By Vishwamithra –

“That last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.” ~ Cicero

After the end of the Second World War, Roosevelt of the USA, Stalin of the USSR and Churchill of the United Kingdom sat down and divided the world into categories of their own liking and their respective loyalties. On one side was the United States, backed by its unmatched power of the Military Industrial Complex and the USSR backed by the great and emerging military strength of the Russian arms industry. Both sides, for the convenience of the world’s consumption purposes, drew their political paintings along ideological lines.

Capitalism on the one hand and Socialism/Communism on the other, this mosaic depicted a picture which was interpreted and critiqued in terms of the beholder’s assumptions and prejudices. Capitalism, based on the individual, his freedoms and his fundamental propensities appealed to the greed and everlasting cravings of the primordial instincts of man. Socialism/Communism had a more inclusive and a sense of collectivism as was marketed by their initial propagandists. It preached that poverty as a social dynamic was not an objective condition of the one that is subjected to it but a drastic consequence of the objective and subjective socioeconomic conditions that surrounded him, thereby lending an excuse instead of a valid and legitimate reason for his or her prevailing condition.

Both sides had their own respective advantages and disadvantages, depending upon the the audience that each party was addressing. But the growth of global wealth seemed to have had no physical or psychological boundaries. With the vanishing of colonialism, once dominated by the United Kingdom, Britain’s relevance and the consequential dominance too suffered an irreversible setback, making Great Britain a second-rate power amongst the two giants, America and the Soviet Union. The sun had eventually set on the British Empire.

The African continent emerged not only as a free land of free people, its men became utterly familiar with the modern weaponry at the end of whose supply chain was either the Military Industrial Complex of America or the bastardized weapon industry of the Soviets. Emergence of the Great Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea as equal members of nuclear club along with America and Russia has contributed immensely towards the continuing world tension.

The world that the trio of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin foresaw in the immediate wake of the Second World War now looks tremendously different, tremendously hungry and tremendously tensed. But what is most disturbing is with the guy at the helm in America. Donald Trump is no ordinary person. His very persona has created many a heartache for the average run-of-the-mill politician. His style is different; his public conduct is bordering on slightly less than vulgarity and his policies could be dangerously unsettling not only for the USA but, because of its global economic and military dominance, for the whole world.

China has replaced the old Soviet Union as the sole competitor for America. However, China’s approach to the so-called Third World is much more different from that of the then Soviet Union.  China does not seem to advocate any political theory or ideological conversion; she lends a subtle helping hand to the countries that desperately need financial assistance and lure them with whatever means to get a leg inside the given administration. The finest example is Sri Lanka. Building unnecessary infrastructure facilities which look massive and impressive have erupted but at what cost to the country was manifest in the country being declared bankrupt in the midst of this corrupt environment.

China as the sole second place economic cum military power in the twenty first century is without dispute. Her domineering presence in the international stage, her restrained conduct in the United Nations Security Council, her adamant opposition to Israel’s inhumane practices in the Gaza arena has all been well digested by the global community. She is less belligerent than the then USSR, but her steadfastness has never faltered. Yet she has one great disadvantage which America does not; America, being the sole ‘mega power’, has only China as its main rival; but China is not only competing with the USA, she has to deal with India who is not far away from China’s economic strength and political dominance. Fighting one enemy is bad enough, having to battle with two could be telling in the context of the current potentially violent situation in the international field.

Sri Lanka sits amidst this mess. Being a member of the under-valued region of the ‘Third World’ and declared bankrupt only two and half years ago, Sri Lanka chose to travel a diametrically different path by electing Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) and the National People’s Power (NPP) as her navigators in these troubled waters. AKD as well the NPP are considered amateurs. Their domestic opposition’s main cry is that both are inexperienced and lack the nuanced approach to governance. AKD has survived up to time, but Trump’s tariff could play a decisive role in the short run. However, getting closer to India without antagonizing China would not be a bad strategy.     

It is only into this volatile domain Donald Trump introduced his potentially disturbing tariff formulae.  Donald Trump declared April 2, 2025 as the ‘Liberation Day’. Portraying himself as a petty dictator, armed with a blackboard on which a table of his totality of proposed tariff numbers against each country, like a second-rate school teacher, Trump laid out his grand strategy of ‘Tariff-imposition’ on an already suspecting world. He had a captive audience, but in no way an unsuspecting one. On July 4, 2025, he launched his ‘Big Beautiful Bill’; from April 2 to Aug 2, four months have passed. What does he have to show?

A pathetic performance of the economy, an untamed sense of uncertainty and ever-expanding verbiage which he seems to be very comfortably easy with, Trump began his explanation for the latest Job Report for the month of July by discarding the statistics of the Labor Department as wrong and concocted by a Biden appointee. That’s the immediate end result of the Tariffs and the Big Beautiful Bill created by the ‘fake-genius’ of modern times. If this is what he’s boasting about, what more to come is being dreaded by the average American whose aspirations and hopes are being dashed to the ground. In four short months, the so-called deliverer of economic liberation for the commoner in the rural America has managed to do just the opposite.

Donald Trump inherited a strong economy. The numbers he inherited told a story of a steadily expanding economy, growing consumer demand and customer satisfaction, progressively growing employment and a manageable, yet distant inflation if the Trump administration handles the overall economic frame within controllable boundaries.

In order to stamp his own image and persona, Trump introduced the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’. Crafted and designed by his crony billionaires, the Big Beautiful Bill, from Alpha to Omega, consisted of open giveaways to the affluent class and hidden takeaways from the ordinary folks. What it created, instead of a well-founded trust in the marketplace and unquestioned confidence of the consumer, was certain uncertainty. That uncertainty in turn generated the numbers that were in the last Job Report, that of July 2025. In addition to this eye-opening July employment numbers, the report also corrected and revised the May and June numbers. May and June’s job gains were revised downward by a combined 258,000. Instead of adopting more market-friendly and reasonable economic policies that did not overlook the existence of the poorer man and woman, Trump opted to replace the labor statistics chief. That is Trumpism at its height.

In and around this chaotic economic situation, the children in Gaza are going hungry and Israel’s solution seems to dwell in the barrel of the gun. Netanyahu is rumored to be considering annexing Gaza to mainland Israel. In another sphere of global conflicts, chances for peace between Russia and Ukraine do not seem promising at all. Above all, we are dealing with the American spectacle called Donald Trump. Any traditional approaches, any methods and means tested and tried in the past do not reemerge. Local politics in each country has totally overpowered the international paradigm of governance. It is in such a potentially dangerous locale that the world needs a calming voice and a balanced mind. We are nowhere near such an oasis.

What can we do? There is no other way than resorting to the same old time-tested method of agitating peacefully for a change. Whatever the institutional barriers that are thrown at man, he has succeeded in overcoming such barriers. One must never foreclose people’s power. In what way, shape or form it comes, it shall manifest itself. Man has not come so far just to give up his fight and stamina for an afternoon siesta like flirtation with would-be dictators.

I’m reminded about how Nehru describe the ‘spirit of man’ in his celebrated book ‘The Discovery of India’: “How amazing is the spirit of man!…it is impossible to lose hope for him. In the midst of disaster he has not lost his dignity or his faith in the values he cherished. Plaything of nature’s mighty forces, less than a speck of dust in this vast universe, he has hurled defiance at the elemental powers, and with his mind, cradle of revolution, sought to master them. Whatever gods there may be, there is something godlike in man, as there is there is something of the devil in him.
The future is dark, uncertain. But we can see part of the way leading to it and can tread it with firm steps, remembering that nothing that can happen is likely to overcome the spirit of man which has survived many perils. Remembering also that life, for all its ills, has joy and beauty, and we can always wander, if we know how to, in the enchanted woods of nature.”

*The writer can be reached at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com