Taliban summer

As the second half of 2021 began, the world took a new turn towards hard times: the Delta strain spread, the northern hemisphere burned, and the Taliban returned to power throughout Afghanistan. 

The fast-spreading Delta strain, born in India, gave new life to the pandemic worldwide. There was some evidence that Delta outbreaks subside quickly too, perhaps through a combination of vaccination (a quarter of the world has now had at least one shot of anti-Covid vaccine), natural herd immunity, and renewed public caution. But for now it was still spreading in numerous countries, like Mexico, Russia,  and Indonesia, and even the United States, where infections and deaths were mostly among the unvaccinated. Nonetheless, many in Europe and elsewhere protested against new "vaccine passports" that would limit the freedoms of those without proof of vaccination. 

The 2020 Asian miracle of low Covid was a distant memory. Israel and South Korea did a vaccine swap, Israel sending expiring Pfizer doses now, in return for Korean-made Pfizer later in the year. Japan held its delayed Olympics under tightly controlled conditions. Taiwan struggled to obtain Pfizer since a Shanghai company held distribution rights. Delta even made it into mainland China... Meanwhile, the US intelligence community was due to report on the likely source of the original, Wuhan-derived strain of the virus by the end of August.  

In time for a new round of climate diplomacy, the northern hemisphere summer broke numerous records, with major fires in North America, Russia, and the Mediterranean, and major floods in Germany, central China, and India. Seven years after its last report, IPCC, the UN's panel on climate change, issued its updated review of the scientific literature, ahead of a November world summit in Glasgow, Scotland. 

For at least a century the world has run on fossil fuel - coal and oil. Access to these energy-rich resources has been vital for economic advancement, and control of supply has been central to geopolitics. Wars were fought to see who would dominate the Middle East because of this. The whole modern era of Islamic militance, born in Iran and Afghanistan, was midwifed by the conspiratorial competition of the Cold War superpowers; and even now, China and Japan keep a wary eye on the constant progress of the oil tankers, through the straits of Iran, then the straits of southeast Asia, and north to their own ports, vigilant for any interruption to the flow of energy. 

But fear that a world warmed by the accumulated CO2 emissions of the industrial age, will be one of drought, famine, and enormous mass migrations, has driven the west to seek new energy sources. Meanwhile, the rising powers of the world, newer to the hungers of machine civilization, are seeking energy wherever they can find it, including nuclear power and solar power. So grand deals will be proposed and made, to develop, share, and promote new energy sources, while cutting back on the old. 

History, however, is not so easily left behind. Ancient, mountainous Afghanistan, formerly part of Greek and Persian empires, then a source of Muslim raiders into medieval India, then fought over by Britain and Russia, and most recently occupied by America since the beginning of the "war against terror", is rapidly succumbing to the forces of the Taliban, the reactionary militia who provided Al Qaeda with its safe haven in the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks.

For twenty years after 9/11, while focus shifted to the invasion of Iraq, then the Iranian nuclear program, then the Arab spring and the terrorist "Islamic State", American forces stayed in support of the new government they installed in Afghanistan. This year, they were supposed to return home, while the democratic Afghan government carried on the battle against Taliban guerrillas, who fled into rural Afghanistan when the Americans came. But once America was truly on its way out, the Taliban came out of hiding and the cities of Afghanistan began surrendering rapidly. 

The return of the Taliban is an enormous concern for their neighbors, who are afraid the country will again become a center of jihad. China welcomed a Taliban delegation and said, we can work with you, just don't support Uighur terrorists. Russia engaged in preparatory military drills with its former Central Asian colonies. The Indian foreign minister conferred with Iran's new president; they were supposed to open a trade route via Afghanistan, but now the Taliban control it. 

India accuses the Taliban of being a puppet of Pakistan. Certainly the Taliban have a deep relationship to Pakistan. They are based among the Pashtun people, who live on both sides of the border. Pakistan prefers an Islamic Afghanistan that might support it against India, rather than a nationalist Afghanistan that might support Pashtun separation from Pakistan. But support for Taliban backfired on Pakistan, emboldening its own religious extremists to bloody and costly insurrections... Just as Pakistan's Taliban policy reflects its own social division over fundamentalist Islam, Afghanistan's other neighbors face their own dilemma. China, Russia, and Iran are all happy to see one less American base in Central Asia - but they don't want to see the power vacuum filled this way. 

Other things happened in the world. Zulus in South Africa ransacked supermarkets when former president Zuma agreed to go to jail. Along with Iran, Israel got a new government. China was accused of hacking the Microsoft databases of numerous corporations, and Israel was accused of selling mobile-phone spyware to numerous other countries... Two billionaires - Bezos and Branson - traveled to near space in separate suborbital flights. Today they promote space tourism; tomorrow, perhaps they'll promote geoengineering, sprinkling dust in the stratosphere to cool the overheated Earth. 

China launches and Iran votes

Despite a Covid surge in parts of south-east Asia and South America, and vaccine shortages in Africa, the success of national vaccination programs in reducing Covid, in those countries where a majority have been vaccinated, shows that the end of the pandemic is more conceivable than ever (though we do not yet know if it shall be a zero-covid world, or merely a low-covid world, in which there is always some new strain circulating somewhere on the planet). Even the great second wave in India is already in retreat, after taking hundreds of thousands of lives. 

Thinking about outer space is a way to gently zoom in on the details of the reborn post-Covid world order of Covid-fortified nation-states, returning to their agendas of economic development and strategic competition... On Mars, after a seven-month journey from Earth, and three months inspecting the Martian surface from orbit, China's first interplanetary mission landed in Utopia Planitia, a giant plain in the north of Mars (visited 55 years before by an American Viking lander), and sent the five-ton solar-powered rover Zhurong (a fire god) out to explore; at a time when the latest American mission, Perseverance, was testing a small helicopter drone (blades half a meter long, total weight one kilogram), on the other side of the Martian northern hemisphere. 

Closer to Earth, in mid-June, China will send up the first crew for its new (still under construction) Tiangong scientific space station. The commander of this mission, Nie Haisheng, has already been into orbit twice. Meanwhile, the old "International Space Station" has been up there for twenty years. It has primarily been a partnership of America's NASA and Russia's Roscosmos agency. But increasingly the private company SpaceX is being used to resupply the station, while Russia is also looking east, having signed a memorandum in March, to work with China on a lunar base. Roscosmos is also to land a European Union rover on Mars in 2022 or 2023; and India's first crewed mission to near space, Gaganyaan, may come near the end of this period too. 

In terrestrial affairs, China approached yet another communist anniversary, the centenary of the party's founding, and announced that families could have up to three children now - though netizens complained that they could scarcely afford one child. In America, as Covid retreated, it was the first anniversary of Black Lives Matter 2.0, but it was unclear how far into "woke" territory the Biden administration would proceed, in its reversal of Trump-era policies that were themselves reversals of Obama-era policies. 

In the Middle East, Trump's last year and Biden's first months saw a variety of diplomatic overtures. A Saudi-led blockade of rival Qatar (supported by Egypt and the Emirates, opposed by Turkey and Iran) was concluded. Bahrain and the Emirates recognized Israel. Turkey and Egypt reconciled, after supporting opposite sides in Libya. All this anticipated a revival of the nuclear deal between America and Iran, agreed by Obama in 2015, but abandoned by Trump in 2018. 

The deal itself (called Borjam or Barjam, or JCPOA in English) was the product of a reformist era in Iran, the Rouhani presidency that began in 2013. With presidential elections due in mid-2021, Rouhani could not run again, but his vice president Jahangiri was eligible. Rouhani's diplomats met with Biden's in Switzerland, originally aiming for a deal by June. 

But events moved against the reformists. In April, a long, secret recording of foreign minister Zarif was leaked, in which he complained that his diplomats were kept in the dark about military activities, and that Russia had wanted the deal to fail, in order to keep Iran in the anti-American bloc. Rouhani's opponents, the "principlists", accused his team of selling out the revolution. In May, an asymmetric battle between Israel and Palestinian Gaza erupted for two weeks, something that has occurred every few years since Hamas replaced Israel as the de facto government of Gaza, but now accompanied by serious Arab demonstrations within Israel itself; the new head of Iranian special forces, Suleimani's successor Salami, considered this a victory of their policy, of creating problems for American influence in as many separate locations (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen) as possible. 

Then, at the end of May, Rouhani's vice president was ruled ineligible to run for president, leaving principlist favorite, and runner-up in 2017, the judge Ebrahim Raisi, as the most likely winner. Many other candidates, notably principlist-turned-centrist Ali Larijani, were also ruled out; but perhaps this was meant to mask the Iranian deep state's true priority, of ending this latest reformist period. Among reformists, Raisi was notorious for playing a part in prison purges carried out in 1988, as Iran brokered a ceasefire with Saddam's Iraq, after a decade of war; tens of thousands of leftist prisoners were executed so that they could not subvert the Islamic republic in its moment of weakness. Raisi is said to have helped administer this process, and later rose to high positions in Iran's judicial system. 

One may therefore predict that the true powers in Iran, such as supreme leader Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards, have already decided that the country is strong enough to not compromise with the west. China, Russia and the European powers, as well as Iran itself, never abandoned the terms of the nuclear deal, unlike America; they consider it to still be valid, and regard America as the absconder. So Iran will take an economic populist line at home, building up its economy through its own efforts, and through trade with China and anyone else willing to defy America; and they will maintain their militant regional policy, aimed at eventually expelling American forces and delegitimizing Israel; and it will be up to America to either make concessions if they want to reenter the deal, or remain out of step with the other great powers. 

The situation will be clarified soon. On June 14, NATO will meet, and will have to deal with issues like Russian sales of arms to Turkey and natural gas to Germany. On June 16, Biden and Putin will meet in Switzerland. On June 18, Iran will vote... Meanwhile, Biden has promised that American troops will leave Afghanistan by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the Al Qaeda terrorist strike that sent them there; and perhaps a week later, Russians will vote on deputies for the Duma, the national parliament. There is some possibility that the communists - one of the leading opposition parties in the Putin era - will make common cause with nationalists like Navalny; not enough to displace Putin's party, but something that would change the tenor of Russian politics. 

India's Covid crisis

With an out-of-control second wave, India has become the center of the global battle against Covid-19, rapidly overtaking other places in trouble, like Brazil and France. Its national vaccination program is strong; alongside China and America, it has already vaccinated over 100 million people. But it seems that government and people thought they had already won, and allowed large political, religious, and recreational gatherings to take place; sowing the seeds of outbreaks in New Delhi, Maharashtra, and elsewhere, that grew with exponential suddenness, creating a national crisis. Hospitals and morgues overflowed; vaccine exports were halted; industry, medicine, the center and the states all scrambled to do what they could. 

As India is the world's largest vaccine manufacturer, and a pillar of the Indo-Pacific Quadrilateral alongside America, this crisis will probably accelerate plans by the Quad to become a global provider of Covid vaccines. This was mentioned at a video summit in March, but as just one priority alongside others like climate change and defending democracy. Now India must concentrate on overcoming its domestic crisis, through lockdowns and extra vaccine production. Vaccination will be open to everyone over the age of 18, after 1 May... But once it has turned itself into a machine for beating Covid, that capacity will surely be retained, and once again used as part of the global fight. 

The universality of the Covid threat will also give India a chance to move back towards a nonaligned position, perhaps under the umbrella of a unified World Health Organization anti-Covid strategy. Despite its membership in "eastern" organizations like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation  Organization, India's antagonism towards China has lately pulled it towards America and away from its old ally Russia. But India is already manufacturing the Russian vaccine Sputnik-V, alongside the British AstraZeneca vaccine (under the name Covishield), and the Indian vaccine Covaxin, so it can be a conduit for both western and eastern contributions to the global vaccine supply. 

For now, global politics is still unfolding in the shadow of the renewed antagonism between east and  west. Biden called Putin a killer; Russia massed forces on the borders of Ukraine; Turkey revealed that  the US was sending warships to the Black Sea, via Turkey's Bosporus strait; the warships were not sent, Russian pulled back its forces, and Biden declared that over 100 years ago, Ottoman Turkey committed  genocide against Armenia, a label which Turkey has fought to deny for decades. 

As for China, it held its annual "two sessions" (lianghui) of political decision-making, parallel meetings of the People's Congress (the Communist-dominated legislature) and the Consultative Conference (a heterogeneous advisory body with representatives from all sectors of society), in early March. In the legislature, the end of rural poverty was celebrated, a five-year-plan of green finance and high-tech self-sufficiency was adopted, a law to ensure patriotic government in Hong Kong was passed, and Xi  Jinping said the Chinese economy could double in size and surpass the American economy by 2035;  while representatives at the advisory conference fretted about male feminization in the media, and the  9am-to-9pm, six-days-a-week culture of overwork. 

Then foreign minister Wang Yi headed to Alaska for a first, acrimonious meeting with representatives of the new Biden administration. The Americans made their usual criticisms of Chinese policy regarding Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan; the Chinese were unimpressed and went home. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov then visited Wang in China, saying America has forgotten what diplomacy is, and that Russia and China must keep working together on achieving financial and technological independence from American threats. 

In the Middle East, at the start of 2021, it was one year since the American assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, head of Iranian special forces, during a visit to Iraq. The Iranian parliament formalized a policy of allying with anyone in the region who would expel the American military from their country, and a few months later, Iran also signed a long-term trade deal with China, in effect offering Iranian oil for Chinese investment. This will give Iran relief from American economic  sanctions, and China extra security of energy supply - oil arriving by sea is at risk of naval blockades by America and its allies, but Iranian oil will come by land. (This joins Nord Stream 2, whereby Russian oil goes to Europe, as an energy supply line outside of American control.)  

Elsewhere in the region, Netanyahu hung on as prime minister of Israel, winning the fourth election in two years, and overseeing one of the most thorough national vaccination programs in the world; and Turkey remained diplomatically hyperactive, welcoming the Libyan unity government, urging Egypt and Ethiopia to make a deal over management of the Nile, and declaring neutrality between Russia and Ukraine. Pope Francis of the Catholic Church visited the Shia grand ayatollah, Sistani, in Iraq; but it was less successful than his meeting with the Sunni grand imam of Egypt's Al Azhar in 2019. 

America rejoined the Paris climate convention, announced it would stay within the World Health Organization, and sought to revive the Iranian nuclear deal. Within America itself, the rush to vaccinate the country was followed by the announcement of new grand plans: spend $2 trillion rebuilding  American infrastructure, assemble a democratic rival to China's Belt and Road network, cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, withdraw from Afghanistan by the tenth anniversary of 9/11, fight "systemic racism" throughout society. The outcome of the George Floyd trial was seen as a victory for racial justice. 

In Brazil, former president Lula had his political rights restored, meaning he could run as the leftist candidate against rightist president Bolsonaro. In Myanmar, an important state for Chinese economic ties with southeast Asia and for Indian security in its northeast territories, the military cancelled an election which its candidates had lost, killing hundreds of protesters. In Africa, Covid infections were the least of any major world region, but the continent was still in a recession it could ill afford, a  stumble after many years of rapid development. 

Seeking immunity

As 2021 began, the Covid pandemic continued. About 2 million people had died, but 70 million had recovered. 20 million were known to be infected; 100000 of those were seriously ill. The 2020 battle against Covid was dominated by lockdowns and other social restrictions, but by 2021, the world was embarked on a second phase of battle, in which vaccines began to be deployed. 

In the east, Chinese and Indian companies (Sinopharm, Sinovac, Bharat Biotech) produced traditional vaccines containing inactive coronavirus. China (CanSino), Russia (Ministry of Health), and Britain (AstraZeneca) produced vaccines in which coronavirus genes are introduced to the immune system via adenovirus; and in the west, the American companies Pfizer and Moderna pioneered RNA vaccines in which a single coronavirus gene is introduced, protected by a layer of "lipid" molecules. 

The pandemic fared differently in different world regions. In Europe, numbers were rising in a third wave, partly due to the more infectious UK strain; in India, national numbers had been falling away from September's peak, as the first wave died away.  

Vaccine demand exceeded supply. Poor countries criticized rich countries for buying up most of the supply; rich countries criticized the vaccine companies for not delivering as many as promised. Nonetheless, vaccination was underway, with China and America leading in absolute numbers vaccinated (around 20 million each), and Israel and the Emirates leading with percentage of national population vaccinated (around 20%). 

World powers readied themselves for a new era. Europe's World Economic Forum held a virtual summit to discuss the "great reset" and similar post-pandemic plans, to be followed up with a physical summit in Singapore in May. In the USA, the Trump era ended with a brief occupation of the national legislature by election protesters, and the suspension of the president from social media; and the Biden era began with promises of mass vaccination, economic relief, racial justice, and climate progress. The Gulf Arab states reconciled at Al-Ula, with Saudi Arabia ending its blockade of Qatar; while Iran boosted its nuclear enrichment, in anticipation of renewed negotiations with the west. 

In 2020, the global economy shrank almost everywhere outside of China, though foreign investment went up in India. Carmakers worldwide faced a shortage of computer chips, as sedentary populations under lockdown purchased computers and media devices. Elon Musk became the richest man in the world, as Tesla shares soared in value, on expectations of colossal future demand for electric cars, as Biden's USA rejoined the Paris climate accord. 2020 itself was another hot year, with record fires and storms in many places. 

South Korea jailed the chairman of Samsung for bribery, and upheld the 20-year sentence of former president Park Geun-hye for corruption. A bitcoin-like digital version of the yuan, China's national currency, was to be tried out in Beijing and Shanghai and on popular websites like Bilibili. Germany deplored Russia's crackdown on Navalny supporters and welcomed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would bring Russian gas. 

Uganda shut down the Internet during an election, after Facebook started closing pro-government accounts (the government won the election). During celebrations of Republic Day in the Indian capital, a militant group of farm-bill protesters invaded the Red Fort, a historic national monument, and flew a Sikh flag, but were quickly disowned by the protest movement. Japan confirmed that the Tokyo Olympics would be held this year, but wasn't sure if spectators would be allowed to attend.