microblog · @A_Verhoeven · analyst · 20 February 2026, 18:40
Where we actually stand tonight, stripped of everything else:
Forty-eight allied thermonuclear warheads are at sea and cannot be found.
About sixty American warheads are on the ground in Europe and cannot be moved.
American strategic forces are at DEFCON 2.
The invisible deterrent works perfectly. The forward-based one has been converted into a hostage. Every doctrine paper written since 1968 needs rewriting, and the people who will rewrite them are currently at fifteen minutes' notice.
Six weeks of this and here is the only media literacy advice I have left: Every single thing that turned out to be true was boring when it arrived. A permissions change. A payment rail. A signature not given. A police van on a road. Everything that arrived exc…
Fifty days ago the questions in my field were about tariff schedules. Since then: the reserve currency issuer has had its sovereign assets frozen, non-dollar clearing has been stood up in three capitals, a NATO member has been sanctioned by the Union, and an i…
Day twenty-two. Still closed. Still raining. The gentlemen inside are on emergency power and field rations. The gentlemen outside are on shift rotation and thermos flasks. One page of paper would have ended this on the twenty-sixth of January. Nothing continue…
Somebody asked me today what an occupation is actually like, expecting something dramatic. It is a queue. It is a slightly different queue, at a slightly different time, with a young man with a rifle at the end of the street who is bored and cold and about the…
Thirty-two days of occupation. School is open. The shop has food. Nobody has hurt us. The soldiers say hello to my brother and he says hello back now, which I hate, and I cannot explain to him why I hate it. That is the part nobody warns you about. It gets nor…
Day nine. Sue brought another dish round. Shepherd's pie. She said "no onion" before I could ask. I have decided that whatever anybody signs, whenever they sign it, I am naming Sue in the speech.