The GOP Saw it Coming - They Know Who to Blame - But Who Can Lead GOP Out?

 

R.M. Westerink; November 2026 

Republicans knew what voters were worried about.
Now the party needs a leader willing to act on it.

On Tuesday, Democrats won both houses of Congress.
In Texas, James Talarico defeated Ken Paxton. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown won the Senate seat JD Vance used to hold. Donald Trump’s initial explanation was that he himself hadn’t been on the ballot. But in races like these, voters had a chance to pass judgment on his presidency. They took it. [1]

Republicans saw trouble coming. A year ago, after a bad election night for his party, Vance said Republicans would ultimately be judged on whether they made a decent life affordable. This week, Trump himself acknowledged that he knew the Iran war would affect the midterms. Nobody had to predict a Democratic Senate win in Texas to understand the risk. The vice president had spelled out the test, and the president knew one of his biggest decisions could turn against him. [2, 3]

Vance says what went wrong

On Wednesday, JD Vance put the Iran war at the center of his explanation for the defeat. He also pointed to something Republicans should find especially troubling. Winning back people who deliberately voted against them now, takes a reason for them to change their minds. [3, 4]

Vance’s account also points a question to himself. He was part of the administration whose decisions he is now asking Republicans to reckon with. His warning on affordability was on the record a year ago. What would he have done differently with that warning in mind? And where is he prepared to push for a change while he is still vice president?

Trump owns the decision to launch the war and still defends it.
Republican leaders have their own choices to answer for. They had a president of their own party and majorities in both chambers. What did they use that power for? Where did they press the White House to change course? The party can start answering those questions now, while the decisions are still fresh and the people who made them are still in office. [3, 5]

DeSantis has another point

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was already criticizing the political cost of the war and Republicans’ handling of gas prices before the results came in. Afterwards, he called the election a rebuke to both the president and Congress. He argued that some Republican voters stayed home because they were frustrated by how little their party had got done in Washington. He pointed to Florida, where Republicans held on in close races, as evidence that the national result had been avoidable. [6]

DeSantis gives Republicans a different diagnosis to argue over. Vance points to voters who switched sides. DeSantis points to voters who stayed home and to a Congress that gave them too little reason to turn up. Both things can happen in the same election. And some of what DeSantis wants from Congress, such as putting Trump’s immigration orders into law, would carry parts of the Trump agenda forward. That tells us something about the contest taking shape.

Republicans will have to decide which parts of Trump’s program they want to keep and which they are prepared to abandon. [4, 6, 7]

But what about Style?

Did Trump make America great again by lying to the public, pitting Americans against one another, levelling baseless accusations at opponents, taking false claims to court, appealing to white grievance, and treating the law and Congress with contempt?

That was Trump’s style of governing. Republicans know whose name is on it.

What would Republicans fit better?

The party needs new clothes.
Start with the people they have to fit. Take a worker who voted Republican in 2024 and now has less room in the household budget, or worries about what happens if the biggest employer in town shuts its doors. What can that worker expect from a Republican government? How would GOP make it easier to find another job nearby, get training without giving up a pay cheque, or keep health coverage between jobs? A would-be leader should be able to name something they would do and say how they would get it done.
Dressed in a credible Style..

Who would fit?

The contest for 2028 will give Republicans time to compare personalities.
The party has an urgent choice to make while Trump is still in office. When the president pursues a policy that makes life harder for the people Republicans say they represent, who in the party will say so in public and use the power they already have, to change it?

That is where we look for the next Republican leader.

References

1. Reuters, Democrats capture Congress in sweeping setback for Trump

2. Fox News, Vance’s affordability warning in November 2025

3. Associated Press, Vance’s break with Trump over the Iran war

4. The Washington Post, Vance on the Iran war and cost of living

5. Reuters, Republicans call for Trump to change course

6. The Wall Street Journal, DeSantis challenges fellow Republicans

7. RealClearPolitics, DeSantis on codifying Trump’s immigration orders

Democrats Won. What Now for the GOP?

 

Republicans face a choice over leadership, policy and their relationship
with Donald Trump. Those are three different questions.

R.M. Westerink; November 2026 

Democrats have won control of both the House and Senate.
For Republicans, the defeat opens a struggle over what went wrong—and what must change before 2028. The first press assessments point to weakened presidential authority, renewed arguments over candidate selection and an accelerating contest to succeed Trump. [1]

But electoral punishment does not come with instructions.
Republicans can draw very different lessons from the same defeat. Each points towards a different future.

1. Keep Trumpism, change the messenger

The least disruptive response would be to preserve the movement’s central commitments while finding a leader who promises greater discipline and competence.

That successor could retain restrictive immigration policies, economic nationalism and combative cultural politics, while offering fewer distractions and more predictable government. JD Vance would be an obvious contender for this direction, although the succession remains open. [2]

The argument would be straightforward: the agenda was right; its execution lost voters.

Its weakness is equally clear.
If voters rejected the consequences of policies—higher costs, tariffs or foreign conflict—a smoother presentation will not resolve their objections.

2. Change the policies that became liabilities

A second direction would involve substantive adjustment: reconsidering tariffs, rebuilding relations with allies, avoiding costly military commitments and concentrating on household finances.

This would allow Republicans to argue that they had listened without repudiating their entire political identity. Reuters’ reporting before the election already identified divisions over trade, intervention and the future of populism. [2]

But changing policy means confronting interests and convictions inside the party. A presidential hopeful might attract independent voters by making those changes, while losing the Republican primary needed to reach them.

3. Rebuild a GOP capable of saying no

The deepest response would address how the GOP makes decisions.

Republicans could restore greater independence to congressional leaders, defend oversight regardless of who occupies the White House, and select candidates for their ability to represent constituencies rather than demonstrate personal loyalty.

This would be a larger undertaking than replacing Trump. It would require politicians who accommodated his dominance to establish—and uphold—limits on the next leader.

Leadership challenges alone would not prove that such a reconstruction had begun. Removing a defeated congressional leader can satisfy demands for accountability while leaving the party’s habits intact.

4. Double down and fight the Democratic Congress

There is also a direction that requires little self-examination: blame weak candidates, hostile media and insufficient commitment, then turn the next two years into a confrontation with Democrats.

Trump’s initial response, blaming Republican candidates while denying that the result reflected his own standing, points towards that possibility. [3]

A Democratic Congress would provide a new opponent against which Republicans could mobilize. Investigations, spending disputes and blocked legislation could all become arguments that Democrats were obstructing recovery.

This approach might hold the movement together. Whether it could rebuild a national majority is another question.

The choice Republicans cannot avoid

These directions can overlap. A successor might offer Trumpism with better discipline, selective policy changes and promises of institutional restraint—all at once.

The difficult choices would emerge when those promises collide.

Would a Republican leader challenge a popular primary position to regain independent voters?
Would congressional Republicans constrain their own president?
Would the party accept evidence that a cherished policy had failed?

The central problem is that the coalition needed to win a Republican nomination may differ from the coalition needed to govern America. AP’s analysis identified precisely that tension in the emerging succession contest. [4]

Democrats should therefore avoid assuming that this defeat guarantees a lasting realignment. Their own performance will help determine how quickly Republicans recover.

For the GOP, however, recovery begins with a diagnosis.
Does it need a new messenger, different policies, or a different way of exercising power? Until Republicans answer that question, the struggle to succeed Trump will also be a struggle over what his party becomes.

---

References

[1] Reuters, “Democrats seize Congress in sweeping midterm repudiation of Trump,” 4 November 2026.
[2] Reuters, “As Trump takes center stage in Dallas, Republicans debate a future without him,” 9 September 2026.
[3] Roll Call, “Trump made midterms about himself, and voters rejected him,” 4 November 2026.
[4] Associated Press, “Trump’s solution to Republicans’ midterm troubles is more Trump,” October 2026.

 

From Welcomers to Europeans

 

R.M. Westerink; October 2026 

Europe is receiving fewer asylum seekers than at any time in the past five years.
Irregular border crossings are down roughly 90 percent from the 2015 peak. And yet anti-immigration parties have never been stronger. In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD has just won a state election.

Immigration is shrinking. The politics of immigration is growing. Something has come loose.

The Italian think tank ISPI puts it plainly: European migration policy "increasingly appears to operate independently of migration trends themselves." The debate has become a machine that keeps running whether or not there is anything to feed it.

This essay is about that machine: how it works, how it ran its course in the United States, why it is still running here, and what it costs us. It is written for the Welcomers among us, and it carries an uncomfortable message.

The short version: Europe’s Welcomers have fixed half of their blind spot. The other half keeps the machine running. And while it runs, Europe is losing time it does not have.

How the machine works

The machine needs only two things. The first is a real, practical problem that people experience and that those in charge do not solve. The second is a way of talking about that problem that makes it impossible to raise without being called a bigot. Put the two together and you get a field of unanswered grievance. Someone will always step in to claim it.

Call the two camps what they are.
The Welcomers see receiving refugees as a moral identity and a duty.
The Gatekeepers see controlled, limited and orderly immigration as the precondition of a functioning state.

Both camps have the same bad habit: they judge motives instead of arguments. To Welcomers, Gatekeepers are xenophobes. To Gatekeepers, Welcomers are naïve idealists, or worse. Each side has its alibi for not listening. This essay is about the Welcomers’ version, because that is the one Welcomers can fix.

America: the machine at full power

Until around 2020, the American debate was mostly a quarrel about motives. "Kids in cages" on one side, "open borders" on the other. Then the numbers arrived. Between 2021 and 2025, U.S. border authorities recorded more than 8 million encounters at the southern border. Shelters filled up. Asylum courts fell years behind. Cities far from the border, like New York and Chicago, struggled to house the new arrivals.

This is where both Welcomer blind spots showed.

The numbers blind spot. The asylum system had a capacity, and the inflow exceeded it. For too long, many Welcomers treated that as a detail, or even as a reason to loosen the rules further. A moral stance turned into an operational failure that everyone could see.

The alibi blind spot. Because resistance to immigration had been defined as a moral failing, Welcomers had no language left for the practical problem. Admitting it felt like giving in to xenophobia. "They are bigots" became a reason not to look.

The Biden administration did change course, eventually.
It restricted asylum above a daily threshold, backed a bipartisan border bill and expanded legal routes. But the turn came late. By 2024, immigration was Trump’s strongest issue and Harris’s weakest. Trump did not invent his immigration theme. The Welcomers handed him the material: a crisis they would not measure and a grievance they would not let be spoken.

What happened next is instructive, though not in a comfortable way. Crossings fell to historic lows. Enforcement under Trump went too far for many Americans. And public support for immigration rebounded, to 79 percent.

It would be convenient to read this as proof that Welcomers who learn their lesson can switch the machine off. The American story does not prove that. It proves something more modest, and still important, just that the machine cán stop. When the practical problem disappears from people’s daily lives, the grievance loses its power and opinion swings back.

Europe: the numbers fell, the machine kept running

Now look at Europe.
Here, the practical problem has largely shrunk. Asylum applications and irregular crossings are falling year after year. By the American logic, the machine should be slowing down. It is not. Governments are still competing on strictness, outsourcing asylum procedures and building processing centers in Albania, while arrivals keep falling.

Two things keep it running.

Twenty-seven arenas instead of one. In the United States, one federal government owned the problem and could be judged on it. When the numbers fell, everyone could see it. Europe has twenty-seven national arenas, each with its own elections and its own Gatekeeper parties. Brussels manages the rules, but nobody owns the result. Falling numbers at European level do not register as a success anywhere in particular.

The EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact was presented as the answer to the far right. The far right was not impressed. Anti-immigration parties grew from 18 percent of the European Parliament in 2019 to 26 percent in 2024, and Poland’s prime minister threatened not to implement the pact at all. In Europe, the grievance does not get resolved. It moves around.

The alibi survives. European Welcomers have learned the first lesson. Nearly every mainstream party now accepts that migration must be limited and controlled. In the Netherlands, GroenLinks-PvdA campaigns for "effective and humane" asylum policy.

But the second lesson has not landed. When AfD voters, Rassemblement National voters, or residents of a village with a new asylum center voice their worries, the reflex is still to explain those worries away: as prejudice, as manipulation, as fear stoked by others.
The numbers blind spot has been cured. The alibi has not.

That is the real difference with America. There, once the numbers fell the machine ran dry. In Europe, our fragmented politics keeps the grievance in circulation without needing the numbers.
What keeps it alive is the gap the alibi leaves: concerns that are heard but never answered.

That gap is the one part of the machine the Welcomers control. It is also the one part they have not yet repaired.

Fighting the last war

The issue matters far beyond migration, because migration is not the question that decides Europe’s future:

•        Defense: rearmament, Ukraine, the eastern flank, credible deterrence.

•        Economic power: competitiveness, technology, energy.

•        Unity: whether Europe can act as one when it has to.

Each of these requires exactly what the migration debate keeps using up: political attention, trust between member states, and voters who believe Europe works for them.

Look at what migration does to European politics today. It crowds summit agendas. It sets member states against each other: frontline states against destination states, east against west. It has brought back border checks inside the Schengen area, one of the most tangible things Europe ever gave its citizens. And election after election, it pushes voters toward parties that distrust the very European cooperation on which defense and economic strength depend.

A wedge, Europe keeps driving into itself. Every election fought over migrants rather than over Europe’s place in the world is an election in which the questions that will decide our future go unasked and unanswered.
Welcomers who keep migration at the center of their identity are fighting the last war. Without meaning to, they help keep the wedge in place.

From Welcomers to Europeans

This is what the title means. It is not a call to give up humanitarian principle. It asks Welcomers to move their identity: away from a single issue, and toward the European agenda on which a humane migration policy itself depends. Two commitments follow.

Europe first. A humane migration policy can only be built by a Europe that exists as a political actor. Defense, economic strength and unity are where Europe’s future will be decided. Migration should become what it can be: a well-run, shared and largely technical file, like fisheries or customs. Something Europe handles, not something Europe fights about.

Closing the alibi gap. The American lesson cuts both ways. Support for a generous policy returns when people believe the system is under control. And that trust is built in the street, not in Brussels.
Housing shortages, full classrooms, disorder in public spaces, the sense that rules apply to some and not to others: these are not prejudices to be deconstructed but governance problems to be solved.

Picture a town where a new reception center is announced.
In one version, residents who raise concerns at the town meeting are told they are being manipulated.
In the other, they leave with a named contact person, an extra teacher for the local school paid from a European fund, and a date on which the municipality will report back. Only the second version builds the trust that Europe needs for everything else.

The two commitments fit together: calm and technical at European level, visible and practical at street level. The solidarity mechanisms of the Migration Pact are a start. They should grow into a standing, funded instrument that makes "Europe protects" something people can see in their own village, and not just at the border.

One discipline belongs to both commitments: stop disqualifying the other side.
The Welcomer reflex of seeing every restrictionist as morally suspect mirrors the Gatekeeper reflex of seeing every humanitarian as a traitor. Both are alibis. Both make problems undiscussable and opponents unreachable. A politics that wants to remove the wedge has to stop speaking its language.

The wedge only works on a divided Europe

The United States showed that the machine can stop. It stopped when the practical problem went away. Europe has the falling numbers, yet the machine keeps running. Our fragmented politics keeps the grievance in circulation, and the Welcomers’ alibi keeps it unanswered.
The numbers will not save us this time. Closing the alibi gap might.

Meanwhile, the questions that really matter have little to do with migration.
Europe’s ability to defend itself, to compete and to act as one is being decided now. Every round of Welcomers against Gatekeepers uses up attention, trust and unity that this agenda cannot spare.

From Welcomers to Europeans means this. Keep the humane conviction. Drop the single-issue identity. Make Europe’s future the first priority, and earn the mandate for it by taking seriously what people experience where they live.

The wedge only works on a divided Europe.
Our closing task as Welcomers is to make ourselves, as a separate identity, unnecessary.

Sources

Nieuws.nl: EU heeft opnieuw minder asielverzoeken dan jaar ervoor

BNR: Aantal asielaanvragen in Europese Unie op laagste niveau in vijf jaar

Reformatorisch Dagblad: Aantal asielaanvragen in EU eerste helft 2026 verder omlaag

ISPI: Europe’s Migration Policy: Have We Entered a Permanent State of Crisis?

Deutsche Welle: Refugees and migration: Is Europe closing its doors?

GZERO Media: Europe’s anti-immigration parties are surging as immigration numbers fall

he Local: Migration to Europe is falling, so why are countries pushing on with crackdown?

GlobalEurope Journal: European Union Migration Policy in Times of Geopolitical Upheaval

Democracy Journal: The Democrats and Immigration

NOTUS: Democrats Wonder Whether the Lesson of 2024 Is to Shift Further to the Right on Border Security

Brookings: How 2026’s divisive immigration politics could lead to a solution down the road

Third Way: Memo to Democrats on Immigration: To Turbocharge Generosity, Get Order Right

Al Jazeera: How have Democrats’ policies shifted since the last major US election?

China’s Green Strategy Is Also a Strategy for Power

 

What Europe should learn from the connection between clean energy, economic strength and security

R.M. Westerink; 27 October 2026 

For many Europeans, the energy transition is primarily a response to climate change: a necessary effort to reduce emissions and protect the planet.
In China, it also serves another purpose. It is helping the country build industries, reduce vulnerabilities and strengthen its position in the world.

A new report by researchers at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute presents China’s approach through three connected ideas: clean, secure and cheap. [1]

Clean energy can reduce pollution and emissions. Energy produced at home can reduce exposure to disruptions in imported fossil fuels. And technologies that become cheaper through innovation and production at scale can support economic growth.

The report suggests that these goals can reinforce one another. That is a valuable insight for Europe, where climate policy, industrial competitiveness and security are still often discussed as separate subjects.

A strategy born partly from vulnerability

China’s interest in energy security is longstanding. Its economy depends heavily on imported oil, much of which must travel through vulnerable maritime routes, including the Strait of Malacca.

Chinese leaders have long recognised the risk: a disruption far from home could affect transport, industry and the wider economy. The Grantham report traces this concern to what Chinese policymakers called the “Malacca Dilemma.” [1]

Wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles do not eliminate every energy vulnerability. But they can reduce the need to import and continuously burn fossil fuels. A car powered by electricity produced within China is less directly exposed to an interruption in imported oil than one running on petrol.

That gives the clean-energy transition a strategic meaning. It helps China address climate and pollution concerns while gradually changing the sources of energy on which its economy depends.

From energy policy to industrial strategy

China’s approach goes beyond installing renewable energy. It has also invested in the industries that manufacture the technologies needed for the transition.

Solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles have benefited from sustained investment, large domestic markets, manufacturing scale and competition among Chinese producers. Government direction and support have played an important role, as have companies’ efforts to innovate and expand.

The result is visible well beyond China. Chinese clean-energy products have become an important part of international trade and have helped make some technologies more affordable. According to the International Energy Agency, China accounted for roughly half of global exports of selected clean-energy technologies in 2025, excluding trade within the EU. [2]

The economic opportunity is therefore larger than the sale of individual products. It includes research, manufacturing, skilled employment, infrastructure, services and relationships with customers and partners around the world.

The Grantham authors also see clean industries as a potential source of growth as other parts of China’s economy face difficulties. That does not mean they will solve every economic problem China faces. But it does show why the transition has become closely connected to the country’s vision of its economic future. [1]

The strategy is still a work in progress

China’s achievements should not be confused with a completed transition.

The country continues to rely heavily on coal. Renewable electricity needs to be transported from where it is produced to where it is used. Storage, grids and flexible demand must develop alongside new wind and solar capacity. And clean industries face their own pressures, including intense competition and questions about excess production capacity.

The report recognises, in particular, the importance of improving transmission and electricity trading between Chinese provinces. Building more renewable capacity is only part of the task; integrating that capacity into a dependable energy system is another. [1]

Even so, the direction of China’s effort is clear. Clean energy is being developed as part of a larger programme of economic and strategic transformation.

That is where the opportunity for Europe begins.

Europe can connect its own ambitions

Europe already has many of the ingredients for a similarly joined-up approach: scientific expertise, innovative companies, a large market, established industries, skilled workers and experience in cross-border cooperation.

It also has reasons to move. High energy costs affect households and businesses. Dependence on imported fossil fuels exposes Europe to volatile prices and events beyond its control. European industry needs affordable energy and a credible route to modernisation.

The European Commission’s Clean Industrial Deal, launched in 2025, explicitly connects decarbonisation with industrial competitiveness and affordable energy. [3] Europe therefore does not need to start from an empty page. Its task is to turn these connected ambitions into sustained results across countries, sectors and political cycles.

China’s experience offers several useful clues.

First: treat clean energy as an economic opportunity

A transition of this scale inevitably involves costs. Homes, factories, grids and transport systems must be adapted, and not every investment will succeed.

But the expenditure also creates assets: more efficient buildings, modern infrastructure, new businesses, technological knowledge and productive capacity. The question for Europe is how to make those investments support prosperity as well as reduce emissions.

That means helping existing industries modernise, creating conditions for new companies to grow, and ensuring workers have access to the skills needed in a changing economy.

It also means paying attention to households. A transition that lowers emissions but leaves people unable to afford energy or improve their homes will struggle to maintain public confidence. Its benefits need to become visible in everyday life.

Second: build an energy system, not just individual projects

Solar panels and wind turbines matter. So do electricity networks, storage, flexible demand and connections between countries.

Europe’s diversity can be an advantage. Countries have different sources of energy, weather patterns and periods of peak demand. Better connections can help them share resources and use electricity more efficiently.

The Commission’s affordable energy plans already recognise the importance of interconnections, electrification and a more integrated energy market. [3] The opportunity is to make that integration tangible: faster connections for new projects, more reliable supply and energy prices that better reflect the benefits of clean generation.

A European energy system that works across borders can become a source of both competitiveness and solidarity.

Third: use Europe’s scale

China’s large domestic market has helped companies produce, learn and expand. Europe also has a large market, but it can be harder for businesses to benefit from its full scale when rules, procedures and investment conditions differ across national borders.

A more effective European market could help promising technologies grow from pilot projects into widely available products and services. Public purchasing, shared standards, research programmes and long-term investment can all contribute.

This does not require Europe to produce everything itself. It does require a clearer view of where European capabilities matter most—and the confidence to develop them together.

Fourth: cooperate where cooperation creates value

China’s clean-energy capabilities also create opportunities for Europe to cooperate.

European communities, businesses and industries can benefit from affordable technologies. European and Chinese companies can work together on research, production and deployment. Investment partnerships can create jobs and skills in Europe when they bring real local value.

Cooperation can also extend beyond Europe. Many countries need affordable electricity, modern infrastructure and support for their own industrial development. European and Chinese expertise, finance and technology could contribute to projects that help them meet those needs.

At the same time, Europe will want to maintain diverse sources of supply and develop important capabilities of its own. A strong European position makes cooperation more sustainable: it gives Europe the capacity to choose its partners and contribute as one.

A European opportunity

China’s green strategy offers Europe more than an example to study. It invites Europe to see the transition in a broader light.

Clean energy can contribute to climate protection, but also to industrial renewal, energy security, innovation and international cooperation. Those outcomes will not appear automatically. They depend on investment, effective institutions, public support and the ability to turn shared goals into practical action.

Europe has its own strengths and must find its own way. Its opportunity is to bring those strengths together around a simple proposition:

A cleaner Europe can also be a more prosperous, secure and capable Europe.

The question is how quickly—and how purposefully—Europe chooses to make it happen.

---

References

1. Mathias Larsen, Yanxi Zhou and Nicholas Stern, Resilient Growth for China in a Turbulent World, Grantham Research Institute, 26 October 2026. www.lse.ac.uk
2. International Energy Agency, Energy Technology Perspectives 2026: Energy Technology Manufacturing and Trade. IEA
3. European Commission, Clean Industrial Deal. European Commission

 

The Intruder Wants a Say over the Whole Street

 

Anton Gerashchenko’s warning —
and what it means for Europe’s shortsighted neighbors

R.M. Westerink; October 2026 

A war to seize a neighbor’s territory can become something larger: an attempt to decide how the whole neighborhood is allowed to protect itself.

That is the warning running through Anton Gerashchenko’s Bluesky post of October 23. Bringing together statements by Russian officials, analysts and political commentators, he describes a Moscow looking beyond Ukraine toward a wider rearrangement of European security. Negotiations would provide an opportunity to pursue that ambition, even while the war continues. [1]

His account closely follows the predicament described in my earlier article, What Good Are Shortsighted Neighbors? [2] There, an intruder occupies rooms in a neighbor’s house while the other residents struggle to organize an effective response. They provide substantial help, but their divided decisions prevent their combined resources from becoming sufficient power. Meanwhile, their powerful friend from another street begins discussing a settlement with the intruder.

Gerashchenko adds an unsettling next chapter. The intruder has ideas about the rest of the street, too.

What Moscow hopes to gain

Gerashchenko describes an emerging negotiating agenda that reaches beyond stopping the fighting. Putin has called for discussion of security guarantees for Russia and the wider security order. The announced initial format brings together Russia, Ukraine and the United States, leaving European participation for later.

Alongside those official positions, Gerashchenko assembles more expansive expectations from Russian public figures. These include restrictions on NATO deployments and enlargement, recognition of territorial seizures, sanctions relief and the return of frozen Russian assets. Other voices celebrate the status Moscow gains from dealing directly with Washington, or see an opportunity in Trump’s desire for a political success before the American elections.

These statements have different standing. A commentator’s ambition is not automatically a Kremlin negotiating demand. Nor does a Russian description of American intentions establish what Washington has agreed to do. But taken together, they reveal a way of thinking Europe needs to understand: the war may be used to obtain concessions extending well beyond the territory Russia occupies.

Three points particularly stand out.

1. The argument reaches beyond Ukraine

The demands Gerashchenko attributes to analyst Stanislav Tkachenko concern the security arrangements of other European countries, including NATO’s military presence in Eastern Europe and further enlargement.

That changes the scale of the issue. A settlement could become a means of seeking influence over decisions that belong to sovereign European states.

Ukraine’s freedom to choose its protection is already at stake. The wider danger is that coercion becomes an accepted basis for restricting other countries’ choices as well. Russia would gain political authority from the very insecurity it has created.

This closely matches the central concern of the neighbors parable. Helping Ukraine defend its house is part of defending the rules under which everyone else lives. Europeans cannot assume that securing their own doors will settle a dispute about who has the right to control the street.

2. Negotiations can reward Russia before an agreement

Gerashchenko’s second important point is that Moscow can value negotiations even when they produce no peace settlement.

Direct dealings with Washington confer recognition. A broader agenda creates opportunities to connect Ukraine’s future with sanctions, economic relations and European security. Disagreement among Western governments can weaken their common position.

None of this makes negotiations inherently undesirable. Ending a war requires diplomacy. But holding talks and making progress toward a durable peace are different achievements.

Europe therefore needs to ask what changes while negotiations proceed. Does Ukraine become more secure? Does Russia face stronger reasons to stop? Are concessions reciprocal and enforceable? Or does Moscow gain status and practical benefits while preserving its ability to continue the war?

The existence of a negotiating table answers none of those questions.

3. Fighting continues to shape the bargain

Gerashchenko reports Dmitri Trenin’s expectation that negotiations can proceed while fighting continues, potentially into 2027, with eventual terms depending on military outcomes.

The implication is straightforward. A negotiating position rests partly on what each side expects to gain by continuing the war.

If Moscow expects further advances, mounting Ukrainian exhaustion or declining European support, it has reasons to delay and demand more. If it expects sustained resistance and diminishing returns, its calculation can change.

For Europe, this connects diplomacy directly to the speed, reliability and effectiveness of its support. Ukraine needs the means to defend its population, maintain its forces and keep its society functioning. European promises matter most when they become capabilities in time.

Your place at the table carries more weight when your actions affect what happens away from it.

What this means for the neighbors

Gerashchenko’s account strengthens the warning in What Good Are Shortsighted Neighbors? Europe’s fragmentation creates opportunities for an adversary willing to combine violence, bargaining and delay.

It also sharpens the response. Europe needs shared resources, faster decisions and a credible common position, developed with Ukraine. Being represented in negotiations matters. Being able to sustain the country under attack gives that representation substance.

Return, then, to the street.

The intruder is still inside his neighbor’s house when he sends a message. He is willing to discuss peace. But the meeting must also settle which locks the other neighbors may install, who may join their protection agreement, and how close their patrols may come to his home.

The powerful friend agrees to talk. The homeowner has a chair, though he remains under enormous pressure. The other neighbors are told they may be invited later.

Before anyone signs anything, the intruder is pleased. He is being treated as someone entitled to negotiate the rules of the street. Meanwhile, his men keep breaking through the house. Every room they capture may improve the terms he can demand.

The neighbors finally understand what their meetings have been missing.

They establish a common security fund, coordinate their equipment and arrange decisions that one household cannot indefinitely block. They help the homeowner repair his defenses and keep his family safe. Together with him, they agree on what they will support at the negotiating table—and prepare to sustain it if the talks fail.

Then they send their answer.

They are ready to discuss how the violence ends. The homeowner will decide his own future.
The street will decide its protection together.

And the intruder will no longer be allowed to make delay work entirely in his favor.

About Anton Gerashchenko

Anton Gerashchenko is a Ukrainian political figure and commentator. He served in Ukraine’s parliament from 2014 to 2019 and as deputy minister of internal affairs from 2019 to 2021, and has also advised the interior minister. He shares news and analysis about Russia’s war against Ukraine with international audiences through social media. His commentary offers an explicitly pro-Ukrainian perspective, informed by experience in government and security affairs.

References

[1] Anton Gerashchenko, Bluesky post, October 23, 2026.
https://bsky.app/profile/antongerashchenko.bsky.social/post/3mykvec6sgs2b

[2] What Good Are Shortsighted Neighbors?, Europe Is Us, October 24, 2026
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/10/what-good-are-shortsighted-neighbors.html

What Good Are Shortsighted Neighbors?

 

A simple story about a street, a break-in and the neighbors who keep calling meetings.

It’s about Europe at this day, and it’s about us.

R.M. Westerink; October 2026 

“Better is a neighbor that is near than a brother far off.” — Proverbs 27:10

The Dutch have their own version of that old line: "better a good neighbor than a distant friend". It sounds like the kind of wisdom nobody needs to be told. Until the day you actually need your neighbors. Here is a story about a street where that day has come.

* * *

Picture a street. One night, a resident forces his way into his neighbor’s house. The neighbor fights back hard, but the intruder occupies several rooms, smashes the furniture, and declares that the house was really his all along.

The other neighbors are shocked. The house rightfully belongs to the man who lives there; they recognized that themselves years ago, and so, for that matter, did the intruder.
They rush to help with money, tools, and equipment so he can defend himself, and they take in his children. That is a lot, and it costs them a lot. But it doesn’t get the intruder out. Years later, the neighbor is still fighting, room by room, for his own house.

Here is the strange part: together, the neighbors are far richer than the intruder. They have more people, more money, and more know-how. On paper, they could run him off the street in no time. So why don’t they?

Because the neighbors are not one household. They do have a neighborhood association, and they meet often, sometimes deep into the night. But on the biggest decisions, everyone has to agree. One neighbor who would rather do business with the intruder can hold everything up for months. On security, it’s even worse: everyone has their own alarm system, their own locks, their own supplier, and nothing fits together. There is no shared fund for security, no joint patrol, and no one who can speak for the whole street. Every decision becomes a compromise, and a compromise almost always comes too late.

The intruder has no such problem. In his house, he is the only boss. He is poorer, but he is fast, and he is willing to take a lot of punishment to get what he wants.

And the neighbors keep doing the math the wrong way. Each of them calculates what helping costs. None of them calculates what it will cost if the intruder wins.

For decades, the neighbors have counted on their friend for their own safety: the rich and powerful man who lives one street over. He has by far the strongest security, and he is the heart of their shared agreement: an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. But he is not the friend he used to be. He asks out loud what his protection is actually getting him, and the neighbors are less and less sure what they can count on. These days, he talks directly with the intruder, about business too.

Then he comes up with a plan to end the violence. The intruder gets to keep part of what he has taken. And the neighbor who was attacked may never join the shared protection agreement. The plan was worked out at a table where the powerful friend and the intruder sat down together. The neighbors weren’t there. The man whose house it is wasn’t really there either.

The neighbors are angry.
But anger is not a policy. In principle, they could drive the intruder out, but then they would take some blows themselves, and there is no majority for that in any of their houses. So they do what they can do: put up extra fences and locks around their own homes. Good fences make good neighbors, the saying goes. But a fence does nothing for the man next door whose house is already occupied. And so the neighbors begin to consider gently advising him to accept the plan after all, hoping the intruder will stop.

That doesn’t mean they agree the house belongs to the intruder. But they do accept something else: that violence gets to decide what protection the victim is allowed to seek. Whoever breaks in gains a say over the future of the house he attacked. And anyone who lives on a street knows that an intruder who learns that breaking in pays doesn’t stop at the first house.

And the neighbor himself? He hears his well-meaning neighbors tell him that he is free, that the house is his, and that they will help him to the very end so he can keep choosing his own future. But the one thing that has to make that freedom real, his protection, is being decided over his head, and over theirs.

* * *

Those neighbors? That’s us.

From the street to the map

In simplified terms: the street is Europe. The house is Ukraine, the intruder is Russia, and the powerful friend down the road is the United States. The neighborhood association is the European Union; the shared protection agreement is NATO.

Europe is defending a principle: you do not move borders by force. It is making real sacrifices for it. But it fails to turn its combined strength into power, because it decides like an association while facing great powers that decide like a single person. The result: plenty of money and promises, but too slow, too fragmented, and without the muscle that tips the balance.

And that is not just Ukraine’s problem. The real question for the rest of the street is how long its own security will hold in a neighborhood where breaking in earns you a say, and where the neighbors always have to call a meeting before they are allowed to lock the door.

What good neighbors would do

It doesn’t have to end that way.
Good neighbors would set up a shared fund for security instead of passing the hat every time. They would decide by majority, so that one household can no longer hold the whole street hostage. They would buy locks that fit together, and choose one voice to speak for the street, at the table where its future is decided. And they would put enough into the house next door that the intruder concludes breaking in simply doesn’t pay.

Being a good neighbor was never about sympathy. It is about understanding that the house next door is part of your own security.

Shortsighted neighbors don’t just lose someone else’s house.
They show the intruder which doors to try next.

Discontent - Seeing Discontent Before It Boils Over

 

Seeing Discontent Before It Boils Over

Key notes from a five-part series on discontent

R.M. Westerink; Key notes to a five-part series | Review draft v0.2 | October 22, 2026

Imagine a classroom at 39°C (102°F). Thirty-seven students share one fan. Teachers who leave are not replaced. In September 2026, students at a high school near Paris had enough. They blocked the school gate. Within weeks, hundreds of schools across France followed. On October 17, more than half a million people marched. The same day, parts of several cities were looted and burned.

How does a complaint about a hot classroom end in burning town halls? And could anyone have seen it coming? Those questions drove a five-part series. These key notes give you the main insights in one read. Each one points to the part where you can read more.

The big idea

Anger alone is rarely what makes discontent dangerous. What matters is how a few judgments change together: what people think is wrong, whom they blame, and what they believe they can and may do about it. And we make those judgments together, with the people around us.

The series in one picture.

Nine insights

1. Every complaint raises three questions. What is wrong? Who is to blame? What can we do? A fair complaint does not make every explanation right, or every action acceptable. Keeping the three apart is the first step to understanding any protest. (Part 1)

2. We answer them together. Friends, classmates, coworkers, and online groups turn “my problem” into “our problem.” They also decide which explanation counts as true and what kind of action is okay. A group that leaves room for doubt is safer than one that treats doubt as betrayal. (Part 1)

3. Anger alone is not the warning sign. Very angry people often stay peaceful. Trouble grows when three things happen together: blame spreads from one decision to a whole group of people, normal ways of getting heard stop working, and violence starts to seem acceptable to some. People who feel that nothing works anymore are more likely to turn to violence than people who are simply angry. (Part 2)

4. Watch who gets blamed. Blaming a decision leaves room for a fix. Blaming a whole institution makes it harder. Blaming a whole group of people leaves only opposition. In France, the students first blamed missing teachers and broken buildings. After police injured several teenagers, many blamed the police and the state. (Part 2)

5. A movement can get harder as it gets smaller. When moderate people leave a protest, the ones who stay are often the most determined. They then become its public face. Harsh treatment of everyone tends to speed this up: some moderates leave, and others join the hard core out of solidarity. (Part 2)

6. By the time there are riots, the warning came long ago. Every government, democratic or not, struggles to see how unhappy people really are. Those who suffer in silence, or simply give up, rarely show up in the news. Repression does not make discontent disappear. It only makes it invisible, until it bursts out. (Part 3)

7. Asking without answering makes things worse. A complaint line, a survey, or a citizens’ panel raises hopes. If nothing visibly happens, people learn that the normal routes are useless. In early October, the French government asked students online what was wrong. More than 100,000 answered. What it does with those answers now matters a great deal. (Part 3)

8. Democracies hear the organized and miss the rest. Elections, courts, a free press, and the right to protest work well for people who speak up and organize. They work less well for the silent, the disillusioned, and movements without leaders. When the French prime minister met with unions after the riots, the students who started it all were not in the room. (Part 4)

9. Leaders matter, on every side. Leaders shape who “we” are and whom “we” blame, but only if people accept them as one of their own. A government leader can calm a crisis or inflame it. A movement without leaders has no one to talk to, and no one to hold back its hardest members. (Parts 2 and 4)

What you can expect from a government

1. Listen early, and not only to those who shout.

2. Answer the questions you ask.

3. Keep blame specific, also in your own words.

4. Treat peaceful protesters and rioters differently, in practice and not only in speeches.

5. Give people without an organization a seat at the table before the street gives them one.

What this means for you

You do not need to run a country to use these insights. Notice when blame in a conversation shifts from a decision to a whole group of people. Notice when doubt is no longer welcome in a group you belong to. And remember that a fair complaint deserves a hearing, even when you disagree with how some people express it.

France as a test

The final part of the series applies all of this to France in October 2026. It does not stop at explaining. It writes down, with dates, what we expect to happen next under different choices the French government could make. Events in the coming weeks will show whether those expectations hold. That is the real test of any way of thinking about discontent. (Part 5)

Read more

1. The Discontent Challenge: the three questions, and how groups shape them.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/10/discontent-discontent-challenge.html

2. How Discontent Escalates: how protests change direction, and the warning signs.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/10/discontent-how-discontent-escalates.html

3. How Governments Perceive Discontent: how any government can see trouble earlier.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/10/discontent-how-governments-perceive.html

4. Discontent and Democratic Institutions: what democracies see, what they miss, and what they could do better.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/10/dicontent-discontent-and-democratic.html

5. France, October 2026: Analysis and Advice: the test case, with advice and expectations.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/10/dicontent-discontent-and-democratic.html

The series draws on research in psychology, sociology, and political science. The full parts contain the evidence, the sources, and the limits of what we can say.