The world order as it has stood for decades "no longer exists" – and he warned the United States that it will not be powerful enough to "go it alone" in the new age of great power politics.

Great power politics, it seems, offers strong and easy answers – at least to the big players, and at least at a first glance," he said. “Under this illusion, big power politics turns away from a world in which increasing connectivity translates into the rule of law and peaceful relations between states. Big power politics has its own rules. It is fast, harsh, and often unpredictable."

"A divide has opened up between Europe and the United States," Merz said. "Vice President J.D. Vance said this very openly here at the Munich Security Conference a year ago, and he was right." However, Merz said he does not subscribe to Vance's diagnosis, speaking instead of European values – including those in direct disagreement with the Trump administration's decisions and beliefs, in particular its withdrawal from multilateral organisations and abandonment of efforts to combat the climate emergency.

“The culture wars of MAGA in the US are not ours," he insisted. “Freedom of speech here ends where the words spoken are directed against human dignity and our basic law. We do not believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade. We stick to climate agreements and the World Health Organization because we're convinced that global challenges can only be solved together."

Merz insisted that Russia could not yet be trusted to negotiate in good faith on ending its assault – and called out Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's visit to Moscow in 2024, albeit without naming him. "There was somebody from the European Union, a prime minister, who travelled to Moscow on his own," Merz recalled. "He had no mandate; he went there, he achieved nothing. In the week after, we saw the heaviest attacks on civil infrastructure, and private homes, on hospitals, we had ever seen until this time.

"So if it makes sense to talk, we are willing to talk," Merz continued. "But as you can see with the American side, Russia is not yet willing to talk seriously. This war will only end when Russia is at least economically, potentially militarily, exhausted. Russia has to give up this terrible war against Ukraine, and we have to do everything that is needed to bring them to the point where they see no further advantages for them to continue this terrible war.

"Russia's GDP is currently about €2 trillion. That of the European Union is almost 10 times as high – but still, Europe is not 10 times as strong as Russia today. "Our military, political, economic, and technological potential is huge, but we haven't tapped it to the necessary extent for a very long time. So the most important thing is to flick the switch in our minds now. We have to understand that in the era of big powers, our freedom is no longer a given. It is at stake. We will need to show firmness and determination to assert this freedom.”

The defiance against America that has consumed Canadian life for over a year now has finally spread to the rest of the West. The message of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos last month — that of a “rupture in the world order” — was not new for Canadians. Just after his election in April, Mr. Carney declared that “our old relationship with the United States, a relationship based on steadily increasing integration, is over.” At Davos, the moment caught up with him, and with Canada.

Throughout last year, the consensus among many European policymakers in the face of Donald Trump’s bombast was to wait out the nonsense and appease when possible. Mr. Carney’s speech arrived at the exact point at which that position proved untenable: Mr. Trump’s intensifying threats to forcibly annex Greenland, not to mention his insults to NATO troops who fought and died alongside U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. “They stayed a little back, little off the front lines” is a statement that will be remembered in Europe alongside “Ich bin ein Berliner” and “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” as a presidential remark that embodies the American spirit of its moment. Suddenly, Mr. Trump’s mindless drive toward territorial expansion and his desire to humiliate and degrade were impossible to ignore. For Canada, though, America’s disrespect and intimidation are now standard issue. The U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, seems to have been installed primarily as an insult engine, tasked mainly with belittling his hosts wherever and wherever possible. (His advice to Canadians upset by Mr. Trump’s remarks that Canada should be the 51st American state: “Move on.”) Recent revelations that U.S. officials have been meeting with Albertan separatists have indicated that the Trump administration may not have given up on the idea of Canada’s dissolution. Threatening one’s neighbors, as Canada has learned the hard way over the last year, is a hallmark of autocracy-minded leaders.

… American aggression and American decline are of a piece. As Mr. Carney has announced a slew of measures aimed at boosting Canada’s electric vehicle industry, nobody has argued for a moment that American equivalents could compete. By ending E.V. tax credits, Mr. Trump may have all but ensured that the American electric vehicle will one day be a thing of the past. America has decided not to compete. It would rather pose. If you are integrating yourself into the American sphere of influence, or whatever Mr. Trump’s national security apparatus calls it, you are integrating yourself into antiquity — or worse.

At the same time, America is becoming synonymous with dangerous randomness. The constitutional system is in collapse. The legislative branch, made up of both Democrats and Republicans, is missing in action. The Supreme Court debates the legal equivalent of how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, while the legal order that has held the country together for 250 years sputters toward an ignominious end. Nobody knows what America is anymore — not Americans, not their enemies, not their friends…The West is feeling its betrayal turn into rage. The world is waking up to both its vulnerability and its value. But better late than never: We’re all Canadian now.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/canada-america-anger-carney.html?unlocked_article_code=1.KFA.R4KP.rY_jJZQArPek&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Vladimir Putin’s promised “weeklong” pause in strikes on Ukraine’s power plants lasted just four days; will the Russian thugocrat pay any price for yet again breaking his word? President Donald Trump announced from the Oval Office last Thursday that Putin had agreed to the pause as a humanitarian gesture amid a brutally cold winter. Supposedly, Moscow (suddenly) didn’t want to wage war on civilians.

Yet Tuesday’s barrage of 450 drones and 70 missiles, Russia’s largest such assault in nearly four years of war, aimed at the very infrastructure Vlad had claimed he wouldn’t target. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky called this exactly what it is: “Moscow is choosing terror and escalation,” not peace. Putin broke his word to Trump, ruthlessly attacking civilians one day ahead of planned US-brokered negotiations in Abu Dhabi; will our president just take it?

… When will the president show some rage at Putin’s nonstop lies and broken promises?…Months of jawboning (and feeding Putin’s ego by doing face-to-face talks) hasn’t gotten the monster of Moscow to budge an inch; Russia’s still bent on total conquest no matter how long, or how much blood on both sides, it takes.

… Since Vlad keeps spitting on carrots, Trump’s people should be hitting him with lots of sticks: Get Kyiv more offensive as well as defensive capabilities; squeeze Moscow’s energy industry as hard as it’s hitting Ukraine’s. Putin’s plainly laughing at Trump’s weak-seeming will; time to teach him what “peace through strength” really means.

https://nypost.com/2026/02/03/opinion/its-time-to-hit-lying-putin-with-lots-of-sticks/