News from the quaternity

The quaternity has been my private name for the four big powers, America, Russia, India, China.

America remains in political flux. I won't even try to predict what's next; but I will make a comparison with Russia.

Just now in Russia, there were demonstrations against corruption. The numbers weren't big, but they were in dozens of cities. As I understand it, they were held in response to a video by Alexei Navalny detailing a network of corruption around prime minister Medvedev.

Now contrast this with what Trump is facing: challenges from CNN and the CIA, as well as from the establishment of his own party. Putin owns the institutions but faces an activist opposition, whereas Trump faces institutional opposition.

China meanwhile is busy building its new geoeconomic empire - every month, more countries join the New Silk Road and its maritime counterpart. I was struck by the prominence of China's political consultative assemblies in recent weeks. These bodies have no power, but they do issue advice to the real government. It seems like a Chinese path, if not to democracy as the West understands it, then to a more participatory technocracy.

Finally, in India the giant state of Uttar Pradesh voted for Modi's BJP, and now a Yogi Adityanath is the new chief minister. Ayodhya is here, site of a mosque that was torn down by Hindu activists in the early 1990s, so that a temple of the god Rama could be rebuilt. If that happens, it could be like the founding of modern Israel, a turning point in the revival of a major religious civilization.

Spy war

Trump's opponents were racing to find something irrevocably damning about his team's interactions with Russia. They did manage to corner Michael Flynn into resigning.

Now Trump's supporters are racing to find something irrevocably damning about how Obama's team carried out that investigation. So far, they have got the liberal media contradicting themselves, as Mark Levin demonstrates.

Meanwhile, Wikileaks has started releasing documents on the CIA's cyber-spying. Under the codename "vault7", they have been hinting at this release for at least a month, though no-one knew what it was going to be about.

My theory is: Wikileaks gets a lot of its material from Russian intelligence (though surely through third parties), and these latest documents are meant to provide political ammunition for Trump allies, that will help them purge the American intelligence community.

So it's really a continuation of what happened during the 2016 election campaign. Then, the DNC and Podesta email leaks were meant to hurt Clinton and help Trump. These new leaks, by hurting the CIA, can help Trump bring it under control. If that is accomplished, then Trump and Putin can really get down to business.