The Don's new world disorder
Liberal norms wither. Tough tactics thrive. And a novel on why neither may matter
The Big Story:
No prizes for guessing which country would get the most nominations right now for the world’s not-so-super superpower: the United States.
Some say that an America (mis-) led by Donald Trump is on a blunder-fest of epochal proportions because it is:
dismantling the rules-based trade and political world order it created.1
bullying and insulting countries in its own hemisphere (Mexico, Canada,2 Panama) , in Europe (Britain, France, Germany, Denmark), in the Middle East (Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian territories) and in Africa (Lesotho).3
embracing authoritarian Russia as a near-equal partner.
Russia’s dramatic elevation on the world stage includes:
Vladimir Putin graciously receiving respect from Trump’s America, on Ukraine and sanctions.
Hollywood, a bastion of American soft power, making much of an actor who’s been called the “Russian Ryan Gosling”.4 Yura Borisov who plays the henchman with a heart in the Oscar-winning film Anora, is one of Russia’s biggest heartthrobs.
This Week, Those Books:
Since 1945, America has tended the garden that is liberal democracy.
Part of Russia’s cultural influence is its hardball negotiating tactics.
A novel about the planet’s future – it’s greater than geopolitics.
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The Back Story:
The US says that from April 2, so-called reciprocal tariffs on goods from a wide range of countries will go into effect.
The US has slapped tariffs on its largest economic partners, Canada, Mexico and China.
In the first address of his second term to the US Congress, Trump insulted Lesotho as a country “nobody has ever heard of". Lesotho’s textile and garment industry is a major supplier to US brands.
The Jungle Grows Back
By: Robert Kagan
Publisher: Alfred A Knopf
Year: 2018
It is almost painful to read this book, which Robert Kagan wrote midway through Trump’s first term. Then, as now, to quote Kagan, the “jungle is growing back. History is returning. Nations are reverting to old habits and traditions”. The “jungle” is a reference to the vines and weeds that “constantly threaten to overwhelm” the “garden,” which is the liberal world order.
Then, as now, the US is letting the system unravel.
And yet, there is a crucial difference between 2018 and today. This time, America itself is actively unravelling the system by openly supporting illiberal, anti-democratic nationalist forces.
Accordingly, Kagan’s hope that America would return to tending the garden is no longer relevant. Instead, this book is important for a quite different reason. It underlines some basic truths. That the post-WWII liberal order was an “aberration” and always “fragile and impermanent”. And that history should not be “viewed as a progressive upward march toward enlightenment”.
This prompts a hopeful question. If the US will no longer beat back the jungle, might a new group of gardeners emerge, with their own plans for landscaping, planting and nurturing?
Choice quote:
We jump from Periclean Athens to the birth of Christianity, from the Renaissance to the Reformation, from the Magna Carta to the American Revolution. Omitted from this tale of golden ages and great leaps forward are the dark ages and great leaps backward.
The Kremlin School of Negotiation
By: Igor Ryzov
Publisher: Canongate Books
Year: 2019
This book made modest news in Britain back in 2021 when it was revealed that the UK’s Brexit negotiator turned to Igor Ryzov’s hardball Russian tactics to get the results he wanted. It was a vote of confidence by Lord David Frost, a veteran diplomat.
This is a decent, even entertaining how-to guide on talking tough when doing a deal. Ryzov, a business coach, says negotiation is “combat” and that “a street thug is stronger than any sportsman trained in a sports hall”. He claims that the Kremlin school of negotiation is the “toughest and most brutal”.
The book has some gems, not least Ryzov’s description of former Soviet foreign minister and negotiator during the Cuban missile crisis, Andrei Gromyko. He writes that Gromyko “outlived virtually every General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union”. Starting his diplomatic career at 30 “under Joseph Stalin’s rule, at an extremely precarious time”, Gromyko’s “first major posting was as the USSR’s ambassador to the USA”. He was “a master of the Kremlin school of negotiation,” writes Ryzov. He must have been…just to survive.
Orbital
By: Samantha Harvey
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Year: 2023
Samantha Harvey became top of mind for the reading world last year when Orbital won the Booker Prize. She is the very writer for this moment in time. And Orbital, which is more vignettes than novel, is the right book because it reminds us that we share a home.
The story revolves around the daily lives of astronauts in the International Space Station. As they conduct scientific experiments they watch the Earth. Circling the planet multiple times a day, they are awed by its beauty and fearful about its future. A map on the first page allows the reader to understand exactly where, over Earth, the spacecraft is flying in each chapter.
Harvey is part philosopher, part poet of the planet. She rejoices in a worldview that’s a literary version of Gaia, the belief all living things interact with their inorganic surroundings to create a synergy. In Orbital, she examines how human lives intersect with that of the planet. The novel looks up into the sky; then from space down upon the earth. And then, it looks all around. Crucially, it looks inside us.
Choice quotes:
How are we writing the future of humanity? We're not writing anything, it's writing us. We're windblown leaves. We think we're the wind, but we're just the leaf.
Maybe we're the new dinosaurs and need to watch out.
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Richard Haass, a veteran of multiple Republican administrations and president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, told US National Public Radio on March 3, 2025: “I’m used to empires or orders crumbling. I’m used to them being overwhelmed. I’ve never seen…the country that created it and maintained it dismantling it. And that is exactly what we are doing”. https://www.npr.org/2025/03/03/nx-s1-5316261/with-trump-in-office-u-s-allies-lose-standing-security
Canadian minister of foreign affairs Mélanie Joly told BBC Newsnight that Trump’s economic attacks on Canada are part of a serious plan to annex the country and make it the 51st state of the US. https://x.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1897070589669441594
Lesotho's foreign affairs minister Lejone Mpotjoane said it was "shocking" to hear a head of state "refer to another sovereign state in that manner". He told the BBC, “‘the country that nobody has heard of' is the country where the US has a permanent mission". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0q18x0192yo
Anora’s director Sean Baker calls Yura Borisov the “Russian Ryan Gosling”. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/26/nx-s1-5292466/yura-borisov-anora-oscars
Borisov is the first Russian to be nominated for an acting Oscar since Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1977. https://apnews.com/article/oscars-yura-borisov-anora-13be8785ae729c239f146403d0fc71e8