The new year is not just the old year plus one. It will be another year. A different year.
Not only because the calendar has changed. But because things, people and the world have changed with it.
The farmers’ blockades and every other aggravation of the day may be inconveniencing travelers, but at least it doesn’t go further than a few tractors blocking Greece’s national roads.
Which is more than can be said for the world at large, where new geopolitical balances and international alignments are taking shape, without Greek protesters lending a hand.
In 2026, the international community will be called upon to address two open wounds and a fundamental problem.
The wounds are, of course, Ukraine and the Middle East. The problem is the United States.
For the first (and perhaps the only) time in the post-war era, the world’s most powerful nation, which has defended the basic coordinates of the international system and guaranteed its stability since the end of World War II, is behaving as though it has moved over to the opposition camp.
Incomprehensible choices, ill-thought-out behavior and unpredictable consequences offer up a scary prospect. In the last few days, the US has even gone so far as to ban well-known Europeans from entering its territory.
All of which comes across as chaotic. But even chaos eventually settles into (a new) order. At a cost, of course.
Except that many of us suspect all this may not simply stem from a single egomaniac sowing disorder and unrest. That, in fact, it is part of an ideological project. One which calls into question the very foundations of the world system.
Of course, the plan is overblown and incoherent. But that doesn’t make it any less frightening and dangerous.
The new year will allow us to form a clearer picture along, perhaps, with a more well-informed assessment of the problem.
Most importantly, it will provide an opportunity to shape the terms of our own response to it.
On one condition. That the European Union sets aside its nonchalance and complacency in order to fight for its very existence on the most favorable terms possible.
Those, at least, who are determined not to allow the European dream to die, and decades of hard work to go for naught, at the hands of a Russia-loving Hungarian or Slovak and a Flemish nationalist.
In other words, the European Union is not being called upon to chart America’s course. That’s not its job.
But it is being called upon to navigate through a world that seems very different from the one we have known till now.
As we embark on 2026, To Vima would like to wish all its readers and their families health and happiness. But also to wish that we can maintain the greatest political good there is, which is free and democratic dialogue, for all our sakes.
