The last few months have seen it become a fact that the tide of war in Ukraine has finally turned. So at last the hundreds of billions of Euro and dollars that NATO countries have poured into Ukraine, and the hundreds of thousands of sacrificed Ukrainian soldiers, are finally being justified, aren't they? Sorry to say it, but the answer is no.

The last few months have seen it become a fact that the tide of war in Ukraine has finally turned. So at last the hundreds of billions of Euro and dollars that NATO countries have poured into Ukraine, and the hundreds of thousands of sacrificed Ukrainian soldiers, are finally being justified, aren't they? Sorry to say it, but the answer is no.

‘We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline’, said US Foreign Secretary Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference. And he added: We will ‘renew the greatest civilization in human history’. So his message is: The empire is back”!

US president Donald Trump won the elections on a promise to solve US’ domestic problems. As so many US presidents before him, he hasn’t delivered on this promise and has instead started new military adventures in far-away countries. The successful operation to kidnap the Venezuelan president has apparently given him an appetite for more. That spells danger for the rest of the world. And for the US.

The international political and economic system is under reconfiguration, and China is fundamental for this process. China has for decades been a rapidly surging economic power, but will it continue? The country faces many challenges, and there are, as always, China observers predicting doom. This is nothing new. But just because doom-sayers have been wrong up to now, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are wrong again. However, they probably are.