Nations great and small

I had hoped that the Trump presidency might bring economic cooperation between China, Russia, and America, along the lines suggested by Carter Page in his Moscow seminar. But the American deep state nixed any possibility of cooperation with Russia; and despite his professed friendship with Xi, Trump has made good on his threat to deploy tariffs against China and a dozen other countries; and so the Trump world order is looking a lot like that of Obama's second term, with Russia and China remaining unmoved by American entreaties and threats, the twin pillars of an alternative world system.

But America remains far from alone, and I don't just mean NATO and the G-7. India and, to a lesser extent, the Sunni bloc assembled by Saudi Arabia, remain aligned more with America than with Russia and China, for their own reasons. Saudi Arabia has put itself in the same trench as Israel, against Iranian revolutionism; and India sees America as an ally to prevent encirclement by China.

I have asked myself what other revolutionary acts Trump might yet perform. He could weaponize the Qanon movement and truly go after the Clintons, but that would be best saved for the impeachment endgame of the Mueller investigation. And, he could overturn the western financial order: go after the Fed, or default on American debt. But for now the focus remains trade: we are promised a new NAFTA by the end of September, and there is no end in sight for the trade war with China.

Meanwhile, domestic affairs continue, everywhere. In China, Jack Ma retired as chairman of Alibaba (as India's Ambani passed him as the richest man in Asia), and Tencent complained that the enormous gaming industry would be held back by a new licensing process. In the west, there has been a media blitz about China's unfolding "social credit" system, and enhanced surveillance and ideological education in the Uyghur state of Xinjiang. (But there is rarely an attempt to objectively compare China's panopticon to our own.)

In Russia, a strategic plan to organize the country in a dozen economic macro-regions was revived. In India, while floods ravaged Kerala, Modi announced the Gaganyaan mission to put an Indian in space by 2022. This month, the Indian Supreme Court also ruled that the criminalization of homosexuality is unconstitutional, almost a decade after the Delhi High Court first did so.

Greece joined China's Belt and Road Initiative. Sweden's anti-immigration party grew in strength at elections, but perhaps didn't obtain the balance of power. Turkey was beset with American economic warfare directed at its currency, and protested Russian indifference as Syria prepared to take back the last jihadi stronghold, Idlib. Austria hosted a Putin-Merkel pipeline meeting, and fought opaque struggles in the western spy world to assert its populist, look-east policies.

Australia had its fourth party-room coup against a sitting prime minister in ten years. In crime-ridden Brazil, with presidential elections a month away and Lula barred from running, law-and-order Bolsonaro led the polls, but was stabbed by a communist activist.

In America, Apple vied with Amazon for most valuable company, and Jeff Bezos's personal wealth continued into the stratosphere, as money poured into Amazon stocks. Even when the inevitable "correction" comes, with stocks falling back in value, Bezos will probably remain the richest man on earth for some time.