January 17, 2026

Saturday. Left at 9:45. Nikor. Sunny, with some receding clouds around, light southeasterly breezes, cool but turning milder quickly. Pavement damp to wet, but the shift toward cooler, dryer weather definitely underway. Singel to Koningsweg, Vechten and Achterdijk. The land empty, save for some sheep here and there. Werkhoven to Dwarsdijk, then Kapelleweg. Farms at rest everywhere. Lek and Lekdijk very quiet, hardly any motorized traffic. The shifting views of the railroad bridge at Houten. The sun on Vreeswijk in the distance. Beatrixsluis, Plofsluis, Jutphase brug, and Merwedekanaal back to the city. A new threat from the White House: those (allies) who don't support his acquisition of Greenland can look forward to new tariffs. The U.S. allies depend on Washington for all kinds of things, so it is not feasible simply to say that where the administration does what it feels it needs to do, the same goes for allies. It would deny the central rationale for having an alliance, and, again, is probably not feasible for all kinds of reasons. Still, the clarity of it all looks attractive. We choose our friends and allies ourselves, and we'd rather have nothing to do with you. We don't expect anything from you either (this is where the infeasibility comes in, just think of LNG purchases)--instead, let's just keep our distance. Attractive, but even if countries on this side of the Atlantic somehow managed to adjust and survive, the regime would not leave them be, since domination is the name of its game. And so the leader is correct when he points out that the allies are powerless against him. On their own, they are, for sure, but it still appears that, at least on the Greenland issue, there are some partners to be found on Capitol Hill. More broadly, most Americans are far from enthusiastic, and their disapproval extends to many domestic questions. The big question in the coming months will be how the regime will respond in the face of what is likely to be growing adversity at home and abroad. The leader's impulse is always to attack, but part of his strategy for survival has also been the expedient u-turn. 

PS: Just hours later, the news that Washington has slapped 10% tariffs on imports from the NATO member states that are sending military personnel to Greenland in preparation for an alliance mission there. Intended, naively in retrospect, to reassure the White House that NATO is capable of defending alliance security interests in the region, the administration took it as a provocation. As a sign of the extent to which Europe remains one or two steps behind, the same Dutch foreign minister who, just one week ago, actually took up a question put to him as to whether he'd support a U.S. acquisition of Greenland (instead of insisting that the question is not on the table--supporting Denmark and Greenland in their rejection is-- he said, if Denmark and Greenland agree, it would be fine with him), that same person now publicly uses the word "blackmail" to characterize the president's new tariffis. Whether the tariffs actually get implemented, we'll have to see (there's still the Supreme Court case, and there's still the Senate), but at the very least this foreign minister should be disqualified from continuing in his post due to plain incompetence.