Tolstoy’s War and Peace teaches that happiness and peace are built. Trump’s war and peace teach that they are charged for: happiness belongs to the victor, and peace is imposed through pressure, threats, and the interests of the stronger.
Both Tolstoy and Trump believe that war is meaningless—but for opposite reasons. For Tolstoy, peace is the goal. For Trump, it is a tactic—in other words, peace on credit.
In 2026, peace on credit is granted swiftly. Like Ukraine, a strategic property overlooking the Heartland—Russia—Greenland is treated as strategic real estate with a view of the Arctic: strategically vital, resource-rich, and too valuable to remain “someone else’s.” The message is clear: security is provided only in exchange for concessions of sovereignty.
Venezuela represents the other side of the same logic. Ceasefires, pressure, and “humanitarian” concessions come with an implicit claim to oil, influence, and political obedience. Peace—but with collateral.
Iran is the next step in this logic. After prolonged pressure through sanctions—enabled by the contested U.S. practice of deciding who is allowed to sell oil, a form of economic starvation often more cruel than the repression exercised by the regimes governing those societies—Iran has been systematically shaped into an object of direct external control. First, the anger of a hungry population is produced; then peace is offered—not as a right, but as a temporary suspension of pressure.
This is peace without stability. A pause. A breather between two “surgical operations”—often without anesthesia.
History knows this model well. The fifth century. Attila—the “Scourge of God.” Rome paid to avoid being attacked today. Attila took the gold and prepared tomorrow’s campaign. Fear was the currency. Peace was a short-term arrangement.
Trump’s geopolitics operates in much the same way: allies become clients, institutions become obstacles, and international law is reduced to a footnote if it does not serve the “deal.”
By 2026, we have entered a late phase of a natural predatory cycle. The prey has already been weakened: the state or region no longer possesses the strength or autonomy to resist the pressure of a more powerful actor. The ecosystem is unstable, and the system survives only on the fear that tomorrow will be worse. In such circumstances, peace on credit appears preferable to a new global slaughterhouse of war.
If Trump loses personal authority, control over fear, and the loyalty of those who follow him, his order—like Attila’s—will collapse faster than it arose. Peace that depends on one man is not peace. It is a hostage situation.
The problem with peace on credit is simple. Interest payments can still be made, and the appearance of normality maintained. But repayment of the principal exceeds available resources—and at that point the debt becomes unsustainable. The question, therefore, is no longer whether Trump delivers peace, but how long his clients can continue servicing this “peace loan,” and what they will pay with when the “Scourge of God” swings again.
To answer that question, we must look through the lens of natural predatory cycles.
Cascading Predation
The wolf–deer predatory cycle can be read as a metaphor for the hierarchical order of contemporary capitalism, involving American, Western European, and Eastern European billionaires—oligarchs. In nature, the wolf regulates the deer population. But if it becomes too successful, it exhausts its prey, threatening the stability of the entire ecosystem. Once the deer population collapses, the wolf population weakens as well, allowing for a temporary restoration of balance.
In the global financial system, American billionaires function as apex predators. They control capital flows, technological platforms, and financial infrastructure. Western European billionaires occupy a lower rung in the hierarchy—powerful enough to act as regional predators, yet structurally dependent on U.S. markets, the dollar, and the rules of the game. Eastern European oligarchs sit even lower: they manage local resources and political connections but rarely exert influence over global terms of exchange.
Predation unfolds in cascades. American capital pressures Western European industry and finance. Western European billionaires transmit that pressure eastward. Eastern European oligarchs, in turn, extract the remaining value from societies with the weakest institutional protections. When this chain of exploitation becomes too intense, the entire system is depleted: local demand shrinks, political instability rises, and the space for profit narrows.
Seen through the prism of Donald Trump’s predatory appetites, 2026 appears as a phase of overexploitation and destabilization. Trump’s transactional approach—tariffs, threats to withdraw protection, bilateral “deals,” and the fusion of state power with private interests—accelerates the exhaustion of the prey rather than preserving balance. This is the moment when the predator still appears strong, while the environment sustaining the system already shows signs of fatigue: fragmented alliances, growing resistance, and increasingly frequent crises.
As in the wolf–deer ecosystem, such a phase does not produce lasting dominance. Instead, it prepares the ground for a reset—through crisis, regulation, or redistribution of power. In this sense, 2026 can be read as the late stage of a predatory cycle, immediately preceding either the weakening of the predator or a change in the rules of the game.
Donald Trump today stands on the roof of the world—at the apex of power. The problem is that when one reaches the top, the only direction left is downward: along side paths, along routes one has personally cleared, or along paths cleared by others. Trump has chosen the third path—one previously carved out by China and Russia. But he is late, and that delay forces him to adopt increasingly risky methods.
What, then, does this path lead to?
2026 – A World Without an Anchor: China, Russia, and the West in a New Power Game
The world entered 2026 fluid and unstable. There are no clear blocs. The behavior of actors matters more than the structures to which they belong. Power circulates but does not concentrate. Western strategies are short-term and situational. On the one hand, Western Europe tries to uphold norms. On the other, Donald Trump strikes deals outside the institutional West. By contrast, China builds long-term dependencies (through infrastructure projects, technology, and credit). Russia seeks to preserve long-term room for maneuver for a flexible strategy: more options, more exits. The question is no longer who will win, but who will manage to navigate the longest in a world without an anchor.
Meanwhile, for years the Western public has been entitled to a rhetoric according to which the world is entering a “multipolar era.” The term is repeated in political speeches, strategic documents, and analyses, as if it truly described the world we live in. As if we were really moving toward a new stable equilibrium: several great powers, clear blocs, and predictable relations. Reality is different. Messier. More fluid. This very gap is key to understanding the paralysis in which Western theory and practice of international relations have found themselves. At the level of rhetoric, the world is still described as multipolar. At the level of practice, it has already entered deeply into an era of multivectorality.
Multipolarity versus multivectorality
Multipolarity presupposes order: several centers of power, stable alliances, and clear lines of affiliation. This is the logic of the nineteenth century or the Cold War, only with more actors. Multivectorality, by contrast, does not start from structure but from the behavior of actors. In such a world, states do not choose one side, but simultaneously maintain multiple relationships, in multiple directions, depending on interest, context, and moment. In other words: multipolarity speaks of poles; multivectorality speaks of maneuvering. And while the West continues to orient itself toward poles, a large part of the world has long been maneuvering.
Russia as the source of the concept
It is important to understand one often overlooked fact: multivectorality is not the spontaneous chaos of globalization, but a consciously articulated concept. Although it initially developed spontaneously in Russian strategic thinking after the Cold War, it was later theorized in Russian foreign-policy literature and analyses of the post-Soviet period. This approach is described as an effort to preserve strategic autonomy through parallel, non-exclusive relations with different centers of power, instead of permanent attachment to a single bloc.
This logic has been systematically analyzed by Western and Russian authors such as Andrei P. Tsygankov, who describes Russian foreign policy as a form of strategic pluralism and multi-vector balancing under conditions of post–Cold War uncertainty (Russia’s Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity in National Identity, Rowman & Littlefield), as well as Bobo Lo, who defines Russian strategy as networked and adaptive rather than bloc-based and adversarial (Russia and the New World Disorder, Brookings Institution Press).
Moscow sometimes uses the term “multipolar world” in public discourse, but this is more in the sense of misleading adversaries. Its foreign policy has for decades followed a different logic: flexible, networked, and non-bloc-based. It develops pacific or conflictual cooperation—but always cooperation. And it does so simultaneously with all actors in international relations, friends and enemies alike, without the intention of permanently binding itself to a single center of power. That is multivectorality in practice.
The problem arises when the West translates this logic into its own language of international relations—as if it were dealing with a classic multipolar rival seeking to build its own bloc. BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) is not an economic bloc but a network. Russia does not seek to create a military bloc, but situational, multivector military cooperation. When Western politicians and analysts treat Russia as a multipolar rival, they show that they do not understand the meaning of Russian strategy. It remains incomprehensible and unpredictable to them. Consequently, the Western public is deprived of a broader insight into today’s world as it really is. Like its analysts, it remains “frozen in space and time,” gripped by a sense of paralysis and dissonance—“stuck” between past and future, between old bloc paradigms and new global dynamics.
Sanctions that produce the opposite effect
This is best illustrated by the example of sanctions against Russia. They were conceived as a tool of a multipolar world: isolate one “pole,” apply pressure, change behavior. In a multivector reality, the effect of these sanctions is different. When the Western vector is closed to Russia, others remain open. Instead of isolation, there is redirection. Instead of collapse, adaptation. Sanctions do not stop movement; they only change its direction.
NATO in a world without firm lines
A similar dynamic can be seen in NATO. The Alliance remains an important framework for Western collective defense, but it is increasingly difficult for it to function as a political matrix of the global order. Not only is it expensive and insufficiently flexible, it is also eroded from within by differences in threat perception. As a result, many states outside it avoid clear alignment. They do not reject cooperation with the West—but they do not want to close off other options. Thus, the world today functions in a paradox: rhetorically multipolar, operationally multivector. As long as Western politicians and analysts do not acknowledge this gap, their international policy will continue to “lag behind” reality—not because it lacks power, but because it is trying to manage a world that no longer exists. Trump understands this new world. Europe is still lecturing.
Geopolitical stalemate
While the European Union continues to think in terms of blocs, procedures, and moral declarations, the world has moved on. It has become fast, networked—multivector. From this mismatch a geopolitical stalemate has emerged: the West has power, but is losing momentum. Politically and mentally stuck in time and space, the Union continues to rely on the idea of the omnipotence of the United States and NATO as it applied in the last century. As global relations fragment and overlap, the EU remains faithful to slow, classical diplomacy and ritual consensus—tools that today rarely produce real influence. Moreover, it mocks the “ignorance and lack of polish” of Trump’s managerial team. It perceives the American president not merely as a political problem, but as a heresy: someone who shatters the image of the West that Europe wants to preserve. And yet Trump’s “private diplomacy”—direct deals, personal channels, capital instead of institutions—is not an excess, but an attempt to escape the Western paralysis described above.
European criticism of Trump is almost always moralizing and misplaced, because it skips an undeniable fact: like the former European powers before it, the United States has not ceased waging war, intervening, or expanding its influence from the Second World War to the present day. Trump’s rule therefore does not change the predatory essence of the Western will to power.
The Pentagon has recently confirmed that Trump’s America continues—though reinterprets—Zbigniew Brzezinski’s policy of the “geopolitical chessboard,” in which Eurasia is the strategic key to global power, and in which the United States must prevent the emergence of any force capable of dominating the entire continent. Trump’s policy continues the “chessboard” idea in terms of strategic control over territory and resources, but it is profoundly transactional, short-term, and personalized. While Brzezinski viewed the “board” geopolitically and systematically, Trump sees it as a set of instruments for the direct imposition of power and extraction of profit, with little regard for allies or international rules.
Trump does not conceal what was previously wrapped in diplomatic language, and he confronts rivals with his own version of their tactics. He accelerates the predatory process. Why? In a fluid world, stopping means losing. For precisely this reason, Donald Trump has taken on the role of the “Scourge of God.” Instinctively, he has accepted—and is trying to turn to his advantage—the paradoxical world of today: rhetorically multipolar, operationally multivector.
European Strategic Missteps
European politicians and analysts persistently engage in psychiatric analyses of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Across Western Europe as well as in Croatia, Slovenia, Poland, and Ukraine, the results of these analyses are reflected in the nicknames they assign to powerful statesmen. The Russian president, for example, is treated as “Putler” (Putin + Hitler)—a derogatory neologism that directly equates his policy with the Nazi model. Attack is the best defense, and here it serves to conceal the fact that the rehabilitation of fascist collaborators did not take place in Russia, but in Eastern European EU member states, under the guise of anti-communism and geopolitical necessity, with the tacit tolerance of Brussels and the support of Washington. In this way, antifascism is relativized and adapted to current political interests, instead of remaining a foundational European value.
In the same manner, what Serbian—as well as Croatian and Slovenian—analysts most reproach Donald Trump for is evident in the nickname with which they most often label him: the “orange clown.” It alludes to his recognizable bronze-orange complexion and to his alleged frivolity, unpredictability, and showbiz inclinations. In doing so, they obscure an undeniable fact: that the original “orange clown,” without any additional makeup, is in fact their idol—Volodymyr Zelensky, the illegitimate heir of the Orange Revolution, who before his presidency was known exclusively as a comedian and actor.
And so, while “the dogs bark, the caravans move on”… Europe stubbornly refuses to confront its own strategic failures: a bloc-based logic that has excluded it from parallel channels of power; slow decision-making and institutional rigidity that stem from that logic. Sanctions are imposed without an exit strategy, the Global South is neglected, and pragmatism is perceived as a compromise of moral values. Europe has—most critically—lost its intuition. And intuition is the source of what we in practice call intelligence: the ability to recognize change before it becomes obvious, to react before old formulas are exhausted, and to act in real time rather than according to outdated maps of the world.
America’s Fear of “Kafka’s Metamorphosis”
Procedurally competent but geopolitically slow, Europe today is formally present but substantively—nowhere. Unlike the Americans, who have been returned to pragmatism by their fear of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. With such aggressively loyal allies, they feared that one morning they might wake up like Kafka’s Gregor Samsa—transformed into an insect. Useless. Discarded. Unnecessary.
That is why they democratically decided that their leader would no longer be the West’s traveling salesman. That he would no longer feed the entire Western “family”—a family that, like Samsa’s, could easily declare them a burden. They feared the loss of dignity. The loss of power. The fear that they would no longer play the leading role to which they were accustomed. That they would become victims of a system they themselves had created. That they would incarnate a Kafkaesque absurdity in a world without gratitude. In a world that no longer dreams the American dream.
Thus were born the “Scourge of God” and his “peace on credit.” Hence the “New Year’s fireworks” with which Donald Trump greeted his rivals at the very beginning of 2026.
It is therefore interesting to “read” the New Year’s news through the prism of the multivector dynamics of the real world:
News of December 30, 2025 – January 1, 2026.
The New Year was marked by “fireworks over Valdai”—an alleged drone attack on Putin’s residence in Valdai. Russia claimed that Ukraine had launched 91 drones, while Kyiv and U.S. intelligence circles denied that any real attack had taken place at all. On the surface, therefore, nothing happened. Yet in a multivector world, a drone that reaches a symbolic target without escalation sends a clear message: we know where you are, we know how to act, but we consciously choose not to go further.
The key to such messages lies in technical infrastructure—satellites, navigation, and airspace surveillance—which enables signaling without destruction. Knowing and remaining silent becomes a tool of stabilization: the message has been received, escalation is unnecessary.
Trump’s “private diplomacy” relies on parallel channels: signaling by drones, silence, and an offer. Already on January 3, 2026, Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela confirmed this logic: do not intervene in our neighborhood if you do not want us to intervene in yours—in Ukraine.
In the new global order, power is not demonstrated through destruction or formal declarations, but through capability and control of infrastructure.
News of January 3, 2026.
The U.S. military abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros and transferred him to New York, where he was charged with narco-terrorism and the importation of cocaine into the United States.
Maduro, Chávez’s uncharismatic successor, initially managed to maintain order, but during his tenure Venezuela fell into a severe economic and social crisis. The oil industry collapsed, inflation reached 130,000 percent in 2018, food became a luxury, and millions of people emigrated. U.S. sanctions, economic liberalization, and the opening of casinos accompanied the growth of social inequality and the breakdown of the social system Chávez had built. The regime introduced police control and political conditionality of social rights through the Carnet de la Patria card, and brutal repression between 2017 and 2019 led to the alienation even of historic Chavistas.
On July 25, the United States accused Maduro of running the Los Soles cartel and declared him responsible for drug trafficking, although experts claim that such a cartel never actually existed. According to the accusations, drug transit allegedly served to finance Hezbollah’s military wing, even though Hezbollah in Lebanon does not cultivate drugs but collects zakat (obligatory religious alms in Islam) from local drug barons.
Operation Absolute Resolve caused power outages and the bombing of military centers in and around Caracas. An air unit stormed the presidential residence and arrested Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The clash occurred exclusively with the Cuban presidential guard, whose members were eliminated, while Venezuelan forces offered no resistance—suggesting possible military consent. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez smoothly assumed the role of interim president; it is known that during the 2020s she was involved in internal factional struggles for control of the security and intelligence apparatus, in conflict with then–Vice President Tareck el-Aissami, who, together with Maduro, had been accused by the United States of corruption and of issuing passports to Hezbollah members and Syrian officials.
Although there is no reliable confirmation of Mossad’s involvement, analysts note that international intelligence services—including Israel’s—monitor Venezuelan–Syrian networks. Only CIA activity against the influence of Cuba, Russia, and China in Venezuela has been publicly confirmed. The fact that NATO was not informed in advance demonstrates Trump’s unilateral approach to alliances. The operation is therefore read less as a takeover of control over the world’s largest oil reserves than as a message to Russia and China: the United States has “absolutely resolutely” moved from the role of guardian of order to that of an actor with even greater freedom of maneuver than Russia and China allow themselves in their own near abroad. The U.S. remains the most powerful force, one that does not treat NATO as a framework for joint decision-making, but as an optional platform.
This “reading” of current events does not change the fact that the Venezuelan people remain humiliated and that American interventionism will further complicate the country’s recovery.
News of January 7, 2026.
Donald Trump withdrew the United States from 66 international organizations, including 31 linked to the UN, arguing that they were “contrary to national interests.” Those affected include bodies dealing with climate, labor, health, trade, and international law, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
By doing so, Trump acknowledges that the world no longer functions through permanent commitments and universal rules, but through constant redirection of interests and flexible positioning. Russia theoretically developed such networked diplomacy, China practically operationalized it, while the United States, with this move, stepped out of institutional rigidity.
Trump’s Chances to Make Up for Lost Time and Outpace His Rivals
Most analysts argue that the United States violated international law in Venezuela. Opponents of this thesis point to a terminological fallacy: international law is not a universal legal code—it has no police, courts, or prisons of its own, and is instead defined as a set of obligations that apply only to those who voluntarily accept them. This interpretation best fits the multivector reality of today’s world. According to it, the events in Venezuela are not an exception but standard practice for a great power that declares the state whose sovereignty it is about to violate an existential threat. An integral part of such existentialism is the appropriation of natural resources.
In a fluid world of constant reversals, the multiplication of American actions does not necessarily have to lead to a direct confrontation between the United States and Russia and China—provided that Trump implicitly legitimizes their key “existential” maneuvers through his own moves. In other words, there will be no frontal confrontation if Trump accompanies his claim that he did not carry out an invasion in Venezuela but removed a drug trafficker with acceptance of Putin’s thesis that Russia did not invade Ukraine but implemented the Minsk agreements and UN Security Council Resolution 2202, and if he accepts Xi Jinping’s position that China will never attack Taiwan as long as it does not declare independence. The impression is that Trump is constantly on the verge of legitimizing the existential moves of his rivals—but that this step is stifled at the very outset.
The American president applies a carrot-and-stick tactic of alternating flattery and punishment: first he gives Putin and Xi the impression that he conducts dialogue on an equal footing only with them, and then he strikes them with sanctions. In doing so, he encourages European allies to continue competing for his favor—and to pay an ever-higher price for it. In other words, the favor of the American president has been put up for auction.
In theory, his “private diplomacy” offers speed and flexibility: without bureaucracy, negotiations are more pragmatic; private capital becomes a means of pressure or reward; and personalized relationships deliver results where institutional channels stall. The goal is to preserve American strategic autonomy through parallel, non-exclusive relations with multiple centers of power, rather than permanent attachment to the Western bloc. Yet Trump still presides over that bloc. Moreover, the moves of his private diplomacy at the beginning of 2026 objectively favor the interests of the traditional West and act “absolutely decisively” against states networked within BRICS (Venezuela, China, Russia, Iran).
The war in Ukraine is sustained thanks to American blocs—NATO and the Five Eyes—in combination with private Starlink. This shows that Trump has only temporarily freed himself from institutional constraints in order to more easily confront BRICS states individually. Because these states are not unified in a solid defensive bloc, they slip out of his rigid NATO framework. NATO is therefore used selectively, where it serves the America First principle—even when this runs counter to the interests of the allies themselves, as in the case of Ukraine. His noise around Greenland is already achieving the desired goal: the British, French, and Germans are deploying forces there, thereby strengthening American defense against potential Russian missiles free of charge—missiles whose shortest trajectory runs over the North Pole and Greenland. After drawing Europeans into the war in Ukraine, the Americans have no intention of spending a single penny on their defense.
Trump’s method, however, carries serious risks. Because it is not institutionally grounded, agreements are short-lived, legitimacy is weak, allies doubt the durability of commitments, and any scandal or departure of a key actor can undo what has been achieved. In a world of conflicting interests, Trump gains an advantage in the short term, but the long-term preservation of power requires networked coordination and institutional support—the foundations on which the Russian and Chinese models rest. Without them, agility delivers quick wins but not lasting influence. His rivals know that the very next U.S. administration could fold the results of his private diplomacy back into classical diplomatic frameworks, as the Biden administration did in the Middle East. That is why neither Xi Jinping nor Vladimir Putin—who, unlike Trump, have secured longevity in power—can reliably count on agreements concluded with him, especially since the American president finds it increasingly difficult to conceal his need to demonstrate his own superiority to them.
At this moment, Trump is facing the full complexity of the geopolitical “chessboard.” Even the United States, as the world’s most powerful military force, cannot effectively intervene simultaneously in Latin America, Ukraine, and Iran. A potential action against Iran could destabilize the fragile balance in the Middle East that Israel is trying to achieve—a balance whose extended arm is precisely the American military presence and armaments. NATO is already deeply engaged in Ukraine, and member states’ dependence on American weapons, technology, and logistics limits their mobility. Additional engagement in Latin America makes it harder for Trump to redirect military capabilities toward Iran. Russia and China, meanwhile, are patiently waiting for his mistakes.
The risk of a Third World War—a conflict encompassing multiple states and continents—has reached its peak. By opening multiple fronts, Trump would risk overextension, like Napoleon and Hitler before him, whose ambitions exceeded the real capacities of their states and ended in catastrophic defeat.
Grayscale Geopolitics & Lifestyle GGL Magazine 
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