Gustavo de Arístegui,
September 23, 2026
I. INTRODUCTION
The 81st session of the UN General Assembly has transformed New York, over the past 24 hours, into the stage where nearly all the fault lines we’ve been tracing in these reports converge. President Donald Trump took to the podium to present the oligarchic-jihadist regime of Tehran with a stark choice: agreement or annihilation. Just hours later, he confirmed a meeting between his envoys and the Iranian side on the sidelines of the Assembly. That same Tuesday, he signed a security agreement with Denmark and Greenland, an agreement intended to resolve the Arctic crisis that began in January when Washington refused to rule out the use of force to seize the island.
Meanwhile, on both sides of the Atlantic, significant developments have taken place. In Germany, the regional elections held on Sunday, September 20, in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania have revealed a country torn apart by its extremes: the legal successor of the party that built the Wall is now the leading force in the federal capital, the far right has won in the northeast, and the Christian Democrats have, for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic, failed to secure any seats in a regional parliament. That same Sunday, in the tiny French archipelago of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney staged a rapprochement between Canada and the European Union (EU), which is also an unequivocal message to the White House.
This report analyzes these four issues using the usual framework of facts, implications and perspectives, and dedicates an extended editorial commentary to the thread that unites them: the moral hemiplegia with which much of Europe views its own extremes and the cartographic temptation with which Washington has come to look at its allies.
II . NEWS FROM THE LAST 24 HOURS
1. Iran: Trump threatens to “annihilate” the Islamic Republic as diplomacy gains ground at the UN
Facts
In his address to the General Assembly on Tuesday, September 22, Trump questioned aloud whether he should strike a deal with Iran that would allow it to rebuild and become a great nation, or whether, on the contrary, he should swiftly annihilate the Islamic Republic to prevent it from killing and destroying again. He accused Tehran of deliberately delaying any agreement on the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz until after the November 3 midterm elections, asserted that the regime’s misbehavior stemmed not from strength but from weakness and desperation, and boasted that the U.S. Navy had already escorted more than a billion barrels of crude oil out of Hormuz. Most of the Iranian delegation left the room during his speech.
Hours later, the president himself revealed that his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had met with the Iranian side and described the meeting as “very good.” Several media outlets presented it as the first confirmed direct contact since the start of the war in February, although Trump referred to a meeting “with the mediators,” so the exact format remains unclear. Addressing the leaders of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), he asserted that there is “a lot of momentum” for an agreement, but reiterated that the conflict will not end before the elections and that he is confident of reaching a deal immediately afterward.
On the Iranian side, a senior official told Reuters that Tehran could reopen the Strait of Hormuz to Gulf traffic within seven days if the United States lifts the blockade and eases military pressure. He described the New York meeting as a “golden opportunity” and stated that President Masoud Pezeshkian’s delegation has full powers to resume talks, though he ruled out a meeting between the presidents. There has been no face-to-face meeting since July, when the interim agreement signed by Trump and Pezeshkian collapsed within weeks. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who led the previous negotiations, insisted that Iran will never surrender. Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed openness to a meeting with Pezeshkian but noted that he is subordinate to Supreme Leader Mokhtaba Khamenei. It is worth remembering that Mojtaba Khamenei has not appeared in public since the February 28 attack in which his father was killed and he himself was wounded; his messages are disseminated in writing or through messengers, and his actual status and effective command capacity remain a mystery.
The energy backdrop remains very serious. Saudi Arabia last week shut down a key pipeline that served as an escape valve for crude oil trapped in the Gulf, after it was attacked by pro-Iranian terrorist organizations in Iraq, and the Houthi terrorist organization, following its territorial gains, has taken control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, making the Red Sea route extremely dangerous for oil tankers.
Implications
The double signal—an apocalyptic threat in the morning followed by a “very good” meeting in the afternoon—is a well-known tactic. H.R. Haldeman, Richard Nixon’s chief of staff, recounted in “The Ends of Power” (1978) how the president wanted his adversaries to believe he was capable of anything to extract concessions: the so-called “madman theory.” It is a technique, not a strategy, and its effectiveness erodes with use. Threatening to annihilate a state from the UN podium further damages Washington’s moral authority, precisely when it needs the Gulf countries, hosts of large US bases repeatedly attacked by Iran, to support any agreement.
More revealing than the threat itself is the admission regarding the timeline. By acknowledging that the agreement will come “after the election,” Trump admits that the pace of the war is subordinate to the US electoral cycle and, unwittingly, validates Tehran’s delaying tactics, which are betting that a poor Republican result on November 3rd will weaken the White House’s negotiating position. Republican nervousness about midterm elections being held in the midst of the war, with tensions running high, is now perfectly visible.
The underlying problem goes far beyond what Rubio pointed out. It’s not just that President Pezeshkian is subordinate to the leader of the revolution, but that the leader of the revolution has disappeared, and that this vacuum has been filled by the regime’s true strongmen: Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, and General Ahmad Vahidi, head of the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; in Persian, Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enqelab-e Eslami). Both are individuals with repugnant pasts, and both are wanted by Interpol, with red notices, for their alleged involvement in the 1994 terrorist attack against the AMIA (Argentine Israelite Mutual Association) in Buenos Aires, which left 85 dead.
Rezaei and Vahidi are systematically sabotaging all attempts by the less brutal factions of the regime, led by Pezeshkian himself, to negotiate and break free from the current war. The reason is clear: a situation of permanent tension, punctuated by sporadic clashes of varying intensity, suits them perfectly, because it justifies the militarization of power, silences those who advocate a negotiated solution, and consolidates their control over the state apparatus. The sweeping powers that Tehran grants to the presidential delegation in New York clash with this reality, and the collapse of the interim agreement in July, just weeks after its signing, is the best proof of who truly holds the power in Tehran.
Finally, the strategic balance confirms our central thesis on this war: the military and tactical success (the Iranian air force and navy destroyed, a good part of the leadership eliminated, an economy in ruins due to the blockade) is countered by an unmitigated geopolitical failure, with two vital straits compromised at the same time, Hormuz and Bab el Mandeb, a Saudi oil pipeline closed and the energy markets in permanent tension.
Perspectives and scenarios
Scenario A (most likely): Stepped negotiations. Contacts through mediators during the General Assembly and in the following weeks, with partial gestures in Hormuz in exchange for limited easing of the blockade, and formalization of a broader agreement after November 3. Iran would buy time, Trump would present the outcome as a victory, and crude oil prices would only partially decline while Bab el-Mandeb remains in Houthi hands.
Scenario B: a stalemate in a volatile war. Talks fail to materialize, skirmishes continue around the Strait of Hormuz, pro-Iranian terrorist organizations maintain pressure on Saudi infrastructure, and Brent crude remains at very high levels until after the elections. This is precisely the scenario preferred by Rezaei and Vahidi.
Scenario C (less likely, but with extremely high impact): total escalation. Following a serious incident, Washington launches massive attacks against Iranian energy and civilian infrastructure. The risk of regime implosion, with no post-crisis planning, territorial fragmentation, a power vacuum, and waves of refugees, would then be very real.
2. Greenland: The United States, Denmark, and Greenland sign an agreement that aims to end the Arctic crisis
Facts
Trump, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, and Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen signed the security agreement announced the previous Friday on Tuesday, on the sidelines of the General Assembly. The text, released by the Danish Foreign Ministry, amends the 1951 defense treaty between the United States and Denmark, which remains the legal basis for the U.S. military presence on the island and to which Greenland was not a separate signatory. The United States will be able to modernize and expand the Pituffik space station, its northernmost facility, dedicated to missile early warning and space surveillance, and establish new defense zones at Narsarsuaq, the former Bluie West One airfield closed in the 1950s, and at Mestersvig, on the east coast, currently used by the Sirius dog sled patrol, a Danish special forces unit. The two sites are approximately 1,500 kilometers apart.
The agreement grants U.S. forces freedom of access and movement between defense zones, including territorial waters, by land, sea, and air, and allows its aircraft to fly over and land anywhere within the territory. It authorizes the deployment of the Golden Dome missile defense system. According to CBS, it has no expiration date, will remain in effect even if Greenland achieves independence, and prevents non-NATO countries from establishing military installations without the agreement of all parties. It also includes an investment control mechanism that, according to the State Department, permanently ensures that only the United States and its allies can make significant investments on the island. In return, it reaffirms the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark and recognizes Greenland’s right to self-determination. The technical details of the new installations remain pending, and any additional defense zone will require consultations and mutual agreement.
In his speech, Trump announced that Washington would immediately begin construction on “two very important military bases” and maintained that the United States was assuming “permanent control” of the island’s security. Frederiksen and Nielsen welcomed the agreement, and Macron praised it for respecting Danish sovereignty and international law. At the height of the Cold War, the United States maintained 17 installations and more than 10,000 personnel in Greenland; today, it operates only one base. In early September, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a €200 million European investment in the island.
Implications
It must be emphasized with absolute clarity: this is a textbook example of the outburst strategy. It consists of making demands that seem absurd, outlandish, and megalomaniacal, such as the annexation of an allied territory, only to then soften the blow and reach an agreement that, in all likelihood, yields better results than would have been obtained through purely diplomatic negotiations from the outset. It is highly probable that the United States extracted broader conditions and concessions from Denmark and the Greenlandic government (indefinite validity, the agreement’s survival in the event of independence, vetoes on facilities belonging to non-NATO countries, and control over sensitive investments) than it would have achieved by starting with a reasonable request.
It is true that the tension generated enormous doubts among NATO’s European allies, and that Trump’s methods are deplorable: his verbal excesses too often undermine the credibility of US foreign policy at a particularly volatile time. But we come back to the same old problem: Europe doesn’t know how to understand Trump. This is not a defense of the man, but a description of his approach. As former Republican Congressman Chris Stewart of Utah, a veteran Air Force colonel, emphatically argues in the debates of a think tank to which we both belong, Trump must be taken seriously, but not at face value, and Europe does exactly the opposite: it takes him at face value and never takes him seriously. The formula, coined by journalist Salena Zito in “The Atlantic” in September 2016, remains the best key to understanding this presidency, and European bewilderment regarding the Greenland affair is its direct consequence.
In any case, this is excellent news for Western security. It made no sense that a separatist minority on an island of fewer than 60,000 inhabitants could hold the security of not only the United States, but also Canada and Europe, hostage. Greenland is the cornerstone of the GIUK passage (Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom), the true gateway between the Arctic and the North Atlantic through which new Arctic shipping routes must pass. Its value is not only commercial, but above all military: Russian Northern Fleet submarines, whose base on the Kola Peninsula is monitored from Pituffik, sail into the Atlantic through this passage. It was, therefore, an extraordinarily sensitive asset, which Chinese and Russian intelligence services had been trying to destabilize in order to bring it into their sphere of influence. The investment filter points directly to China, whose interest in Greenland’s rare earths, among the largest known deposits outside its territory, is notorious, and the clause that protects the agreement against a possible independence neutralizes the strategy of courting the pro-independence sectors.
The other side of the coin is asymmetry: the United States effectively gains veto power over sensitive foreign investments in a European territory, and the EU’s contribution of 200 million euros in exchange for bases, a missile shield, and investment controls illustrates once again the gap between European rhetoric of strategic autonomy and its actual capabilities.
Perspectives and scenarios
The agreement will likely have to pass through the Danish Folketing and the Greenlandic Inatsisartut, where pro-independence movements may interpret the clause that keeps it in force after independence as a provocation. Ratification is probable, but it will not be a mere formality. The Russian response, which will be measured more in deployments and maneuvers of the Northern Fleet than in statements, and the Chinese reaction will have to be closely watched. The big question is whether the agreement will serve to calm the White House’s territorial agenda or, on the contrary, embolden it: the map that Trump published on September 7, with Iceland and the French territories in the Americas under the US flag, makes it imperative not to consider anything settled.
3. Germany: The heir to the Wall party wins in Berlin, the far right in the northeast, and the center collapses
Facts
In Berlin, according to the provisional results, The Left has doubled its support and become the leading party in the city for the first time with 25.7% of the vote (12.2% in 2023). The CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands; Christian Democratic Union of Germany) has fallen to 18.8% from 28.2%; the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland; Alternative for Germany) has risen to 16.3% from 9.1%; Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (Alliance 90/The Greens) has dropped to 14.3%; and the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands; Social Democratic Party of Germany), the party that governed the city for decades with mayors like Willy Brandt, has plummeted to 12.1%. The BSW (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht; Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance) failed to secure any seats with 4.7% of the vote. Turnout was 74.2%. The Left Party candidate, Elif Eralp, and the Christian Democrat Stefan Evers are vying for the regional presidency, and both would form a majority with the support of the Greens and Social Democrats.
The outgoing mayor, Christian Democrat Kai Wegner, withdrew his candidacy in July following criticism of his handling of the crisis and the spread of misinformation about his agenda surrounding the January 3 arson attack on the power grid. The attack left some 45,000 homes and more than 2,200 businesses in southwest Berlin without electricity or heating in the middle of winter—the longest blackout in Berlin since 1945. The attack was claimed by a far-left “Vulkangruppe,” and the Federal Prosecutor’s Office took over the investigation for alleged membership in a terrorist organization. On election night, Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, accused the Left Party (Die Linke) of repeatedly committing antisemitic transgressions during the campaign without facing personal or political consequences. Even the left-wing newspaper taz acknowledges that members of the Neukölln federation openly seek closeness with the terrorist organization PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine).
In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the AfD won with 38.2% (16.7% in 2021), ahead of Minister-President Manuela Schwesig’s SPD (35.5%, down four points). The Left Party (Die Linke) obtained 6.5% and the Greens 5.7%. The CDU, with 4.9%, failed to win any seats in the regional parliament, something that had never happened to it before in the history of the Federal Republic; the BSW (4.8%) and the FDP (Free Democratic Party, 1.0%) also failed to win any seats. Of the 71 seats, 32 went to the AfD, 29 to the SPD, and 5 each to the Left Party and the Greens. The outgoing coalition of the Social Democrats and the Left Party lost its majority, and it is highly likely that Schwesig will expand it to include the Greens, as all parties ruled out forming a coalition with the AfD. Chancellor Friedrich Merz called the result a “disaster,” but announced he would remain at the helm of the party and the government. This comes two weeks after the AfD garnered 43.8% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, more than double that of the CDU (17.2%).
Implications
These elections are an unmitigated disaster for Germany’s two major parties. The SPD is in freefall and risks following the path of other European socialist parties that have practically disappeared, such as the Italian Socialist Party, dissolved in 1994, or the French Socialist Party, whose presidential candidate failed to reach 2% in 2022. The CDU, for its part, has been ousted from a regional parliament and has lost almost ten points in the capital.
The dominant narrative in much of the European press has rightly focused on the rise of the AfD, but has glossed over the other extreme, and that is unacceptable. In Berlin, it wasn’t simply the left that won, but rather the most radical, hardline, and brutal left: precisely the heirs of those who tormented East Berliners for over four decades. Die Linke is the legal successor to the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands; Socialist Unity Party of Germany), which was none other than the communist party of the GDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik; German Democratic Republic), born in April 1946 from the forced merger, under Soviet supervision, of the KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands; Communist Party of Germany) and the SPD in the Soviet occupation zone. In December 1989 it became known as SED-PDS, then PDS (Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus; Party of Democratic Socialism), and in 2007 it merged with the WASG (Arbeit & soziale Gerechtigkeit – Die Wahlalternative; Work & Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative) to form Die Linke.
That is to say, the party that built the Wall in 1961 and gave the order to shoot those who tried to cross it: at least 140 people died at the Berlin Wall and several hundred more along the entire inner-German border. The party whose political police, the Stasi, numbered some 91,000 full-time agents and nearly 189,000 unofficial informants in 1989 to monitor a population of barely sixteen million, and imprisoned and tortured tens of thousands of Germans in prisons like Hohenschönhausen, with historians estimating the number of political prisoners at around two hundred thousand throughout the GDR’s existence. The party that enslaved an entire people under the sarcastic guise of calling it a “Democratic Republic.” That his successor is now the leading political force in the city that symbolized resistance to communist totalitarianism is a political fact of the first magnitude, one that does not allow for soft or complacent analyses and cannot be dismissed as a mere progressive preference of a young, urban electorate. We are witnessing the rise of extremism, yes, but also of left-wing extremism, which must be denounced with the same energy and forcefulness with which the far right is denounced.
The data from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania further illustrate the migration of the working-class and popular vote from the far left to the far right in the east of the country: Die Linke, which garnered 13.2% in 2016 and 9.9% in 2021, has now fallen to 6.5%, while the AfD has risen from 16.7% to 38.2%. This correlation alone does not prove the transfer, but it is consistent with what has already occurred in France with the electorate of the PCF (Parti communiste français; French Communist Party).
The biggest loser, in short, is the democratic center. Merz, in whom many placed great hopes, has failed to meet the urgent needs of Germany and Europe, and his coalition with the Social Democrats emerges from these elections more fragile than ever. Both extremes, moreover, share worrying traits for European security: hostility toward NATO, ambiguity regarding Putin’s Russia, and opposition to military support for Ukraine.
Perspectives and scenarios
In Berlin, a left-wing government led by Eralp with the Greens and Social Democrats is the most likely outcome, although an Evers government with the same partners is arithmetically possible and will depend on whether the controversies surrounding antisemitism weigh on the calculations of the Greens and SPD. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Schwesig is expected to remain in power with an expanded coalition, while the AfD capitalizes on its status as the largest party excluded from government. At the federal level, pressure on Merz will increase within his own party, and the formation of a government in Saxony-Anhalt, with the AfD on the verge of a majority, will be the next test of the system’s resilience.
4. Canada and the EU: the photo of Saint Pierre and Miquelon
Facts
On Sunday, September 20, Macron welcomed Carney to Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a French territory of about 5,800 inhabitants located off the coast of Newfoundland. This marked the first official visit by a Canadian prime minister to the archipelago and the first by a French president in over a decade. Carney summarized the gesture by stating that while Canada and France are only a few kilometers apart at their closest point, their values are even closer. Both countries will task their space agencies and defense ministries with developing and sharing infrastructure, including launch systems and ground receiving facilities, and will expand cooperation in energy, telecommunications, climate resilience, critical minerals, quantum computing, satellites, and supercomputing. Macron is seeking agreements to bring more Canadian LNG (liquefied natural gas) to the European Atlantic coast amidst the energy crisis triggered by the Iran-Iraq War.
Macron endorsed the proposal, put forward by Von der Leyen in her State of the Union address, to make Canada the EU’s first “associate member,” and Carney welcomed it enthusiastically after addressing the European Parliament on September 17. Canada already became the only non-European member of the new European defense procurement program last year, and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) has been provisionally in effect since 2017, although it has not been ratified by all member states, including France, which Carney is pressing to ratify. Canada has not applied for membership, and Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union reserves membership for European states; the status of associate member currently lacks a legal definition. The leader of the Canadian Conservative opposition, Pierre Poilievre, has warned that Canada will never be a member state of the EU.
The visit has an unmistakable backdrop. On September 7, Trump posted a map on his social media platform, Truth Social, without comment, showing the American flag covering Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Iceland, the French Antilles, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon; Iceland responded by summoning the US ambassador. Upon arriving in the archipelago, Macron asserted that its French character is undeniable and lamented the circulation of “foreign ideas.” Later, in Saint Pierre, he proclaimed that France and Canada are two great independent nations that wish to remain so.
Implications
The image is extremely important for three reasons. The first is the rapprochement between Canada and the EU toward a partnership that, if realized, would represent the highest possible level of integration without being a member state, with practical content that already exists in part (defense, research, trade) and that could be expanded to include energy, critical minerals, and space. The second is the message to Trump: the transatlantic relationship is essential, and Canada, far from abandoning it, wants to strengthen it on its European side; this is not a break with the United States, but a rebalancing to avoid dependence on a single partner capable of exerting economic coercion.
The third reason is the most compelling. Saint Pierre and Miquelon is a French territory literally attached to Newfoundland, about twenty kilometers from the Burin Peninsula. France retained it in the Treaty of Paris of 1763, when it ceded the rest of New France, and Canada has never claimed it. When the two countries had a dispute, it was over maritime boundaries, and they resolved it legally through the arbitration award of June 10, 1992. Ottawa has never maintained the absurd argument that the islands belong to it because they are in the Western Hemisphere, attached to Canadian land, and therefore part of the American continent. This is neither the first nor the last case: Eastern Thrace, the European part of Turkey; the Dutch, British, and French overseas territories in the Caribbean; the Greek islands literally attached to the Turkish coast, such as Samos, less than two kilometers away in the Strait of Mycale, or Kastellorizo, about two kilometers from Kaş; Or Bioko Island, formerly Fernando Poo, whose capital was called Santa Isabel until 1973 and is now Malabo, located about 32 kilometers from Cameroon and much farther from Río Muni, the mainland of Equatorial Guinea. Sovereignty is based on legal titles, the will of the people, and international law, not on geographical proximity.
Perspectives and scenarios
Canada’s association will require the creation of a new legal framework, somewhere between the European Economic Area and traditional association agreements, and will demand unanimity in the Council, exposing it to the same agricultural lobbies that are keeping CETA in limbo in France and other member states. In Canada, there is broad political consensus on the European shift, but the rhetoric surrounding accession could backfire on Carney if the opposition manages to portray it as a surrender of sovereignty. Washington’s response may come via trade: according to France Info, the White House has banned the import of certain Canadian products, including alcoholic beverages, starting September 29, and has raised tariffs on others.
III. MEDIA RACK
Reuters presents Trump’s speech as a double-edged sword: a threat of annihilation and an opening toward an imminent agreement. It also reports on an offer from a senior Iranian official to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the blockade is lifted. In its Arctic coverage, it emphasizes that the text of the agreement allows for the deployment of the Golden Dome in Greenland and that the pact does not satisfy the initial demand for annexation.
AP (Associated Press). Macron’s support for Canada as the EU’s first associate member is noteworthy, as is the symbolism of the chosen location: French territory just a few kilometers from Canada, amid Ottawa’s shift towards Europe in the face of deteriorating relations with Washington.
CBS News. It highlights three clauses of the Greenlandic agreement: it has no expiration date, it survives eventual independence, and it prohibits bases from non-NATO countries.
Time. It includes the State Department’s interpretation, according to which the pact permanently guarantees that only the United States and its allies can make sensitive investments on the island, and frames it within the debate on the real scope of Danish sovereignty.
Fox News. Broadcasts the interview in which Rubio, without ruling out a meeting with Pezeshkian, points out that the Iranian president is subordinate to Mokhtaba Khamenei and that Iran will never be able to have nuclear weapons.
Le Figaro. In an analysis of the visit, it emphasizes that Carney took advantage of Saint Pierre and Miquelon to defend the virtues of CETA, which has been provisionally applied since 2017 and is still pending ratification in France.
Libération and BFM TV emphasize the historic nature of the first visit by a Canadian head of government to the archipelago and the joint reaffirmation of both countries’ independence in the face of Trump’s pressures.
France Info. It documented the map published by Trump on September 7, which placed the French Antilles, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Greenland and Iceland under the American flag, and Reykjavik’s summons of the American ambassador.
Other sources consulted: Euronews (Trump’s speech and the signing of the Greenland agreement), ZDF and the German Federal Agency for Civic Education, bpb (election results), taz (anti-Semitism in the Berlin federation of Die Linke), Le Devoir and Europe 1 (Carney’s visit).
IV. RISK TRAFFIC LIGHT
| Risk | Level | Trend | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Persian Gulf / Strait of Hormuz | ● Red | Stable, with a diplomatic window | First contact confirmed in New York and Iranian offer to reopen in seven days, but no changes on the ground and with the agreement postponed until after November 3. |
| Red Sea / Bab el Mandeb | ● Red | On the rise | The Houthi terrorist organization controls the strait; attacks against Saudi Arabia and closure of a Saudi oil pipeline following actions by pro-Iranian terrorist organizations from Iraq. |
| Energy markets | ● Red | Stable at high levels | Two straits compromised at the same time; Europe seeks Canadian LNG for its Atlantic coast. |
| Arctic / Greenland | ● Amber | Downward (de-escalation) | Agreement signed that respects Danish sovereignty; pending parliamentary processing and Russian and Chinese response. |
| Transatlantic cohesion | ● Amber | Uncertain | Trump’s map of September 7, trade restrictions on Canada and Ottawa’s pivot towards the EU. |
| German political stability | ● Amber | Upward (deterioration) | Extremes on the rise on both flanks, CDU out of a regional parliament and a weakened chancellor. |
| US domestic policy | ● Amber | On the rise | War, expensive energy, and midterm elections in six weeks; the election calendar conditions negotiations with Iran. |
V. EDITORIAL COMMENTARY
Hemiplegia and the map: Europe facing its extremes, Washington facing its allies
In the prologue he wrote in 1937 for French readers of “The Revolt of the Masses,” José Ortega y Gasset delivered one of the most incisive pronouncements in Spanish political thought: “To be on the left is, like being on the right, one of the infinite ways a person can choose to be an imbecile: both, in effect, are forms of moral hemiplegia.” Ortega wasn’t condemning the left or the right, but rather the mutilation of those who can only see with one eye. His words have rarely been more relevant than this week, in which much of the European media has interpreted the German elections with only one hemisphere of their brain.
The headlines have rightly focused on the AfD’s 38.2% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which comes on top of the 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt from two weeks ago. This is a very serious figure and must be treated as such. But that same Sunday, in the federal capital, the leading political force became Die Linke (The Left Party), the legal successor to the SED, the party that terrorized and enslaved East Germany for four decades. It was one of the most brutal, iron-fisted, and savage dictatorships in the entire Soviet bloc, with the most ruthless political police behind the Iron Curtain, the Stasi, comparable only to the Bulgarian DS (Darzhavna Sigurnost; State Security), which it closely rivaled. This is the party that built the Berlin Wall in August 1961 and whose border guards were ordered to shoot anyone attempting to cross it. In too many newsrooms, the story has been presented as a charming curiosity, a progressive shift in a young and cosmopolitan city, or even as a healthy counterweight to the rise of the radical right. None of these interpretations withstand scrutiny.
Berlin is no ordinary city. It is the city where, on September 9, 1948, in the midst of the Soviet blockade, the Social Democratic mayor Ernst Reuter, standing before the ruins of the Reichstag, called upon the peoples of the world to look to this city. It is the city where John F. Kennedy declared himself a Berliner in 1963 and where, on June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan, at the Brandenburg Gate, demanded that Gorbachev tear down the Wall. That the party born from the very heart of those who built it is now the most voted-for party in the city, while Reuter and Brandt’s party has plummeted to 12.1%, should provoke more than just a shrug in Europe.
This isn’t about denying that many voters for Die Linke are young urbanites anxious about housing prices, nor about ignoring that their candidate, Elif Eralp, has distanced herself from the excesses of her own party. It’s about noting that the same press that scrutinizes, and rightly so, every misstep by the AfD has barely noticed that the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany has accused Die Linke of repeated antisemitic transgressions during the campaign, nor that even a left-wing newspaper like taz denounces the close ties between activists in Neukölln and a Palestinian terrorist organization. Antisemitism doesn’t cease to be antisemitism simply because it comes from the left, just as racism doesn’t become acceptable simply because it comes from the right. That is precisely the yardstick that the paralysis prevents us from applying.
Jean-François Revel described this phenomenon in “La Grande Parade” (2000): in his view, communism enjoys an amnesty of memory that has never been justifiably granted to National Socialism, so that the historical failure of real socialism has not discredited the utopia that inspired it. The paradox is particularly painful in Berlin, because the campaign was overshadowed by the January 3rd attack on the power grid, claimed by a far-left group, which left nearly one hundred thousand people without electricity or heating in the middle of winter and which the Federal Prosecutor’s Office is investigating as terrorism. That attack ultimately cost the Christian Democratic mayor his job due to his poor handling of the crisis; the far-left terrorism that caused it has barely figured in the European debate on the rise of extremism.
None of the above diminishes the danger posed by the AfD, whose advance in the east has social roots that should be understood rather than dismissed with condemnation. The data from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are telling: while Die Linke, once a stronghold of the former PDS in the region, has fallen from 13.2% to 6.5% in ten years, the AfD has become the leading party. A significant portion of the working-class and popular vote that previously went to the far left has shifted to the far right, as happened earlier in France with the former communist electorate. The extremes are not isolated compartments: they feed off each other, share hostility towards NATO and ambiguity towards the Kremlin, and thrive on the same vacuum—the one left by a democratic center incapable of offering solutions in housing, security, immigration management, and energy. The disappearance of the CDU from a regional parliament and the collapse of the SPD in Berlin are the arithmetic expression of this vacuum. Merz, called upon to lead Germany and provide the leadership that Europe urgently needs, has fallen short, and the continent remains without a political direction suited to its challenges. The solution is not a one-sided cordon sanitaire, but a center that governs effectively and combats both extremes with equal resolve.
Hemiplegia also has a transatlantic version, and it is no less unsettling. On September 7, the President of the United States posted on his social media, without a single word of explanation, a map in which the American flag covered Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Iceland, the French Antilles, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon. Iceland, a founding member of NATO, had to summon the US ambassador. It is undoubtedly part of the repertoire of outbursts, and taking it literally would be a mistake; but in foreign policy, symbols matter, and the cost to credibility of these excesses is real. Thucydides, in the Melos dialogue, put into the mouths of the Athenians the maxim that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. The international order that the United States itself built in 1945 was born precisely to banish that logic, and above all, to banish it among allies.
The argument underlying this cartography—that everything in the Western Hemisphere or adjacent to the American continent inherently belongs to its sphere—is as absurd as it is dangerous, and the photo of Saint Pierre and Miquelon alone refutes it. France retained the archipelago in 1763, and Canada, whose coast is visible from its cliffs, has never claimed it; when they had a dispute over the surrounding waters, they submitted it to arbitration in 1992. The world is full of similar cases, from Turkish Thrace to the Greek islands off Anatolia, from the Dutch, British, and French Antilles to Bioko Island, closer to Cameroon than to the mainland of Equatorial Guinea. If geography granted sovereignty, the world map would be a permanent casus belli. Sovereignty rests on legal titles, on the will of the people and on international law, and whoever forgets this opens a door that others, in Moscow or Beijing, are eager to cross.
The Greenlandic outcome, however, illustrates the other side of the coin. Trump demanded the unacceptable—the annexation of an allied territory—and has descended several steps to an agreement that amends a 1951 treaty, respects Danish sovereignty and the Greenlanders’ right to self-determination, and grants them, in all likelihood, more than they would have obtained through conventional negotiations: more bases, the missile defense shield, control of the GIUK passage against the Russian Northern Fleet, a veto on Chinese investments in rare earth elements, and an agreement with no expiration date that outlasts any eventual independence. It is a textbook example of the strategy of outbursts, and Europe, which took the January threats at face value without ever seriously considering the underlying problem, has once again been dragged along. The cost in trust between allies is real, and it is significant. But the outcome is excellent for Western security, and it was made possible because, in the end, professional diplomacy and the sound judgment of figures like Marco Rubio were able to transform the outburst into a solid agreement. The lesson for Europe is to learn to read this president; the lesson for Washington is that this method has its limits, and that the map of September 7 should not become the program.
Canada understood the moment before anyone else. In 1949, Louis St. Laurent and Lester Pearson succeeded in including Article 2 of the North Atlantic Treaty, known ever since as the “Canadian Article,” which commits the allies to strengthening their free institutions and fostering economic cooperation among themselves. For Ottawa, the Alliance was never just a military pact, but a community of values on both sides of the ocean. Carney’s shift toward Europe is therefore not an abandonment of the Atlantic, but its rescue: when one of the pillars falters, the others must be reinforced so that the edifice does not collapse. Europe, however, must live up to the offer it has made. It is difficult to court Canada as the first associate member of the Union while its trade agreement with Canada remains unratified in several member states, including France, nine years after its provisional application. Consistency is also a form of power, and Europe wields it far too stingily.
The same pattern of outbursts is reappearing on the Iranian front. The alternative that Trump posed from the UN podium—greatness or annihilation—is a false dilemma. No one disputes the nature of Tehran’s oligarchic-jihadist regime, a terrorist state and exporter of instability, nor the legitimacy of preventing it from acquiring nuclear weapons at any cost. But, as we have been arguing, this military and tactical success is countered by a geopolitical failure that time only exacerbates: the Strait of Hormuz half-closed, Bab el-Mandeb in the hands of the Houthi terrorist organization, a Saudi oil pipeline shut down by pro-Iranian terrorist groups in Iraq, and exhausted energy markets. The regime is weak, as Trump says, but weak regimes that implode without anyone having planned for the aftermath do not produce stable democracies, but rather power vacuums that are filled by the most violent elements. The admission that the agreement will come after the elections is also a gift to Tehran, which now knows that its best card is its enemy’s electoral calendar. With a supreme leader missing and real power in the hands of Rezaei and Vahidi (see news item 1), each week of waiting strengthens those who profit from the war and weakens those who want to end it.
The four news items in this report converge on a single conclusion. Europe must cure itself of its moral paralysis: it must see and combat both extremes with equal rigor and, above all, govern well to deprive them of the ground they currently occupy. Washington must remember that its strength has never resided in maps, but in the alliances founded on law that it forged after 1945. The Atlantic community, from Nuuk to San Pedro, from Berlin to Ottawa, will be a community of law or it will cease to exist. Ortega y Gasset urged Europeans in 1937 to stop looking with only one eye; almost ninety years later, that warning still awaits heed on both sides of the ocean.