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April has been an incredibly busy month so far. Below you will find the articles I have produced. With a global trade war now upon us, it seems unlikely that I'll run out of things to report on, any time soon. 1 April - Europe prepares itself for all-out war with Russia 3 April - Beware of Americans offering to make you safe 5 April - Values will get you into wars, not out of them 7 April - The European Union should reform or die - by Ian Proud 9 April - Europe will block any minor concessions to bring peace to Ukraine If you appreciate my work, please consider buying me a coffee  or purchasing a copy of my book, A Misfit in Moscow .

Like the US, they should seek to intermediate in talks, not promote the interests of one side in a losing war I am aiming to cut through the warmongering propaganda with balanced analysis and a desire to fill the diplomacy vacuum in our troubled world. If you find my work helpful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or buying me a coffee . Alternatively, I’d be delighted if you purchased a copy of the memoir of my diplomatic posting to Russia, A Misfit in Moscow . Thank you very much. President Zelensky now attends every major European meeting of Heads. While perhaps understandable, that means the agenda gets hijacked by Ukrainian talking points and limits Europe’s ability to play an impartial role in peace talks. European leaders met again in Paris on 27 March to discuss ideas for a coalition of the willing, specifically, a group of European nations that would be willing to provide security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a future peace process. That meeting produced no new breakthroughs and the co-hosts, President Macron of France and Prime Minister Starmer of Britain, held separate press conferences at the end. Yet again, it wasn’t possible to reach a consensus on the controversial topic of using frozen Russian assets for reconstruction in Ukraine, given the significant legal and financial risks around this. No new determination was reached on the controversial notion of deploying western ‘reassurance’ troops to Ukraine in the future. Some European countries including Greece and Italy have made it clear that they see this as an unworkable and dangerous step. Unworkable, because the deployment of, essentially, NATO troops to Ukraine, will almost certainly face resistance from Russia. Dangerous because, even the most optimistic western commentators are talking about a deployed European force of 30,000 troops, which is tiny when set against the 600,000 Russian troops thought to be in Ukraine right now. But there is a deeper problem. Proposals to deploy troops to Ukraine, however unworkable and dangerous, are addressing the wrong question. The United States and, indirectly, the NATO Secretary General, have admitted that Ukraine’s desire to join the military alliance is off of the table. The Paris summit would have better focused on the detail of what security guarantees for Ukraine might look like as part of any peace deal. This might be along the lines of an Article 5 type of commitment by willing European states, as recommended by the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni. Leaders like Macron and Starmer can’t claim the threat of a military force is a tactic to put pressure on Russia to strike for peace, given the proposed force’s limited size and the reality that it would take months, at the current rate of progress, for troops to arrive in Ukraine, if they ever did. Yet again, this talks to Europe’s inability to fight wars by committee. Big meetings in Paris give European leaders their moment to say the right things, express solidarity and offer every type of support short of assistance. But, and fundamentally, they offer no new ideas and inject no new energy or momentum into efforts to bring peace to Ukraine. In fact, in terms of the substance, the events have become a distraction from and a delaying tactic to, real peace. A contributing factor, it seems to me, is the inability of Europe’s leaders to hold a meeting without inviting President Zelensky of Ukraine. He appears, in his cargo pants and black sweatshirt, to be treated like royalty. And, of course, it may be understandable that people feel a sense of solidarity with Ukraine at a time of war and feel a personal affinity to Zelensky. But the question remains, what role does Zelensky play at these talks? Clearly, he arrives with his own talking points and a package of narratives to deploy during his many press engagements in Europe. These include the need to impose more sanctions on Russia, that Europe should force Putin to make peace, that only strengthening Ukraine with more weapons will help. You’ve probably heard these lines countless times before because they are aggressively deployed by every Ukrainian official and media outlet. As Ukraine is fighting Russia on the battlefield, I understand their need to pursue an aggressive public communications posture as part of their wider war effort, including to prop up morale at home. In Zelensky’s shoes, I might pursue a similar tactic. And yet, the lines he advances, on sanctions and applying pressure on Russia all appear, most likely, to extend the war, not end it. They certainly offer nothing new, in the context where Ukraine is losing on the battlefield, and the tried and tested tools to thwart Russia have all failed. Yet, because Zelensky attends every major European meeting now on the war effort, his narratives dominate the agenda of the day, whether or people believe that his proposals will work. So, during his press conference in Paris, and following Zelensky’s script, Starmer said that the west should impose more sanctions on Russia as part of efforts to force President Putin to make peace. This despite the fact that eleven years after the first sanctions were introduced, Russia’s economy still outperforms those in Europe. (Indeed, this week the UK Office of Budget Responsibility halved its estimate of UK economic growth in 2025 from 2% to 1%.) Or that, with Russia still retaining the upper hand on the battlefield in Ukraine, imposing further sanctions now will merely, and self-evidently, discourage President Putin from agreeing any peace deal. An extremely small potential package of sanctions relief on the Russian Agricultural Bank hangs in the balance, despite the US agreeing with the Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Saudi this week to unlock the Black Sea deal. President Macron has said that there can be no sanctions relief until there is complete peace. The European Commission Press Spokesperson has said that sanctions can’t be removed until the compete withdrawal of Russia troops in Ukraine, a position that clearly hasn’t been discussed or agreed with other EU Member States. These British, French and wider European pronouncements might be well-meaning, but they are usually unhelpful. On top of the already challenging bureaucratic straitjacket on Europe making a constructive input into peace talks, the presence of Zelensky at all of their meetings inevitably drags them towards agreeing and promoting his agenda. And, of course, it also means that Russia does not see Europe as an independent actor in any peace talks, as it has become an extension of Ukraine and unable to adopt an impartial position. Not least as European leaders seldom, if ever, engage directly with President Putin. That’s why Putin has been open to engaging in peace talks with Trump, because he sees that the US is trying to intermediate in talks, rather than simply taking sides with Ukraine. Zelensky has now ‘insisted’ that Britain and France should be represented at any future peace talks for Ukraine. In truth, if Starmer and Macron want to play a more prominent role in the process, they should invite Zelensky to fewer meetings.

It's time to sell, baby, sell! I am aiming to cut through the warmongering propaganda with balanced analysis and a desire to fill the diplomacy vacuum in our troubled world. If you find my work helpful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or buying me a coffee . Alternatively, I’d be delighted if you purchased a copy of the memoir of my diplomatic posting to Russia, A Misfit in Moscow . Thank you very much. As President Trump threatens the world with sweeping tariffs, he is trying to change the fundamental laws of economics through force of will. He shouldn’t succeed. Reciprocal tariffs will hurt developing countries more than the USA; they should instead sell off U.S. debt. The Austrian American economist Ludwig von Mises once said that ‘the balance of payments theory forgets that the volume of trade is completely dependent on prices.’ The United States has such a gigantic trade deficit, at over $1 trillion each year, because it can buy foreign goods cheaper than it can produce them domestically. Some countries subsidise production to lower prices for export advantage while others export goods further down the value chain. But, the U.S. dollar is so powerful, that it renders American exports more expensive, irrespective of the distortions and disadvantages of its trading partners. This is part of the exorbitant privilege in which the U.S. dollar remains the world’s leading reserve currency, amounting to 58% of total reserves. Foreign countries put their capital into the U.S. precisely because it is a stable and safe, raising the price of the dollar on exchange markets because demand is always high. A strong greenback makes imports cheaper and that helps manage inflation in America. President Trump clearly wants to boost his support in the blue collar heartlands of America, driving job creation in traditional American industry that has been undercut by foreign imports over many years. But he can’t have two cakes and eat them both. He can’t simultaneously slash the huge U.S. balance of payments deficit – helping blue collar workers – while at the same time maintaining the U.S. as the destination of choice for foreign capital. That would be to defy the logic of economics. To oversimplify slightly, America has built its bloated Federal apparatus on the back of cheap imports. The huge current account surpluses that exporting powerhouses like China, India, some European and ASEAN countries run produces a torrent of easy capital that props up the U.S. state. The U.S. has a debt mountain of around $35 trillion which is roughly the equivalent sum of debt held by foreign investors. Of that debt, around $8.5 trillion is in the form of U.S. Treasuries, literally loans to the U.S. government, with a similar amount invested in corporate debt and the rest largely in equity. That’s why Trump is going in so hard with Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative. He’s desperate to reduce the size of the U.S. state apparatus because he knows that the Federal house of cards is built on fiscal quicksand. He probably figures that the political benefits of promoting employment among among the working class are higher than cutting the federal workforce. If his plan works. Because the real challenge to the U.S. is not the federal debt itself but its ability to service its debt. The exorbitant privilege, coupled with the massively disinflationary tidal wave of the global financial crisis, ushered in a period of historically low inflation and low interest rates. That era has ended, as ratings agency Moody’s pointed out this week. U.S. interest rates are now higher, at 4.25-4.5% driving up the costs of servicing the country’s enormous debt mountain. The threat to the U.S. right now is inflation and what that means for its debt servicing bill, if interest rates are held or, even, forced higher. That’s why the idea of a BRICS currency is so terrifying to Trump, because BRICS now accounts for 41% of the global economy by purchasing power parity. A BRICS currency (a highly speculative idea, frankly, at this stage) might pose a longer-term risk of making the dollar less appealing and, therefore, weaker, driving up inflation. There are parallels here for the 1970s, when rampant inflation, triggered by a number of factors including the oil crisis and America’s move to a fiat currency, led U.S. interest rates to soar at one point to 20%. During this period, foreign countries withdrew their investments, and the dollar slumped to 45% of total global foreign exchange reserves. And herein Trump’s challenge. He can’t export more without a weak dollar, and a weak dollar will make U.S. debt harder to services. Tariffs are simply his attempt to bully less developed economies for America’s political and economic advantage. They impose a cost on foreign exporters that is unrelated to the price of the goods, as determined by the rate of exchange at any time. And there is little value for an individual country in responding with reciprocal tariffs, precisely because they export more to the U.S. than they import. On the escalation ladder of tariffs, developing countries will always lose out. And economic war, like real war, hinges on which belligerent can accept the most pain and continue to fight on. But developing countries have more power than they realise. Countries that export more than they import, build up stocks of foreign exchange that they invest overseas. If you look at the size of countries’ trade surpluses with the U.S. it is insightful. China’s surplus runs out at almost $300 billion each year, for the EU and ASEAN it’s over $220 billion. These countries/blocs all park significant volumes of their capital in the U.S. Rather than fighting a losing tariff, the should accelerate the divestment of long-term debt holdings in U.S. treasuries and corporate debt, undermining the strength of the dollar and adding inflationary pressure. U.S. exports may rise. Exporting countries may need to seek to reinvest in other jurisdictions or repatriate capital (as Russia did in 2014, following the imposition of sanctions). However, and as happened in the 1970s, inflation would become an increasing risk to the U.S. economy over a period of years, as the price of foreign imports rose in the face of a weakening dollar. That would force up interest rates, as the U.S. government sought to shore up demand for the dollar to reduce inflationary pressure. And that would raise the cost of servicing America’s debt mountain. In the art of the deal, threatening to crash the U.S. economy would bring Trump to the table far quicker than a tariff war. As the U.S. President himself might say, ‘sell, baby, sell.’