The imported rage by Jemma Norman

Britain has always borrowed from America. It borrowed jazz, denim, fast food, prestige television and the peculiar talent for turning politics into entertainment. What it now appears to have borrowed, however, is something darker: a style of populism engineered less around solving problems than around manufacturing permanent outrage. The language is familiar because it arrives subtitled in an American accent. The villains are always elites, migrants, universities, journalists, judges, experts or “globalists,” depending on the week’s algorithmic mood. The objective is not persuasion. It is exhaustion.

The unsettling thing is not that Britain has populists. Britain has always had political showmen and grievance merchants. The unsettling thing is how strangely imported the current atmosphere feels, as though entire sections of British political culture were assembled from spare American parts. One can almost hear the focus-grouped cadence crossing the Atlantic: the suspicion of institutions, the theatrical contempt for compromise, the insistence that every election is a final battle for civilization itself.

American politics has become a profitable export industry. Britain, unfortunately, is an eager customer. The social-media ecosystem rewards fury because fury keeps people scrolling. American strategists perfected this decades ago. The trick is to convince ordinary people that every inconvenience in their lives is caused by shadowy enemies rather than structural realities. Stagnant wages become the fault of immigrants. Housing shortages become the fault of human-rights lawyers. Underfunded public services become evidence of conspiracies rather than political choices. Complex national problems are compressed into bumper stickers and shouted into phone cameras.

Britain once possessed a different political temperament. Not necessarily a nobler one, but certainly a less hysterical one. British politics traditionally operated through understatement, procedural caution, and a faint embarrassment about excessive patriotism. Even ideological enemies tended to sound like men reluctantly arguing over accounting methods at a provincial golf club. Today, politicians rehearse for television clips as if auditioning for American cable news.

The result is a politics without proportion. Everything is now presented as national collapse. A museum exhibit becomes evidence of cultural suicide. A refugee boat becomes an invasion. A university seminar becomes tyranny. Politicians no longer speak like administrators of a difficult country; they speak like influencers monetizing panic. Britain is not governed through confidence anymore. It is governed through adrenaline.

Yet the deeper problem is that imported populism flatters Britain’s insecurities while offering no genuine renewal. It tells the country that decline is somebody else’s fault and that greatness can be restored merely by denouncing enemies loudly enough. This is emotionally satisfying and economically useless. No nation ever rebuilt itself through comment-section psychology.

Can Britain save itself from this imported rage? Possibly, but only if it rediscovers the distinction between performance and governance. Democracies require disagreement, but they also require shared reality. A country cannot function if every institution is portrayed as corrupt whenever it delivers inconvenient conclusions. Nor can it survive if politics becomes indistinguishable from entertainment content designed to trigger emotional addiction.

Britain does not need less passion. It needs less theatrical despair. The nation’s problems are real enough without importing America’s apocalyptic style of political psychodrama. The loudest voices insist Britain is on the edge of ruin. In truth, what is really endangered is something quieter, the national habit of scepticism toward demagogues pretending to be saviours.

The Strait after Trump by Harry S. Taylor

Trump entered office promising to bring Iran to its knees. Instead, he may have accelerated the arrival of a regional order in which Iran holds more leverage, more strategic patience and more influence over one of the world’s most critical waterways than at any point in recent history.

The irony is almost literary. The administration withdrew from the nuclear agreement with theatrical confidence, insisting that “maximum pressure” would produce maximum submission. But nations are not slot machines. Iran did not collapse. It adapted. It learned to operate inside permanent pressure, to weaponize ambiguity, to turn endurance itself into strategy.

The Strait of Hormuz became the perfect stage for this transformation. For decades, the narrow corridor has represented the fragile artery of global energy markets. American presidents traditionally approached it as a zone secured by U.S. naval supremacy. Trump imagined that increasing sanctions and military threats would reinforce that supremacy. Yet the opposite occurred. Iran demonstrated that it did not need to defeat the United States militarily to alter the balance of power. It merely needed to prove that it could disrupt certainty.

That distinction matters enormously. Iranian strategy in the Gulf has never depended on conventional dominance. Tehran understood long ago that it could not outbuild the Pentagon or outspend Saudi Arabia. Instead, it developed a doctrine based on asymmetry, calibrated escalation and psychological endurance. Fast boats, proxy networks, drones, missile systems, deniable operations, these became tools not of conquest but of perpetual negotiation through tension.

Trump’s policies handed this doctrine new relevance. By abandoning diplomacy and replacing it with economic warfare, Washington unintentionally legitimized Iran’s argument that survival required regional hard power. Every tanker incident, every spike in oil prices, every nervous insurance market became evidence that Iran possessed a veto over stability in the Gulf. Not total control, certainly but enough influence to force the world’s attention.

And attention, in geopolitics, is currency. The uncomfortable truth for American strategists is that Iran no longer needs formal victories. It benefits simply by proving that no security arrangement in the Gulf can function without accounting for Tehran’s interests. That is the new order quietly emerging in Hormuz: not an Iranian empire, but an Iranian inevitability.

Trump mistook isolation for weakness. In reality, isolation often hardens regimes. Sanctions damaged Iran’s economy profoundly, but they also pushed Tehran toward deeper regional integration with non-Western powers and toward a more aggressive maritime posture. China continued buying influence. Russia found common tactical ground. Gulf monarchies, despite public hostility, increasingly recognized that permanent confrontation with Iran was unsustainable.

Even Saudi Arabia, after years of rhetorical escalation, drifted toward cautious normalization talks with Tehran. That alone should have shattered the fantasy of maximum pressure succeeding.

Meanwhile, the United States looked strangely exhausted. Endless deployments without strategic clarity create not fear but fatigue. Washington still possesses overwhelming military power in the Gulf, of course. But power and control are different things. An empire begins to decline not when it loses strength outright, but when smaller rivals learn how to operate comfortably within its shadow.

Iran has learned precisely that lesson. Trump promised restoration of American dominance. What emerged instead was a more fragmented Gulf, a more adaptive Iran and a Strait of Hormuz governed less by unquestioned American command than by mutual vulnerability. Tehran does not own the Strait. But it has succeeded in making the world understand that nobody else fully owns it either. That may be Iran’s most significant victory of all.

Border fires by Mary Long

In north-west Pakistan, where military checkpoints and funeral processions have long existed side by side, a car bomb tore through a police convoy and an ambush followed close behind, killing at least fifteen officers. Days later, another bomb exploded in a crowded market in the same region, killing civilians who had likely spent years learning how to continue ordinary life beneath extraordinary danger. The dead were not symbols or abstractions. They were policemen riding to work, vendors arranging fruit, children wandering through narrow streets while adults discussed prices, weather, and politics.

Pakistan immediately pointed across the Afghan border. Islamabad argues that militant groups are operating from Afghan territory with enough freedom to threaten the fragile calm that had recently begun to settle over parts of the frontier. The accusation is hardly surprising. Since the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the return of the Taliban to Kabul, the border has become less a line between two states than a corridor of denials, resentments, and armed opportunism. Afghanistan insists it does not permit attacks against neighboring countries. Pakistan insists the evidence says otherwise. Meanwhile, graves continue to fill.

The bitter irony is that everyone involved claims exhaustion. Pakistan is exhausted by insurgency. Afghanistan is exhausted by war. The local population is exhausted by being treated as collateral geography in a conflict that endlessly mutates but never disappears. Yet exhaustion alone does not produce peace. Sometimes it merely lowers expectations enough for governments to call a pause stability while militants quietly reorganize in the mountains.

What makes these attacks particularly alarming is not only their brutality but their familiarity. The choreography is painfully recognizable: a bombing, retaliatory rhetoric, promises of investigations, warnings about foreign sanctuaries, and solemn declarations that terrorism will be defeated. Then another explosion arrives to remind everyone that the cycle remains intact. South Asia has become dangerously skilled at absorbing violence without forcing political transformation from it. The dead are mourned sincerely, but structurally almost nothing changes.

Pakistan’s security establishment still views militancy largely through the lens of strategic management, distinguishing between useful proxies and intolerable enemies depending on circumstance. Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, for their part, appear unwilling or unable to fully sever ties with hard-line groups that share ideological roots and battlefield histories. Both governments speak the language of sovereignty while tolerating ambiguities that make sovereignty meaningless at the border itself.

The real victims are the civilians trapped between slogans and shrapnel. They are asked to celebrate every tentative ceasefire as a historic breakthrough, only to discover that peace in the region often resembles a temporary intermission between funerals. A society cannot indefinitely survive on resilience alone. At some point resilience curdles into fatalism, and fatalism is where extremism thrives best.

The frontier is burning again, and official statements from Islamabad and Kabul increasingly sound less like diplomacy than competing excuses shouted across smoke.

Until both states abandon the convenient fiction that militancy can be selectively tolerated, every announcement of restored order will remain provisional. The border region does not need another exchange of blame or another vow of retaliation. It needs governments willing to treat human life as more important than leverage and nostalgia.

Walk the talk 26#008 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

The term “talk the talk, walk the walk” is a phrase in English
that means a person should support what they say, not just with words,
but also through action. Actions speak louder than words.

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Nigeria’s Security Quagmire by Tunde Akande

Nigeria is still what Chief Obafemi Awolowo called it before independence: a mere geographical expression. Until it builds a home for its over 350 ethnicities, it will always have insecurity.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu sat in one of his offices at the Aso Rock Villa. He was not in his usual dandogo or kaftan. He wore a white agbada with simple embroidery. Sitting opposite him were some guests obviously from Plateau State who could not be seen in the very short video clip that this writer watched. Plateau State has become a killing field where bandits and insurgents kill rampantly. The state is mostly Christian, and when the killings became focused and targeted and would not stop, and more so when the invaders were taking their land, the people labelled it “Christian genocide.” That invited United States President Donald Trump, who warned President Bola Tinubu and thereafter rained down Tomahawk bombs on an area of Sokoto State where the terrorists were said to have their weapons stored.

Homeland Security Adviser, Major General Adeyinka Famadewa

There were further threats of mayhem if Tinubu did not move quickly to stop the wanton killings. Some panicky moves by the government include propaganda and a dispatch of the first lady, Oluremi Tinubu, to attend Donald Trump’s Prayer Breakfast to soften the heart of Trump. The first lady is a pastor in the Redeemed Christian Church of God, a big Pentecostal church in Nigeria. A contract said to be about $7 million was put together to lobby the American legislators to counter the genocide story. It was also alleged that Nigeria’s junior defense minister, Bello Matawalle, whom Tinubu refused to remove when he removed the defense minister, Mohammed Badaru Abubakar, and replaced him with former Chief of Defence Staff Christopher Musa, had bribed American legislators with some millions of dollars. If the story is true, it won’t certainly be without the knowledge of his boss, Bola Tinubu, who is no stranger to such deals. Tinubu knows how to use money to get his way in anything.

Bola Tinubu throttled out at the top of his voice to his Plateau State audience, “My presidency will not be terminated by insecurity. My enemies will not end my presidency through insecurity. I’m going to campaign and work hard.” The president was speaking for the second time to the leaders of Plateau State over wanton killings in their state. A few weeks back, Tinubu, who had hurriedly and in an unfriendly manner visited their state and met with them at the Yakubu Gowon Airport, Jos, for a brief meeting that barely lasted for an hour, promised them that killings such as has happened in Dadinkowa in Jos will not repeat itself. But it did, and not one time, not two times, but many times. This time in Aso Rock, in one of the president’s offices, the president had nothing to say again other than to blame his enemies who don’t want him to return for a second term. The Senate president, Godswill Akpabio, whom people call a rubber stamp of Tinubu’s policies, had said the same thing a few weeks before. Godswill Akpabio, on the floor of the Senate, said Nigerians should wait till the end of the elections, and they will not see the banditry and insurgents again. By that, he meant that the impending 2027 election was the reason for the spike in terrorism in Nigeria. He may be right, but terrorism has been ravaging Nigeria since the time of former president Goodluck Jonathan, who ruled from 2010 to 2015, and who succeeded his boss, Umaru Yar’Adua, who died in office. Insecurity is therefore not caused by the impending election.

Just as Goodluck Jonathan did not know what to do about the insurgency then and was labelled “clueless” by the emerging All Progressives Congress (APC) of late President Muhammadu Buhari, President Tinubu now has run out of steam and doesn’t know what to do with the insurgency, terrorism, and banditry. Nigerians are yet to give him a label because Tinubu has been deceiving them with one political gimmick or another to give an impression of strategy.

In 2023, President Tinubu appointed Nuhu Ribadu, an Assistant Inspector-General (AIG) of police, who was retired when he did not see eye-to-eye with the then-President Yar’Adua. Up to that point, Nigeria had picked its security advisers from the ranks of retired military generals. But Tinubu picked a retired police AIG. What was the president up to? Bola Tinubu is well reputed as a great headhunter. He did that as governor of Lagos. Will Ribadu be able to cope with the generals, more so because the military in Nigeria feels superior to the police?

Nigerians do not need to be told that Nuhu Ribadu is not finding his job easy. The Director General of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) became a victim when he published statistics that banditry and kidnapping have spiked in Nigeria since Tinubu assumed office. He was quickly arrested, and the website of the NBS was taken down. The arrest of the DG and the removal of the website were the work of Nuhu Ribadu, who obviously was fidgety. Ribadu had given himself as dealing heavy blows to the insecurity situation in Nigeria. But the experience of Nigerians does not confirm that, and the figures of NBS confirmed the experience of Nigerians.

Now Bola Tinubu has pulled another trick from his political bag of tricks. He has appointed Adeyinka Famadewa, a retired major general who is said to be well decorated. Famadewa is said to be experienced in security matters, and he will be the Homeland Security Adviser to the president. What exactly Homeland Security is has yet to be explained. Nuhu Ribadu is the National Security Adviser, and nobody knows who will report to whom or how the functions will be delineated. There is a Ministry of Interior, and how the new Homeland Security will differ from the Interior Ministry is not known.

Famadewa is not new to government; he was in the security network of ex-president Muhammadu Buhari. An article he published in Premium Times in 2023 revealed his mindset on security. He quoted Robert McNamara, former American security adviser, who defined security as development and development as security. If security is development, then issues of insecurity in Nigeria are caused by the nation’s underdevelopment.

The north of Nigeria, where terrorism, insurgency, and banditry are rife, is the least developed in the country. The most unserious leaders in Nigeria are in the north. Rather than spend money on education and health, they sponsor their people to holy pilgrimages in Mecca, Saudi Arabia and build digital Islamic centers, things that have nothing to do with meaningful development. Therefore, the citizens are denied education and wallow in ignorance, procreating unchecked. The leaders in the north distribute money to the clerics and consult these clerics for future direction by occultic means rather than implement sound economic policies.

For example, the coup planners who are being tried are said to have consulted an imam, Sani Abdukadir, to help them pray for their coup to succeed. Until the north is developed nobody should expect any end to insecurity. Just as Famadewa and General Christopher Musa before him have said, security is not just the business of the Armed Forces alone but that of the whole society. Who then will enlist the Nigerian society to combat insecurity? The Nigerians who will do that will be Nigerians who are sure of three square meals daily, Nigerians who will by merit attain their heights by hard work and not by nepotism, religion, or tribalism. Nigeria is still what Chief Obafemi Awolowo called it before independence: a mere geographical expression. Until it builds a home for its over 350 ethnicities, it will always have insecurity. If thousands of Famadewas can be appointed by hundreds of Tinubus, nothing will happen. The appointment of Famadewa may have been a function of Tinubu’s frustration with the raging insecurity which has hobbled Nuhu Ribadu.

First Published in METRO

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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.

Early Signs of a Darker Future: Bengal’s Political Turn and the Genocide Risk By Dr. Habib Siddiqui

The swearing‑in of Suvendu Adhikari as the new Chief Minister of West Bengal marks a dramatic and unsettling turn in the political history of a state that, for decades, resisted the communal polarization sweeping across much of India. His rise is not merely a regional development; it carries profound implications for India’s Muslims, for Bangladesh, and for the fragile peace of an entire subcontinent already strained by majoritarian politics.

Not too long, on May 4, Adhikari reportedly declared, “The Hindu people of Nandigram made me win again. There, the entire Muslim vote went to TMC... I will work for the Hindus of Nandigram. TMC will be finished. Within 24 hours, it will be destroyed, it will be finished. This corrupt, family-oriented party has no ideology... We will do the work that Home Minister Amit Shah had declared in the manifesto, and Prime Minister Modi has guaranteed again and again. We will complete it..."For many observers, such remarks signaled not reconciliation after a contentious election, but a sharpening of communal lines.

Adhikari is widely regarded as a highly polarizing figure whose political ascent has been intertwined with rhetoric that critics describe as deeply hostile toward Muslims. Within days of taking office, his administration oversaw the demolition of homes and small businesses using bulldozers – an approach that has become emblematic of the governance style of Uttar Pradesh’s former Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath. On Thursday, May 14, 2026, bulldozers also razed a Trinamool Congress party office and a clock tower in West Bengal. This comes a day after an allegedly illegal tannery was brought down in Kolkata’s Tiljala area after a fire broke out in the building, killing two and injuring three persons. 

Critics argue that such actions disproportionately affect Muslim communities and are often justified under the pretext of “illegal encroachment,” even when due process is questionable. For many, the speed and symbolism of these demolitions suggest not administrative necessity but a political message—one that deepens fear among minorities and signals a new, harsher era in West Bengal’s governance.

This shift in West Bengal is not occurring in isolation. It is part of a broader transformation of India under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose ideological project – rooted in Hindutva—has increasingly reshaped political, social, and administrative life across the country. From Assam to Gujarat, from Karnataka to Uttar Pradesh, the pattern is unmistakable: a narrowing of civic space for minorities and a normalization of exclusionary politics.

West Bengal, long governed by parties that resisted communal polarization, was once considered a buffer against this tide. That buffer has now collapsed.

One of the most troubling aspects of this year’s West Bengal election was the widespread allegation that many Muslim voters were prevented from voting on “technical grounds.” Reports from civil society groups, journalists, and political observers suggest that the disenfranchisement was not accidental but systematic – an outcome of bureaucratic maneuvers that disproportionately affected Muslim-majority constituencies.

While the full extent of the irregularities is still being documented, the pattern aligns with concerns raised in previous elections in other BJP‑ruled states, where voter list manipulation, document requirements, and targeted exclusions have been used to reshape electoral outcomes. Many analysts attribute these tactics to strategic planning at the national level, particularly under the influence of Home Minister Amit Shah.

For a hybrid-democracy like India that prides itself on electoral legitimacy, such practices strike at the heart of public trust.

The rhetoric emerging from some BJP leaders about “pushing illegal Bangladeshis back” has resurfaced with renewed vigor after Adhikari’s victory. While India has the sovereign right to enforce immigration laws, the political framing of this issue often blurs the line between undocumented migrants and Indian Muslims, creating a climate of fear and suspicion.

This narrative is not new. It has been used repeatedly to justify policies such as the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, which left nearly two million people – many of them Muslims – at risk of statelessness. The danger now is that West Bengal may become the next laboratory for such policies.

For Bangladesh, this rhetoric is deeply destabilizing. It revives old anxieties about demographic engineering and raises the specter of forced population transfers – an act prohibited under international law. Even when such outcomes do not materialize, the political signaling alone can strain bilateral relations.

Bangladesh‑India relations were already at a low ebb during the Interim Government of Dr. Muhammad Yunus. Contrary to some narratives in India, the tension did not stem from Dhaka’s actions but from longstanding grievances about New Delhi’s perceived interference in Bangladesh’s internal affairs. Many Bangladeshis viewed the previous government of Sheikh Hasina as excessively aligned with Indian interests, to the point of compromising national sovereignty.

Hasina’s nearly sixteen‑year mis-rule left behind a legacy of serious allegations – extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, rampant corruption, and the near‑bankruptcy of state institutions. She now faces legal proceedings in Bangladesh, yet continues to reside in India, a fact that fuels public resentment and complicates diplomatic engagement.

The return of the BNP to power in Dhaka initially raised hopes for a reset in bilateral relations. But Adhikari’s rise in Kolkata threatens to widen the rift once again. West Bengal is not just another Indian state; it is Bangladesh’s immediate neighbor, sharing deep cultural, linguistic, and economic ties. A hostile political climate in Kolkata inevitably reverberates across the border.

The Risk of Cross‑Border Communal Contagion

Communal tensions do not respect borders. If targeted attacks on Muslims escalate in West Bengal, the ripple effects could be felt in Bangladesh, where minority communities – particularly Hindus –have historically faced retaliatory violence, although on a much small scale, during moments of regional crisis. This is not a hypothetical scenario; it has happened before.

The danger is twofold:

1. Indian Muslims may face intensified discrimination, violence, or displacement, especially if bulldozer‑style governance becomes normalized in West Bengal.
2. Bangladeshi minorities may become collateral victims, as extremist elements exploit regional tensions to justify attacks – potentially prompting well‑off Hindu families to consider relocating to India for safety.

This cycle of reciprocal insecurity benefits no one. It undermines social cohesion, destabilizes border regions, and erodes the moral foundations of both democracies.

A Genocidal Trajectory?

Genocide is not a sudden eruption; it is a slow, deliberate process. Scholars of mass violence have long warned that the earliest stages are marked by dehumanizing rhetoric, discriminatory laws, targeted disenfranchisement, and the normalization of state‑sanctioned violence. According to Genocide Watch—an organization dedicated to preventing mass atrocities—many of these warning signs are now plainly visible in India’s political landscape. Ignoring them would be an act of willful blindness.

Raising this alarm is not an accusation that genocide has already occurred. It is a recognition that India is moving along a trajectory that experts in atrocity prevention find deeply troubling. When a majoritarian ideology embeds itself in state institutions, when entire communities are cast as outsiders or enemies, the risk of mass violence does not merely rise—it becomes structurally enabled. The danger grows not through dramatic ruptures, but through the steady normalization of exclusion and coercion.

The ongoing transformation of India under the banner of Hindutva is therefore not just a domestic political shift; it is a regional security threat. For India’s 200 million Muslims, the implications are existential. For South Asia as a whole, the destabilizing potential is immense. A country of India’s size and influence sliding toward systematic persecution is not merely “concerning”—it is a crisis in the making.

A Call for Leadership, Not Bigotry

Suvendu Adhikari now governs a state that has historically prided itself on pluralism, intellectualism, and resistance to communal hatred. The responsibility on his shoulders is immense. He can choose to govern as a statesman—protecting all citizens, upholding the rule of law, and preserving West Bengal’s legacy of inclusivity. Or he can continue down a path of polarization that endangers millions and destabilizes an entire region.

The choice he makes will shape not only West Bengal’s future but the future of India‑Bangladesh relations and the safety of vulnerable communities on both sides of the border.

It is time for leadership, not bigotry. Time for governance, not intimidation. Time for healing, not division.

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[Dr. Siddiqui’s forthcoming book, ‘Modi‑fied’ India: The Transformation of a Nation, is slated for publication by Peter Lang in 2026.]

The last strongman season by Dmitri Kovalev

There is a particular moment in the life of every long-ruling strongman when power stops looking permanent and starts looking theatrical. The speeches grow harsher. The photo opportunities become more carefully staged. Loyalty is no longer assumed; it is audited. Vladimir Putin may not yet be politically finished, but the aura that once made him appear inevitable has begun to flicker.

For two decades, Putin sold Russia a story about restored greatness. After the humiliations of the nineteen-nineties, he arrived as the disciplined adult who would stabilize the country, humble the oligarchs, tame separatists and force the West to treat Moscow seriously again. Many Russians accepted the bargain: fewer freedoms in exchange for order, national pride, and predictability. It was authoritarianism wrapped in competence.

The trouble with systems built around one man is that eventually the man ages, the myth stiffens, and reality starts leaking through the cracks.

The war in Ukraine accelerated that process dramatically. What was intended to be a swift demonstration of Russian dominance became something far more corrosive: a prolonged war of attrition exposing military weaknesses, economic strain, bureaucratic rot and astonishing strategic miscalculations. Even if the Kremlin insists on projecting confidence, history has a cruel habit of measuring leaders not by the stories they tell but by the costs they impose.

Putin still controls the machinery of the Russian state. That matters. He commands the security services, influences the courts, dominates television, and oversees a political culture where meaningful opposition has been suffocated. Yet authoritarian systems often appear strongest just before they become brittle. Fear can maintain obedience for years, but it rarely produces genuine devotion forever.

The Wagner mutiny last year felt significant not because it toppled Putin but because it punctured the illusion of untouchability. Watching an armed column move toward Moscow while the state hesitated was the kind of spectacle that authoritarian governments dread. It suggested that beneath the rigid public image lay uncertainty, rivalry and perhaps panic. In autocracies, perception is half the regime.

The question now is not whether Putin remains powerful. He plainly does. The real question is whether the elite around him still believes he guarantees stability better than the alternatives. That is where strongmen become vulnerable, not from crowds in the streets but from quiet conversations behind guarded doors.

Dictators are rarely removed in dramatic cinematic fashion. More often, they are gradually isolated. Allies become careful. Generals become noncommittal. Wealthy insiders begin moving assets and hedging loyalties. The ruler notices the hesitation and responds with purges, paranoia, and even tighter control, which in turn deepens the atmosphere of fear. It becomes a political hall of mirrors.

Putin increasingly looks like a leader trapped by the image he created. He cannot easily soften because strength is his entire political brand. He cannot admit failure because his authority depends on appearing historically destined. He cannot truly retire because systems centered on personal power offer no safe retirement plan. Men like Putin do not leave office; they leave eras.

That does not mean collapse is imminent. Predictions about Russia often fail because outsiders underestimate the state’s tolerance for hardship and the population’s exhaustion with instability. Russians have survived revolutions, famines, purges, economic collapse and wars. Many may prefer an aging authoritarian to another national convulsion.

Still, the atmosphere has changed. Putin once looked like the future of Russia. Now he increasingly resembles the final guardian of a system running out of imagination. The Kremlin remains formidable, but it no longer feels historically confident. It feels defensive.

And that may be the clearest sign of all that the long season of Putinism is approaching winter.

#eBook: St. Helena’s Imperial Shadow by Ovi History

 

Napoleon’s Final Voyage. On the morning of October 15, 1815, a battered carriage rumbled up a winding path cut into volcanic stone.

Inside sat the most feared man in the world, once Emperor of ninety million subjects, now a prisoner aboard HMS Northumberland.

Before him rose the fortress of Jamestown, St. Helena, a speck of black rock two thousand kilometers from any continent. Napoleon Bonaparte had not been defeated in a final glorious charge.

He had been outlasted, surrounded, and erased from the map by British decision-makers who refused to repeat the mistake of Elba. This time, there would be no escape.

Ovi History eBook
May 2026

Ovi eBook Publishing 2026

St. Helena’s Imperial Shadow

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Maples & Oranges #065 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Taunting oranges in the midst of other fruity links,
constantly spreading the wares of their juicy gloom.

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Museums for Our Entry into the World Society by Rene Wadlow

18 May is the UNESCO-designated International Day of Museums. Each year, there is an overall theme but presented in many different ways by museums throughout the world.  This year, the theme title is “Museums as Cultural Hubs”. The role of museums in society are changing.  Museums keep reinventing themselves in their quest for becoming ever more interactive and community oriented.  As institutions at the heart of society, museums have the capacity to establish dialogue among cultures and to build bridges.

Museums can play an increasingly vital role as we move toward a just and inclusive world society.  As citizens of the world in our analysis of the world situation, we have stressed the need for a clear strategic focus to move to a world society that is just, sustainable and inclusive.  We understand community-oriented as care for the Earth and as embracing our common responsibility to cooperate in promoting the well-being of all people and the larger community of life.

Museums as vital community centers are challenged to find the balance between conserving the heritage of the past, educating on current vital issues, and pointing to trends which will develop in the future.

A current vital issue is the world-wide effort for ecologically-sound development  as an imperative if we are to meet the basic needs of all.  Basic needs include improved nutrition, education, safe water, and sanitation.  There is no question that humanity's relation with the earth is undergoing a profound transformation.  There is a process of deep reflection about our attitudes to plants, animals, land, water, air, in fact, the entire natural world of which we are a part.

Since the 1972 UN Stockholm conference on the environment, the public has been provided with realistic accounts of the extent of the degradation of planet Earth.  However, we must also stress activities that are being undertaken to improve the conditions of the environment to show that solutions are being found so that people do not feel hopeless and helpless.

Taking effective action to halt the massive injury to the Earth's ecological structures is a first necessary step.  This will require a mobilization of political will and cooperation.  We need to recognize that world ecological stability must be based upon a shared commitment to the common good and that each person has a unique part to play.

Museums help to build new bridges between nations, ethnic groups and communities through values such as beauty and harmony.  Museums also build bridges between generations, between the past, the present and the future. Therefore for this International Museum Day, let us consider together how we may advance understanding of the challenges that humanity faces as we move into a world society.

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Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

The long table in Beijing by Thanos Kalamidas

There was a revealing asymmetry in the photographs from Donald Trump’s latest meetings with Xi Jinping. Trump, the man who once treated diplomacy like a televised arm-wrestling contest, appeared oddly diminished; one arm tucked behind his back, posture stiff, smile strained in the peculiar way of a politician trying to disguise anxiety as confidence. Xi, meanwhile, looked exactly as the Chinese leader always tries to look, unmoved, patient, perfectly comfortable with history unfolding in his direction.

Body language analysis is often junk science masquerading as insight but sometimes the theater tells the truth before the communiqués do. Trump did not travel into a negotiation from a position of triumph. He arrived carrying inflation that refuses to behave, farmers angry about shrinking margins and unstable export markets and a restless political base still waiting for the return of an America that no longer exists outside campaign slogans and faded memories.

The deeper problem is not merely economic. It is psychological. Trump’s political mythology has always depended on the promise of restoration. The factories would hum again. Cheap gas would return. Manufacturing towns would revive. America would resume its uncontested place atop the global pyramid simply because Trump willed it so loudly enough. But history does not reverse itself on command. Entire electorates can spend decades voting against time and still lose.

Xi understands this better than most Western leaders. China’s long-term strategy has never depended on charisma or emotional spectacle. It is built on endurance. Beijing thinks in decades while Washington thinks in election cycles and cable-news segments. That difference now shows everywhere.

China dominates critical supply chains. It extends influence through ports, infrastructure, lending and trade agreements stretching from Africa to Latin America. Its military projects power farther from its shores each year. Even countries wary of Beijing increasingly treat China not as an ideological ally but as an unavoidable economic gravity field. They may distrust China; they simply distrust dependence on America more.

Trump once boasted that trade wars were “easy to win.” Instead, many American farmers became collateral damage in a geopolitical experiment they never asked to join. Soybean growers, cattle producers and small agricultural exporters learned a brutal lesson; global markets do not reward patriotic rhetoric. They reward stability. China diversified suppliers. Brazil benefited. Others stepped in. And many of the old relationships never fully returned.

That lingering resentment matters because farmers were not merely another voting bloc for Trump. They were central characters in his national story, the hardworking Americans supposedly abandoned by cosmopolitan elites and rescued by populist nationalism. Yet nostalgia is a poor substitute for economic planning. The “good old days” are politically useful precisely because they cannot be tested against present reality.

Meanwhile Xi projects continuity. He does not need applause lines. He does not need rallies. He only needs the appearance of steady ascent. Even China’s serious internal problems, youth unemployment, demographic decline, property-sector instability, do not erase the broader perception that Beijing is expanding its influence while Washington struggles to define its own role.

That is why the Taiwan issue suddenly feels so delicate. Trump has always approached alliances transactionally and transactional diplomacy becomes dangerous when facing authoritarian powers skilled at exploiting ambiguity. Beijing watches carefully for signs that American commitments are negotiable. Any hint that Taiwan could become part of a larger bargain sends tremors across Asia.

Perhaps Trump believes flexibility is strategic. Perhaps he thinks unpredictability keeps adversaries off balance. But there is a fine line between strategic ambiguity and visible uncertainty. Xi, unlike many American politicians, rarely mistakes patience for weakness. He understands that exhausted powers often compromise gradually; convincing themselves each concession is temporary and manageable until the balance of influence has quietly shifted.

The images from Beijing captured more than two leaders meeting across polished tables. They captured an uncomfortable truth about the current century. America still possesses immense power, wealth, innovation and military reach. But confidence has eroded into improvisation. China, despite all its vulnerabilities, increasingly behaves like a nation convinced that time itself is on its side.

And perhaps the most unsettling part for Washington is this Xi no longer needs to defeat America outright. He only needs America to keep doubting what it once was.