The military don’t start wars. Politicians do.

History is littered with proof of that. Old men, with political power, start a war, and young men with no power are sent to fight them. It’s an infinite cycle.

So, does Donald Trump, the oldest-ever president of the United States and now in his 80th year, really plan to wage war on Greenland, an ally of America and the West? He says he can and will.

Here are some of things Trump has said. They are direct quotes.

• “We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not.”
• “I would like to make a deal the easy way, but if we don’t do it the easy way we’re going to do it the hard way.”
• “One way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland.”
• “If we don’t [take over], Russia or China will take over Greenland. And we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor.”

Trump has a very loose acquaintance with truth, so all of this could be fake news, to use the president’s preferred put-down. But it isn’t just Trump who has said these things. His White Office has issued this official statement: “The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilising the US military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal.”

And Trump’s Gollum-like Homeland Security Advisor, Stephen Miller, has been even more direct. Speaking to CNN a few days ago, Miller said that “the formal position of the US government that Greenland should be part of the US.” And, on whether that might lead to war, Miller said: “Nobody’s going to fight the US over the future of Greenland.”

The Europeans beg to differ. Seven of them issued an extraordinary joint statement last week, saying “Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.” Denmark, a longtime U.S. military ally, itself said it is “ready to defend” Greenland.

The country’s Defence Committee chair added that Trump’s stated goals “means war” and that Danish troops “would fight back.” Germany, for its part, has sent a warship to the area. And some European leaders are speaking openly of military confrontation, shutting down U.S. military bases in Europe, and cutting off trade.

It is worrying, of course. More significantly, however, Trump’s manifest destiny madness is against the rules and against common sense. Two reasons – one well-known, the other not so much.

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It’s axiomatic: when you do something a lot, you get better at it. So, when you do lots of campaigns, you get better at campaigns.

Witness the variously pro-Palestine, anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, antisemitic Leftist fringe that magically transformed itself into the anti-U.S., anti-Trump, pro-Maduro Leftist fringe over the weekend. Within hours, with military precision. Here, in Canada, and around the world.

Says Canadian lawyer and expert Caryma Sa’d: “Since the US military intervention in Venezuela, I’ve covered [and] reviewed footage from Cambridge, Toronto, and Ottawa that suggests convergence between the anti-Israel and anti-American protesters…Everything is viewed through what they’d consider an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-oppression lens, from Land Back to Safe Supply to Free Palestine to Trans Rights, and now, Hands Off Venezuela.”

And, as I document in my Random House book The Hidden Hand, out next month, a worldwide propaganda campaign against Israel and the West commenced in the early hours of October 7, 2023, when Hamas murdered, raped and brutalized thousands of Jews in Israel.

The campaign had lots of money, organizers, protestors and tested messages mostly aimed at Gen Z and Millennials. It has been a massive success: the anti-Israel, antisemitic side has overwhelmed their targets by a factor of fifty to one.

And, by running so many protests for more than two years, the antisemites and the bigots have acquired undeniable skills. Their messaging and tactics have dwarfed the feeble pro-Israel, pro-Western effort.

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For 2025, I got some things right: Justin Trudeau would leave (Adrienne Batra and Brian Lilley still owe me lunch for that bet). The Liberals would have a leadership race and their numbers would improve (dramatically, as it turned out). The new Liberal leader would be an outsider (Mark Carney, take a bow). Doug Ford would win, big (and he remains a formidable political force).

But I got one thing very wrong: notwithstanding all the above, I thought Pierre Poilievre could still win. His polling lead was too big, I said.

Well, so much for that prediction.

My fallibility thus established, I herewith offer my predictions for 2026. I’ll try to do better this time.

1. Donald Trump will have a major health crisis. This one isn’t hard: the U.S. president is already clearly unwell. He can’t stand for extended periods, he has mysterious bruising and swelling in his extremities, he’s getting more MRIs than you get hot meals, and – whenever he opens his mouth – Trump genuinely sounds like he is experiencing actual dementia. There’s lots of Kremlinology going on, so no one knows for sure. But something’s up.

The consequence of it could be a silent palace coup, and there already signs that is happening. Or, there could be serious moves made on the 25th Amendment, to formally remove him. Either way, it isn’t just MAGA that is looking sickly. Trump is, too.

2. The Democrats will win. Full disclosure: I’ve actively campaigned for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. So, you know I’m being truthful when I say I’ve been completely disgusted by how cowardly the Democrats have been since Trump’s return. With the exception of my preferred presidential contender Gavin Newsom, the Dems have been directionless, clueless and gutless.

Despite all that, and despite themselves, the Dems have been winning. In November’s races and in special elections, the Democrats have been crushing their Republican MAGA opponents in places where they haven’t been competitive in decades. Trump has become a major liability to his party, and he is going to get beaten like a human piñata in November’s midterms.

3. Carney isn’t going to get a trade deal. Not one worthy of the name, that is.

The issue isn’t the Prime Minister or any of the rotating cast of characters he picks to lead talks in Washington. The issue is Trump himself, for the reasons outlined above: the president seems to be losing his marbles. He’s not compos mentos, as lawyers like to say.

Carney and Trump could sign a deal on a Tuesday and – after, say, Trump sees a completely-factual commercial about tariffs on Wednesday – lose his mind and tear up the deal. He’s invoked bogus “national emergencies” against us before, and he will do so again.

My advice to Carney: keep doing trade deals with the rest of the world. Stay calm. And wait until Trump loses power, or is a resident of the funny farm, whichever comes first.

4. The AI bubble will burst. And, possibly, take us with it.

Ominously, artificial intelligence is already showing signs of self-preservation. As Canadian tech genius Yoshua Bengio has noted, chatbots are becoming independent and starting to “drive bad decisions.” Stories litter the Internet (for now!) of people being nudged toward violence by AI-generated “companions.”

But for most of us – writers, musicians and artists in particular – AI remains an elaborate plagiarism platform, one that doesn’t generate intelligence so much as steal intelligence and offer it up as its own. And, with so much capital invested in a concept that has so far been all lunchbag-letdown, a burst bubble seems highly likely. It’s happened before.

5. Things will get worse. Sorry, but they will.

And not just the weather or the cost of beef, either. Us. The enemy is us, as comic strip Pogo once memorably said. We are becoming less intelligent. We are becoming more violent. We are becoming less and less preoccupied with the common good.

The cause is what you almost certainly are using to read my prognostications: the Internet. The device you hold in your hands has been the biggest political, cultural, personal and economic revolution in our lifetimes. Since it became ubiquitous in the Nineties, the Internet has made all of human knowledge available to us, for free.

Instead of embracing that, humans have moved in the opposite direction, and become suckers for misinformation, disinformation, hate and conspiracy theories. We read less, and we yell more. It’s not good. Way to go, Al Gore.

Final prediction, then, gratis: I’ve now depressed you enough to drive you to an early drink.

Save one for me. I’m depressed, too, and I’m coming over.

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In Canadian politics, Pierre Poilievre should be – but actually isn’t – the biggest loser of the year.

And, yes, 2025 saw the Conservative leader blow a massive lead in the polls, lose an election that had been in the bag, and fritter away his own Ottawa-area seat. By any objective standard, that should qualify Poilievre as the political loser of the year.

But the biggest losers – the ones who will continue to be losers after Poilievre is gone, which is a foregone conclusion – are those who make up the Conservative Party of Canada. They are the real losers.

The Conservatives’ 2025 election loss – to a man who had never held elected office before, to a party that had been mired in misconduct and misfires – was not entirely Pierre Poilievre’s fault. Because Poilievre is the current Conservative Party of Canada in human form: too angry, a bit paranoid, often Trumpian. They are him, and he is them.

Consider the available evidence. For months – and long before Justin Trudeau’s departure, and Mark Carney’s debut – polls had been consistently showing that voters were decidedly unenthusiastic about Poilievre. His petulance, his arrogance, his bumper-sticker policy-making was hurting him with key constituencies – women, seniors, Quebeckers.

A year ago, as 2024 was coming to a close, multiple polls showed the Conservative Party had a huge lead over Trudeau’s Liberals. But, in every one of those polls, Poilievre was lagging behind his party. In December 2024, the Reid Institute found that every party leader was more unpopular than popular – with Poilievre being seen favourably by 37 per cent of respondents, and unfavourably by 55 per cent. That is a huge gap in an era where people vote for leaders as much as parties.

Leger, one of the most reliable federal pollsters, found the same sort of trend. In December 2024, only 22 per cent of Québec respondents thought Poilievre would make the best Prime Minister. Likewise for women and urban voters – only 24 and 27 per cent, respectively, saw the Tory leader as the best choice. Those are constituencies, as everyone knows, make up the vast majority of voters. Ignore them at your peril.

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