The ballot box troll by Timothy Davies

Democracy used to be serious business. You argued, campaigned, complained, voted and then spent the following four years discovering that the people you elected had either forgotten their promises or never intended to keep them. Today however, democracy increasingly resembles an internet comment section with compulsory paperwork. The candidates are the content, the voters are the audience, and the ballot box has become an opportunity to tell the political establishment to go to hell.

Consider the bizarre political symbolism of a candidate named Hitler Mussolini Flores winning a mayoral election in Peru. The name alone sounds like a particularly tasteless joke invented by an exhausted history teacher after three glasses of wine. Yet the deeper question is not whether the name is outrageous. It is what happens when politics becomes so absurd that absurdity itself starts looking like a legitimate political strategy.

We should be careful not to assume that a provocative name automatically makes its bearer an extremist, or that everyone voting for such a candidate shares the historical associations attached to it. Names, personalities and political identities do not always fit neatly into the boxes observers construct. But the spectacle raises a genuinely uncomfortable question: are citizens still voting for the government they want, or are they increasingly voting for the political circus they believe they deserve?

There is a difference, and it matters. Across democracies, distrust of established parties, frustration with corruption and disappointment with public institutions have created fertile ground for political protest. Some voters turn to radical movements. Others abstain. Still others support candidates who promise to smash the system, embarrass the establishment or simply make the political class look ridiculous.

The irony vote belongs to this last category, although it is not always easy to distinguish deliberate provocation from sincere political conviction. It is the democratic equivalent of replying to a bureaucrat's incomprehensible letter with a photograph of a goat. You may experience a moment of exquisite satisfaction, but the bureaucracy remains, the problem remains, and the goat has no administrative authority.

That is the central danger of hyper-polarisation. Political choices become less about governing and more about humiliating the other side. The opponent must be defeated, preferably spectacularly. The establishment must be embarrassed. The institutions must be mocked. The candidate's competence becomes secondary to the pleasure of watching respectable people choke on their morning coffee.

And the political establishment has done plenty to earn public contempt. When parties treat public office as private property, when corruption investigations become political theatre, when politicians promise transformation and deliver carefully packaged disappointment, they should not be surprised when voters stop treating elections with reverence. People do not suddenly develop a taste for political absurdity in a vacuum. Often, they arrive there after years of being offered the same stale menu by different waiters.

But understanding the frustration does not mean romanticising its consequences. A ballot is not a social-media post. A mayoralty is not a meme account. A municipality must collect waste, maintain roads, manage budgets, provide services and make decisions that affect people who may have voted for the winner, against the winner or not at all. Water systems do not care whether an election was intended as satire. Public hospitals cannot be administered through sarcasm. Pensioners cannot pay their bills with the satisfaction of having annoyed a political commentator.

The joke ends when governing begins. Worse, irony is an exceptionally convenient hiding place for political irresponsibility. A voter can support a provocative candidate and later claim that nobody was supposed to take the choice seriously. A politician can cultivate notoriety while avoiding the difficult business of explaining policies. And parties can dismiss legitimate public anger as ignorance, allowing themselves to avoid confronting the institutional failures that helped produce it.

Everybody gets an escape route. Democracy gets the bill. There is also a darker consequence. When political life becomes an endless contest of humiliation, citizens gradually lose the distinction between institutions that deserve reform and institutions that should simply be destroyed. Courts, electoral authorities, local councils and public services become props in a permanent culture war. The objective is no longer to make them work better, but to make the other tribe suffer.

That is how civic despair becomes politically profitable. The answer is not to lecture voters about behaving responsibly while leaving corruption, inequality and administrative incompetence untouched. Nor is it to demand that every election become a solemn ceremony conducted by people wearing respectable expressions. Democracy needs anger, humour, dissent and the freedom to reject conventional candidates. Sometimes the establishment deserves to be laughed out of the room.

But ridicule must lead somewhere. Protest without accountability becomes another performance, and performance without governing becomes an expensive illusion. If political parties want fewer voters treating elections as opportunities for sabotage, they must give citizens reasons to believe that their choices matter. That means competent public services, transparent institutions, credible investigations into corruption and political representatives who understand that public office is a responsibility rather than a personal entitlement.

The irony vote is not necessarily a vote for extremism. Sometimes it is a vote of exhausted disbelief, a desperate attempt to make an unresponsive system notice the people it has ignored. Yet a democracy cannot survive indefinitely if its citizens regard the ballot as a punchline and its politicians regard public anger as a marketing opportunity. The ballot box should be where citizens choose their future, not where they upload their contempt. Because when democracy becomes a joke, the final laugh rarely belongs to the voters.

Guilfoyle Athens, Inc. by Thanos Kalamidas

There was a time when becoming an American ambassador required something resembling diplomatic experience, international knowledge, political judgment, and the ability to represent the interests of the United States without turning an embassy into a personal clubhouse. Under Donald Trump, however, the appointment process increasingly resembles a family loyalty programme. Have you donated enough? Have you praised the boss sufficiently? Are you close enough to the family to know which doors open and which secrets must remain locked?

Kimberly Ann Guilfoyle apparently understood the importance of networking. The former Fox News personality, Republican fundraiser and former …fiancée of Donald Trump Jr. became America's ambassador to Greece. Her appointment raised questions about the increasingly blurred boundaries between political loyalty and diplomatic qualifications. However, on 13 October 2026, the curtain fell. Guilfoyle resigned after White House press secretary Katie Zacharia announced that the administration had asked her to step down.

The official farewell was predictably polite. Guilfoyle had been a wonderful asset, Zacharia said and the White House wished her well. Washington has a remarkable talent for turning political embarrassment into a farewell card.

But the departure is bigger than one ambassador's career. It raises a much more uncomfortable question, what exactly does Greece mean to Donald Trump's America if a position of such strategic importance can become entangled with personal connections to the presidential family?

That is the question Athens should be asking Washington. Greece is not a decorative Mediterranean postcard where an American political celebrity can spend a few years enjoying sunshine, receptions and expensive dinners. It occupies a strategically significant position connecting Europe, the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean with implications for NATO, regional security, energy infrastructure, maritime routes and relations with Turkey. Its proximity to the Middle East makes its diplomatic importance even more obvious.

This is serious business. It requires serious representation. Yet Trump's approach to public appointments has repeatedly suggested that proximity to the family can be more valuable than professional experience. Loyalty becomes a qualification, personal relationships become political currency and institutions are expected to accommodate the preferences of a president who often treats government as an extension of his own brand.

In this system, an ambassador risks becoming less a representative of the United States than a representative of the president's personal interests. The distinction is not academic. American diplomats are supposed to advance national interests, maintain relationships with host governments and protect their country's credibility. They are not supposed to create uncertainty about whether official meetings, diplomatic access, or political connections might serve private interests. Even the appearance of such conflicts can damage trust.

The allegations surrounding Guilfoyle were serious. Reports alleged that she sought a $100,000 payment from a political donor to cover a personal credit card bill, potentially in exchange for access to senior administration officials. Other allegations concerned her interactions with Greek business interests and the use of diplomatic influence. Her lawyers disputed the accusations and defended her conduct. These remain allegations, not established findings of guilt, and her resignation does not settle the questions surrounding them.

But the political consequences are already clear. An ambassador appointed amid questions about political connections has departed amid questions about conduct, leaving the administration to manage the damage.

And what does this tell us about the appointment process? If Guilfoyle's relationship with Trump Jr. helped make her politically attractive for the position, the problem extends beyond her individual qualifications. It concerns a system in which personal proximity to power can appear to count more than the professional demands of the job.

The White House's request for her resignation also exposes the fragility of political patronage. The same administration that entrusted her with a sensitive diplomatic position ultimately decided that the controversy had become too costly. Loyalty can open doors in Washington, but it does not guarantee that those doors will remain open when the headlines turn sour.

What an extraordinary way to run a foreign policy. If Guilfoyle's departure leads to a serious review of diplomatic appointments, ethics procedures, and accountability, something useful might yet emerge from this episode. If she is simply replaced by another politically connected loyalist, the nameplate will change while the machinery remains untouched.

Greece and in fact every other country, deserve better than to become collateral damage in Washington's family politics. Its government and public should be entitled to expect an American ambassador who understands the responsibilities of the office, respects Greek sovereignty and can conduct diplomacy without private controversies overshadowing official business.

Americans deserve better, too. Their diplomatic service is not a collection of reward positions for political loyalty, fundraising enthusiasm, or romantic proximity to the president's family. Guilfoyle's resignation closes one chapter, but it does not answer the most important question: who was responsible for deciding that she was the right person to represent American interests in Athens and what criteria mattered most in that decision?

The real scandal is not simply that Kimberly Guilfoyle has left her post. It is that her appointment raised such fundamental questions about how the post was awarded in the first place. If family connections can become a route into diplomacy, then the problem extends far beyond one woman. It concerns a presidency in which personal loyalty risks becoming foreign policy and a country whose strategic interests deserve considerably more than a presidential favour.

A treaty against tomorrow by Virginia Robertson

Humanity has perfected the art of preparing for the last war while sleepwalking towards the next catastrophe. We have treaties against nuclear proliferation, military alliances against hostile states, conventions governing chemical weapons and elaborate diplomatic rituals designed to prevent one government from blowing another government off the map. Yet we remain remarkably unprepared for threats that do not respect borders, recognise flags or wait for foreign ministries to finish their morning coffee.

Artificial intelligence, engineered biological threats, nuclear escalation and climate tipping points are not separate chapters in a collection of fashionable anxieties. They are warning signs of a civilisation acquiring powers that its political institutions may be incapable of controlling.

The question is no longer whether humanity possesses the technological capacity to endanger its own future. It is whether humanity possesses the political maturity to prevent that capacity from becoming a catastrophe. At present, the evidence is hardly encouraging. Our international security architecture was largely constructed around the assumption that danger comes from identifiable states pursuing identifiable interests. Governments sign agreements, establish verification mechanisms and negotiate compromises because they understand that mutual destruction is generally an unattractive investment. The system is imperfect, frequently hypocritical and heavily influenced by military and economic power, but it provides a framework for managing certain forms of conflict.

Existential risk exposes its limitations. A runaway AI system would not necessarily recognise diplomatic boundaries. A biological catastrophe could spread across continents before governments agreed on the wording of a joint statement. Climate tipping points would not pause because competing powers had temporarily suspended their arguments. And a nuclear escalation could turn a regional confrontation into a global disaster before the international community finished debating responsibility.

The threats are different, but the fundamental weakness is the same: humanity's capacity to create danger is developing faster than its capacity to govern it. Consider artificial intelligence. Governments and corporations are racing to develop increasingly powerful systems, driven by commercial advantage, military applications and the fear of falling behind competitors. Safety research exists, regulatory initiatives are advancing, and international discussions are taking place. But the strategic incentives remain brutally familiar. If one country slows down, another might accelerate. If one company invests heavily in safeguards, a competitor might market a less constrained product first.

We have built a technological arms race in which the prize is economic and military dominance, while the potential losses could extend far beyond the competitors themselves. This is not an argument against technological progress. It is an argument against treating the future of civilisation as an acceptable side effect of commercial competition.

The same logic applies to biosecurity. Scientific advances can improve medicine, prevent disease and save millions of lives. They can also create new vulnerabilities if dangerous capabilities spread without adequate oversight. National regulation alone cannot reliably manage risks that cross borders, particularly when information, equipment and expertise move through global networks.

Climate change presents another uncomfortable lesson. Its dangers have been documented for decades, yet governments continue to treat long-term planetary stability as something to negotiate against short-term political convenience. Every election becomes an excuse to postpone difficult decisions, while the atmosphere remains magnificently indifferent to electoral arithmetic.

The existing Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty remains important. It should not be discarded as an obsolete relic. But a framework designed principally around nuclear weapons cannot, by itself, govern emerging AI capabilities, biological threats and interconnected environmental risks. Humanity needs an additional instrument: a Humanity Safeguard Pact, a legally binding international agreement establishing minimum protections against catastrophic and potentially existential threats.

Such a pact should require participating states to maintain independently verifiable safeguards for the most dangerous AI systems, establish shared biosecurity standards, strengthen monitoring of emerging threats and create rapid international notification procedures when a credible catastrophic risk appears. It should also provide secure channels for scientific cooperation, independent oversight and assistance to countries lacking the resources to implement adequate protections.

Most importantly, compliance must not depend entirely on the goodwill of governments or the promises of corporations. Independent verification, transparent reporting and meaningful consequences for serious violations are essential. Without enforcement, another international treaty would merely add expensive stationery to the world's already impressive collection of unfulfilled promises.

The pact must also avoid becoming an instrument through which powerful countries monopolise advanced technology while denying poorer societies its benefits. Humanity cannot build collective security on technological apartheid. Developing countries must have a genuine voice in setting the rules, alongside access to scientific knowledge and the resources needed to meet common standards.

And who should lead this effort? Not one superpower, not a handful of billionaires and certainly not an exclusive club of governments deciding that everybody else can inherit the risks without sharing the authority. The United Nations should provide the negotiating framework, supported by independent scientists, international institutions and civil society. Governments must accept that certain risks are too consequential to be left entirely to national discretion.

None of this guarantees survival. Treaties cannot eliminate accidents, malicious actors or every unpredictable consequence of scientific discovery. But uncertainty is not an argument for political paralysis. It is a reason to build safeguards before the emergency arrives.

The year 2100 may seem distant to politicians whose horizons rarely extend beyond the next election. For the generations expected to live in that century, however, it is not an abstract date. It is their future, their societies and their planet. We cannot promise them a world without danger. We can stop pretending that every danger must first become a disaster before governments take it seriously.

Humanity has spent centuries negotiating how to fight wars between nations. It is time to negotiate how to prevent threats that could make those wars, and perhaps humanity itself, irrelevant. The ultimate national security interest is the continued existence of humanity. Every flag, every ideology, every corporation and every government is subordinate to that single condition. Without a future, there is nobody left to govern, conquer, regulate or profit.

Berserk Alert! #123 #Cartoon by Tony Zuvela

 

Tony Zuvela and his view of the world around us in a constant berserk alert!
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Walk the talk 26#017 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

The term “talk the talk, walk the walk” is a phrase in English
that means a person should support what they say, not just with words,
but also through action. Actions speak louder than words.

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The strait of illusions by Harry S. Taylor

The contemporary dogma wants if something is not under control, send more soldiers, more aircraft, more missiles and more money. Eventually, they tell themselves, the map will become obedient. Yemen has spent years proving the opposite.

Now Saudi Arabia and its Yemeni allies are preparing a new offensive aimed at reversing Houthi gains around the Bab al-Mandab Strait, including territory that gives the Houthis direct leverage over one of the world's most important maritime chokepoints. The objective is understandable: reopen the Red Sea and make commercial shipping safe again. The problem is that the proposed solution belongs to another century.

A conventional army can capture a town. It can seize a port. It can destroy a weapons depot. It can establish checkpoints and parade its generals in front of television cameras. But none of this guarantees control over a narrow stretch of sea when the opponent does not need to defeat your army to make shipping dangerous.

That is the uncomfortable lesson of asymmetric warfare. A cheap drone does not need to sink a fleet. A missile does not need to destroy a container ship every day. A small boat does not need to defeat a navy. The threat itself is enough. If shipping companies believe that one vessel in a hundred could become the next target, insurance costs rise, crews become nervous, schedules change and ships take the long way around Africa.

The battlefield therefore moves from Yemen's mountains to corporate boardrooms in Rotterdam, Singapore and Copenhagen. And this is where the military logic begins to look almost absurd. Saudi Arabia can spend billions trying to secure the coastline. International navies can patrol the water. Aircraft can bomb launch sites. Intelligence services can hunt commanders. Yet the Houthis do not need permanent command of the sea. They need only the capacity to make the sea uncertain.

Uncertainty is their weapon. The obsession with “securing” Bab al-Mandab also ignores the fundamental political failure underneath the military problem. Yemen is not a pirate nest that can simply be cleaned out. It is a fractured country where competing armed groups, regional powers, local interests and political grievances have survived years of intervention. Even the anti-Houthi camp remains deeply fragmented.

The fantasy is that one more offensive will finally produce a decisive victory. We have heard that fantasy before. Military campaigns in Yemen have repeatedly demonstrated that bombing does not manufacture political legitimacy. Nor does capturing territory automatically produce stability. Every new offensive risks producing another generation of fighters who understand the conflict not as geopolitics but as survival.

And while generals discuss corridors and chokepoints, ordinary Yemenis pay the bill. The cruel irony is that the more aggressively Riyadh tries to impose security through force, the greater the possibility that the Red Sea becomes even less secure. Escalation creates retaliation. Retaliation creates more escalation. And every round provides another justification for the next.

This is not security. It is an industrial process for manufacturing insecurity. The world also needs to abandon another dangerous illusion: that global shipping can be made permanently safe by military power alone. Maritime commerce depends on predictability, not domination. A warship can protect a vessel today. It cannot guarantee that tomorrow's vessel will not face a different drone, a different missile or a different armed group.

The Bab al-Mandab crisis is therefore not simply a Yemeni military problem. It is a warning about the fragility of globalisation itself. If governments want secure shipping, they need diplomacy, political settlements, regional arrangements and serious investment in Yemen's reconstruction alongside defensive maritime protection.

Otherwise, they will keep trying to bomb uncertainty out of existence. And uncertainty, unlike a military target, cannot be bombed. The tragedy is that everyone knows this. They just keep ordering the missiles anyway.

Morals for sale by Marja Heikkinen

Welcome to the age of Transaction Realism, where democracy has a price tag, climate targets have an escape clause, and international solidarity lasts precisely until somebody discovers a cheaper barrel of oil. The grand language of Western foreign policy is being stripped of its expensive packaging, revealing the familiar machinery underneath: money, resources, leverage and the eternal political fear of voters paying too much at the petrol station.

Apparently, principles are wonderful things, provided they do not interfere with business. For years, Western governments presented sanctions as instruments of moral and strategic pressure against aggression, authoritarianism and violations of international law. They promised that economic consequences would make hostile governments reconsider their behaviour. Then energy markets became unstable, domestic prices climbed, and suddenly yesterday's untouchable adversaries became tomorrow's potential suppliers.

The United States' move to accommodate Russian diesel shipments while its war against Iran has disrupted energy markets captures the contradiction perfectly. Washington can declare Moscow a strategic adversary in the morning and explore commercial opportunities with it in the afternoon. Somewhere between the presidential announcement and the next fuel delivery, geopolitical morality apparently requires a small administrative adjustment.

This is not diplomacy with a conscience. It is diplomacy with a calculator. Of course, governments have a responsibility to keep energy affordable, protect industrial production and prevent economic shocks from devastating ordinary households. Nobody can heat a home with a declaration of democratic solidarity. No truck driver can fill a tank with international law, and no struggling family should be expected to finance an endless succession of geopolitical mistakes without asking questions.

But acknowledging economic reality is not the same as surrendering every strategic principle whenever the market becomes uncomfortable. That distinction is disappearing. The climate crisis provides another spectacular example of this political double bookkeeping. Governments promise decarbonisation, announce ambitious targets and congratulate themselves on their environmental leadership. Then an energy emergency arrives, and fossil fuels are suddenly indispensable, drilling becomes patriotic, and long-term climate obligations are pushed into the cupboard beside the Christmas decorations.

The problem is not that emergency measures are sometimes necessary. The problem is that emergencies increasingly become excuses for avoiding the structural changes that would make societies less vulnerable in the first place.

Energy independence cannot be achieved simply by changing the flag on the tanker. Replacing dependence on one authoritarian supplier with dependence on another powerful supplier is not independence; it is rearranging the furniture in the same burning house.

Renewable energy, storage, interconnected electricity grids, efficiency and diversified supply are not merely environmental luxuries. They are instruments of strategic autonomy. Every country that reduces its exposure to volatile fossil-fuel markets acquires a little more freedom to make foreign-policy decisions without looking nervously at the next oil-price announcement.

Yet political leaders often prefer the immediate spectacle of a deal to the slower, less glamorous work of building resilience. Transaction Realism thrives on this short-termism. It measures success in contracts signed, shipments secured, tariffs imposed and investment figures announced. It asks whether a transaction benefits the national balance sheet today, but rarely whether it creates a dangerous dependency tomorrow.

The same logic threatens international alliances. If cooperation is reduced to a sequence of commercial exchanges, allies become customers, adversaries become potential business partners, and security guarantees begin to resemble subscription services whose conditions can change without notice.

For smaller countries, this is particularly dangerous. They cannot always match the economic or military leverage of superpowers. Their protection depends partly on predictable rules, functioning institutions and the expectation that agreements mean something beyond the immediate interests of whoever occupies the presidential palace.

When great powers treat commitments as disposable, the resulting uncertainty spreads far beyond the original dispute. International law faces a similar problem. Treaties cannot eliminate power politics, and no serious observer should pretend that states have ever pursued foreign policy through pure altruism. But rules provide a framework within which competing interests can be managed without every disagreement becoming a contest of economic or military coercion.

If commercial convenience consistently overrides those rules, the strongest states acquire greater freedom while weaker states inherit greater insecurity. That is not a new international order. It is an old hierarchy wearing a modern business suit. The next decade will certainly be shaped by energy security, critical minerals, supply chains, artificial intelligence and competition for technological dominance. Trade agreements and resource partnerships will influence geopolitical relationships. But the conclusion should not be that democratic values are obsolete or that international law has become an expensive historical curiosity.

Pragmatism should help governments defend their interests without destroying the foundations of cooperation. It should identify sustainable alternatives, strengthen alliances and make economic pressure more effective. It should not become a sophisticated vocabulary for explaining why yesterday's promises no longer apply.

The real test of Western leadership is not whether it can negotiate a profitable deal with an adversary. It is whether it can do so without sacrificing the security of its allies, abandoning its climate commitments or turning international law into a rulebook reserved for weaker countries. Because when everything becomes transactional, eventually everything has a price, including trust. And once trust becomes just another commodity, the bill for its replacement can be considerably higher than the price of oil.

World Citizens Urge Renewed Efforts to End US-Iran War By René Wadlow

Seven months into the United States (U.S.)-Iran war, with threats of further military escalation and fears of worsening humanitarian suffering, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, on an official visit to Pakistan on October 6, 2026, called for an end to the U.S.-Islamic Republic of Iran war. He hopes that Pakistan can play an important role in helping to establish negotiations between the U.S. and Iran.

The armed conflict began in February 2026 with the joint U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran followed by Iranian responses of attacks on U.S.-linked sites in Jordan and several Gulf states. Maritime passages have been blocked in the Straits of Hormuz. The conflict has had an impact on the wider region. Saudi Arabia and the coalition it backs in Yemen have begun a counter-offensive against the Houthis. Saudi Arabia has sent fighter jets to aid its anti-Houthi allies.

As a consequence of the armed conflict, the Iranian authorities are intensifying the crackdown on any form of internal dissent. The crackdown is particularly acute on members of Iran’s ethnic communities such as the Kurds and on economically disadvantaged citizens.

From the start of the armed conflict, the Association of World Citizens has called for negotiations in good faith to halt the fighting and to help rebuild the destroyed infrastructure. World Citizens have highlighted the need to empower local actors to work together for peace.

These needs continue today. The time for positive action may be short before violence spreads. Urgent action is needed. Nongovernmental Organizations may be able to play an active role.

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Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

Maples & Oranges #074 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Taunting oranges in the midst of other fruity links,
constantly spreading the wares of their juicy gloom.

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Oct 14, 1912; Roosevelt survives assassination attempt

On October 14, 1912; Theodore Roosevelt was supposed to be campaigning for the presidency. Instead, he became the sort of historical character whom history, with its taste for theatrical absurdity, seems to have invented.

Roosevelt was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, campaigning as the candidate of the Progressive Party, the movement he had created after breaking with the Republican establishment and its nominee, William Howard Taft. He was already a former president, but he was campaigning as if the presidency were something he had temporarily misplaced and intended to retrieve.

Then came the gunshot. John Flammang Schrank, a saloonkeeper from New York, approached Roosevelt as the former president was leaving his hotel. Schrank fired a revolver at close range. The bullet struck Roosevelt in the chest. What happened next became one of those extraordinary episodes in American political history in which fact seems to compete with mythology.

Roosevelt did not immediately collapse. He was wearing a heavy overcoat, and the folded manuscript of his speech was in the breast pocket. The bullet passed through the manuscript before entering his body, which probably helped slow it. Roosevelt coughed and discovered that he was not coughing blood. He concluded that the bullet had not entered his lung.

It had, in fact, lodged in his chest. The sensible thing would have been to go directly to a hospital. Roosevelt had never been particularly interested in doing the sensible thing.

He was driven to the Milwaukee Auditorium, where thousands of supporters were waiting. There, instead of allowing doctors to examine him, he informed the audience that he had just been shot.

And then he produced one of the most spectacular lines in the history of American political theatre. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he effectively told them, “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.” The bullet was still inside him. He nevertheless proceeded to speak.

The story has acquired the sheen of legend because it fits Roosevelt almost too perfectly: the exuberant former president, the hunter, reformer, soldier, cowboy, naturalist and political warrior refusing to let a piece of lead interrupt his evening. But beneath the heroism there is something more complicated and considerably more interesting.

Roosevelt's refusal to stop was not merely courage. It was also performance. He understood politics as theatre long before television made every politician a permanent actor. Roosevelt knew the value of the physical gesture, the dramatic sentence, the carefully constructed image of personal vitality. He had cultivated the persona of the vigorous American man precisely because it represented his political philosophy. Weakness, hesitation and passivity were not simply personal defects in his worldview; they were political dangers.

So the wounded candidate walked onto a stage. He spoke for roughly eighty minutes. Only afterward did he permit himself to be taken to a hospital. The doctors discovered that the bullet was lodged near his ribs. They decided not to remove it because attempting to do so could have caused more damage. Roosevelt carried it for the rest of his life.

There is an almost irresistible temptation to celebrate the episode as proof of extraordinary toughness. Roosevelt himself certainly understood its political value. The image was irresistible: an American politician literally bleeding into his shirt while continuing to campaign.

But history should occasionally resist the mythology it creates. There is courage in Roosevelt's decision. There is also recklessness. That distinction matters. Political cultures often turn dangerous behaviour into virtue when it happens to a charismatic man. Had Roosevelt collapsed on the platform, had the bullet punctured an artery, had he developed a fatal infection, the same decision might today be described less as courage than as extraordinary irresponsibility.

Yet Roosevelt's political instincts were correct about one thing: the attempt did not weaken him. It strengthened the legend. Schrank, who had no coherent political connection to Roosevelt's opponents, later claimed that he had been inspired by a dream involving William McKinley, the president assassinated in 1901. He believed Roosevelt was seeking an unprecedented third term and therefore needed to be stopped. Roosevelt, apparently, had become something larger in Schrank's imagination than a political candidate. He had become a dangerous symbol.

That, too, feels remarkably modern. American politics in 1912 was already saturated with personality, resentment and political paranoia. Roosevelt's campaign was itself an extraordinary rebellion against the established order. He accused Taft's Republican administration of surrendering to corporate interests and conservative party bosses. The Progressive platform demanded political reform, workers' protections, women's suffrage, regulation of big business and a more active democratic state.

Roosevelt was not simply asking voters to choose between two men. He was asking them to choose between two versions of America. And he was prepared to bleed for his version. But the election produced a curious historical irony. Roosevelt survived the bullet but lost the presidency. Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the election, while Roosevelt finished second, ahead of Taft. The Progressive experiment would soon fade, and the Republican Party would eventually recover its dominance.

Roosevelt's political defeat therefore sits beside his physical survival in an almost comic contradiction. The bullet could not stop him. The voters could. Perhaps that is the most important lesson of Milwaukee. Democracy does not ultimately depend upon the physical courage of its politicians. It depends upon something much less cinematic: institutions, elections, disagreement, restraint and the willingness to accept defeat.

Roosevelt's story is magnificent because it contains all the ingredients of the American political myth: violence, ambition, theatre, masculinity, reform and an almost pathological refusal to surrender. But it should not become an instruction manual. The greatest democratic leader is not necessarily the one who can stand on a stage with a bullet in his chest. It is the one who understands when to leave the stage.

Roosevelt survived because he was extraordinarily fortunate, physically resilient and surrounded by circumstances that happened to favour him. His speech manuscript slowed the bullet. His coat absorbed some of its energy. The bullet missed vital organs. His doctors chose not to remove it. And, most importantly, he lived.

That combination of courage and luck is what history often disguises as destiny. Theodore Roosevelt's bullet eventually became part of the story of Theodore Roosevelt. But perhaps the more revealing fact is that the man was already larger than the bullet before it was fired.

He had made himself into a political spectacle. On that October evening in Milwaukee, he simply refused to let anyone including a gunman, rewrite the script.

The sanctions circus by John Reid

On 9 October 2026, Donald Trump announced an agreement with Vladimir Putin for Russian diesel supplies, while the US Treasury issued a temporary general licence permitting transactions involving Russian-origin diesel through 7 April 2027. The announcement represented a striking reversal of the policy designed to restrict Moscow's energy revenues following its invasion of Ukraine. The justification was familiar: get more fuel into the market and bring prices down. The political timing, with American midterm elections approaching, makes the domestic pressure impossible to ignore.

Welcome to energy realpolitik, where international principles remain solid until the petrol station starts charging too much. Sanctions were never magic. They were economic instruments intended to raise the cost of aggression, restrict resources available to an adversary and demonstrate that violating international norms would carry consequences. Their effectiveness depends on coordination, enforcement and the credible expectation that governments will maintain pressure when the going gets uncomfortable.

But what happens when the governments imposing those sanctions begin treating them like temporary inconveniences? Moscow receives a rather useful lesson: Western resolve has a price, and that price can be discovered by waiting for Western consumers to become angry. A government can endure condemnation, diplomatic isolation and financial restrictions if it believes its opponents will eventually panic over inflation, supply shortages or electoral arithmetic.

The Kremlin does not need to defeat the sanctions architecture in one spectacular stroke. It only needs to watch its architects dismantle it themselves, one exemption at a time. And Washington is hardly operating in a vacuum. Energy markets have been battered by conflict, disrupted supply chains and insecurity surrounding critical shipping routes. Diesel is particularly sensitive because it powers trucks, agricultural machinery, industrial operations and much of the machinery that keeps economies moving. When its price rises, the pain travels from the transport depot to the supermarket shelf. Governments cannot simply lecture families about geopolitical discipline while pretending that household budgets do not exist.

That is the legitimate dilemma. The disgrace begins when short-term relief is presented as a strategic triumph without adequately confronting its wider consequences. The American administration has promoted Russian diesel supplies as a way to increase availability and ease prices. Yet the actual market impact remains uncertain. Additional shipments do not automatically create an equivalent increase in global supply; they may simply redirect cargoes away from other buyers. If that happens, the immediate political theatre could produce far less economic relief than advertised, while allowing Russian exporters to benefit from renewed commercial opportunities.

In other words, the public may receive the promise of cheaper diesel while Moscow receives something considerably more tangible: another demonstration that Western restrictions can be relaxed when circumstances become inconvenient. That is a dangerous bargain. Authoritarian governments study Western behaviour with the same attention that Western intelligence agencies devote to theirs. They notice which threats survive an economic downturn, which alliances endure a change of administration and which principles disappear when a leader faces an angry electorate. Every concession becomes information. Every exemption becomes a precedent.

China, Iran and other governments navigating an increasingly multipolar world have their own strategic calculations, and their circumstances differ. But the broader lesson is universal: economic coercion loses credibility when its targets can reasonably expect the coalition applying it to retreat under domestic pressure.

Sanctions are not simply about money. They are also about expectations. If governments repeatedly announce that aggression carries consequences, then quietly suspend those consequences when energy prices become politically dangerous, they undermine their own future bargaining power. The next adversary will ask not merely how much pain sanctions can inflict, but how long the imposing governments can tolerate the pain themselves.

And there is another rotten ingredient in this recipe: hypocrisy. Western leaders have often demanded that citizens accept economic sacrifices in defence of democracy, sovereignty and international security. Those sacrifices become much harder to justify when the same leaders abandon their own restrictions without a transparent account of what they have obtained in return.

If sanctions relief is intended to secure peace, where are the verifiable concessions? If it is supposed to stabilise markets, where is the credible evidence that the benefits will reach consumers? If it is a temporary emergency measure, what prevents temporary from becoming permanent?

A telephone conversation and a shipment schedule are not substitutes for a durable settlement. The answer is not to pretend that sanctions must never change. They should change when circumstances justify it, when negotiated progress can be demonstrated, or when evidence shows that a different approach would better serve the stated objectives. But changes must be deliberate, transparent and tied to measurable outcomes—not improvised as political life rafts whenever domestic pressure rises.

Western democracies cannot eliminate the cost of geopolitical confrontation. They can, however, stop making their strategic commitments look like disposable campaign promises.

The final irony is that the governments most eager to advertise their toughness may be teaching their adversaries precisely how to outlast them. A sanctions regime that collapses under the weight of its own political contradictions is not merely weakened; it becomes a guidebook for future challengers.

The Kremlin understands the value of patience. Western leaders should understand the cost of inconsistency. Because when international security is traded for the hope of a cheaper tank of diesel, the immediate transaction may be measured in fuel. The long-term bill arrives in credibility, deterrence and the lives of people who discover that geopolitical promises have an expiry date.

And that is how sanctions die: not necessarily with a dramatic announcement, but with a carefully worded exemption, a presidential handshake and the familiar excuse that there was simply no alternative.