Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone

Let us use this day to reflect on the year that has passed and the year that is to come. A lot has happened, and even more is sure to happen, so there is plenty to talk about.

The year 2025 was the year when it finally dawned on many Europeans that Israel and the United States cannot necessarily be seen as eternal shining icons of democracy and humanism. Some may expect me to take this opportunity to say ‘I told you so,’ and I will certainly do so, but I would like to emphasise that, as usual, the matter is not black and white, because every coin has two sides.

I am not a big fan of Trump, but the problems he creates are not new and isolated to 2025. Trump is pursuing the same hedonistic policies and in the same way that the United States has always done. He just does it more openly, clumsily and amateurishly than his predecessors. The 80% of the world's population who do not live in the Western world have been aware of this for decades, and in that sense it is actually positive that European populations and politicians have now also realised how the world is organised. The US has been the de facto occupying power in Europe and the eastern part of the South China Sea since World War II, and has ruined opportunities for democratic and economic development throughout Latin America and many other parts of the world. Now, the US appears to be relinquishing its grip on Europe in order to free up resources to maintain its dominance in more unruly areas on other continents. In isolation, this is positive for Europe, even if it costs a little to build new institutions and infrastructure. As captain of a sinking ship, Trump's amateurish handling of tariffs and foreign policy is doomed to fail in the long run, and without friends and vassal states, it will lead to the US losing its imperialist world domination and allowing a more pluralistic world. This is good for the world, and we can thank Trump's incompetence for it.

The year 2025 was also the year when Denmark's fantasy about threats and enemies went from catastrophic to even worse. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse with Denmark's distorted perceptions of who is a friend and who is an enemy, and what is important in life and in the world, Mette Frederiksen surpasses herself with delusions that TikTok and Russia will bring about the end of the world. That is not the case. The world is in the midst of an environmental catastrophe. Biodiversity is in free fall, and there is no prospect of mitigating the decline and no political plans to do anything about it. Russia may cause a little trouble in Europe's backyard, but both their and our own oil production and oil consumption are far more dangerous than their military actions. In 50 years, Ukraine will be forgotten, and so will Trump's wet dreams of taking over Greenland. What will be remembered is the climate change that, in the coming half-century or century, will halve agricultural production on earth due to drought and unstable harvest conditions, cause billions of people to flee their homes, and put an end to the Gulf Stream. Compared to that, a little unrest in Eastern Europe and discussions on social media are small fry. The fact that we have a prime minister who seriously says that an age limit on TikTok is more important than the green transition is such a distortion of reality that it is not surprising that the government is falling in the polls, but rather astonishing that the decline is not greater.

Trump's great achievement in 2025 has been to finally puncture the illusion of global free trade and a rules-based world order. ‘It's a disaster!’ say all European leaders, as if they still live with a worldview that infinite growth, capital and thus consumption are possible on a finite planet. Let's take a closer look at that.

The rule-based world order that we imagine has existed is based on the world being governed by negotiations in international organisations, where the US and its 42 vassal states in NATO and other associated countries hold well over the majority of the delegate seats. This is because international bodies are not governed by the population size of the countries, but in relation to the countries' membership contributions, which in turn are determined by their economic capacity in terms of gross domestic product. The rich countries pay the most and therefore also have the most influence. NATO accounts for only 11.5% of the world's population, but holds 40% of the seats on the UN Security Council, including more than half of the permanent seats. This is what we call the rules-based world order, because the rules ensure that rich countries can use international bodies to exercise their world domination over the remaining 80% of the world's population. I am certainly not opposed to the principle of a rules-based world order, but one of the major events in the world this year was the meeting in