Dr. Jan Øberg interview

(Don't miss the section below this interview!)

NATO Pushes Europe Toward Total Collapse - Countdown to ALL-OUT War Has Begun | Dr. Jan Øberg | World Affairs In Context | July 25, 2026
Dr. Jan Øberg is a Swedish peace and conflict researcher, author, and co-founder of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research. Follow Jan's work: Substack: https://thetransnational.substack.com/

Here is a transcript of this interview:

JAN- Well, I chose a perspective that has not been discussed as part of this rearmament in Europe, which comes as a very unfortunate consequence of the stupid NATO expansion that was responded to in an contra-productive way by Russia invading Ukraine and both parties being happy to use the Ukrainian people for their battle. And that perspective was the economic one.

I was motivated by the fact that you've heard secretary generals of NATO, you've heard the Danish prime minister, you've had a lot of European leaders say that it's one way to get the wheels running in the European economy, is to invest in the military and switch to a war economy. There's all, I mean it's not, I don't think, the term war economy, has been put into any official document, but that's what they do from a civilian peacetime economy to converting it to a military, basically like the military should be uplifting the rest of the economy and then I was reminded of the fact that in the '70s and '80s we were a number of peace researchers and economists who worked with the issue of what was at that time called conversion and that was the idea could you convert the military industry to civilian industry and get a beneficial effect of that. For instance there was the Swedish diplomat or disarmament minister Inga's big study in the United Nations of this and I sat at the time at the Danish government's security and disarmament commission and the whole thing about what is the relationship between military investments and civilian investments is something that we should discuss now because I can tell you now at that time and today there does not exist any study, any piece of research, any book, any dissertation that proves that you get more beneficial effects of military investments than you do from similar civilian investments in the economy. So if you want to waste money, go for the military. If you want to waste and get less employment effects, innovative effects, spillovers to the civilian sector, worse hospitals, less cultural life, less welfare for the people, keep on militarizing your economy. It's there is nobody who has proved the opposite of what I just said.

Interestingly enough, those who say this today are not research institutes. We are the only one here in Sweden, not in the only one in Sweden, we the only one in Europe who have published this analysis saying these things.

No other research institute have done it. Not CRI, not PO, not the other peace research, not those you would expect knowing about economy and military and beneficial or non-beneficial effects of it. It's the banks and the bank studies you will find if I remember correctly the one is from the Danish National Bank and I think the European Bank too are clearly saying that there are less effects from military investments than there would be from comparable equally large civilian investments. So if you want to, I mean Europe is in deep economic crisis.

Germany is falling apart as everybody knows. Volkswagen is probably going to be taken over by China. You have written you've given a lecture in your own program which is excellent about these things which I was happy to repost. Everybody knows that we are in crisis and there are competitors such as China and Russia to a certain extent and the US is giving us all these kinds of problems with Trump and tariffs and God knows what. We're now choosing European leaders are now choosing something that they must know if they are not ignorant beyond permissible will make the economy less growth oriented, less welfare oriented, less innovative in the civilian sector. And therefore I call the subtitle of my article "are they ignorant or do they lie deliberately" because they cannot, all these leaders, basically everybody has said it, is that state leaders they cannot not know from their experts if they lose any from their banks etc.

They cannot be ignorant about the fact that I've just told you there is no study that proves that what they say is true and there has not been one earlier either. So long story short, this is a catastrophic development. And I would like this program and others to begin to discuss why are we ruining the welfare?

Why are we making life a hell for our children and grandchildren by militarizing which one, will not solve the security problems with Russia? And two, will only make us ourselves go down and become you know a peripheral area of the world's future because nobody's going to listen to Europe if we're going to be in an, you know, a stone-age economy that wasted all this money on armament.

So that's a long answer to your question.

LENA- Right. And you mentioned Germany. Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Germany's factory and industrial investments are being driven by this massive corporate pledge under the made for Germany initiative, which now commits over 800 billion - 800 billion euros through I believe 2028 to spend on military infrastructure and on heavy government infrastructure spending as well. So they're effectively building roads that would possibly be used for military equipment which I believe now is not structured or designed for military transportation vehicles. So and this particular program consists of 139 firms across the country across Germany. It includes Deutsche Bank and Siemens and other major enterprises. So it does appear that virtually every big business, every CEO is on board with the strategy to militarize and to cut social spending despite an average person, you know, struggling to make ends meet.

JAN- Yeah. That has to do with the fact that if you present it like if we do not do any other investments and we don't have a long range plan for the civilian infrastructure development of Europe then it is true that if you compare with making no other investments then of course it's better to invest in the military because it does give some employment. The problem, and I didn't make that clear in what I said, is that it gives much less employment and much less welfare benefits than in investment in civilian companies, investments in infrastructure, investments in education health etc., and culture. So if of course, if somebody comes to a big company and it's a CEO and says well we give you billions of contracts if you produce this and that weapon system or parts for it etc. Yeah, of course that will be seen as positive. What I'm talking about is the spin-off effects or the multiplier effects into civilian society and that's where the lying comes in. This is much less effective as an investment for citizens lives in the future than civilian investments of the same size would be. And that has to do with the fact maybe and we should explain this to make it more clear for people who may not have thought of these things before. First of all, this is a monopsonistic market. It's a difficult word, monopsonistic market. It means that there's only one buyer and that's the state for the weapon systems and that's why weapon systems can increase any percentage, hundreds of percentages, from they are planned and bought and contracts are written with governments till they are finally there. Take the F-35 for instance - way more expensive, the world's history's most expensive project. The other thing is there's something called opportunity costs. Whenever you spend $100 on a tank, you cannot spend that $100 on welfare or health or infrastructure. And there's something called, what would you call that? You probably call it passive or negative capital in this because a weapon system, take a plane, a fighter plane will first of all take more hours to maintain on the ground than it will be in the air. Secondly, most of the time it will be standing on the ground unless you expect it's functioning in a in a full-scale war and that means it just costs money every day and does nothing useful for the economy and for the civilian development and innovation. Then comes this argument that well, there will be a lot of research and development of new weapons and sometimes that they spin off, you know, positive effects for civilian society such as back in time we would not have had transistors or we would not have had hearing devices or something like that.

Hearing aids - if we had not had the military, excuse me, how stupid do people think we are. If you want hearing aids or you need a new type of technology or something, you go straight and do research on getting that and finding ways to get that. You don't sit and wait, you know, for decades until perhaps research on a military system will spin off something that could produce the product you need in civil society. I mean, this is bizarre. But the fact is you don't have media who have the competence to discuss this. As I said, no single research institute in Europe has investigated these things. And I can understand why. I can understand why, but it's immoral, if you will. And third, it's not a public discussion.

People believe that, oh, that's what we must invest because then they protect us and then there will be no war. Excuse me. Think of the trillions of dollars that have been poured into NATO since '49 for the three words of the NATO mantra: stability, security, and peace. And where are we today? We're at the closest distance to warfare. I'm not an alarmist. I'm not a doomsayer. Don't get me wrong, but the discussion about warfare is now more rampant than it has been for decades.

While NATO was promising us that if we made these investments and paid the price also in civil society, we would avoid war and we will have a peaceful world. There must be somebody who wakes up at some point and say this is all BS.

We know it doesn't work that way and the economies don't work that way. The military doesn't create security or peace because as the saying goes and I've said it before, if weapons could create peace we would have at peace a long time ago. It takes something completely different to create peace and certainly investments in the military is now first of all not only making military security and tension bigger.

It is also ravaging and ruining our civilian societies. It's a double idiocy and that comes on top of the fact that NATO still has a military expenditures which combined are at least 10 times higher than Russia's. Now do not tell me that somebody who has 10 horses starts a war against somebody who has 100 horses and believes that hello, hello, everything is going to go fine.

It doesn't it doesn't make sense.

There's nothing that is formally set in this sector of European politics that makes any sense. It's for lunatics or people who can't think. I'm sorry to be this determined, the words I use. But I spent 50 years understanding these issues and I don't see any logics anymore. We have stripped the world, the European world from diplomacy. We have stripped it from contacts, confidence building measures, trying the least to understand what the Russians are about whereas the Russians are studying us research wise and otherwise.

And we see enemies everywhere. China is an enemy. Russia is an enemy. Iran is an enemy. And we must, I mean, this is hysteric. And who's paying the price?

The taxpayers. I would like taxpayer's boycott.

If you guys in the military want all these, begin to sell cakes and coffee at your meetings and see how much money you can collect for the next war. Because squeezing money out and promising taxpayers security, stability, and peace and not delivering it and then ask for even more, excuse me, I would call that unethical if not lunatic. And that in itself could lead to war. Not Russia invasion of a NATO country. It's never happened and it won't happen for a number of reasons. I've written a long articles about this and 13, 15, 16, points of why it's... But the long story short is we might end up making a self-fulfilling prophecy because we believe that military is the only thing that can solve problems. Just pouring money. And that has to do with a very dangerous new tendency in the western world. We don't talk about what we actually do. We talk about setting off money for it and then we think we've solved the problem. You know, we take 5% of the gross national product and then we'll be much safer. That depends on how you spend that five percent.

But we have converted any serious discussion about what threatens the western world, nature, other conflicts, cultures, environmental decay, poverty, tension, terrorism, all this is eradicated. The only thing now is what threatens us is what we can meet by increasing military expenditures - 5%, of gross national product, that is totally bizarre. I am so far the only scholar in the world who has analyzed this as a bizarre absurd measurement because it substitutes from a serious threat analysis. I know what it takes to make a threat analysis. The Nordic countries made serious threat analysis years ago. Today there's no talk about anything. Russia is a threat therefore 5% of gross national product. You see what I mean? It has nothing to do with solving problems. It has nothing to do with diagnosis. It has nothing to do with possible new thinking that might be needed. It's just more money, we've solved the problem. More money for hospitals, we've created more health. I mean, there's no links between these things. It's quantification. It's market mechanism for everything. And then we think we have solved problems.

We might end up waking up in the war because we've done all these stupid things. Not because of what the Russians or the Chinese are doing, but what we have done ourselves such as ruining the welfare states that Western Europe and particularly the Nordic countries where I sit were well known for. People look up to the Nordic countries because we were welfare states. We had equality. We had people's high schools. We had women's equality. We had talked about things instead of fighting each other or slapping each other's face. Now all this is gone. It's destroyed by stupid people in Stockholm who just joined NATO. I mean it's amazing what this will cost the taxpayers. Uh, oh.

I'm thinking of my children and my grandchildren, not myself.

LENA- Europe is creating this self-reinforcing cycle where increased military production actually generates political incentives for even greater militarization. And so we see this cycle kind of go on and go on and go on and I think it's sort of spinning faster and faster because you know first we discuss oh, this is just rhetoric, this is just you know, so and so saying that Russia is going to invade, but we know that's not true and we sort of brush it off, but then I think a couple years later we see that actually that rhetoric is transforming into policies into security policies and economic policies that affect every single person. So because as you mentioned and as you wrote in your absolutely wonderful Substack post, military spending is economically less productive than civilian investment and because that's sort of the case and everybody remains silent, everybody sort of observing who are the primary beneficiaries of Europe's massive re-armament.

JAN- That will only be those companies that actually get the contracts to produce, produces waste.
It's waste production from a civilian economy. I mean producing a tank or whatever there's no civilian use.
Those companies which get these billions of dollars in investments will of course benefit.
But the rest of society will not. That is what makes the politics of the European Union and NATO deeply immoral. They couldn't care less about citizens welfare when they steal your money, tell you that we will deliver something called peace, security, and stability, and they don't do it. And when they find out that their policies don't work if they're reasonably intelligent, which I'm not sure, they ask for more of the same thing instead of asking, hm, what are we doing wrong? What worked in '49 or '53 or '62 or '78 doesn't work today. But there's one thing that never worked through the whole process and that's the idea of military investments doing civilian good things. That has not changed. It's the same mistake over and over again. We are going to live in relative poverty in Europe if these guys are allowed to continue their absolutely self-destructive policies in the name of welfare or development or competition with the rest of the world. Shut down these companies. If you want to compete and be somebody in the future world order, you don't militarize your economy. That's the last thing you would do. And you open a relationship to Russia. You start negotiations. You use diplomacy again. You use intelligence.

You use your brains if you have any. And you have a vision about how to solve conflicts and live together peacefully in Europe. The Russians are ready to do that. They've always seen themselves as also European.

But the West does not want that relationship with Russia. They want to pump in. They give loans to pump in. They actually help. Now the US does it too in having a full war between Ukraine and Russia.

This is what it leads to is that stability, security and peace that NATO promises and ask us a demand or squeeze money out of us to pay for. I mean, I'm sorry this is a theater of the absurd. It has no relationship to empirical analysis and serious politics.

LENA- Very true. New York Times just published an article on how the US president has made over two billion dollars during his first year alone in office through conflicts of interest relating to crypto business deals and bribes. Now, I will just link that article for anyone interested below. But it seems to me that we're observing an interesting dynamic where policy and these decisions are being shaped by personal interests and the interest of major campaign donors and not by a politician's constituency. And I think there is a degree of that in the EU as well, not just the United States. And so that raises a question, does democracy even exist in the United States? And in those European countries where the population is very much opposed to militarism but then a small group of individuals at the very top continue pushing their own agenda that's disconnected with the will of the people.

JAN- ... who often when they were young got Fulbright scholarships and were educated at US universities or journalists who were educated at the American University in Beirut etc. And they all kind of more or less brainwashed. I call it brain-Washington, you know, for a little joke because what comes out of this is you have, and that's the center periphery, the elite are the same, the elites are the same in different parts of the world and they have more common interest together than they have an interest with their citizens. [galong's ?] old central-periphery structure which was about imperialism and it also applies is within NATO. The elites within NATO are more loyal with each other and the benefits they get from it than they are with their citizens and their citizens best [interest].

There's the word for that in wartime, you know, and there's a word for it in peace time, too. This is "traitor." You can be a wartime traitor, more loyal with the foreign powers, you can be a peacetime traitor. This the same thing, just the time is different. And of course the crime is bigger if you are traitor during a quisling as it was called in Norway. If you are that in wartime but I would say I have a moral problem with those who are more loyal with Washington than in Stockholm than they are with my security and my families and the Swedish people's best.

I have a problem with them ethically and morally and they would never dream of talking with me who is a peace researcher about anything. They would talk with people who are Russophobic and confirms only their own views that we must arm [for] war and war. So you have military research centers all over Scandinavia today. You have a cri that does military security studies not peace studies. You have a po in Oslo that has nothing to do with the institute that you and Galton started in the late 50s and you have university departments in Scandinavia which are doing what they are supposed to do because university institutes too are state financed. So you can't find money today in today's Sweden, you can't find money for a study of some kind of peaceful solution, peace research, reconciliation, forgiveness or something like that. We can do it because we are people financed and people appreciate what we do. But you [and] I couldn't do this. I was a director of a state institute, Swedish Institute of Foreign Affairs or International Relations or the Copenhagen International Institute for International Studies or something like that. They all producing basically the same stuff and that's why they have not made a study of the economic effects of militarism. They know that that would be difficult to sell and get financed. Free research, forget about it.

LENA- Yeah, and of course these policies, militaristic policies don't exist in a vacuum. And we know that when there is this sort of the idea of creating a monster or an adversary also leads to certain civil liberties and freedoms being then effectively abused by the state because now the state has a reason to say, "Oh well, you don't get to post this because this means that you're a foreign agent or something like that or you're supporting adversary." And we've seen that after 9/11. We saw that during other conflicts and we certainly see that now during the war the proxy war in Ukraine where any dissent is being silenced. But it seems to me that the silencing is actually taking on a more and more aggressive posture in the EU. Could you speak to that? Could you could you kind of walk us through what you're observing for those in our audience who are not from the EU, who are in the United States and have no idea what's going on.

JAN- Well, I'm spontaneously reminded of a German author after the Second World War. I'm sorry I'm forgetting his name, but he said if you sleep in a democracy, you risk waking up at in a dictatorship.

And that comes to, that applies to the intellectual world today too, or the research world. I'm not saying we don't have intellectuals but they are outside the academic circles so to speak, basically, and that I think that what you're pointing to is partly motivated by the fact or caused by the fact that the West which is 12% of humanity is going down. We are now the last empire. That empire is getting weaker and weaker, more and more desperate and cannot tolerate that there are different views. I mean the more weak you are, the more intolerant you are, you become with people who say something else. You know this is, the United States is, a kind of patriarch at the deathbed and the children do not obey around the world. The Chinese do not obey. Africa does not obey. People are seeking, you know, other finance systems. Now, what we tried to do backfires. Nothing is going really well for the western world at the moment. And so you get more and more intolerant. And those of us who may have blown off a few truths at some point, we are hated and we're never used. I have no problems with that. I've [been] used elsewhere, but I was very much used in the Danish and Swedish and other media in the '70s and '80s and '90s. I mean, I can't imagine myself sitting in a commission for disarmament security in today's Denmark, which is probably the most militaristic country in Europe with a prime minister who has the guts to say that all Russians are crazy, which he said at the Munich conference last and who has also warned the Danes that we should if we don't look out, Hamas may come and take Denmark, you know we are that level, right, so what happens is, the weaker you get the more intolerant and the less intellectuality in the field of security. I mean if we if we peel the whole fruit, security politics is enormously interesting philosophically.

How do we treat people? Why do we treat people, some people as enemies? What do we do with enemies? Are we threatened?

How do you make a good serious threat analysis? Civilian threats, military threats, short-term threats, long-term threats, micro threats, macro threats. You know this is one reason I was stimulated to go into this field in the '70s. I was planning to become an architect, it's intellectually, philosophically so interesting. How do we live together on this earth with our conflicts without killing each other which I think is a reasonably good question. And all this intellectualism is off how - by people who say just give us 5% of the cost that's not a product and we will solve all the problems. Right. Right.

Now these guys are not serious. They are not intellectuals. They are not even thinkers in any kind of sense of the word. But worse they have a media and a research priesthood. And you know I talk about MIMAC, the military-industrial media academic complex. These elites sell this nonsense and the main tool is to tell we are threatened. Your life is in danger. The future is very dark but if you give us money then we will save you. Now that's the only, some of these nasty guys is the little boy looking at the emperor saying excuse me, um, why are we then not living in peace at the moment? I'm happy to be that little boy sometimes. I know it's annoying to some of these people and I think intellectuals should be annoying. One, two, they should be more creative. And I'm happy to say, but it's sad from a democratic point of view, it is not very difficult to be more creative than our present state leaders and leadership of the military.

I have not in my last 50 years when I've studied these things seen a level this low in terms of creativity in terms of ability to evaluate what they are doing changing the horses and doing something new saying something new and I tell you one of the biggest and most important differences between China and the West is if you ask the Chinese where do you want to be in 20, 30, or 40 years from now they have interesting ideas and they have a vibrant discussion about it. It's not only five year plans. It's a bit more than that. For instance, within 25 years to eradicate poverty and they did it within 24 years.

If you ask a European leader or an American leader, where do you want your society to be in 20 years from now? How do you want to make your society become better? What, is your message to your grandchildren's society? Nothing. Nothing, Lena. Nothing. There's not one leader who can say anything interesting. Now leaders could in the '60s and '70s. Willy Brandt could, the go could, [Uncle ?] Jorgensson could, Helmut Kohl could, Schmidt could, [Keon ?] in Finland could, the idea of neutrality, equal distance from Russia, Warsaw pact and NATO. Brilliant idea. Everybody should go neutral in that sense. We would eradicate a neutrality. [?]

So all of this is gone. And maybe I'm just talking about a world that was better before. But I cannot imagine any other basic reason that things are falling so much apart intellectually and morally than the western people, western leaders knowing very well we're losing it. And then what is classical when you're losing it? What do you use? You use that type of power in which you still believe you're relatively strongest and that is a military. You're not strongest economically anymore. You're not strongest technologically anymore.

You're not strongest in terms of culture anymore. I mean, what comes out of our America today compared with the '50s, '60s, and '70s in terms of art and music.

My goodness, what changed? You are not the strongest in terms of legitimacy in the eyes of others and you are very weak when it comes to visions of a better future of a better society, of the good society which we never discussed, by the way. So what do you do? You maximize your weapons capacity because that's the last thing you can cling to. We're still strong. 5%, 10% of gross national product and we will survive and - no you won't you will destroy yourself and that's the tragedy of the West - we could go down with grace, we could reach out to others, we could demilitarize, talk with those we have problems with instead, but what we do is we don't destroy China or Russia or Africa or the Middle East or Iran culture 6,000 years back. I mean I've been through Iran a couple of time not a couple of times several times and been teaching there and stuff like I mean this is not a society you destroy by bombing. Trump believes these kinds of things, but you destroy yourself. What is going on in the western world now is predominantly self-destructive and the rest of the world will increasingly say okay, these guys do it their way we do it our way and in the long run they will sit and say how stupid that the west whom we loved, looked up to, were inspired by. Go to China, tell me there's not an inspiration from the west. I mean, lots of things they have done is inspired from the west. Russia is not a socialist, communist, blah, blah, blah, country anymore. It's a western capitalist country and still we see enemies everywhere.

In a way, we have won, but now we're losing everything. So it as I said it's a unique tragedy in western history in my view and that's what makes me sad. The rest of the world makes me happy. They will survive. I'm unfortunately not sure that what we call the western world will survive. Yes but we will not be a very nice place in the future. We'll be a pure free a museum, a funny place that you can go to because that was what it once looked like. And that is very sad. We have tremendous resources in the West if we wanted to redeploy them, convert them to something constructive instead of destructive.

LENA- Many people argue that Europe has become effectively a vassal of the United States especially under the Trump administration. Is the Trump administration, if that's true, and if you agree with that statement, does the Trump administration deliberately seek to destroy Europe's, you know, role in in global politics and sort of is destruction the goal or is there another goal that sort of results in Europe's self-destructive policy? JAN- And it's a very mixed, it's a very mixed bag, Lena.

The US needs Europe, but it does not need a strong Europe. It doesn't want a strong Europe. It didn't start with Trump. It started way earlier and you had Biden administration saying we're going to blow up Nordstream. And that meant economic warfare to say the least.

You now have tariffs. You have a submissive EU that sits and talk about these kinds of things and let Trump get away with more or less crazy terrorist policies.

You have a total military production dependence very strong at least of the US because we've always stupidly believed that the US was there for us. The US is here for the US and the idea with NATO has never been to protect Europe. The project called NATO is a US project to secure that if there is a war it will be in Europe and not on US soil. That's forward defense. This is the idea of deterrence. This is American nuclear weapons in Europe. It is to have the fight here not in the American mainland if you will. And that's why we have the ballistic missile defense. This is why we have long range missiles. This is why we have the bases in Greenland. That is why Trump is interested in Greenland, is [to] keep every kind of possible warfare away from the US society. That's a cynical and the Europeans have been sitting down since '49 and believe that this was a beneficial thing to help and assist the survival of the Europeans. I mean this is this is laughable. It belongs to the world of fiction. And of course media and CIA's influence on media etc. Everybody is paying for the right message you know, media warfare is almost as important as military warfare. The war on your minds and brains and thinking and world views is so strong and the Americans have been formidably good at that for you know for 70 years and believing that there was only a good society and they wanted to do good for us and then sometimes we need to pay a price for it all. So but long story short, this submissiveness is not a new phenomenon. It's been there all the time. It's just, let's say, it's gotten worse under the so-called leadership of people like von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas and German Chancellor Merz, after basically everybody after Willy Brandt who had the intellect and the background and the knowledge to stand up and say, I'm ruling this place not America. And who was also the man who knelt down in Warsaw and apologized for what the Germans did. How many leaders do we have of that caliber today? Zero. How many presidents have been to Hiroshima and never, never apologized. Now you know we're far down the drain of demoralization also. And that's very sad to see. I can say that because I have [for] a few years I've studied these things.

Maybe somebody who's 25 think I'm very radical. I'm not very radical given that I studied these things since I was about 20.

LENA- If Europe continues on its current trajectory of rising military budgets through 2035, I believe, what do you think Europe will look like economically and socially, let's say 5 to 10 years from now?

JAN- It would be elusive politically, economically, culturally. Everything that a good society needs will be eradicated and will be, you know, subsumed under military needs.

Whether it's good museums or scholarships for young artists or whatever, there will not be that money for it. If you continue down this road, and I tell you 5% is not the end of it.

They would probably say six or seven at some point because they can't think of changing policies. They can only change figures. And that's what somebody who is not very intelligent and has never been an intellectual can do. But if you start thinking in a new way, then you're an intellectual. I don't see it that they will change. Unless you have a catastrophe that makes people think a really serious economic breakdown somewhere in Europe that may say, oh my god what happened, I mean Germany's basically gone like a you know peripheral country or something it doesn't mean that we cannot be happy. I worked in Somalia and Burundi and in poor societies and people can be happy without that but then the Europeans will have to live without any kind of material benefits and joys and all that and be happy dancing and writing poetry or something like that. I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad life. It will be a wakeup call, but it will be a periphery in the world which is roaring out there. High-tech AI, getting together, building cooperation. If you take the Belt and Road Initiative, 150 countries are now involved, the only ones who are not involved in NATO and EU countries. I mean, this is self-isolation. It's so stupid.

From a visionary point of view, from a future point of view, we're creating a multi-polar, multi-nodal, multi-cultural world, and it's extremely fascinating.

That's why I'm so optimistic about the future. I'm just not optimistic on behalf of those 12% of the world who says that they belong to the western world. You know, Titanic is sailing at dawn.

LENA- Yeah. And then maybe the last question for today, you end your article with a very provocative question. That question is, are European leaders misunderstanding basic economics or are they deliberately presenting an incomplete picture to the public? In other words, are they deliberately lying? So, after years of studying peace and conflict, which explanation do you find more convincing and why?

JAN- I had somebody who wrote back to me and say they are both. I don't know whether you can be both. But Lena, the main thing is both are very bad. If you're ignorant about the basics of economics, and I say that to you with somebody who is tremendously knowledgeable about economics, if you were a politician today in the western world not knowing the basics of economics, that's catastrophic.

And if you know that basics and you then deliberately lie about and say it'll have great effects for the civilian economy to make huge investments in weapons factories and great spin-offs for society and all that.

I don't know which is worse. I don't care which is worse. Both things are beyond believable in a democracy and an enlightened society.

And what makes me perhaps even more pessimistic about the western future is that you have so few scholars in media. You are one of the exceptions. But media who say the same nonsense and never ask questions.

You see, the moment you don't have that, you don't have a vibrant society and you don't have democracy anymore. When research and media explorations, free thinking is disappearing and substituted by, by rhetoric by, you know, peace is war, war is peace, freedom is slavery, etc.

Then it's gone. I'm sorry, Lena. Then it's gone - what we were so proud of in Europe and had all reasons to be proud of you know whether Beethoven or [Gagord ?] or whatever will be gone. It would have repercussions much further outside just economic crisis because the moment you take this economic crisis thing and you destroy the economy, I'm not sure you will have a vibrant culture. You may have it. I'm not saying culture is dependent on welfare and materialism.

But I think there's a risk that other sectors of society will be drawn down in an economic crisis.

And then you have to make somebody the reason for your economic problems. And that's where China will be pointed out as more of an enemy. They were the ones who destroyed the European economy or the Russians were the one who did bad things to us or now the Americans perhaps at some point if Trump is allowed to continue there might be more voices in Europe, the last voice will be we did all the stupid things from NATO's expansion which we should never have done and promised never to do, onto the war and onto the sanctions and onto the militarization and the conversion to a war economy. We did all the wrong things ourselves. We could have done something else. Now that something else is never discussed and that in my view is the end of democracy and a healthy society. The good society is a vibrant discussing society. It's a dialoguing society. It is a society in which all views are possible, listened to, taken seriously by the decision makers. People who listen to what is going on in the in the citizenship etc. Now that's a long time ago since that happened in Europe but particularly in the Nordic countries probably now 30 years ago since we had a serious discussion in Scandinavia about security issues and that's how NATO membership for Finland and Sweden is possible, how America has built 40-plus bases in Scandinavia in two years, etc. So I can't tell you whether they are ignorant or they are lying or both or whatever. But it doesn't matter much to me. They should not, those who lead Europe's 450 million people, should not behave the way they do. No matter what you and I think will be the actual explanation for it. I think the decline of the West is the main explanation, getting more and more desperate. But it's not good. It's not good. It's not good if you're ignorant and don't know the basics of economics, and it's not good if you're lying to your people.

LENA- Dr. Jan Øberg, thank you so much for taking the time to join and for such a fascinating and important conversation.
I really do hope that our viewers share it with their network and with their friends and really start looking into these topics themselves and doing the homework to understand what's going on better. I highly recommend following Jan on Substack, on X, as well as on his website. I will link everything in the description below. Jan, thank you so much for your time. It has been a pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity and what you do, which is so much needed in this crazy times we're living in. And I hope we can do some more synergy in the future. Thank you very much.

Yet wasteful military buildup proceeds apace in all EU/NATO countries, especially in the most NATO-ist of them all, outside of the Baltic States - Canada. The neo-conservative government of Canada, operating as a unitary-executive state by the banker Mark Carney, is planning massive military buildup, in all the wrong ways, starting with increasing the original mistake of buying F-35 attack fighters then increasing that order. Every few days there is another announcement, often tied to their blind support for the failing campaign against Russia via Ukraine.

And as Jan Øberg points out in the above interview, "if you were a politician today in the western world not knowing the basics of economics, that's catastrophic" - that applies perfectly to the clown Carney - clueless on economic and monetary matters. These Western "leaders" keep pushing national debt forward, they expect it to be someone else's problem later on. They fail at actual forward planning, as per my comment on Prof. Warwick Powell's latest article: The Emergence of a Strong Socialist Finance System in China:

In thinking about China in this world, I would say that China sails through these times in a multi-hull ship with layers serving many purposes - reflective, resistant, protectant, absorbent and resilient. Meanwhile the capitalist West sails in a single glass hull composed of, for the "developed" countries, about US$78 Trillion of debt. Thus a different way of realizing Steven J. Newbury's brittle fracture and resource entropy singularity. This hull of debt is going to fracture, and these fools have no life boats. Thus the greater lesson for China is to ensure that any interest on investment debt accrues to the nation itself rather than to international banking. Otherwise, the economy cannot actually afford interest.

Thus, we are forced into inventing geopolitical threats and allowing military capture of what's left of an economy.

OTTAWA — The Canadian government has announced a nearly $2 billion investment to procure 190 additional Armoured Combat Support Vehicles (ACSVs) under a new strategic partnership with General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada (GDLS-Canada). The four-year program is aimed at modernizing the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) while strengthening Canada's domestic defence industry and supply chain.
Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the investment on July 16 in London, Ontario, alongside Defence Minister David McGuinty. The agreement makes GDLS-Canada the first company selected as a Strategic Partner under Canada's newly introduced Defence Industrial Strategy Strategic Partnership Framework.The procurement will increase the Canadian Armed Forces' ACSV fleet from 360 to 550 vehicles. The additional vehicles will mainly support training activities at military bases across Canada, helping prepare personnel before operational deployments.
The new vehicles will gradually replace the Canadian Army's aging LAV II Bison and M113 tracked vehicle fleets. They are built on the Light Armoured Vehicle 6.0 (LAV 6.0) platform, allowing multiple vehicle variants to share the same chassis. Using a common platform simplifies maintenance, reduces training requirements, lowers long-term sustainment costs, and improves fleet availability.
The ACSVs are equipped with advanced armour protection designed to withstand mines, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and direct enemy fire while maintaining the mobility needed to operate alongside front-line combat units. The procurement forms part of Canada's broader effort to modernize the Canadian Armed Forces and increase defence spending. According to the government, Canada is reaching NATO's target of spending 2% of GDP on defence for the first time since the end of the Cold War.
The ACSV fleet already supports Canadian military operations. Existing vehicles are currently deployed with the Canadian-led NATO Multinational Brigade in Latvia as part of Operation REASSURANCE.>br /> Canada has also provided military assistance to Ukraine through the ACSV program. The government has previously donated 89 Armoured Combat Support Vehicles to Ukraine and announced an additional 35 vehicles during the 2026 NATO Summit in Turkey earlier this month.

And likely these armoured vehicles will be shipped, still in their packing cases, right over to fight in Canada's war on Russia via Ukraine and the Baltic States, and now Moldova.

From Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Maria Zakharova in a press conference - Russia on Moldova: "Blame Russia for Everything" Strategy Continues | RU-EN - Freelensia, July 22:

5:54- On June 30th, the Moldovan Ministry of Defense announced the signing of a framework agreement and contract with Estonia's Centre for Defence Investment to purchase over 100 Canadian-made armored vehicles. What are they planning to do with them? Harvest crops, deliver library books? The funding, totaling over 50 million euros, will be funneled through the "European Peace Facility" – that very same "peace facility" that funds the slaughter in Ukraine.

Russia is considering a demonstration strike on a NATO country facility operating as a "rear-area" production site for supplying Ukraine with military supplies. What better example to demonstrate reach, invincibility of hypersonic missiles and target accuracy than this armoured vehicle mfg site in Ontario, and they have the address...

In other news, on first appearances, the tRump regime hasn't launched a weekend-strike on Iran, supposedly due to low munitions. However, this may be due to Pakistan with backing of China, making progress in the implementation of the Islamabad MoU. tRump called Pakistani Field Marshall Asim Munir at least three times last week, asking for more negotiations, to which he was told to start respecting the MoU. So start following the clues - first, and end to attacks on Iran. Yes, US military eyes have been blinded by Iran taking out US billion-dollar radar sites, forcing them to rely on AWACS planes. But then, tRump is telling Bibi to withdraw IDF from Lebanon, West Bank, etc. If the money starts moving to Iran, then you know the Pakistan/China imposition of the US surrender is actually in progress. Which unfortunately, brings the world closer to Bibi's use of his nukes to finish his job on Iran. But then, a new twist in West Asia, the bearded dwarf attacking an Iranian ship in the Caspian Sea may be a fatal mistake - Iran's big missiles can reach Kiev (not Ukr spelling!) and unlike Russia, has no qualms about doing a decapitation strike. Or, is NATO now in on the "Iran War"?

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev addresses Vladimir Putin during their meeting, sharing international signals he says he has received from Europe and the United States regarding the Russia–Ukraine conflict. Tokayev suggests that it may be time to freeze the conflict and return to an updated "Istanbul Formula 2.0" for peace negotiations. He explains why Kazakhstan refuses to act as a mediator while reaffirming its strategic partnership and allied relations with Russia.

Leave a comment! This is a re-direct to my Substack page.

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