Published January 11, 2026

In Bede’s 8th-century history of England, he describes how the Saxons live in Roman ruins, which they don’t have the skills to maintain or reproduce. By the 12th-century, some English scholars attribute the Roman ruins to a race of giants. Mere mortals couldn’t build like that.  

A year into Donald Trump’s second presidency, and we are all still talking about Greenland. Why? Because after the illegal US operations in Venezuela, his explicit threats of a US seizure of that island could simply happen, something that was unthinkable a couple of years ago. Because international norms are dead. The post war order is dead. Things like this can now happen, and there isn’t even an attempt to window-dress it as legal anymore, like, say, the illegal invasion of Iraq. What will happen next is anyone’s guess, and the takeover of the legal territory of a NATO ally isn’t unthinkable anymore.  

And how did this happen? Just like that Hemingway quote about bankruptcy: “first gradually, then suddenly.” If this undoing of the world order comes to a halt, will there be anybody living in the ruins capable of rebuilding it, or even maintaining what is left of it? Or are we just slowly descending into a new Dark Age.