratic governance. At the same time, I sense there is also a desire to ditch the proles and go full right-wing Silicon Valley elitism, which could turn out to be even worse than the clownish populists of the past decade.

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Last week, I went viral in Pakistan. Very viral. I went so viral in fact that my follow-up tweet about the experience, which I posted several days later, also went semi-viral. It was all so immense, and prompted so many interactions with so many people of different political affiliations and beliefs, both celebrity and civilian, that it has inspired a new curiosity about the country. Most remarkable were all the invitations I received to have meals in people’s homes, a kindness I won’t forget.

The occasion was peace talks between the United States and Iran in Islamabad, Pakistan’s unexpectedly lush capital. If you can recall all the way back to two weeks ago–practically the Pleistocene era in internet time–many people were worried that Trump was about to use a nuclear weapon on Iran. It started when the American president wrote that “a whole civilization will die tonight” on TruthSocial. JD Vance then hinted that the US “had tools” that it hadn’t used yet, but could. In a major story run that same day, a London-based Iranian diaspora journalist named Ghocheh Habibiazad quoted an “anonymous Iranian” in Iran who had allegedly expressed support for Trump’s use of a nuclear bomb on their own country. After questions arose about the authenticity of the quote, the BBC quietly removed it from the story without explanation. But the damage was already done. The BBC’s original inclusion of the idea suggested to some that consent was being manufactured for the utilization of a tactical nuclear bomb. Then, public figures like Tucker Carlson issued statements urging people within the US chain of command to disobey orders should they be instructed to prepare for the use of the bomb. Just as the week’s atomic anxieties and fears of uncontrolled escalation reached a fevered pitch, a two-week ceasefire was announced.

Pakistan, it would turn out, was the country that played the biggest role in brokering that ceasefire. Other countries played major supporting roles, particularly Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Meanwhile, Europe was remarkable only for its complete absence in the mediation efforts.

It wasn’t the first time this particular group of countries–Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt–had come together in recent weeks. Indeed, there was ample diplomatic “buzz” that the quartet could evolve into a more formal bloc of some kind. I was asked by my editors at UnHerd to evaluate the group and whether its emergence reflected broader trends. The piece ended up being a joy to report and to write. I got to speak with Chas Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia who also served as Nixon’s interpreter during his historic 1972 visit to China–coincidentally, the last time that Pakistan scored such an enormous diplomatic victory. Ahead of Nixon’s visit that year, it was Pakistan that facilitated communication between the United States and China.

Viktor Orbán is out in Hungary. Europe’s enfant terrible for the last 16 years, the former liberal-turned-obstinate-pillar of the “conservative internationale” conceded defeat last night. He was ousted by Peter Magyar, an erstwhile ally who split from the outgoing Fidesz a few years ago. Magyar’s new Tisza Party (“Respect and Freedom Party”) is a generic center-right, pro-EU outfit, but managed to win 138 out of 199 seats in parliament; this means it secured the two-thirds majority necessary to change the constitution. Not since 2010, when Fidesz won a two-thirds majority in a vote described as the “revolution in the polling booth”, has a political party scored such a crushing victory in a Hungarian election.

Orbán’s defeat has implications beyond little Hungary. Taken together with Trump’s abysmal approval ratings and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s failed referendum last month, it hints at a global fatigue with right-wing populism–and the growing toxicity of the Trump “brand”. At the same time, a possibly related phenomenon: the “post-liberalism” trend of recent years appears to be falling out of fashion in intellectual circles. In Budapest, Orbán sought to cultivate his own incubator of conservative thought. A new network of think tanks, publications, and fellowships was created with the aim of nurturing thinkers on the right. In a sea of “globalist liberalism”, Hungary would serve as a bastion of conservative freedom, unencumbered by the hysterical dictates of Woke. But what did it do, really, other than give a faint intellectual veneer to complaints about Drag Queen Story Hour? The problem with it is that it was all negation. It lacked a positive message of its own. In this way, it was not unlike Russian propaganda, with which there is much overlap: it’s not that there aren’t major problems with Western liberalism, but rather that Putin–and Orbán, too, it would turn out–does not have an appealing counter offer. For now, it looks like Trump’s disastrous presidency is poised to inspire a liberal renaissance, and send much of the world running into the arms of globalist elites, begging to be taken back.

But back to Hungary. The campaign leading up to yesterday’s vote was an especially acrimonious one. It was marked by allegations of foreign interference, purported sabotage of a gas pipeline in Serbia, and leaks of private phone calls. But the insurgent Tisza’s overriding theme was anti-corruption. Indeed, Magyar ran a pretty standard “anti-corruption” campaign–a well-worn but effective tactic for unseating long-running regimes. It is an especially familiar formula for those of us who are students of Central and Eastern Europe. But what’s effective at winning elections has not always translated into effective governance. In fact, anti-corruption campaigns have a habit of becoming vehicles for corruption once their party takes office. The fall of Orbán ally Nikola Gruevski in North Macedonia was one of the most glaring examples. Prime Minister Gruevski was brought down by the center-left SDSM led by Zoran Zaev, who promised an end to corruption. The country even opened a special office for prosecuting corruption cases in 2015, and its female prosecutors received glowing write ups in Western media that likened them to a crime-fighting “Charlie’s Angels”. Lo and behold, once in power, SDSM ended up being spectacularly corrupt themselves; even “Charlie’s Angels” were eventually implicated in graft. And who could forget Serbian leader Aleksandar Vučić’s widely heralded anti-corruption crusade, on which his party rode to power in 2012 and which defined his earliest years in office? To think that Vučić could ever present himself as an earnest voice against corruption is laughable today.

This is not to rain on anyone’s parade. I, too, feel a sense of relief that Orbán lost. But the implications are many, and I have not yet processed them all. I am acutely aware, for instance, that this is very bad news for Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik and President Vučić. Orbán was their champion, their bridge to Trump, their big Magyar brother across the border who could throw his weight around in the international arena more than they could. Who does Dodik have now? And what about Vučić? In Europe at least, they are alone. Of particular interest is the fate of the sale of NIS–the Petroleum Industry of Serbia, majority-owned by Gazprom–to the Hungarian multinational oil and gas company, MOL. The entire deal seemingly hinged on Orbán’s unique ability to act as a bridge between Washington, which has sanctioned NIS, and Russia, which is selling its majority share of it. With Orbán gone, the status of that deal is unclear.

But perhaps today is not the day to worry about all of that. Perhaps today is just a day for remembering that things can change.

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I have a new piece out in The Baffler today, “Yugoslavia Calling”. A few month ago, editor Matthew Shen Goodman contacted me and asked if I would be interested in writing something on the theme of mercenaries, foreign fighters and freelancers. The piece began to take shape in my mind almost immediately. The war drew so many losers, outcasts, ideologues, fanatics, sadists, and entrepreneurs looking for a buck (I guess every war becomes a magnet for such types), that there were already stories I knew I wanted to tell. There are many more that didn’t make it into the final piece.

I began researching the piece with a true distaste for the violent men who felt called to the region to fight in a foreign war, for a cause that was ostensibly not their own. I judged them as losers or sadists, people who couldn’t succeed as civilians. But then, at some point during my research, I think I started to acquire a little bit of empathy for them. Were their motivations always all that different from the human rights activists and politicians demanding humanitarian intervention? There were differences, sure, but there was also overlap. Exploring this tension, between the international community’s cosmopolitan concern, and the motivations of the foreign fighters, became a major theme of the piece.

I hope you enjoy the piece, and as ever, I welcome your feedback.

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I have a new piece about Turkey’s position in the US and Israeli war on Iran in the spring edition of the New Statesman. The cover is illustrated with an image of Trump eating a chocolate Easter egg wrapped in a foil globe: Trump devouring the world. My editors were interested in hearing my thoughts on how Turkey is navigating this war, as well as a general sketch of Turkey-in-NATO ahead of the alliance’s summit in Ankara this summer.

I went to a different summit in Istanbul this week called the Stratcom Summit, something put on by the government’s Directorate of Communications. It would have been useful for my piece in the Statesman. This year’s event was on the theme of “Disruption in the International System: Crises, Narratives, and the Search for Order”; unsurprisingly, much of the focus was on the war on Iran. There were familiar names and faces from diplomacy and regional governments (including a few from the Balkans) but the two most important speeches were from Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Director of the National Intelligence Agency (MIT) Ibrahim Kalin. I wanted to write up some thoughts from those speeches, though I will give more attention to Fidan’s since it was more topical.

First off, I hadn’t expected Fidan’s speech to be delivered in English, as most other officials gave theirs in Turkish. This meant that his words were definitely intended for a wide international audience. It was also a much more confident delivery than I’d seen from him before, and, I think, did what it had to do, which was project an image of an assertive Turkey amid regional war and crisis. The speech also had a bit of an “I-told-you-so” tone. Fidan repeatedly emphasized that the world–or perhaps just the West–is only just now catching up with what Turkey has been saying for years:

The present state of global governance is dysfunctional, paralyzed and unsustainable.

And this systemic disruption did not occur overnight.

It is the result of structural decay that Türkiye has systematically exposed for years.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s call for global justice and for the reform of international institutions was not a political slogan, it was a diagnosis.

A diagnosis many ignored until the crisis arrived at their own doorstep.

From the rostrum of the United Nations to countless multilateral platforms, we consistently sounded the alarm.

At the time, many preferred the illusion of their geopolitical comfort zones.

For years, as long as the cost of dysfunctional order was paid elsewhere, many were content with maintaining a self-serving status quo.

But today, that illusion has shattered.

Those who comfortably benefited from the unjust system are facing a reality as the crises finally touch their own shores.

I interpreted this mostly as a message for the West, and perhaps even a response to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos in January about the imperiled liberal order. At the time, many criticized Carney for the fact that he had only felt inspired to describe the deficiencies of that order when Western countries were finally the ones being threatened; you’ll recall that at this year’s Davos, the big fear was that the United States was about to annex Greenland. Critics pointed out that people like Carney hadn’t been too troubled about the hypocrisies of the liberal order when it was only non-Western countries that were subjected to violations of their sovereignty and occupation or annexation of their territory.

Something else I found noteworthy about Fidan’s speech was the conspicuous lack of criticism of the United States. In Fidan’s view, Israel is the aggressor, and Israel is responsible for the region’s malaise. From Turkey’s perspective, this careful sidestepping makes sense: US-Turkey relations have generally improved during Trump’s second term, and they probably don’t want to mess that up. The Trump administration has done several things that the Turkish government has wanted it to do: it lifted sanctions on Syria, pushed for the full integration of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into the Syrian army, and reached a tentative deal to drop criminal charges against Turkey’s Halkbank over its business with Iranian entities.

But I also found it interesting because it somewhat mirrors a position increasingly held by many “restrainer” conservatives, realists, as well as some leftists in the United States. It’s a position that’s emerged from discussions about Israel and the United States that have only intensified since the start of the war on Iran. The debate centers around which country–Israel or the United States–is leading or instigating policy. Is Israel merely an “aircraft carrier” of the United States–a local, militarized outpost of the American empire that takes its orders directly from Washington? Or has the United States government been heavily influenced (and perhaps even captured) by Israeli interests and the powerful Israel lobby, who have exploited Trump’s vanity to achieve ends mostly beneficial to Israel but potentially detrimental to the United States? In other words, Fidan’s decision to sidestep criticism of Trump while criticizing Israel actually aligns with a growing tendency within American conservative thought.

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Pretty little Slovenia. The Alpine state of just over two million people is roughly the size of New Jersey, but it punches far above its weight in international intrigue. First, there is the country’s native daughter and American first lady, Melanija Knavs, who was plucked from relative obscurity and brought to the United States to model by an Epstein associate who would later introduce her to Donald Trump. Then there was the Russian sleeper cell: In late 2022, a “normal-looking” Ljubljana couple with two children were arrested by police in one of the most secretive operations in the country’s history. It turns out the pair were “illegals”–Russian agents under deep cover, living with false identities. Not even their children knew who their parents really were, or that they were Russian.

The latest scandal is perhaps the most consequential, as it involves foreign intelligence agents engaged in campaign manipulation–and the tactics of the mafia–at the highest levels of power. On Sunday, Slovenia held its parliamentary elections, in an atmosphere charged with acrimony. The incumbent left-liberal coalition led by the Svoboda (“freedom”) Movement looks to have eked out the slenderest of victories, which would dash the hopes of the right-wing Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) of former Prime Minister Janez Janša. However, as of this morning, there was a less than 7,800-vote difference between Svoboda and SDS, meaning once mail-in ballots are counted, the official result, which will be announced on April 7, could look slightly different. But what currently looks like a very modest win for Svoboda came with a steep cost.

A few weeks ago, Slovenia’s indispensable Mladina (“youth”) published an investigative piece by Borut Mekina about Israeli meddling in the campaign. According to their investigation, SDS officials, including Janša, worked with the private Israeli spy firm Black Cube on an elaborate operation to manipulate public perceptions ahead of the vote. Black Cube engaged in “covert surveillance and wiretapping” of officials from the governing coalition. Posing as potential investors, Black Cube employees wined and dined government officials while recording them in secret. Then, a few weeks ahead of the vote, an anonymous website appeared online in English: anti-corruption2026.com. The site linked to clandestinely recorded videos of officials from Svoboda discussing their political relationships; in many cases, the content of these conversations is more embarrassing than criminal. But Janša and SDS maintain that the videos reveal evidence of corruption in the government of Prime Minister Robert Golob. Among the most contentious issues involved was the purchase of a partially derelict building in Ljubljana for several times what it cost just a few years earlier. Meanwhile, Janša has admitted to meeting with a Black Cube associate, but denies hiring the firm to work for SDS directly. Slovenia’s Intelligence and Security Agency (SOVA) has confirmed that Black Cube indeed interfered in the campaign.

But there is more going on here than meets the eye. While Black Cube is officially private, it has extensive ties to the Israeli government: the firm was founded by former Mossad agents, and one of the Israelis that Janša met with last year was Black Cube advisor Giora Eiland, who used to serve as head of Israel’s National Security Council. This matters because of the position Slovenia has taken on Israel in recent years. Last year, Slovenia became the first country in Europe to impose an arms embargo on Israel. It also banned Israeli cabinet members Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich from entering the country. In December, the public broadcaster pulled out of Eurovision in protest of Israel’s participation. But it was reports that Slovenia would join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that drew the greatest ire in Tel Aviv.

On Friday, the Israeli MFA tweeted:

Indeed, on March 12, Slovenian Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon had announced that Slovenia was reversing its decision and would not join the ICJ genocide case. She said that national security experts had told officials that joining the lawsuit “would jeopardize Slovenia’s national security”, warning that “many of the country’s cyber defense systems are of Israeli origin.” When asked if the country had been subjected to external pressure, she answered in the affirmative. “It is clear that these pressures exist, we are all subjected to them by superpowers, and ultimately this must be taken into account when deciding,” she said. “But again, one thing is principled stances, another might be questions of national security.”

Given the timing of this announcement, some have speculated that Israel agreed to let up on some of the campaign interference in exchange for Slovenia’s agreement not to join South Africa’s genocide case at the ICJ. Either way, it’s clear that the Slovenian government was subjected to extensive external pressure.

In Alpine miniature, the Slovenian example thus reveals the way Israeli intelligence agents manipulate the internal affairs of foreign states. Using mafia-style tactics of questionable legality, and aligning with odious figures like Janša, they shape campaigns, how populations perceive their own leadership, and how and if sovereign countries engage with international humanitarian law.

The EU and NATO–usually rather vocal about the whole foreign interference thing–now have to decide if they will actually confront this or look the other way. Just a few years ago, a Romanian election was cancelled when the winner was thought to have secured his victory with pro-Russian propaganda on TikTok. Israel’s foreign interference in Slovenia has been far more egregious and aggressive. And if it’s not stopped now, it may be coming to an election near you.

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I am trying to keep most of my work un-paywalled, but I have decided to paywall this one. This is a reader-supported newsletter, which means I rely on paid subscribers to keep it going, so consider becoming a paid subscriber today if you can! I am grateful to each and one of my subscribers for their continued support and encouragement.

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Beginning at around 9:40 am local time yesterday, while most Americans were fast asleep, the US and Israel launched a new war on Iran. No clear objective has been provided to the American public. In a speech announcing the attack, President Trump offered a list of grievances as justification, many of them ancient history by American standards: the Iranian hostage crisis (1980), the Beirut barracks bombing (1983), and the Iraq War (2003). It reminded me a bit of Putin’s speech on February 21, 2022, in which he set forth his own list of grievances about Ukraine drawn from Russia’s much longer, deeper historical memory: territorial arrangements from the 16th century, the October Revolution of 1917, and Khrushchev’s 1954 transfer of Crimea to Ukraine, among other excuses proffered for the “Special Military Operation”.

The two speeches made me think about Joseph Brodsky’s essay, “Blood, Lies and the Trigger of History” published during the Bosnian War in 1993:

Evocations of history here are bare nonsense. Whenever one pulls the trigger in order to rectify history’s mistake, one lies. For history makes no mistakes, since it has no purpose. One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience. No man possesses sufficient retrospective ability to justify his deeds -- murder especially -- in extemporaneous categories, least of all a head of state.

We have alternately heard that this war is about destroying whatever remains of Iran’s nuclear program (which we were already told was “obliterated” in the last US and Israeli attack on Iran in June), and that it is about regime change. Indeed, the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was killed last night, but that does not mean that the government is about to fall. The usual justifications about human rights have been rolled out by some peripheral figures but have never sounded less convincing or more selective. Perhaps the clear lack of objective conceals a darker agenda: many experts believe that Israel would be satisfied with a ruined country fractured by civil war. A country mired in chaos and sectarian bloodshed would pose no threat to Israel. It is a tactic Israel has tried in Syria with some success, if you can call it that. What’s remarkable is that this war on Iran, which has already killed at least three Americans, has no discernible strategic benefit for the United States.

I posted an observation on X yesterday that generated a lot of talk and hate. I wrote that I’d seen a lot of people complaining that there was no propaganda campaign in the lead-up to this war, no effort to convince the American public that we were at imminent risk. There was a rather haphazard, tacked-on attempt by Steve Witkoff to advance the idea that Iran was a “week away” from being able to build a nuclear bomb, but this messaging came late and contradicted the administration’s prior reports about an obliterated nuclear program. Indeed, the Trump administration’s foreign policy is warned over boomer neoconservativism, but unlike the neocons before him, he hadn’t tried to give the war on Iran a clearly defined objective or coherent propaganda narrative. On X, I suggested that this was because he no longer has to: there have been no mass anti-war protests like the kind that accompanied the runup to the invasion of Iraq. Several people objected to this, claiming that protests in 2003 only started after the war began, but this, as anyone who participated in those protests remembers, is false: there were massive protests against the war before even a single missile was launched. I suggested that the reason the government can count on our relative inaction is that the American people are largely pacified by technology, utterly stupefied and numb from online shopping and personalized algorithms mainlining a steady stream of mind-melting short-form video content to each individual. Of course, there are still pockets of virulent opposition on college campuses and in the streets which I don’t wish to diminish, but in wars past, protest was truly a mass phenomenon. And I do think that we are more atomized and more pacified today. Back in 2003, we hadn’t yet completely retreated into our screens.

However, I don’t think that’s entirely right. Or rather, I think it’s part of the story, but not the whole thing. There is a parallel process at play, which has something to do with autocratization (yes, I said it), a trend observable in liberal democracies as well as authoritarian regimes. For years, theorists of “authoritarian neoliberalism” have written that after the 2008 financial crisis, leaders in capitalist countries shifted “towards more undemocratic and coercive forms of neoliberalism”. As political economist Ian Bruff has written, authoritarian neoliberalism can involve direct repression, surveillance, and coercion against dissent, but it means more than “the exercise of brute coercive force”; in fact, it also manifests in attempts to “insulate certain policies and institutional practices from social and political dissent”. Indeed, the planned invasion of Iraq was preceded by months of political discussion, hearings and congressional resolutions, as well as the aforementioned anti-war demonstrations. The point isn’t that any of that was effective at stopping the war; the point is that it was still considered necessary. Now, the government doesn’t even feel like it needs to come up with an elaborate pretext, phony intelligence, or the theatre of congressional hearings that would lend the war a faint veneer of quasi-democratic legitimacy. Trump just does things. Indeed, his acts of aggressive unilateralism are often marked by surprise, which requires keeping the public in the dark. This means there is no pantomime of democratic buy-in, no fake “procedure”, and no sustained, coherent propaganda campaign.

Of course, Trump is the most extreme, “mask-off” version of this tendency, but I do feel that much of the West is developing in this same general direction: democracies are getting less democratic, as politicians feel less and less that they need to seek the consent of the governed–or even just the appearance of consent–before undertaking wildly unpopular action. We are in an era of governance by “you can just do things”, wherein the messiness of liberal democracy looks more and more like an obstacle to keeping up with our rivals.

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The current US military build-up in the Middle East is the largest in more than two decades–not since the 2003 Invasion of Iraq has Washington deployed so many military assets to the region. Armchair analysts, Polymarket gamblers, and regional experts have been predicting a US attack on Iran since last month, but there is still ample confusion about whether one will be forthcoming, and if so, why: the objective of such an attack is still unclear. To help clarify the stakes, explore various scenarios, and understand the positions of governments in the region, I turned to Giorgio Cafiero, the CEO of Gulf State Analytics and an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University. (Follow Giorgio on X)

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Last week, I published an article about Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik’s many lobbyists and the triumphant photo-ops with MAGA personalities that they arranged for him on a recent trip to Washington. For those just tuning in, Dodik resigned as president of Republika Srpska (Bosnia’s sub-state Serb-majority entity) last year as part of an opaque deal with Washington to have US sanctions on himself and his associates lifted, but remains leader of the ruling Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD). This means that despite his official departure, he still retains major sway over politics in Republika Srpska.

Republika Srpska in the News

In addition to the meetings in Washington, Dodik’s lobbyists also appear to have secured him a bit of exposure in downmarket American media. On February 9th, two op-eds about Bosnia ran in the Washington Times, a newspaper with a rather eccentric origin story: The paper was founded in 1982 by the Unification Church, more often known as the “Moonies”, a Christian cult established by a self-proclaimed messiah from South Korea. Accused of brainwashing its members, the Moonies are perhaps most famous for their mass weddings held in football stadiums, in which thousands of couples marry at the same time.

The first Washington Times piece about Bosnia is titled “Republika Srpska deserves independence”, an op-ed written by Deputy Commentary Editor Anath Hartmann. A quick perusal of Hartmann’s other work reveals an arch-neocon perspective (e.g. staunch defenses of the IDF bombing hospitals), and the introduction to his article about Republika Srpska is perfectly tailored to a neoconservative audience in Washington:

Prominently displayed on the outer wall of the Iranian Embassy in Sarajevo is a sign that reads, “In memory of Iranian men who sacrificed their lives for peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

These words might surprise Americans, many of whom likely don’t know about the long history of the Islamist world’s inroads in the Balkans.

It’s clear where this is going. The message here is “support Republika Srpska’s independence from Bosnia because the rest of the country is run by Hezbollah/Hamas/ISIS”. It’s absurd, of course, but once again we see the now familiar propaganda tactic: Your enemies are our enemies. We are on the same side.

But I couldn’t help but marvel at this framing for a different reason. While it is certainly true that Iran smuggled military aid to Bosnia in contravention of the arms embargo during the war in the 1990s, in more recent times, it is Serbia that has cultivated close ties with Iran. These days, direct flights operate between Belgrade and Tehran, Iranian drones are showcased at defense exhibitions in Serbia, and Iran still refuses to recognize Kosovo’s independence. If you’re still not convinced, here’s President Vučić on last month’s protests in Iran:

I ask people to read the books Operation Ajax and All the Shah’s Men. This was the 1953 operation, when (the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad) Pahlavi came to power…Look today at how Mossad and the CIA are carrying out operations using the same formula after 73 years. And here, some were dreaming, 25 years later, that they could repeat what happened on October 5, 2000, the overthrow of former President Slobodan Milošević.

Vučić sees the recent protests in Iran as a Western-backed regime change effort. In contrast to Serbia’s wary posture towards the West, the Bosnian government in Sarajevo has made explicit its desire to join NATO. This has meant that Sarajevo’s relations with Iran have actually been somewhat strained in recent years, while Iran’s relations with Serbia have grown stronger.

Of course, Dodik and Vučić are different men; there are some minor differences in the foreign policy orientation of Belgrade and Banja Luka. But given their efforts to display unity (at least publicly), the idea that the Iran of today is a close ally of Bosniaks and an enemy of the Serbs is absurd. (For what it’s worth, I am not disparaging Serbia for its relations with Iran, and think efforts to strengthen relations with non-Western countries are a good thing).

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The rest of the op-ed is an attempt to inspire fear about the alleged Islamist threat simmering in placid Sarajevo. Near the op-ed’s conclusion, Dodik is quoted (emphasis mine):

Nothing good lies ahead for Western values under the current setup.... Young people are leaving. The birth rate is in decline. Under Presidents Obama and Biden, Srpska lost many of the rights granted to it under the Dayton Accords, Mr. Dodik said.

It is strange to see Dodik lament that Bosnia is not fertile ground for “Western values” in this way. Most observers of Serbian politics will know that Dodik regularly rails against the West; indeed, the only way I can imagine him invoking “Western values” is to mock them. For example, here’s a line from a letter sent from the National Assembly of Republika Srpska to US Senator Jeanne Shaheen in 2023 (emphasis mine):

The utter disregard for international law, the rule of law, the Constitutions of BiH and the Republic of Srpska, as well as the hubris expressed through the use of sanctions and threats against the elected officials and institutions of the Republic of Srpska reflect the hollowness of “Western values” and represent an existential threat to the Republic of Srpska.

There’s something unexpectedly interesting here, which is a certain elasticity around Serbian identity in the age of Trump. At the recent Munich Security Conference, it became clear that there are two competing visions of what “the West” means in elite Western circles: one is a liberal vision upheld by the Democratic Party and predicated on NATO and shared liberal values; the other is a conservative vision, espoused in a speech by Secretary of State Marco Rubio at Munich, which is instead rooted in shared religion, civilization, race, and culture. As Nathalie Tocci, director of Istituto Affari Internazionali, put it:

The current political dominance of the conservative interpretation has made it possible for Dodik to invoke “Western values” in a non-derogatory way: in short, when the Democrats are in office, Serbs are emphatically not Western, perhaps even enemies of the West. However, when right-wing conservatives are in power, it’s possible for Serbs to move closer to the West or even become part of it, at least provisionally. But once again, Dodik is also playing to Western sensibilities here. For many outside the West, the notion that there is a civilizational West and a liberal Atlanticist West constitutes a “distinction without a difference”. As I wrote in my piece “Joining the West” in 2022, Balkan leaders have described NATO accession itself as a “civilizational” choice.

Moving on, the second op-ed is titled “An Islamist State on NATO’s Border?”, and was written by Max Primorac, a research associate at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Primorac attempts to do the same thing Hartmann does: make Bosniaks look odiously Muslim and radical, and therefore somehow threatening to NATO (nevermind the fact that there are Muslim countries in NATO already). Primorac has other strong opinions about how to reshape Bosnia. At a panel discussion on the Dayton Accords in Zagreb in December, he said that the only solution for Croats in Bosnia was to form a “third entity”. In other words, that in addition to the Muslim-majority Federation of Bosnia and Serb-majority Republika Srpska, that another piece of Bosnia should be carved out for Bosnian Croats. Once again, he used a civilizational framework to advance his argument:

The situation for Croats is so difficult that the only way for them to survive is the formation of their own entity. They are the only truly pro-Western people in BiH and can be an important link between Serbs and Bosniaks.

An Epstein Associate and Modeling Agency Founder in Banja Luka

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AOC’s big foreign policy debut at the Munich Security Conference last week generated much chatter about a potential 2028 presidential run. It was not that her performance was exceptional exactly, but rather that everyone vaguely left-of-center is desperate for a sliver of optimism from their representative politicians, many of whom have been oddly passive in the face of Trump. To a parched man stumbling through the desert in the noon-day sun, AOC was a shimmering mirage: promising from a distance, but elusive up close.

The Munich Security Conference is attended by the world’s defense and security elite, making it a kind of Davos for decision-makers whose religion is Atlanticism. AOC’s message was perfectly tailored to them: she trotted out the Bidenite “autocracy vs democracy” framework which I spent an entire essay dismantling over at the Ideas Letter last month. By using this framework, AOC communicated to the elite that she belonged at Munich, that she essentially shared their liberal Atlanticist vision of the world, albeit with a few caveats. Among them was her “working class perspective” on US foreign policy. In AOC’s telling, income inequality causes authoritarianism. While I appreciated the novel injection of income inequality into a discussion of democracy and our foreign policy, the point that AOC tried to make was muddled and incoherent. On the one hand, yes, income inequality can lead to polarization, scapegoating, and the rise of right-wing populism. But “authoritarianism” doesn’t quite fit here: you could also argue that left-wing governments have eliminated inequality through authoritarian means. How do you think radical wealth redistribution happens? But I get that what we’re talking about here is an essentially liberal Atlanticist conception of authoritarianism, which means any government that is opposed to the United States and NATO. Still, even AOC appeared to understand that “right-wing populism” was a far better term. At a more confident appearance at TU Berlin later in the week, AOC used “right-wing populism” in the places where she’d used “authoritarian” at the security conference. Here, you could see two slightly different messages for two different audiences: for the security think tank set, who sought reassurance that she would assume the Democrats’ aggressive posture towards America’s enemies, she used “authoritarian”; for left-leaning academics, she used the more precise “right-wing populism”.

Further, AOC’s invocation of the autocracy vs. democracy framework implies that the United States needs to defend democracy abroad. This presumably means shoring up our commitments to NATO (AOC invoked the “trans-Atlantic partnership” more than once) and democracy promotion efforts that take money away from programs that could be used to benefit the American working class. Countries cannot have both a beefed up militarism and robust social welfare: just ask European leaders about the difficult choices they’re making now about their defense. AOC therefore still needs to explain how costly efforts to “uphold democracy” abroad constitute a “foreign policy for the working class”.

In addition, AOC was emphatic that the US needed to “revisit its commitments to foreign aid”: yet another expensive item to add to our sprawling tab! At risk of sounding like a stuffy killjoy, where is the money going to come from to pay for it all? I can already hear the objections: “Lily, we’re going to tax the rich!” Suffice to say, I remain skeptical that this is really possible in the United States, which means that we’re probably just going to end up in the same trap that older, less telegenic Democratic Party leaders have set for us before: bankrolling war and propping up corrupt governments in foreign countries to the detriment of our own abandoned working class, who in turn will be vulnerable to the manipulations of any right-wing populist that comes along.

At another point in her performance at Munich, AOC spoke about American hypocrisy. She described hypocrisies as liabilities. What AOC therefore seemed to gesture at was a newer, better “rules-based order” whereby things are mostly the same as they were before, minus the hypocrisies. The divergent responses to Gaza and Ukraine loomed over this part of the discussion. However, the notion that we can defend democracy abroad without hypocrisy demonstrates a limited understanding of the history of our foreign policy. Indeed, the lions’ share of our hypocrisies have been rooted in our democracy promotion efforts, and have often been framed as a righteous “standing up to authoritarianism”. It has been this belief–that the United States, because it calls itself a democracy, has divine permission to ride roughshod over international law and the sovereignty of other states–that has made our foreign policy hypocritical. AOC’s embrace of Biden’s autocracy vs democracy frame is therefore at odds with her mission to get rid of American hypocrisy.

Many critics have fixated on AOC’s stumbling over a question about Taiwan. In summary, AOC was asked if the United States should defend Taiwan in the event that China were to invade. Of course, Washington’s policy on what to do in such a scenario has long been one of strategic ambiguity: the US will not commit publicly to any specific response to Chinese action on Taiwan. After an agonizing pause filled with lots of fits and starts, AOC eventually eked out a response that hinted at this policy of strategic ambiguity, but it came across as amateurish. Predictably, the response to pointing this out was ad hominem attacks mixed with delusional wishful thinking. “I bet you couldn’t answer that question!”, “Rubio and Vance could never come up with an answer that good!”, “what about Trump’s gaffes?” I fear that this represents a dangerous level of complacency. At this point, everyone should know that this is how the social media ecosystem operates and therefore be able to anticipate attacks rather than complain about how unfair they are after the fact. The best way to prepare is to work to patch up vulnerabilities, not attack anyone who points out self-evident weaknesses that any voter would pick up on. And yes, presentation matters. Voters want to feel reassured that their elected officials can take decisive action when necessary, and that they are confident and well-prepared. Trump’s deviation from the norm does not absolve Democrats of this.

But even a rotten-hearted cynic like me must concede that it wasn’t all bad. At a talk at TU Berlin later in the week, AOC appeared stronger and more self-assured. She cautioned against the temptation of political cynicism, sharing her own story of overcoming it. Here, her millennial relatibility was an asset rather than an embarrassment: she let her story speak for itself. She also warned about the dangers of atomization, of a world in which we call an Uber to take us to the airport rather than get a ride from friends, and where the bonds of community and family are dissolved to make way for the market. Here I could see flashes of AOC at her best: not as an extremist firebrand, as the right so often depicts her, but as a consensus-seeking bridge builder. It’s a perception that has made her the most popular candidate for 2028 among Democrats under 30 by far: 30% of Democrats between 18-22 and 35% of Democrats between 23-29 say they would vote for her if the presidential primary were held today. But despite this formidable position she’s earned in the party, her lackluster trip to Germany suggests that it’s not nearly enough.

I want to write about other places and things, but unfortunately, Aleksandar Vučić and Milorad Dodik keep providing us with new material. And when Serbian politics intersect with American corruption, I am congenitally incapable of holding my tongue. Between the Epstein files and Republika Srpksa’s filings in the FARA database, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time on the website of the US Department of Justice. The story emerging out of Republika Srpska looks like it was generated by putting a bunch of recent international headlines in a blender and reassembling them in new combinations. Trump, Epstein, Mossad, Iran, even ICE: it’s all there. This report, which barely scratches the surface, is so long that I had to divide it up into two separate posts.

Last week, you’ll recall I wrote about Dodik’s two big international trips: first to Israel, where he received an award in the Knesset, and then to the United States, where he attended Trump’s Prayer Breakfast and met with top administration officials, including Pete Hegseth and Karoline Leavitt. The trip to Washington was viewed as a major success by Dodik supporters, and for good reason: Just a few months ago, the former President of Republika Srpska was under crippling US sanctions imposed by the outgoing Obama administration in 2017. But last fall, Dodik managed to get the Trump administration to lift those sanctions. And last week, he attended an NBA game in Washington and successfully nabbed photo-ops with many political celebrities, an astonishing turnaround for a man who’d been blacklisted by the United States until only recently. Now we know how he managed to execute the mother of all comebacks: by spending millions of dollars on lobbying firms, including one run by a former Israeli arms dealer who also used to work for Mossad.

Dodik has a nasty lobbying habit (I’ve detailed some of those relationships before). He has spent unusually large sums of money purchasing American influence from Western lobbying firms while railing against Western influence in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Though he fashions himself a sovereigntist a la Orbán, Dodik seeks not to rid Bosnia of foreign influence but rather to swap one foreign patronage and influence network for another. In concrete terms, he wants to get rid of the liberal, “globalist cabal” that is more friendly to Bosniak interests and replace it with the right-wing MAGA conservative network that is more friendly to Serbian and Croatian (read: Christian) interests. This all sounds crude and unfortunately very civilizational, but it is how Dodik and many others in Bosnia view the stakes.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Bosnian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Elmedin Konaković, publicized the name of Dodik’s newest lobbying firm, the Israeli-Canadian company Dickens and Madson, though documents describing the relationship have already been on the FARA website for months. FARA, for those unaware, is an acronym for the US Foreign Agents’ Registrations Act, which mandates that “foreign agents”–usually lobbyists, lawyers, and consultants–working on behalf of foreign governments register their working relationship with the Department of Justice. In one FARA filing that Dickens and Madson has with Republika Srpska, the aim of the relationship is stated clearly: “The Republic of Srpska seeks to secure the support of the United States and obtain independence from Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

According to the same filing, Dodik paid a retainer of $2 million in early September, followed by two subsequent payments of $1 million each later that month, for a total of $4 million paid to Dickens and Madson in September alone. For that hefty price tag, Dickens and Madson agreed to “provide advice and counsel” to Repubika Srpska and “to advocate before the executive and/or legislative branches” of the US government to “secure political support to consolidate and strengthen the political position of the Republic of Srpska”.

Dickens and Madson also agreed “to arrange meetings with government officials and provide public relations services to further [Republika Srpska’s] goals and activities.” In other words, we now have a better idea about who arranged all those photo-ops with Trump officials.

Before we get into the eccentric Israeli personality who is Dodik’s Montreal-based lobbyist for Dickens and Madson, it’s important to stress that Republika Srpska is paying many other lobbying firms as well. The sub-state entity also employs former Illinois governor and ex-con Rod Blagojevich. His lobbying firm is called RRB Strategies, and according to FARA filings, it has already met one of its goals, which was having US sanctions on Dodik and his associates lifted. Other aims as yet unmet include working to eliminate Bosnia’s Office of the High Representative (OHR), a colonial-style position currently occupied by German diplomat Christian Schmidt; the OHR possesses sweeping powers over Bosnia’s internal affairs. Another of Blagojevic’s goals for Republika Srpska is to “encourage legal procedure” against Schmidt for “illegally occupying” the Office of High Representative.

Another American lobbying firm retained by Republika Srpska is Stokes Strategies, which arranges congressional visits and handles most of the for-profit business that Republika Srpska conducts. Yet another lobbying firm enlisted by Republika Srpska is MO Strategies, headed by veteran Republican advisor Martin Obst, who receives $10,000 per month for his services. Also retained is Zell and Associates, which has agreed to engage in “efforts intended to influence US government officials and segments of the US public”; Republika Srpska’s lobbyist at Zell and Associates is Israeli-American lawyer and chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel Marc Zell. Other registered agents working on behalf of the entity include GS2 Law, Schifanelli Law, the Texas-based law firm McGinnis Lochridge, and Becker and Poliakoff, which, among other things, will “promote the public re-examination of the Dayton Peace Accords within the United States”.

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“Republika Srpska is the Israel of the Balkans,” former Bosnian Serb president Milorad Dodik told the Jerusalem Post in a sit-down interview this week. So confident was he in this point that he repeated it more than once. Dodik was in Israel to receive an award named after Ze-ev Jabotinsky, leader of the Zionist Revisionist movement that nursed ties with European fascists and established a naval academy in Italy in agreement with Mussolini. Jabotinsky’s right-wing Revisionists advocated for Greater Israel territorial maximalism, making him Dodik’s ideological kin. In his interview with the Jerusalem Post, Dodik expressed his admiration for Jabotinsky and emphasized the many parallels he saw between Republika Srpska and Israel, along with the Serbian and Jewish peoples’ struggle for survival and for a state. “If we don’t have our own country, we won’t survive,” he asserted, an implicit reference to Republika Srpska’s secession from Bosnia and Herzegovina, something Dodik has been talking about for years.

At first glance, this would appear to be more of the same. In addition to raising the spectre of secession, Dodik has regularly defied Bosnia’s High Representative, the Raj-like colonial administrator of post-war Bosnia, currently a German. He has long said the Dayton Accords–the peace agreement that ended the Bosnian War in 1995–were being “dismantled” by Sarajevo. And for decades, he has cultivated deep ties with Israel, something that has too often been ignored by Western media. But watching Dodik in this interview with Israeli media, I felt my stomach drop. Dodik wasn’t just reciting his usual litany of complaints; he looked sharper and more focused. His intent was different and he had a confidence I hadn’t seen before. This time, it occurred to me that he was also soliciting Israel’s support for Republika Srpska’s secession. A few months ago, I would have brushed the idea off as the stuff of pure fantasy. But Dodik has navigated the Trump era with unexpected success, even managing to get US sanctions imposed on him and his associates lifted in October. Compounding my dread was Israel’s recent rogue diplomatic activity. In December, Israel recognized Somaliland–a breakaway region of Somalia–as an independent state. While Somaliland has strategic value to Israel that Republika Srpska does not, the statehood recognition demonstrates that Israel is willing to break with convention and set new precedents; indeed, Israel was the first and remains the only country in the world to recognize Somaliland as an independent state. Was it possible that Dodik would convince Israel, or some other friendly country, to “recognize” Republika Srpska in the same way? Surely the idea is very farfetched, but then we are in unchartered territory. There was also the matter of increasing tensions between Israel and Turkey, and the potential for them to play out in the Balkans: the Turkish government had facilitated several recognitions of Kosovo’s independence this past year (I wrote about it here), which made me wonder if Israel would back its own statehood project? Once again, the threat is remote, but Israel has also been eager to promote itself as a defender of Christian interests, both to deflect from its own appalling treatment of Christians and to maintain the support of the powerful Christian Zionist contingent in the US; aligning with embattled Serbdom could correspond with this goal. In chaotic, Trumpian times, what was once regarded as impossible now seems possible.

Even if Dodik is not successful in garnering international support for Republika Srpska’s secession–and I still think it’s unlikely that he will–the normalization of the once-radioactive Dodik is significant on its own. I underestimated him before and I will be careful not to do so again. When Trump began his second term, Dodik was still under US sanctions imposed by the outgoing Obama administration in 2017. Dodik and his associates in Republika Srpska were sanctioned for “undermining the Dayton Accords”–in short, secessionist activity. Dodik had pinned all his hopes for the lifting of those sanctions on Trump getting a second term, but I believed then that those hopes would amount to nothing. I assumed that Dodik was too odious a figure even for Trump. But Dodik, against the odds, made major inroads with MAGA, including figures like Laura Loomer, who has spoken of Dodik as if he was some kind of Christian martyr, as well as Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn and former governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich. With this backing, Dodik managed to have US sanctions lifted on himself and all of his associates. As part of that deal with the US, Dodik agreed to resign from office, but he remains an outsized presence in Republika Srpska’s public life.

Watching his Jerusalem Post interview, I started to understand how Dodik has managed the Trump administration and Israel so well. He hit all the right notes. He spoke of “mass migration” in the West, where Muslim newcomers had “brought their faith” and supposed antisemitism with them. He railed against the “demonization” of Israel and Republika Srpska by “liberal elites”, and he decried the alleged antisemitism of Sarajevo, “the most prominent Muslim city in the Balkans”. He said that the UN was opposed to Israel and Republika Srpska, and that “the normal rules stop being enforced or applied in the case of Israel… it’s the same principle applied with Srpska.” The message Dodik was sending was clear: do you see now? They lied about us in the 1990s, and now they are lying about you too. They called us genocidal in the 1990s and now they are calling you genocidal. There is no “international law”; the courts in The Hague are kangaroo courts. We perished together in the fascist concentration camps during WWII, and we must stick together today or perish again. At every turn, Dodik told the Israelis and their American supporters what they wanted to hear, reflecting back to them a vision of reality that was both legible and flattering.

Before departing for Israel, Dodik stated that “nothing would be the same” for Republika Srpska after his trip. By all accounts, he appears to have been pleased by the visit. In an interview with Radio Television Republika Srpska, he said that “the highest officials of Israel are convinced that the Dayton Agreement no longer exists, that the position of [Republika Srpska] must be redefined in the international sense.” He described his meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu as one of the best he’d had in years. In a series of posts on social media, Dodik spoke of the right of Republika Srpska to self-determination; Blagojevich commented on X that said right was “a matter of great importance for stability in Europe and the preservation of the right to freedom of worship for Christians and Jews.” General Flynn concurred, writing that both Dayton and the NATO Charter needed to be “reexamined”. While these individuals are not exactly MAGA’s inner circle, it’s clear that Dodik’s message is gaining some sympathy in Washington.

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Last year around this time, an old idea was percolating through the op-ed sections of various foreign publications: another “Balkan Spring” was underway in Europe’s restive southeast. From Serbia to Turkey to Slovakia to Georgi…

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While Trump was giving his speech at Davos, I was 30,000 feet in the air somewhere above Europe. My Air France flight had excellent (and free) wifi, so I was able to watch it live. Touching down at Charles de Gaulle airport at dawn, I was having a lot of vaguely Gaullist thoughts, like that I might actually live to see a free Europe.

Europe at least has a chance, I thought. The massive disruptions unleashed by Trump could theoretically lead to a fresh European approach to the world. As an American, I felt almost envious: we were beyond saving, but Europe might still have a sliver of potential.

A bit fatalistic to be sure. In one private message to European friends I described the United States as a gangrene limb that the Europeans should cut off to save themselves. But such is the dark mood one gets into when bracing for impact in Florida.

After I landed, and still in this fatalistic mood, I got an email from the Norwegian daily newspaper Klassekampen, asking me to comment on Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Carney’s speech, and the trans-Atlantic rupture. A few others were asked the same questions, including Pankaj Mishra, Anton Jager, and others.

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Trump just unveiled his big Board of Peace at Davos, with a signing ceremony attended by representatives of foreign governments formalizing the body’s international status. On paper at least, the Board of Peace was supposed to be about administering peace in Gaza and rebuilding the ruined strip. When it was announced last year, it was immediately savaged as a naked colonialist power grab; indeed, its many critics noted that it would simply reproduce the occupation in a new, glitzy form. But watching Trump’s ceremony at Davos, it was clear that the Board of Peace is about more than just Gaza. For Trump and others in his orbit, the board is about flaunting the impotence of “globalist” institutions like the UN. The board’s establishment is yet another crude demonstration of Trumpian dominance over the liberal post-war order and the institutions and logic upon which it was built. Though Trump noted in Davos that the UN “has tremendous potential”, he also stressed yet again that he’d solved eight wars without the UN: in other words, Trump claims that he had succeeded where the UN had failed. And yet, Trump also struck a more measured tone today. During his speech, he said the Board of Peace would work with the UN. Still, even if the Board of Peace was not established with the expressed goal of destroying the UN, it was also clear that it had been founded in part to circumvent it. Today’s event also made clear that Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner view Gaza as a business opportunity, and are trying to lure risk-friendly investors into helping build a futuristic Gulf-style mega-project atop the world’s largest crime scene.

I was struck by the number of familiar faces onstage, including among those playing leading roles. Nikolay Mladenov, who has been both foreign and defense minister of Bulgaria, will be high representative for Gaza, meaning he will serve as the link between the Board of Peace and the newly established National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, a technocratic committee led by former Palestinian Authority deputy minister Ali Shaath. Originally, this role was supposed to go to none other than dark prince Tony Blair. After much backlash from Arab partners, for whom Blair is radioactive owing to his leading role in destroying Iraq, Mladenov was named to the position instead.

Watching the event streamed live from Davos, I remembered Mladenov from an event in London many years ago–a foreign ministers’ debate held with Serbia’s then-foreign minister Vuk Jeremić. I recall being very impressed with Mladenov at the time. Compared to Jeremić, who was playing the role of obstinate cowboy nationalist opposed to anything that deviated from the hardline Serbian position on Kosovo, Mladenov seemed very fair and, well, diplomatic. He was sympathetic to Serbia’s position but uncompromising on Bulgaria’s recognition of Kosovo’s sovereignty. Remembering that event all those years ago, I could understand why he’d been chosen for his current role.

And yet, there is more than diplomatic skill at play in this choice. These days, Mladenov works as the director-general of Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi and is a proponent of the Abraham Accords. Unsurprisingly then, this means he is very much onboard with the Trump administration’s “Israel First” policy of making Arab states’ normalization with Israel the cornerstone of regional security. Al-Jazeera has characterized Mladenov’s embrace of the Emirati-Israeli position as a “subtle but significant realignment”. In his role as the top UN envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he was viewed positively by all sides, seen as a truly neutral actor. In 2021, the New York Times quoted several people representing various sides of the conflict, all saying positive things about Mladenov:

“A very honest broker,” Rami Hamdallah, a former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, called him.

“I personally depended on him,” said Moshe Kahlon, a former Israeli finance minister.

“A man of integrity,” said Jason Greenblatt, the Trump administration’s former Middle East envoy.

“We are proud to have known him,” said Khalil al-Hayya, the deputy Hamas leader in Gaza.

But with a new regional realignment well underway–the UAE and Israel appear to be coalescing into a bloc, while Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt look to be forming another–Mladenov begins to seem less like a neutral arbiter and more of a proponent for the Israeli side.

However, in 2021 he told the New York Times that he approached the region with the caution and sensitivity of someone who came from a part of the world burdened with similar issues:

“I come from the Balkans,” he said. “We’ve changed borders. We’ve fought over holy places, languages, churches. We’ve exchanged populations, for 100 years, if not more. And when you carry that baggage, it does help you see things a bit differently. This is not a conflict where you can come in and just draw a line. It’s emotional.”

“I know from my own experience that when the quote-unquote foreigners come and tell you what to do, you just shut them off. You’re like, ‘Thank you very much,’” he added. “You can’t preach to these guys. Remember, they’ve been it at it for half a century.”

Among the other leaders who are on the the Board of Peace and participated in today’s signing ceremony were Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani (the only woman on the board), Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Prime Minister of Bulgaria Rosen Zhelyazkov, Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, and Mongolian Prime Minister Gombojavyn Zandanshatar.

Both the inclusions and omissions here are significant.

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Just a quick update about finding me: Some of you who know me from Twitter (or “X”, if you insist) might have noticed that I’ve temporarily deactivated my account there. At midnight on January 15th, the new Terms of Service came into effect, and there is no opting out. If you’ve used the site since, you’ve accepted them. But it’s not just that. Even just since January 1st, the place looks to have degenerated into an even more explicit hate machine; it now looks like a Silicon Valley social experiment in dissolving the capacity for human empathy. Meanwhile, whatever few benefits it once had for journalists–it has long been one of the fastest ways to get breaking news–are diminishing, as the quality of information on the site has been degraded. That said, I can’t really afford to stay off forever. The vast majority of my subscribers come from Twitter, and since I am doing this not just for fun but also to live, I need to use the site to share my work. But aware of the hazards therein, I will likely be cycling through more regular breaks. Just so you know and don’t worry if you see me missing periodically.

Europa

Europa (1991) is Lars von Trier’s best film. Years before he started making sadistic movies about female suffering like Dancer in the Dark (2000) and Dogville (2003), and before the crystallization of his proto-Nazi troll persona, von Trier made a lush, hypnotic noir about the American occupation of Germany. The film is almost entirely unrecognizable as von Trier; it’s also not an exaggeration to call it one of the most beautiful looking films ever made. But its disorienting political message, which casts doubt on the moral foundations of the post-war trans-Atlantic order, also feels eerily pertinent today.

The film’s setting is Germany in the second half of 1945, in the months after the German defeat–“year zero” as it’s called in the film. Much of the country has been reduced to rubble and the liminal “American Occupation Zone” has been set up atop the ruins. A naïve, idealistic young German-American named Leopold Kessler arrives, hoping to help his ancestral homeland after war; he is also eager “to show Germany a little kindness”. It’s a queasy foreshadowing, hinting at the doom awaiting the American do-gooder in foreign lands.

The young Kessler gets in touch with an uncle who works on the sleeper carriage of a train called Zentropa, where he takes a job as a conductor himself. He meets many pitiful characters on the moving train, including Jewish refugees and the beautiful daughter of the Zentropa’s owner with whom he begins a romantic relationship. While traveling through the wreckage of the Reich, we see dead bodies hanging outside the train window: victims of the Nazi guerrilla group Werwolf, an underground Nazi partisan movement established near the war’s end to terrorize allied soldiers as they advanced through Germany. In the years after the war, Werwolf cells launched sporadic attacks on the occupying forces, though they obviously never amounted to much. Without giving too much away, Kessler unwittingly gets involved with Werwolf; his naïve idealism and passivity have made him an easy mark for manipulation.

Von Trier is preoccupied with the concept of neutrality. He despises it. In one scene, a Catholic priest says that being neutral is the worst sin. Fighting for a cause, no matter how bad, is better than fighting for nothing. You can see how this line of thinking would appeal to a certain kind of compromised individual in post-WWII Germany. I immediately thought about recent speeches by contemporary European leaders like Germany’s ex-Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who makes use of that famous quote by Desmond Tutu, “if you are neutral in situations of oppression you are choosing the side of the oppressor.” I had always thought that this position was rooted in revulsion at passivity in the face of Nazi horror, a moral argument for standing up to evil. But after watching the former Nazis in Europa employ a similar rhetoric, I do wonder if it’s also something more self-exculpatory and morally dubious: a psychological defense against guilt that celebrates militarism or “action” for its own sake, thus placing Nazism above neutrality in an imaginary moral hierarchy.

And yet, Europa is not the Nazi-sympathizing film you might expect from a director who once told an audience at Cannes that he “understood Hitler”. (He later said the comments were taken out of context). Von Trier very clearly judges Germans as guilty. He is just not so convinced of American innocence. In Europa, the Americans are untainted by the recent war (and only because it hardly touched our shores), but they slip easily into collaborationism, and later into Nazi violence. The system they’ve imposed on the docile and compromised German populace looks democratic and just from a distance, but up close, it’s filled with holes. In the American Occupation Zone, the Americans initiate a denazification program, but it’s clearly very corrupt. One American official arranges for a Jewish thief to write a false testimony attesting to the supposed wartime benevolence of a Nazi; in exchange for his cooperation, he is released from jail. The entire post-war order, von Trier appears to be saying, is built upon these rather shaky foundations.

Europa is fascinated with in-between spaces, best embodied in “the zone” and the train. But there are others: the film exists in a place between war and peace, between the Nazi regime and the democratic one, between departure and destination, between perpetrator and victim, between sleep and waking life, between good and evil, and between past and present. The Zentropa itself used to carry Jews to concentration camps; in peacetime the train’s been repurposed to carry third class passengers and corrupt Americans. In Europa, there are no clean breaks with the past.

Many people, including me, have written a lot about the vaunted “post-1945 liberal order” and trans-Atlantic relationship in recent months and years. Europa takes you to the very first months of that era and to its source, bearing witness to its original sin: moral corruption, superficial denazification, and continuities between regimes. The film was released in 1991, just a few months before the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, the founding document of the European Union. During a decade distinguished by unipolar optimism and Euro-Atlantic confidence, von Trier correctly identified something dark and atavistic still lurking beneath the surface.

Make War

“We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.

We will destroy the museums,
libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every
opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.”

– Manifesto of Futurism, Filippo Marinetti, 1909

The Italian Futurists venerated war above all things. They saw it as an engine of progress and a cleansing fire. Founded by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, futurism was one of the early 20^th century’s most incendiary art and social movements. The Futurists famously celebrated speed, youth, vitality, technology, destruction and masculinity; they reviled the feminine and feminism, along with Italy’s accumulated “ancestral lethargy”. A decade after the founding of futurism, the movement merged with Mussolini’s fascists.

The futurists and fascists had much in common, and nowhere more than in their glorification of war. In 1914, as Mussolini enjoined Italy to enter the war, he said, “it is blood which moves the wheels of history”. Marinetti could have said it himself.

I remembered the Italian futurists when I read the piece “The Orbital Authority” by Curtis Yarvin, the pro-monarchy software engineer-turned-MAGA court philosopher, who used to blog under the name Mencius Moldbug. The piece ran last year in Palladium Magazine, which is based in Silicon Valley and reportedly funded by Palantir founder Peter Thiel. (The publication’s tagline is “governance futurism”). Here’s Yarvin:

War is again the father of all things. Peaceful empires stagnate and grow decadent. Wars generate ideas, art, technology, and progress. Forget the UN—how much of the postwar 20th century was created by the war? Every time we fly, we are flying on a peacetime conversion of WWII air force technology. Without war, would we even have jets? Why?

Again we have the futurist-fascist veneration of war as generative rather than destructive. The post-WWII order is built on the latter perception; the idea that, in the West at least, war is always destructive and must be avoided at all costs. The Silicon Valley right (or Tech Right; I’m not sure if we’ve established a single name to describe the powerful pro-Trump cohort within the liberal Bay Area) would also lament the supposed “globalist” neutering of nationalism, seen as the driver of the 20th century’s most destructive wars.

Some may be tempted to write off a single piece by Yarvin, but this attempt to shatter post-WWII taboos is integral to the entire MAGA project. What’s particularly unsettling is that they are actually quite sophisticated in this; they know how to weaponize language and jargon to soften our defenses to their violation, and perhaps even to welcome it as relief. Alexander Karp, the CEO of Palantir, wrote his PhD dissertation on a controversial speech delivered by German writer and former Nazi Martin Walser in 1998. Upon accepting the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in Frankfurt, Walser spoke of the supposed instrumentalization of Holocaust memory as “a means of intimidation or moral bludgeon”. In other words, Walser shattered the taboo on the way Germans are supposed to talk about WWII:

No serious person denies Auschwitz; no person who is still of sound mind quibbles about the horror of Auschwitz; but when this past is held up to me every day in the media, I notice that something in me rebels against this unceasing presentation of our disgrace. Instead of being grateful for this never-ending presentation of our disgrace, I begin to look away. [I would like to understand why the past is being brought up in this decade more than ever before.] When I notice something in me rebelling, I try to seek out the motives of those holding up our disgrace, and I am almost happy when I believe I can discover that often the motive is no longer keeping alive the memory, or the impermissibility of forgetting, but rather the exploiting of our disgrace for present purposes.

Later in the speech, Walser invokes Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil”, but instead levels the charge that there must be a “banality of the good” in reference to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, which had not yet been built but was being discussed:

Posterity will be able to read one day, in all the discussions concerning the Holocaust Monument in Berlin, what people stirred up when they felt themselves responsible for the conscience of others: paving over the center of our capital to create a nightmare the size of a football field. The monumentalization of our disgrace. The historian Heinrich August Winkler calls this “negative nationalism.” I dare to assert that this is not a bit better than its opposite, even if it appears a thousand times better. Probably there is a banality of the good too.

In his 2025 book The Technological Republic, Karp had this to say about Walser’s speech (emphasis mine):

The moment was deeply cathartic for nearly everyone listening, who, according to several accounts, stood up at the end of Walser’s speech to give the author sustained applause. He had articulated the forbidden desires and feelings of a nation, and in doing so relieved an immense amount of internal dissonance for his audience, most of whom had been immersed in a culture in which speech had been tightly patrolled and monitored for even the slightest signs of deviation from the received wisdom, the national consensus.”

This is what I believe MAGA and its Silicon Valley brain trust are doing: weaponizing language in such a way that allows us to overcome the taboos around war put in place after WWII, and, for some, to experience the violation of those taboos as a resolution of internal tension, as a kind of relief. Of course, many readers might be confused by this. After all, the United States has hardly been reluctant to wage war all around the world. But that was slightly different: Before, there was at least some pretense to multilateralism and “respect for alliances”. Now, we’re being psychologically primed for an entirely new era of unilateral warfare.

Zenitism

Re-reading the Futurist Manifesto, I was reminded of another early 20th century avant-garde art movement called Zenitism, which was most active during the 1920s. The movement was centered in Zagreb and Belgrade in what was then “first Yugoslavia”, and published a magazine called Zenit .

Zenitism was inspired in part by the explosion in orientalist writings on the Balkans that accompanied WWI. The movement then sought to “reclaim” those stereotypes and use them, in a mocking yet provocative way, “against the West”. As the movement’s manifesto read, “Let us destroy civilization through new art!”

Iva Glisic and Tijana Vujosevic have described Zenitism as:

the attempt by Yugoslav poetic and political enthusiasts to climb to the zenith of European civilization and disrupt it by ‘Balkanizing’ the Old Continent. Most importantly, they aimed to transform European clichés of Balkan backwardness and belligerence by identifying with “the Balkan” and presenting him as what they termed the “Barbarogenius.” This new type of man was to be seen as a figure whose fresh, primitive and creative genius would conquer and rejuvenate tired European culture.

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Vučić will be sidelined internationally but will remain in power–for now

While Vučić has certainly been a “loser” of Trump’s return to office–so far, all the Serbian president’s fawning obsequiousness has failed to bring him closer to the White House–he is also a beneficiary of Trumpian chaos. In a different, more stable world, his government might, at this late stage in his reign, attract greater attention in Western capitals, which might in turn translate into interest in regime change. But with the world’s eyes fixed on Trump’s regular displays of “shock and awe” unilateralism, Serbia (along with the Balkans more generally, if I’m to be honest) seems completely irrelevant. This means that Vučić will probably make it through this year. In order to placate protesters, Vučić has said, multiple times, that Serbia will hold parliamentary elections in 2026. But parliamentary elections are currently scheduled for late 2027 and it’s more likely, in my opinion, that they will happen then. Presumably a presidential election will happen at the same time. If played right, it could be an opportune moment for Vučić’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) to claw back some tattered scraps of whatever remains of its popular support. In summer of 2027, Serbia will be hosting the Expo, which plays to one of Vučić’s strengths: presenting Serbia as a country that punches above its weight on the world stage. This could theoretically stir Titoist yugonostalgia in the older segment of the electorate that might still be compelled to cast a vote for SNS. Or at least, that will probably be Vučić’s calculation. I strongly doubt it will work. He’s too far gone, and, as I’ve written before, the end is nigh for him. Absent major changes on the world stage, which are certainly not impossible, I predict that Vučić will leave office in 2027. This means that 2026 will be an exercise in kicking the can down the road, frantic attempts to secure new supplies of energy and piecemeal sanctions waivers, and planning for the Expo.

However, there are others who believe otherwise, and who think that Serbia might be on the verge of transitioning into a more advanced stage of dictatorship. As it currently stands, Vučić cannot be elected president again. By law, his presidential mandate must end in 2027. But some say that Vučić will change the constitution to allow himself to remain president.

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I am writing this from a snowed in yellow limestone cliff house in Mardin’s Old City. The landlord says the house is as old as the city’s Grand Mosque, which was built in the 12^th century. A historian friend tells me that it must be Medieval, probably from the 14^th-16^th centuries. The kitchen window overlooks the vast Mesopotamian plains. In the near distance, about 20 km away, is the border with Syria. Snow has been falling here since Monday, and getting up and down the hill, with its steep, smooth stairs covered in heavy snow and patches of dark ice, has become a bit of an extreme sport. Most restaurants in the sloping Old City are closed or operating with kitchens at reduced capacity, even on New Year’s Eve. You can order French fries or gözleme, but you will have to risk life and limb on the staircase-slopes if you want to get anything greener than that. All the same, I have no complaints. Mardin is exquisite, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.

Though I too am working at reduced capacity owing to the holiday, and will return to our normally scheduled program when it’s over, I wanted to share a quick year in writing review. The year 2025 was a great one for me personally. I won an award for best hard news feature from the L.A. Press Club for my Noema piece “Chasing Utopia, Start-up Style”. As someone who primarily covers foreign affairs, it was a fun change to write about an industry that is very much part of California, and to receive recognition for it in California. A few weeks ago, I was also informed that my piece “Go West” for the Baffler had been selected as one of the year’s Best American Essays. I used to read those Best American Essays anthologies as a teenager, so it’s been sort of an out-of-body experience. In 2025, I also relocated from Belgrade to Istanbul–an excellent decision. I disagree with people who insist that “wherever you go, there you are” and that a new environment changes nothing. It has done wonders for me.

I think my own favorite thing that I wrote this year was my piece on the Serbian student protests for New Left Review’s Sidecar. It’s called “Sense of an Ending”. It felt like a bit of vintage writing about Serbia, the kind I used to write myself and also publish by other people in the old Balkanist days, in that it’s idealistic and a bit hopeful–two things I generally am not, at least not about Serbian politics.

During the first month of Trump’s second term, I also wrote about Florida’s growing prominence in American politics for the New Statesman in a piece titled “The Florida Project”. Florida’s profile is increasing both with respect to the personnel who now staff the administration, in which Floridians are disproportionately represented (DEI for Floridians, perhaps?), and the once-fringe state policies that have been made national under Trump. Mar-a-Lago serves as “the winter White House” and Trump also moved his tax residency to Florida from New York. There have also been the pandemic-era efforts to make Miami the “new Silicon Valley”. As with my aforementioned piece about “network states”, it was strange (in a good way) to cover American domestic politics.

After returning from the NATO Summit in The Hague, which produced a transient hope in some that Trump had “seen the light” on Ukraine and the alliance, I wrote that this détente with the Atlanticist establishment wouldn’t last. Six months or so later, it appears that’s true. The piece is called “Convergence?” and is in New Left Review’s Sidecar.

The summer was a bit of a dry spell for me with pieces, partly due to the heat, which I hate (I’m a delicate flower) and partly because I was socializing constantly as I was new to Istanbul. This meant my output suffered. In the fall, I compensated by going too far in the other direction, effectively becoming a monk that never leaves the house and does nothing but read and write. That period produced some things that won’t be published until later next year, but it also gave birth to this newsletter, which I really only started taking seriously this fall. Some of my favorite and most read recent Substack pieces:

Is the Multipolar World Dead?

The Curtain Falls on Aleksandar Vučić’s “Balancing Act”

How the US Kept Europe Down

Serbia’s Vučić Enters Deeper International Isolation

Another one of the pieces of the year was “Confections”, my review of Finnish party girl and ex-Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s new memoir, Hope in Action, again for New Left Review’s Sidecar.

In the last weeks of the year, I also started adding video interviews here. First, I interviewed Almut Rochowanski about her recent piece for Jacobin, which is about the current European elite meltdown in the face of the continent’s declining relevance and stature. Last week, I interviewed journalist and linguist John Lechner about his book on Wagner, and we discussed the way mercenaries, volunteers and Mujahideen from the Bosnian War supplied fighters and inspiration for wars in Syria and Ukraine.

I really enjoy the freedom Substack gives me to experiment with form, to write about things that would probably scare some editors, to obsessively chronicle the shrinking world of official Serbian politics, and to link this beautiful corner of Europe to world affairs, where it has always punched far above its weight. If you’d like to follow along with what I’m doing in 2026, subscribe today. I am greatly encouraged by your support and appreciate every single one of my readers.

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