Chinese Balloons and US Alchemic Leadership

“The political fracas is already underway in Washington. Republicans claim the Biden administration showed weakness in allowing the balloon to enter the US. Airspace. Officials counter that the previous administration, under President Donald Trump, didn’t react to several similar missions over US states and territories. Yet those previous incursions didn’t go on for so long, or reach so far […]

Chinese trust drain?

A forty-year bond of trust between entrepreneurs and the government, the backbone of China’s meteoric rise, is in jeopardy because of short-term mistakes and long-term neglect. Some Chinese are apparently voting with their feet or lack of activity against what they don’t like. It fuels and is also fueled by growing foreign mistrust of China.[1] It […]

Thanks, but no Tanks. Really?

The German decision to ask for more time to decide whether to supply Ukraine with Leopard tanks may actually have no teeth. After consultations and protracted pondering, Berlin could eventually decide to deliver the weapons. They are necessary to strike hard against the Russians in Kyiv’s long-announced spring offensive. It is not just about foreign […]

Serious questions about Christianity and religions

There may be a missing bridge, a missing brother between the billion Catholics or self-proclaimed such, the Church, and people of other faiths. There may be other scriptures giving different names to their gods—the search for a theology beyond scriptures. It doesn’t eliminate scriptures, but it goes into a hitherto empty space unoccupied by scriptures, […]

Ukraine, EU, and Values: A Drama in Three Acts

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is recreating the bases of continental and transatlantic politics, but it is also helping to lay the foundation of a new system of values and traditions that unite more than yesterday a part of the world. Act I, Germany One of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goals at the outset of the […]

From Peter the Great to Vladimir the Small?

The mobilization announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 21 is not sure to bring a victory from the battered fields of Ukraine. Still, it declares loudly what a growing number of observers have been saying for months: that the “special operation” against Kyiv has failed and that Moscow has been defeated. Against this […]

Better call Trump

There is a strong China angle in the whole Donald Trump affair[1], the growing controversy engulfing America about the ex-president’s behavior during the January 6, 2021 tumult, and his insistence on rejecting the results of the election that brought Joseph Biden to the presidency. The Chinese political system is consistently vertical, unitary, and rational. It […]