LOS Angeles is burning, singeing the rich and the homeless in its wake. Gaza is in cinders, leaving an unconscionable toll of a perpetually violated people, but not without wounding and unnerving the tormentors. The fire and the slaughter are both manmade tragedies and are linked, though difficult to accept as such.
As the stag is caught in the headlights of the approaching milk van, which crushes the animal in the end to leave it crippled or dead while keeping the delivery deadline before daybreak, the world is standing frozen on the crossroads of a hurtling catastrophe. It doesn’t see nature’s wrath it has invoked with at least a century-old abuse of the planet.
Worse, it remains sanguine about the supremacy of nuclear fission and gunpowder as protection against the oncoming calamity. Israel is emblematic of the tragedy. Created as a home for survivors from Nazi ghettos, it is today a replica of Nazi Germany. As the Nazis rationalised their thirst for blood and land with European race theories, the Jewish elite embraced Zionism and took a leaf from their torturers to covet Palestinian land with claims of divine exclusivism.
Imperialism, which transformed Israel into its unsinkable ship, doesn’t always see the need for divine excuses. It has set its eyes, for example, on its own allies in Greenland and Canada. Its entrenched interest lies crucially in denial of climate change although the hunt for critical resources is on in case someone read it wrong.
Donald Trump brings worry for some and hope for others. The variation is evident.
On a different scale, in India, corporates close to the government are being facilitated by the state to stake a claim on the nation’s natural resources. They are cornering forests and water resources and displacing the indigenous inhabitants. They care little that the Himalayan ice is melting, rivers are running dry and a water-sharing treaty between India and Pakistan is being weaponised. There seems no room to sidestep the milk van, which is speeding like China’s bullet train to Tibet but with no guardrails to deter the stag’s botched fate. The global stage has ingredients of Greek tragedies that lay low the protagonists with speeding inevitability. Occasionally, it’s luck that runs out on the hero. Among the least concerned by the mayhem is Donald Trump.
It would, of course, have been better for the world if its joys and sorrows were not determined by America’s four-yearly mood swings and its pursuit of perennially shifting ‘core interests’. But that’s not the way the world is structured. Trump’s second coming starting next week brings with it a more extreme variant of the worry. The core interests have suddenly shifted to terrifying claims on allies, making them palpably nervous. Or to be clearer, Trump brings worry for some and hope for others. The variation is evident.
While the Chinese president expectedly turned down the invitation to Trump’s Jan 20 swearing-in, the Indian prime minister is reportedly disconsolate at not being invited, that too after exerting efforts including his foreign minister’s alleged stakeout in Washington, D.C. Trump has raised close to $200 million from the coming inaugural, says the Fortune magazine.
According to Indian reports, the foreign minister and not Narendra Modi has been invited to represent India. The grovelling is made worse by an absurd fact of history whereby Prime Minister Modi had publicly canvassed — to the world’s astonishment and to many an Indians’ embarrassment — for Trump’s re-election, which he lost. During Modi’s recent visit to the US, however, reports said Trump was expecting to see him, presumably to raise handy electoral support from the mostly Democratic Indian diaspora. Modi apparently miscalculated the election outcome and didn’t meet Trump.
There are greater worries stemming from and hopes hinging on Trump’s second presidency including in South Asia. Trump’s overriding interest in the Global South is, of course, his fear of BRICS. It’s difficult to see any South Asian country ditching the most promising alternative that BRICS has become to gun-toting US imperialism. At an individual level, there have been write-ups about Trump’s soft corner for Imran Khan who, reports say, he could help get back his job. The story is more complex given the quid pro quo Trump would demand from those he favours: betraying BRICS.
There are accusations, and there are reasons to believe them, that the Biden administration waylaid Imran after he met Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Richard Grenell, a close associate of Trump, did, however, publicly demand the release of Imran Khan.
Bangladesh would be on edge too, given the fact that the current dispensation in Dhaka is seen as being close to Hillary Clinton. Her India connection is remembered for the bhangra she danced at an Ambani wedding in 2018. That the tycoon shores up Modi is no secret. For the other regional countries, their ties with the US for the next four years would be measured through the prism of Sino-US relations, Trump’s top priority.
The larger world, meanwhile, remains sandwiched between two bad choices. The outgoing Democratic administration has been neck-deep complicit in the horrific genocide in Gaza. It’s equally responsible for setting off the slaughter underway in Ukraine by insulting and provoking Russia.
Many American opponents, including a friend who has applied to give up her US nationality, see Trump as an insolent real estate shark who became America’s most divisive politician since the Civil War. They say he wants to make his country great again in its most dire sense. Therefore, he must first negotiate the charged-up opposition from the vast swathe of Americans suspicious of his toxic worldview. Trump’s US is expected to be vertically divided over gender rights, climate change and race relations besides a host of tricky hairpin bends on domestic and global policies. Should the milk van keel over on a sharp bend, it would be the best reprieve the stranded stag could possibly hope for.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
Published in Dawn, January 14th, 2025
