Originally published Jan 16, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor. Subscribe to get weekly issues.
By Paul Gordon Collier, Editor
“Sovereignty is your borders. You’re entitled to have borders. You shouldn’t offshore your medicine. You shouldn’t offshore your semiconductors. You shouldn’t offshore your entire industrial base and have it be hollowed out beneath you. You should not be dependent for that which is fundamental to your sovereignty on any other nation. And if you’re going to be dependent on someone, it darn well better be your best allies.” – Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at WEF’s Davos 2026
INTRODUCTION
Across the world, from the U.S. to China, it seems the turmoil, the instability is only increasing. At home, the Progmericans are fighting to defend non-citizens from American law enforcement officers. In China, Chairman Xi is engaged in a bloody war to the death with some of his previously dearest friends (many of whom are now dead).
All these rumblings, however, point back to the same source, the death of the weak ruling the strong through “international order.”
The WEF has become the symbol of a global world order than began after World War II as a way for the Americans to assure they had the vast majority of the “West” strongly in their camp against their main rival, the Soviet Union. The arrangement was simple, we protect the seas and you affirm our world policy.
Abuses abounded in that relationship on both sides, but the net result is the global world order has become a fecund bed for anti-Americanism, both globally and here at home. That globalism has left America bereft of her market independence, but not bereft of her military power. The World Order that once protected America from Soviet expansion has become its own foreign-dominated entity hellbent on one singular goal, dismantle, neutralize American power.
The U.S. military budget in 2024 was almost $1 trillion. China’s military budget was $314 billion. Russia’s military budget was $149 billion. The entire EU military budget, which includes its joint efforts and the budgets of the member states was $380 billion in 2024. If you add up all the budgets of the EU, China, and Russia, you still fall short of America’s military budget. If they hope to work together, currently, they can only do that with American logistical support.
The U.S. now finds itself in the position of having the world’s greatest military, by far and away (especially at this moment with the political turmoil in China which makes ICE protests look innocuous by comparison), but constrained by a global world order that has proven to be disastrous for Americans as a whole.
This is only considering the economic damage that has been done to America; this speaks nothing about the subversive activity foreigners from the CCP to Somalia have funded and participated in on American soil, all under the programs of the global world order.
While President Trump’s speech may have been the real statement of power, the plain speak version spoken by Howard Lutnick would serve as the succinct notice to the world that the ultimate real power behind that world order, the United States, was done sustaining it.
The time is now for nations to take responsibility for themselves, and the reality of power to be known. It’s time for the paper tigers to burn and the fortresses of steel to advance, come what may, in a new global interregnum where all bets are off for what the new world order will be, if there is any world order at all.
A. THE WRITING ON THE WALL
- SOMALIA’S UN – Before Davos, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres intentionally or unintentionally telegraphed what was going to take place at Davos, Switzerland, the home of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting.
The Secretary General could see the writing on the wall through America’s current avatar, Trump, who vowed to come into Davos as a vanquisher, not a partner.
In a meeting of the UN Security Council convened by the Somal contingency (which holds the Presidency until then end of January 2026) Guterres told his audience, “The rule of law is a cornerstone of global peace and security.”
The Secretary General said the quiet part out loud right here, without meaning to, when he declared, “For smaller and less-powerful countries, particularly those affected by historical inequities and the legacies of colonialism, international law is a lifeline promising equal treatment, sovereignty, dignity and justice.”
This is the language of America’s former enemy, the Soviet Union. The agreement has come full circle so that the power it creates for the weak is being used in the same way the Soviet Union would have used it, to destroy the American republic.
This part here appeals to moral restraint alone to check great power against small power. But in the case of the UN, we have a vehicle of power that is being used by collective small power to destroy great power from within their own countries. It is only fitting that the Somalis (who sent us a Minnesota fraud community that was stealing billions from American citizens) presided over this self-own disaster of a speech.
This is like handing over the controls of a 747 to a blind man because it was his turn to fly (and that would be the “democratic” thing to do).
ED.NOTE: Somali culture goes back centuries, and some of it is rich with governance innovation the West has yet to learn, let alone understand. Somalia is the southern region of the land Somalis occupy. Somaliland to the North is radically different than the south. What we have in Minnesota is hardly the Somali peoples’ best, even in the South.
He offered a token gesture to the great powers to convince them that an arrangement that creates an imbalance of power favoring small nations over the great is somehow still good for the great. He claimed, “For powerful countries, it is a guardrail defining what is acceptable – and what is not, in times of disagreement, division and outright conflict.”
The guardrail is there to check their power against their own interest. It’s not there to help great powers.
After Davos, the weak power’s vehicle of power, the UN, and even NATO (weak Europe checking American great power), have de facto lost their reason for existing at all. The UN was an engine of peace that turned out to be an anti-American poison pill largely funded by Americans. NATO was American protection of Europe while Europe undermined Americanism.
As Europe lurched further and further away from individual liberty, the incentive for America to continue to pay for their protection ended.
While International Rule of Law seems good as a Motte, its bailey is filled with violent political papercut fights that allow petty tyrants from barely existing countries to wield international power over far greater powers.
The Secretary General warned that rule of law was being replaced by the law of the jungle, but what he didn’t dare say, or face, was the fact that the UN has enabled a de facto law of the papercut jungle to rule over great powers for the bulk of its disgraceful existence.
Standards, for instance, are not followed consistently, they’re applied to target the UN’s main enemies, America, Russia, and Israel (not necessarily in that order). This speech by the UN’s CEO was a last desperate plea to preserve corrupt weak power over great power. It appears Trump was not impressed.
- THE INDEPENDENCE COPE – Before Davos, President Trump’s bellicose language demanding Greenland become part of America emerged as the bellwether of the upcoming event and would ultimately prove to be the enduring bellwether of the event. Before the event, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen responded to Trump’s threats, calling them a “mistake.”
She then added, “It shows that our northern NATO members have Arctic-ready forces right now. And above all, that Arctic security can only be achieved together. And this is why the proposed additional tariffs are a mistake, especially between long-standing allies. The European Union and the United States have agreed to a trade deal last July, and in politics, and in business, a deal is a deal, and when friends shake hands, it must mean something.”
Europe rushed a few troops in for a few days, then pulled them back out in an empty display that defies the reality of power, which is this; Europe, as of right now, is more of a liability to America than an asset, and her paltry response to Trump’s shocking (even to this writer) suggestions he might use the military (which he later walked back), reveals just how little real power Europe has.
She called for Europe to become more independent, to not rely on American power for their defense, but, in point of fact, for the foreseeable future, Europe has NO EFFECTIVE defense outside of America.
B. THE END OF THEIR HISTORY
President Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, in a conversation on the WEF stage, may have delivered the most meaningful moment of the whole event, topping even Trump, even if not in authority (though one presumes he spoke with Trump’s authority).
What Lutnick did was spell out to Europe why it is that America has no interest in being shackled by a global order that produced a total gutting of American vitality in return. Of course, the story isn’t as simple as that, but this writer believes it is largely accurate (though complex, for the same “Americans” that also gutted other nations through this whole system were also doing this to their own country as well).
He starts off making it clear why the American arrived like never before to Davos this year. He declared, “Okay. We are in Davos, at the World Economic Forum, and the Trump administration—and myself—we are here to make a very clear point.
Globalization has failed the West and the United States of America. It’s a failed policy. It is what the WEF has stood for, which is export offshore, far-shore, find the cheapest labor in the world and the world is a better place for it.”
When the world order looks to the “good of the whole,” they do so at the sovereign expense of their member nations. This is fine in fat times, but the cost is overbearing in lean times, and even more costly when the payoff is the constant shaming and erosion of American vitality and sovereignty.
Lutnick spells it out plainly here, stating, “The fact is, it has left America behind. It has left the American worker behind. And what we are here to say is that America First is a different model—one that we encourage other countries to consider—which is that our workers come first. We can have policies that impact our workers.”
This isn’t a rebuke of the notion of international rule of law, this a rebuke of the current one and a demand that any new ones respect the sovereign rights of states. It encourages sovereign states to look after the interests of its own citizens first, but within the boundaries of their reality of power.
He makes it clear when he means sovereignty, he’s not just talking about borders. He exclaimed, “Sovereignty is your borders. You’re entitled to have borders. You shouldn’t offshore your medicine. You shouldn’t offshore your semiconductors. You shouldn’t offshore your entire industrial base and have it be hollowed out beneath you.”
This next comment is the ultimate indictment of the whole project, and it’s true not just of America but most of the nations of the west. The UN project shifted real market power through international law to China at the detriment of the West (including the US).
Lutnick brings home the point that indicts the whole globalist project, “You should not be dependent for that which is fundamental to your sovereignty on any other nation. And if you’re going to be dependent on someone, it darn well better be your best allies.”
Any system that leads any nation to violate that standard is an existential threat to that same nation, and that includes the U.S.
The UN pushed the Global Warming hoax that was used to justify maddening energy policies from sovereign nations that makes them utterly dependent on an authoritarian state that even now is in the midst of a political purge that hasn’t been seen since Mao.
Lutnick highlighted the foolishness of their green scheme, pointing out, “Why would Europe agree to be net zero in 2030 when they don’t make a battery? They don’t make a battery. So if they go 2030, they are deciding to be subservient to China, who makes the batteries. Why would you do that?”
You would only do that if you were in on the sabotage of your own nation-state, as EU, UN, and even NATO leaders are.
PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS
Before Rome established an Empire, she managed Greece in much the same way America manages her spheres of influence, expecting little more from them than economic cooperation and submission to Roman foreign policy. After a century or two of violations of Rome’s foreign policy, and even an incursion by one Greek King, Pyrrhus of Epirus, Rome decided to use its military advantage to once and for all absorb Greece into its Empire.
This was accomplished with the fall of Corinth in 146 BC, and it would set Rome on a course of gutting their republic and creating a world Empire that would last for centuries. There are significant differences between Rome and America today, but yet we now find ourselves at a similar crossroads to Rome, finding itself sponsoring its own enemies and seeing its own power limited by rules effectively designed to neuter it. This transition from the republic to the empire is Part 3 of our Transitions series, which is scheduled to be published in the June 5 edition of MIA.
Rome chose flat-out conquest, which I am not suggesting America will choose, outside of perhaps Greenland, Canada, and maybe Mexico. It is doubtful America wants to absorb the rot that they view as Europe today. It would be like taking in an old man with a contagious disease.
I am not suggesting America will be conquering Canada and Mexico anytime soon, but the door is now open to do so (not that I recommend we do so).
We are going back to the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), where sovereignty was assumed only for those who could field an army to defend it and a professional class to manage it. Failure on any front would justify conquest from a stronger power. It laid the groundwork for an international order even as the global order would subvert its initial principles.
That treaty was replaced by the post-WWII agreement that afforded weak governments the “right” to hold land and be supplemented by the great powers through a global de facto redistribution of wealth system, one that awarded warlords for compliance with the world order.
The next domino to fall which could ignite a new round of conquest, absorption, and consolidation (sometimes voluntarily) will be the nullification of nuclear missiles through effective missile defenses. This writer believes we are close to seeing something like this happen. Trump’s Golden Dome moves us towards that direction (and it is why, in part, he wants Greenland).
Until then, for all the threats by Trump, Europe has nuclear arms, so they are safe, for now (and probably for some time to come afterwards, should they mind their own business). Canada and Mexico, however, do not have nuclear missiles. The new world order means territory is once again valuable (because they need land and water for AI centers). This makes possession of Canada and Mexico a potential vital need for the continuation of the American state.
If I am right, and Trump is sowing the seeds for that eventuality, see if pro-Americanist groups in Mexico don’t start sprouting up. They already are in Canada. Conservatives in Canada would feel far better under American authority with American rights than they do under Canada’s laws, ESPECIALLY if Canada can sustain its own identity (like Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales do in the UK).
Perhaps the mere offer of becoming American citizens with American rights will be enough to “conquer” Canada and Mexico.
The new American Empire would have more difficulty integrating Mexico than Canada, so phasing in their citizenship and voting rights will be generally longer than Canadians. Mexico’s Americanist population (people who understand and want dangerous liberty for themselves AND their neighbors) is much smaller (but not non-existent) than Canada’s (which might be as much as 25% of the country).
What we are seeing on the streets of Minneapolis are, most likely, the last violent gasps of a global world order desperately trying to reel America back into its heeled place, providing the power while being sabotaged by it.
The 2026 Midterm Elections may be the last stand for the globalist world order or the beginning of their counter-reformation. Let us hope for the sake of the human race they are vanquished by the end of this year. If they are not, expect a Progmerican revival that will not long last as even America’s energy will finally flicker out and the world will be filled with violence for decades to come.
Whether they want to accept it or not, the globalist project is dead. The resources are gone. The myths are destroyed. Even if they “win,” they will have nothing left to complete their project. America is putting it out of its misery before it can completely break her, and thus the world.
A strong, independent America is the best hope for stability for most of the world in the decades ahead. A weak America is war for the world and great pain and suffering for us here at home.
To our Christian subscribers, let us pray for repentance in America, especially of the sin of murdering our children, both in the womb and in the classroom, both physically and spiritually. And barring that, that the Lord might tarry in our deserved judgment and give us more time to lead our nation to repentance, forgiveness, and restoration.
Let us hope there are 10 of us found for God to spare our country.
FURTHER RESOURCES:
World Economic Forum, Davos 2024 – Thomas C. Sanchez
A Patriot’s History of Globalism (It’s Rise and Decline) – Larry Schweikert
United Nations (A History) – Stanley Meisler
The New World Order Book – Nick Redfern
