Last week, I questioned how seriously we should take the initial direction of Mr. Trump’s attempt to end the war in Ukraine—an approach that involves openly conceding to Russia’s demand for territorial annexation and a binding commitment to block Ukraine from NATO membership. This was followed by a bizarre attack on Zelensky on X, where the U.S. president accused his Ukrainian counterpart of being a dictator and of instigating the war. On Friday, scenes at the White House made it abundantly clear: we should take it very seriously indeed. On first glance, Noah Smith and Niall Ferguson were right, and I was wrong. The fates of the key players in this drama are deeply intertwined and will converge soon enough, but it’s worth examining them separately.
Read MoreNoah Smith, an American columnist and Substacker, and historian Niall Ferguson both made the mistake last week of attempting to rationalise the Trump administration’s fumbling attempts to get Ukrainian peace talks underway.
Niall Ferguson appears to be making a completely reasonable point—one echoed by numerous other observers last week—that it was a mistake for the U.S. to publicly acknowledge that Ukraine can never become a full member of NATO and that the country must cede territory to Russia as part of any peace deal, even if both positions are widely accepted on the Western and Ukrainian sides of the negotiations. This, of course, was before Mr. Trump went on one of his ill-advised social media rampages, effectively accusing Ukraine of starting the war and labeling its sitting president a dictator.
Read MoreIt has been a while since I last delved into one of my favorite topics: global demographics. In this piece, I revisit the subject by examining high-level data on key global demographic indicators from the UN’s July 2024 Population Prospects database. I will begin with birth rates.
Scarcely a day goes by without an article, podcast, or both highlighting the accelerating decline in global fertility. As I explain in my essay on the fertility wars, this discussion tends to divide interlocutors into two increasingly polarized factions. On one side are those who believe falling fertility is a grave problem; on the other are those who remain more sanguine, viewing declining birth rates as a natural consequence of modernity—or perhaps postmodernism—and less of a threat to economic growth, government budgets, or humanity’s survival. If women choose to have fewer children and prioritize careers and personal freedom—long the exclusive domain of men—shouldn’t we support that choice?
Read MoreMy “Millennial’s Manifesto” is up as an audio essay on Apple Podcast. Go have a listen! Also consider subscribing to the podcast channel. The cadence of these audio essays is slow, one essay every one or two months, so you won’t be overwhelmed by content. I know many people prefer to listen to their content rather than reading (more about that below), and my decision to start publishing audio essays is my attempt to cater for that. Thanks again for reading and listening.
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