The Best of 2025...
- Dec 30, 2025
- 5 min read
2025 is rapidly coming to a close and it’s been a chaotic year for transatlantic relations. While many who follow politics were expecting a different tack compared to previous administrations, it shocked everyone how different and how strained relations across the Atlantic are after just 11 months of Trump’s second term. From trade wars to the threat of an actual war over Greenland, this past year has been one few who study diplomacy will soon forget.
And, as we're approaching the New Year, let’s get into the spirit by counting down my most read articles of 2025…
The Politics of Memory: How the Right Masters Nostalgia — and How the Center and Left Could Steal It Back
August 12th
The right doesn’t just sell policies. It sells time travel. “Make America Great Again” was not a policy platform. It was a four-word time machine. “Take Back Control,” the winning slogan of the Brexit campaign, didn’t require an economic argument. It was an emotional one — a promise of return, of restoration, of a vaguely defined “before” that people could fill with their private memories and beliefs. It was effective because it didn’t have to be specific. Vagueness is a feature, not a flaw. When the details are fuzzy, people supply their own best memories to fill the gaps. For many people, yesterday was a happier, simpler time when everything was cheaper, safer, and better.
Meanwhile, the center and the left have largely abandoned the nostalgia market. If anything, they treat it as suspect — too sentimental, too rooted in the past, too entangled with traditional hierarchies. Instead, they talk about the future, often in the sterile language of policy frameworks and five-year plans and it's pretty hard for the average voter to become emotionally invested in a white paper on trade. This is important work, but it rarely stirs people in the way a single remembered image can. The right understands that nostalgia is a form of emotional shorthand. The left seems determined to write everything out in long form. In other words, grandma's apple pie will win every day, no matter the preservatives that were crammed into it.
#4: Trading Places
April 14th
Like most protectionist policies, tariffs are built around two assumptions. The first is that the country can and will produce anything it requires independently. The second is that the country is an attractive enough customer that foreign governments will comply with whatever demand is given to access local consumers. Unfortunately for Trump, neither is true nor has it been true for at least 30 years. Let's look at both.
The United States can't or won't produce everything it needs. I won't argue the merits of internationalism when it comes to trade (because there are tradeoffs), but if you look at anything from your phone to your car to the lumber that's in your home, you'll find that it comes from either China, Mexico, or Canada. For assembled goods such as iPhones or Chevy Silverados, it's cheaper to assemble the goods where labor costs are a fraction of what they are in the US. As for raw goods, well, Canada has a ton of space for lumber. Tariffs add extra costs to these products as manufacturers don't pay out of pocket; they merely pass the costs onto consumers by raising the costs of the widget. That's why several European auto manufacturers, such as Land Rover and Audi, paused exports to the US.
#3: Branding and Politics
March 15th
Let’s dive into branding and populism—two topics central to today's political discourse. Branding shapes perception, and in politics, it goes far beyond logos and slogans. Today’s successful political brands—especially on the populist right—consistently deliver simple, emotionally charged messages that resonate quickly on social media. Parties like Germany’s AfD, France’s Rassemblement National, the UK’s ReformUK, and America’s Republicans have mastered this art, turning once-fringe ideas into formidable political forces.
Social media platforms thrive on short, easily digestible messages. Facebook, Threads, or Twitter aren’t places for nuanced discussions; they reward simple slogans designed for likes and shares, fitting perfectly with populism’s strategy of simplifying complex issues into ‘us versus them’ narratives. They’re mostly closed ecosystems of people agreeing with opinions they already have, and with a limited amount of screen to get your message across, in politics you’re mainly dealing with simple slogans that can be liked and shared feeding that ever-hungry algorithm. This fits perfectly with a core aspect of populism: pitting the “people” against “outsiders” and oftentimes winning great success around simple messages such as “Get Brexit Done”, “Make America Great Again”, or “Time For Germany” that promote nationalism over internationalism. These attract voters due to their simplicity and most voters aren’t tied into politics all day, reading blogs about populism. Social media users engage with this content, improving their ranking in the mysterious “algorithm” and generating millions of dollars (or Euros) of free media.
#2: There’s Something About Mamdani
November 30th
Zohran Mamdani has proposed increasing government spending in certain targeted areas. For example, his focus on expanding housing investment and public transit funding fits squarely within social-democratic thinking, not seizing the means of production. He is a self-described social democrat, not a socialist. When people point to successful “socialist” states, they’re actually pointing to social democracy. This model is a market economy with strong state intervention, built on the idea that capitalism can generate wealth efficiently, but the state must shape, regulate, and redistribute it to ensure social stability and prosperity. It’s a middle ground between the wild west of perfect capitalism and the stagnation of perfect communism.
Social Democracy recognises both the strengths and the weaknesses of both systems. It recognises that private enterprise drives growth, but there should be guardrails to limit economic turmoil, even if it may dampen growth compared to freer markets. These regulations may stifle innovation, but they replace it with predictability and resiliency.
#1: What Has NATO Ever Done for U.S.?
March 31
In short, while it is true that the United States has been providing more than 1/32nd of NATO's budget, it can afford it. While the United States contributed just under 16% of NATO's overall budget in 2024, it also represents a whopping 53% of the bloc's GDP. But let's put that spending into an American perspective. 16% of NATO's 4.6 Billion Euro/$4.9 Billion budget is only 0.056% of American defense spending. Not 5%, or even 0.5%. Even if the United States were to fund 100% of NATO, that number would only represent 0.35% of total American defense spending. However, this has kept NATO from being Europe's or the EU's military. The United States has funded a large part of NATO; every military leader of NATO's Allied Command Operations has been an American military officer. Additionally, not every EU member belong to NATO, thanks to longstanding neutrality policies, nor are all members of NATO, like the United States, Canada, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Iceland, and Norway, members of the EU.
What has the United States received in return? Dozens of ideologically similar and sympathetic trade partners pivoted towards the United States after World War Two and the Cold War, resulting in even more trade and wealth for the United States. European NATO countries have paid billions, if not trillions, to American defense contractors in the past 75 years. The UK's Royal Air Force operates 35 Boeing F-35 B's at approximately $109 million per unit. The French Army utilizes machine guns manufactured by General Electric. The Royal Netherlands Navy recently purchased American Tomahawk missiles.
And lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you're looking at it) for me, there is more news breaking every day. See you in the new year.
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