This will be again a relatively short article.

This article is within the section about Europe, Italy, Turin- i.e. my "political side".

Albeit, of course, will integrate also the business side (and a bit of technology).

Why now? We are in January 2026, and therefore in this month most of the articles will be about what's coming next- a good way to share concepts and ideas, and then share later adjustments- and to mark assumptions and what derives from them, allowing a future cross-check on what was missing in the picture.

Reason: as usual, will keep adding posts on Facebook and Linkedin, but will have less time available to actually write articles, as I am focusing my spare time in this first half of 2026 on data projects and publications (mini-books) that will appear in a future date.

The key risk? This first full week of 2026 brought the expected confirmations.

As I wrote also in my latest few articles, and shared almost two years ago within within the #EP2024 article series, within the European Union, both at the European and national level, in most cases we keep a decision-making approach that was more or less working while there was an ongoing Cold War.

Change is never easy, but, when change appear at a wider scale, considerations about the timeframe for implementation of change often turn decision-making into "weathering the storm that will eventually pass".

Which could be a sensible choice in some cases, but, unless all those involved work considering a temporary change of balance, could actually create opportunities for those focused on long-term change to push through changes that otherwise, if taken at face value, would find significant resistance.

A lesson from the "Mule" within Asimov's Foundation (a pattern from Alexander, Caesar, Attila, Napoleon, Hitler from history).

Therefore, as the title goes, in this article will focus on the different levels of perception of reality, and what impacts would have cocooning in cognitive dissonance: facing the weather instead of cocooning.

A fair disclosure and warning: I am not a nationalist, neither for Italy nor for Europe, but I am based in Europe and hold a European Union + Italian passport.

Hence, for example, whenever designing an AI agent to analyze and criticize my material or other material, outside of purely technical concepts I saw that eventually I had to remind that simple above mentioned fact within the "framing" of the agents- as, otherwise, the bias was obviously that some models assumed that the propose perspective would be from "across the Pond" (or from elsewhere- depends on the model).

Anyway, I must say: AI models, when asked to provide a structural analysis within a specified framework of reference, behave better than many consultants who keep looking for reasons to "plug" their wares into whatever activities they are called in to support due to their expertise.

This might change with the "sponsored content" announced by some online AI platform- still, it is something that, as a risk, shared already in a couple of mini-books on change when discussing "smart" devices- imagine e.g. if your appliance manufacturer or car maker were to make co-marketing deals with specific suppliers- your fridge or your car would end up being optimized for revenue, not for use.

So, in this article, my perspective will be of somebody from Europe but trying to have a look at the different sides of the issues discussed- as unbiased as possible, and shifting my bipartisanship, usually restricted to politics in Italy or in Europe, to a wider context.

Few sections:
_ preamble- introducing the themes discussed
_ theme 1: a couple of cultural references
_ theme 2: planes of Real-Politik
_ what's next.



Preamble- introducing the themes discussed

At 5,000+ words, I am the only one who can call this article "short."

Anyway, I think that the title is almost self-explanatory: we have too much rhetoric "sabre-rattling" that sometimes seems to obfuscate not just long-term, but also short-term assessments.

I am used to assess organizational cultures since long before started officially in 1990 working on my first official cultural and organizational change mission.

And always, always, I look for data- not necessarily quantitative, also qualitative data (as already shared almost two decades ago, and did for the first time in business in the last 1980s) can be turned into a quantitative element if you define a framework of reference.

The first theme of this article has the purpose of defining that framework of reference, by "walking on the shoulders of giants".

In our times obsessed with specialization, we often forget that, in order to have a systemic view, you have to look at the overall picture, known and unknown, instead of looking just at what matches the patterns that are familiar to you.

Also, we focus on the formality of democracy, but forget that what many call the "deep state" is not necessarily nefarious: modern states are complex machines, you need continuity and not just disruption.

Hence, usually when outsiders are involved, it is normal that some degrees of "shock absorbers" are added in their teams- albeit, once they understand that, if still involved, gradually will "terraform" their own environment.

Another point to consider is that, as discussed in previous articles, there is a difference between the "old communication style" of Cold War diplomacy, and what happened after the Fall of the Berlin Wall- also if many, notably in Europe, still focus on the former "rituals", and take for granted that those rituals are eternal.

This is a short article, and therefore just a second theme, discussing the cognitive dissonance between what we would like to be, what we perceive after setting up that framework, and what actually happens.

It is interesting how in Europe, again, we are more "conservative" (in terms of keeping up with the true and tried), and look for points of reference that match our expectations, also when those point of reference fail to deliver results.

The typical European Union reaction to any uncertainty? Find formal certainty into something that gives us, at face value, a reassurance of our own credibility, importance, and even global relevance- hence, the Mercosur agreement that really belongs to a pre-Trump and pre-Biden era.

Within the conclusions, this time will add something more than a mere summary: a series of pointers that will have to cross-check with the reality that will unfold in the next couple of quarters.

And now, the first theme.



Theme 1: a couple of cultural references

Now, the first obvious cultural reference about the theme "Real Politik" is actually not from the Cold War era, but a book about the "White Revolutionary", on Otto Von Bismarck- I quoted that book repeatedly in the past and, at 800 pages, will not try to summarize it.

Anyway, along with a couple of books from the late Henry Kissinger, could be useful reading now- not just for what was said, but also for the perception of reality that represented, and how was perceived by counterparts.

No, I do not see President Trump as covering the same role- but it is the difference of perception (and resulting events) from those involved that is interesting.

Whenever there is a significant change, there is resistance to change- and, as wrote in the past, the first term of President Trump was in many ways typical of when somebody from outside the succession path (or whenever somebody out of the expected is landing the top role): seen from outside, there were plenty of "shock absorbers" that tempered choices that could have generated significant impacts.

On a smaller scale, it happened also in Italy over the last few decades.

Whenever the President of the Council of Ministers was not from within the typical source environment for appointments at that level (e.g. never held a ministry, or never had a significant long-term role in national politics), there was a surrounding team that tempered possible misunderstandings or "flipping the cart over".

I remember when, long long ago, a former colleague asked me why a politician had been appointed to a ministry where he had no competence, when a first-time-on-the-national-scene politician was appointed as President of the Council of Ministers.

My reply, in Italian: it is his "badante" (caregiver), to reassure national and international partners.

I was not the first one to have said, before even the current term of President Trump began, that those who were rumored to be part of the team were closer to be loyalists than those who were part of the team in the previous term as President.

And the speed and string of decisions and actions since January 2025 has been at a pace simply impossible without a string of loyalists in all the critical places.

I have been recently reading a book about another revolution (with a different political hue) that started in 1974 in Portugal, written by Maria Inacia Rezola (original title: "25 de abril - Mitos de uma Revolução")- and it is interesting to read all the twists and turns that happened back then, and see in parallel the evolution of current affairs.

The difference between communication and reality often is not minimal, but good communicators with a degree of narcissism can manipulate audiences into doubting their own perception of reality.

And, interestingly, the more experts the members of the audience are, the easier are they to be fooled- as any "techné" comes with the baggage of patterns, and good manipulators can quickly identify (or find) patterns to elicit to manipulate into choices that those experts would not otherwise do.

It happened few times in history, even as recently as (multiple time, not just in the 1920s-1930s) across the whole of the XX century.

But I think that, in another book that read recently at breakfast time, the last speech delivered in 2018 by Amos Oz, there is a quote that is a good closing point to complete this section, connecting the assertions above with what will come in the next section of this article: "A visiting journalist sat with [President Truman] to record 300 hours of interviews, later published in the colorful, unpolished language of this farmer's son. Among other things the journalist asked him - I'll say the following in Hebrew - he asked, "Mr. President, what does it feel like to sit in the Oval Office and be the most powerful man in the world?" Truman cradled his cheeks in his hands and shook his head from side to side like an old woman and said something like this: "Oh, my. Oh, my. If a man happens to sit in the Oval Office thinking that he's the mightiest guy in the world, this guy is in big, big trouble. And so is his country, and so is the world."

And here it comes - inscribe it on tablets of stone: "When you sit in the Oval Office, you're in the perfect position to convince people to do things that deep down in their hearts they know they should do but don't feel like doing."
from "The Whole Reckoning Is Not Over Yet", the last speech by Amos Oz in 2018

I had planned to share a couple of sections outlining the historical path between WWII and today- but, eventually, decided that keeping short would maybe entice others to go for sources with more depth than few thousand additional words in this articles- from books, to decades of published issues of Foreign Affairs that actually showed the geopolitical debate as was developing.

Specifically on the Cold War, you can read more interesting books summarizing history.

I shared in previous articles links, but you can also read within my LibraryThing main profile a selection of books that read in the past (some have also a review, while those with more than 3.5 stars have a review on this website.

Now, if I were to discuss the relationship between Europe and the USA since WWII, would consider these "scenes":
_ the Cold War
_ between the Fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11
_ between 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis
_ from 2008 until COVID.

Anyway, if you read other articles on this website since 2012 (and maybe followed my articles from 2008, while I was living in Brussels), you already read a lot about that.

Plus, have a look at the library link that shared above: you will find hundreds of books directly or indirectly related to this subject.

Therefore, skipping history and previously shared commentary, let's move to the next section.



Theme 2: planes of Real-Politik

The key point in this section is simple: from the 1950s until the 1990s, we got used to a routine that was based on a "sun", and all the European countries (to focus just on Europe) were, to varying degrees, circling around the sun.

It was an arrangement that was convenient for all the parties involved, as each one could really proceed assuming that the other parties would do what was expected of them.

A famous example was the "five eyes" differentiation between Europe and few selected partners worldwide (including UK and Canada) in their intelligence role in the Western alliance.

Hence, also without the old joke from a book on military intelligence blunders (when asked at a press conference about a specific issue, the one presenting in UK said that they had not yet asked Washington), it was never really an alliance between equals, and not even one where all those who weren't the sun were equal.

Despite the joke above, and the reported sneering of President Clinton when reminded about the repeated assertion from UK about the "special relationship", UK, with ups and downs (e.g. Suez and a bit in Libya), was the closest USA European Union ally in Western Europe for a long time- and many joked of the 51st state.

As wrote in previous articles, reading the Trade Tariffs document in spring 2025 elicited at least in me a focus not on the figures, but on the overall scheme- which sounded as a request, no actually a demand and almost a battle order, to align regulatory frameworks worldwide to those most favorite in Washington (vocally by this administration, but also the previous one here and there echoed the same tune).

In my posts and articles since January 2025, often reminded the prior example of the Delian League- albeit USA since inception was designed on the model of Sparta, not of Athens, despite its rhetoric being for few decades about a new Athens spreading democracy with guns, only to then, in the XXI, basically have 25 years (so far) of constant wars, each one leaving behind a newly generated source of geopolitical entropy.

It was interesting yesterday to see a map of the military bases in Greenland during the Cold War and now:



I think that others will confirm locations and sizes.

I saw the side-effects of the post-Cold War dividend also in the early 1990s, whenever I visited my girlfriend in Germany and, as Stadtplännerin, told me about the issue of "recycling" those self-contained towns that used to be formally military bases, going to be vacated by the USA military.

We Europeans have been called "cheapskates" by the current USA administration (and even by many before) for out defense expenditure.

Frankly, was a division of labor and funding.

As I wrote in previous articles, it is was a matter more of perception and roles: you should not look at the defense budget only in terms of equipment, but in terms of ecosystem (what makes it sustainable, technological sourcing, subsidizing research and debt, etc).

Anyway, if you were to look in this website for e.g. Europe defense budget, you would find over twenty articles.

I see around Facebook and Linkedin many posts that from the USA talk about the "security reasons", and the European Union again a "not one centimeter of land" (something we heard from Brussels about Ukraine- a century old German conditioned reflex when talking about the Caucasus).

The former ignore past history, and why now should be less secure under the shared umbrella of NATO where anyway the USA could expand again their presence, and why ownership of Greenland (and its resources) should make it different.

The latter ignore the difference between expectations and capabilities- and, frankly, the announced moved to shift European NATO troops to Greenland could actually obtain the same formal result (albeit, if the real interest is control of resources, of course that would not be enough).

Frankly, the war drive that started in 2025 from the USA each time had a different stated reason, but, curiously was always closely aligned to resource-rich countries.

As I keep saying to Italians, I did not hear that same sabre rattling rhetoric from President Trump about other failed states, with prompt and resolute interventions under the Congress radar to avoid having to ask permission to wage war.

Yes, Sudan and other territories have had similar issues: from human rights, to violence on their own citizens, to mistreatment of religious or political minorities.

We Europeans see from Brussels currently a lot of Munich 1930s patterns- until recently, all the commentary about annexing Canada and annexing Greenland and Latin American "à la Monroe Doctrine" have been discounted as if were merely mumbo-jumbo to appease the USA electoral base.

Exactly what we did in the 1930s.

Now, after Nigeria, Venezuela, warnings to Colombia and Cuba, and probably sooner Iran, what did we Europeans?

Signed the Mercosur agreement with Latin American countries, after defining in Brussels aid to offset potential impacts on the significant voting block still represented within the European Union by agriculture.

Moreover, as we were oblivious to reality, we also announced that the agreement will give the European Union preferential access to resources.

From this page on Wikipedia, which are the member countries? Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Venezuela is a full member but has been suspended since 1 December 2016. Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Panama, Peru, and Suriname are associate countries..

When I selected the title for this section, I did went back in my mind to all the commentary that I read from Italian newspapers and heard from Brussels since the Trade Tariffs charade started- and from the first exchanges I shared my commentary.

Now, we Europeans are still playing chess, with one single objective- and keep presenting each concession as a target reached, another chess match won.

The USA under the current administration, by using short interventions with the threat of further short but equally destructive interventions courtesy of being the only country with the ability to keep planning in parallel all the potential interventions and revise those done, plus the only one (for now) having the capability for "surgical" interventions for few weeks anywhere in the world, instead is "marking territory" across the whole geopolitical board.

Or: playing a different game- as I shared in the past, this approach is similar to what an old RAND report that now has almost a quarter of a century called "swarming"- and on its cover did not have a chessboard- but a Go/Weiqi/Baduk gameboard.

Instantaneous and focused concentration of power in single intervention points, coupled with credible threats of the potential of more.

I shared in previous articles an interesting (and equally old) paper on Go within military (or business) strategy, so I will not repeat here the links and discussion.

The key point is that within the European Union the key weakness is currently that imperial-in-sedicesimo attitude that we have in the current European Commission, with its flair for announces and one-sided negotiations sold as successes and assuming that any concession is final, exactly as we did almost a century ago with Germany.

Yes, it was said that Chamberlain was really buying time as UK was not ready for war, and the same could be said of the European Union now.

Anyway, if, instead of developing our technology and our market, we keep signing agreements that constrain us but not our counterparts, we are not going to improve our position.

As an example, I often quote the one about the choice of frequencies of Galileo: the supposedly short-term oriented USA asked us to change frequency to avoid overlap with GPS- and we complied.

Meaning: in an event of war or even just commercial conflict (not necessarily involving the European Union, as Galileo is open for others too, albeit a commercial war or sanctions between allies are now a distinct possibility), Galileo could be disrupted while GPS will stay operational.

Or: if you remember that we have a Galileo constellation simply because during the Balkan Wars few decades ago our ally did not necessarily share access to GPS with the same precision that they were using, it was quite shortsighted to comply with that demand to change frequency- and showed that, long-term, we are anyway within NATO a fair-weather friendship, at least for some quarters within the decision-making.

As for Greenland (and maybe in the future also some other bases in former European colonies- Diego Garcia comes to mind, of course not needed if Iran were to become again a "partner")...

... well, a weak European Union unable to defend itself and adopting a communication approach akin to the vote before the European Constitution in France and The Netherlands, or before Brexit in UK, that attitude "we are better"...

... could generate an incentive for the distant inhabitants of Greenland to accept the "bribe" being proposed by the USA, if further sweetened by USA citizenship (becoming a state, not a limbo such as Puerto Rico, or soon Cuba and Venezuela, listening to the announces from the White House).

So, if a recent poll stated the 85% of the inhabitants of Greenland were not interested to join the USA, the balance could change.

Sending UK and France and Danish troops (or even European NATO troops even from other countries) to e.g. rebuild the old bases in that map and prepare to defend?

Could be sidestepped by a choice by those inhabitants to vote for independence, and then apply to join the USA (or, simply, once independent, being annexed by a token force of "support and peacekeeping" from the USA).

Our European approach of relying on international treaties, the WTO, etc does not work, when the USA is announcing that is leaving many of such international bodies, probably preparing to impose its own standards: what happened in Nigeria and Venezuela, "Blitzkrieg-ing your way to natural resources" makes our points legally sound, but practically unsustainable.

In this case "weathering the storm" waiting for President Trump term to end ignores that he is actually positioning his Vice-President as a kind of Viceroy for the newly acquired "Monroe sphere of influence" countries, and ignores that even for Gaza he proposed an American administration- making the USA presence in the Mediterranean permanent just around the corner of the Black Sea, and therefore potentially replacing the need of European bases under control and constraints from European Union Member States.

I think for now we will have to get used to more cases where the subtle and not-so-subtle innuendo of potential intervention will generate the need to temporarily appease the USA as priority vs. European unity, e.g. Italy had to wait for its most visible prisoners held in jails in Venezuela to be released as a second round, while already partially State-owned oil and energy concerns are gearing up to work in Venezuela- right after President Trump said that the USA would decide who works there.

I do not know in other countries- but in Italy over the last decade we got used to a "flash mob" attitude in politics from anybody who is opposing somebody else.

Or: asking to have everything all and now- but then failing to follow through.

Unfortunately, a negotiation is still a negotiation where the relevance of balance of forces and interests still matters: when somebody is kidnapped or jailed, the background work needed requires focus, not distractions and "finger-in-the-nose" attitudes that upset the counterpart.

A negotiation, not just in those critical matters, requires considering also the perspective of the counterpart- and any potential parties of mutual interest that could influence the outcome of the negotiation (and, in business and society, the long-term sustainability of its outcomes).

You can negotiate "obtorto collo" if you control also the rule-setting, as recently has been proposed in Italy, when was said that, even if delivered to a wrong address or known wrong address, a notification was to be considered delivered as if it had been delivered to the right address.

If you cannot defined the boundaries of negotiation, and have no power to coherce the counterpart, having at each turn somebody annoying the counterpart makes the negotiation only more cumbersome- and could even derail completely.

Anyway, narcissism in politics is not just an issue in Washington or Brussels- it is quite common in our times where many confuse "likes" with "support"- and end up preaching to the choir as if it were the only constituency that matters in a negotiation.

If President Trump were really to believe in the value of NATO, having Europeans re-open and rebuild the former USA bases there would be enough.

If he insists on ownership, it would again be for resources, also if inhabitants of Greenland were to see more convenient to declare independence hoping to become the 51st state of the USA (and not just yet another colony to strip of resources).

Then, the European Union Member States in NATO could save their face instead of getting into a conflict that is doubtful that they could win, as would become a second front after Ukraine, where already our production capabilities are stretched, and agreement from Brussels repeatedly increased our technological dependence from the USA- countermanding all the initiatives since 2019 to instead develop local capabilities.

Anyway, it will take probably few years to really develop local supply chains and local knowledge supply chain (e.g. an end-to-end research establishment with zilch licensing from elsewhere on technologies and products needed for our critical infrastructure and production)- beyond the end of the current term of the European Commission, recently often sidelined.

Then, as I posted online, probably the European Member States of NATO should consider unwelcome USA military bases in Europe and convert NATO into the European military arm, and start seriously considering not only integrating Ukraine within the European Union, but also accelerate negotiations with Turkey for its accession.



Conclusions and next steps

I hope that the sections above raised more doubts than expected- and that inspired few ideas.

If anything, by contrast.

The main aim of this article was to share some doubts and some realism, as there is too much "sabre-rattling" and propaganda, and we Europeans are constantly doing the same mistake done for the European Constitution and Brexit referenda: we have that "upper lip stiffened" approach to the voting masses.

Hence, as I wrote above, Greenland might decide that has a better future elsewhere- and all the jokes about President Trump's statements contradicting his own position (e.g. when he says that having landed there centuries ago is not enough to claim possession- which obviously would be an interesting concept for Native Americans)...

... ignore the reality of the balance of forces.

It is still to be seen the long-term sustainability of a praetorian USA going well beyond the vexing of its allies and partners done by Athens in its "league", considering the pile of debt it is living on.

So, probably seizing resources worldwide is seen as a way out of the risk of dumping debt.

Or: the USA is quickly asserting its role as the "sick element of geopolitics"- after the resources, by leaving international bodies and standards organizations, my expectation is that soon will start directly and indirectly extend on what was in the spring 2025 Trade Tariffs document: impose standards, impose licensing, and force purchases to keep sustaining its own economy.

Already while living in Brussels wrote in articles that, considering the pile of USA debt that Asian countries (including China) have in stock, denominated in a currency that they do not control and under the possibility of wiping out at whim (a possibility of "selective default" was recently uttered also by President Trump), in a more stable world my suggestion was to spend that pile of dollars and dollar-denominated to expand reach- as was eventually done by e.g. China in Africa and worldwide.

The fly in the ointment: assumed that USA would stay a stalwart of international law as a basic need for its business-based economy.

The second term of President Trump is changing that scenario: if the international law is just paper, and if agreements to access resources can overturned by the mere threat of military intervention, probably the work done so far to exit from dollarization of the global economy is not enough.

And that huge pile of debt sustaining the "American way of life" despite its failing internal infrastructure (look at reports on bridges, etc- even decades old reports) will just be an incentive for more "surgical" interventions to generate instability and threats.

Already recently some questionable restrictions of access to the UN HQ in New York in some cases started to make one wonder, if, after leaving a string of international organizations that actually "pushed" the American way worldwide into globalization, even the UN itself will have to retreat to Geneva.

So, also if the next American President were to be from a different perspective, it is doubtful that (s)he would be able to reverse in a single term all the damage done.

Anyway, there is another element that few in Europe consider: President Trump himself recently urged his political base to focus on the mid-term elections uttering that, were the Democratic Party take the lead, he would probably face impeachment.

Reasons? Many- not just his narcissism and continuous launch of business initiatives for his circle whenever intervening (be it economic or military intervention, does not matter)- look at the "Trump whatever" (towers, etc) repeatedly surfacing first as a joke, then as a plan (even in Europe and candidate Member States).

And the string of "surgical interventions" to circumvent limitations on wars, but then in each case generating, as announced in Venezuela and hinted for e.g. Cuba, long-term commitments that, while not being formally wars, are occupations.

The only point: as even some articles on Foreign Affairs (and not from the left) recently increasingly repeat, it will take a long time to repair alliances.

And, frankly, if since the end of the Vietnam War something has been a constant, is the short fuse for intervention and change from the USA: being it pulling from Somalia, or the quixotic Afghanistan Iraq Libya wars, there is little internal support for long-term interventions, albeit the interventions in the XXI century so far only enlarged what President Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex".

Therefore, while President Trump might be considered the one launching initiatives that he himself stated could lead to impeachment, the momentum created will have long-lasting effects, and if his successor were one of his loyalists continuing on a similar path, there would be less and less chance of turning back time.

No return to the future, but a brave new world.

Have a nice week!