Links 16.2026
On a Personal Note
Y’all, I will stop apologizing for sending out my newsletter late. Johannes kindly cured me of that anxiety about not having a perfectly regular release schedule, even though I can proudly say that I haven’t missed a single week in 2026 (yet).
Meanwhile, the move to Berlin is still in progress. It’s a lot of work. I might share some pictures soon, so make sure to follow me on insta.
Speaking of insta, the election debacle of Viktor Orbán gave me another chance to go viral with some cheap anti-Orbán content. More than 320k views, not bad.
And speaking of viral, here’s my new Open Axis video where I talk about the geopolitical horseshoe, how liberals should think about foreign policy (Spoiler: Not supporting the Orange Man is a decent starting point), and how supportive the German population actually is of the Zeitenwende.
Watch, like, and subscribe. You know the drill. And yes, this is an order this time!
The Mittel Man
The great Ivan Krastev with probably the best interview post-Hungary election. Ngl, I’ve been a bit disappointed by his more recent, somewhat generic pieces—and ofc the way he handled the whole Curtis Yarvin situation in Elmau like an absolute boomer. But this interview is straight fire. Every damn sentence is interesting, sharp, and genuinely insightful on the Viktor Orbán regime and its downfall last week.
It was almost hard to pull excerpts because everything felt relevant and original, which is rare when literally everybody is commenting on Viktor Orbán right now.
If you read one thing this week, make it this.
You have argued that, while Viktor Orbán’s ideas were rooted in traditional conservatism, his methods for entrenching power were novel. What did his illiberal democracy actually consist of?
In some sense he is in the Hungarian conservative tradition – he genuinely believes that sovereignty requires a cohesive national community. For him, Hungary was the biggest loser of the twentieth century, which is why it cannot afford to lose in the twenty-first. That “Trianon trauma” – the loss of two-thirds of Hungary’s territory after the First World War – is embedded in him, as it has been embedded in Hungarian politics more broadly for over a century.
But in other ways he operates outside of that tradition. He has the mind of a hedge fund manager: he thinks that because the state is small, you have to take high risks in order to achieve high rewards. Orbán envied the old communist elites because they had built a genuine deep state, while liberalism, he thought, had remained a surface phenomenon, preoccupied with top-down electoral procedures.
So he set about creating a new kind of party-state, one that controlled the economy not through nationalisation but through friendly companies, and that placed great emphasis on controlling universities and educational institutions. Don’t forget that Orbán wrote his master’s dissertation on Gramsci, and takes the idea of cultural hegemony very seriously. He always believed that the Hungarian right remained in opposition because universities and the media were controlled by his enemies.
[…]
To make that case, didn’t Orbán have to become something more than a Hungarian politician?
Orbán distinguished himself from other eastern European leaders by thinking beyond his own country. In that sense, he was for the political right what Castro was for the left: a leader of a small, relatively unimportant nation who harboured global ambitions. For years he commissioned opinion polling in European countries. He believed the EU should be reorganised entirely, with Hungary leading one of its blocs. These are ambitions you would normally associate with France or Germany.
[…]
How does the collapse of the US-led international order affect someone like Orbán, or his imitators?
Orbán saw the US, particularly under the Democrats, as an enemy. He believed that in a more rules-based world, a country like Hungary was constrained. By contrast, in a more transactional, leader-to-leader order, a skilled operator could punch far above his weight.
In short, he had a Metternich complex: he believed that a small state with a bold, cynical leader could play the great powers against each other and come out ahead. More specifically, he saw himself as the indispensable middleman – the broker between Washington and the European right, between Brussels and Moscow, between the Western financial system and Beijing. In the age of Trump, where politics had become a matter of personal relationships between leaders rather than rules between states, that positioning seemed to offer Hungary extraordinary leverage. Orbán had made himself, in effect, the switchboard of a new international order.
The problem is that it is very difficult to be Metternich in a democracy, because people do not vote as geopolitical analysts. Foreign policy virtuosity does not put food on the table. As Orbán became so absorbed in global politics, he lost sight of what voters cared about. He became, in the end, the thing he most despised: a globalist. And in Orbán’s Hungary, as he discovered, globalists lose.
Meet the Angry Young Women
So far, in our conversation on the new global gender divide, I focused a lot on the manosphere, incels, and all that; but there’s an equally radicalized femosphere that is still not covered anywhere. And no, I’m not talking about that tradwife nonsense or some feminist book club.
What I mean is this very GenZ-TikTok-coded ecosystem that basically mirrors the manosphere: It essentializes and moralizes a female “epistemology” (i.e., women are more in tune with their emotions, capable of more empathy, etc.), exaggerates and amplifies societal gender disparities (which partly explains why young women are so pessimistic about the future), and often reduces men to toxic, misogynistic caricatures. The result is a generation that struggles to relate to each other, let alone date.
All of this is documented in this great piece in The New Statesman, which includes a lot of interesting polling data. Highly recommended, especially in combination with the accompanying podcast.
The last paragraph captures the kinda eerie feeling you get while reading the article:
All the women I spoke to were involved in what they viewed as deeply moral missions to change a world that they believed didn’t care about them. Of course it wasn’t making them happy. That was kind of the point, though. “I think to be a person that cares about other people,” said the Leeds student with the pink hair, “you’ve got to be pessimistic.”
Read the whole thing:
Exclusive polling by Merlin Strategy for the New Statesman reveals that young women, aged between 18 and 30, are by far the most progressive demographic in the UK. This polling found that young women are 26 percentage points less likely to feel positively about capitalism than young men, and much less likely to feel the economy works in their favour. They are also much more pessimistic about the future – their own, and everyone else’s. They also feel much more negatively towards young men than young men feel about them.
O’Brien told me she considers herself a revolutionary rather than an activist. “Revolutionary is more, ‘I want systemic change. I don’t want to exist within these same systems. I want to be an instrument of the revolution.’” She said she felt anxious seeing injustice and doing nothing. It was a physical sensation in the centre of her body. Perhaps this was why women were more likely to be progressive than men, she speculated. “Women tend to be a little bit more connected to their bodies and their physical sensations and emotions.” It seemed like an essentialist, even reactionary view of gender: the idea that women are emotional, physical beings, in a way men aren’t. But O’Brien said that anxiety spurred her on. “The only way I’ve found to release the negative sensation is to act.”
[…]
[T]he polling done for the New Statesman suggests more privileged women are the most pessimistic of all. Women in middle-class professions are less likely to say they feel valued by society, and are less likely to believe that if they work hard they will succeed in life when compared with their working-class counterparts. Young men are now more likely to be unemployed than young women, yet young women are far more financially cynical: they are 21 points less likely than young men to believe they will ever out-earn their parents. White women are more likely to feel the country is racist than non-white women.
[…]
A week later I went along to the national march for Palestine as it progressed from Russell Square to Whitehall. There were more than 100,000 marchers, who could be roughly categorised into three groups: Muslim men, pensioners selling copies of the Socialist and what looked like lots of bright-haired girls, though several told me politely that they were non-binary.
[…]
I asked if they’d consider dating a man with different politics. They all immediately said no. “I don’t think I’d even be friends with one,” said one girl. “They don’t see you as human.” Only one woman, Evelyn, admitted to having male friends (though she was worried this made her a “pick me”, trying too hard for male attention). Evelyn was concerned about what the men she knew were watching online. “The stuff that’s being said about women is crazy,” she said. “They’re getting all these reels, talking about, like, bad stuff about women. And I get reels of women saying bad stuff about men. I try to think, not all men are like this, but…”
[…]
In a vicious cycle, the femosphere both reflects young women’s disaffection and perpetuates it, radicalising them further. A significant majority of young women feel isolated from the rest of the country. The two main political parties aren’t reaching out to them specifically. They fear Reform. Many say they will vote for the Greens in the upcoming local elections, but few seem to believe that will make a difference. They don’t feel represented by mainstream politics, and they don’t think anyone cares.
A New Cold War? Great Power Relations in the 21st Century
Instead of a scientific paper, I’m linking to a syllabus today. Not because I particularly enjoy the views of Michael McFaul; but rather because it captures what a good syllabus should do: (a) provide a clear structure for approaching a topic; and (b) offer a comprehensive reading list with both introductory and advanced texts. McFaul does both here remarkably well IMHO.
Click and browse through.
Course Description
When the Cold War ended in 1991, it was a glorious moment to be an American, multilateralist, and liberal democrat. The Soviet Union disintegrated, and it seemed like the whole world wanted to become a democracy and join the democratic community of states. The United States was the only superpower in the world. And the liberal international order, punctuated by the U.S.-led war against Iraq to restore Kuwaiti sovereignty, seemed to be working. Today, great power competition is back, with many analysts describing our current era as a “New Cold War” between the United States, China, and Russia. How did we go from euphoria surrounding democracy, globalization, and the West three decades ago to current uncertainty about democracy and the liberal international order and fear about the rise of illiberal great powers? Is the Cold War label an illuminating or distorting analogy, and how stable or enduring is this current moment of global confrontation? The course seeks to answer these questions and analyze contemporary great power relations more broadly. We will begin by reviewing major theories that explain relations between great powers. The second part of the course traces the historical origins of the U.S.-Russia and U.S.-China relations, examining the interplay between three central drivers of international relations—power, regime types, and leaders—over time. In the third part of the course, we will assess the similarities and differences between the Cold War and U.S.-Russia relations and U.S.-China relations today along three dimensions in the international system: (1) power, (2) ideology, and (3) competing conceptions of global order. The fourth and final part of the course will discuss future scenarios and policy recommendations for how U.S. leaders can meet the challenge of great power competition in the 21st century. The main text for this course is Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New World Disorder, along with accompanying books and articles.
We Caught Up With the Viral Pacers Couple—Here’s What They’d Like the Internet to Know
Okay, this is a weird entry for the newsletter. But once I saw the story, I had to include it.
Quick context: This clip from a Pacers game went viral a few days ago. It shows a couple where the guy is yapping, while the woman next to him keeps rolling her eyes until she finally snaps. In that setting, it reminded people of a live-action version of the “bro overexplaining” meme, I guess. If you haven’t seen it, just watch it, you’ll get what I mean:
Anyway, Sports Illustrated tracked down the couple and interviewed them. Turns out their explanation of what actually happened is kind of perfect—and too cute not to share. It’s remarkably thoughtful and adult, and shows what happens when you can actually discuss interesting topics in a relationship…
There’s also a more general point here. Psychological research (whatever you make of it) suggests that couples who are willing to argue are more likely to last. The idea is something like this, I guess: low-stakes arguments train you for high-stakes ones. You learn to say things instead of bottling them up. So, judging from afar (and after watching the clip where Shaq talks to them), this looks like a perfectly healthy relationship. Maybe even #goalssss.
In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Michael said they were having a conversation that stemmed from a recent New York Times podcast with Ben Sasse, the former Nebraska senator and University of Florida president who announced last December that he was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Among the many topics discussed on that podcast was the future of liberal arts colleges.
“We were talking about the academic rigor of a liberal arts education, and essentially how it can be updated for the current economic status and job market,” Michael said.
[…]
“Even saying that out loud, I can hear you yawning through the phone,” Grace told SI. ” … The thing is, Michael and I have been together for four years—wonderful, happy years. But that’s just what we do. We both just talk. He’s frighteningly smart. So what everyone witnessed was me listening to his well-articulated thoughts and responding with what you saw, which was ‘What the f--- are you talking about?’
“I think that was probably to kill time while I thought of a rebuttal. Because that’s sometimes what you have to do. Sometimes you ad hominem, sometimes you just raise your voice, and other times you actually already have something to say. I think that I did a mix of the two while I sorted out my thoughts. That’s just how we always talk, and it’s fun, and we’re always just doing that. That’s it. It’s so boring.”
Peace,
SG