The Limits of Liberal Nostalgia: A Critique of Serge Schmemann’s Future of America By Habib Siddiqui

Serge Schmemann’s recent New York Times essay (The Old World Order Is Over. This Is What Could Come Next, dated October 18, 2026) offers a sweeping but speculative analysis on America’s global role in the aftermath of the Trump era. He sketches three possible futures for the United States and the world. It is an ambitious piece, drawing on conversations with foreign-policy thinkers and invoking historical analogies to frame the stakes of the present moment. Yet for all its breadth, the article suffers from conceptual imprecision, selective historical memory, and an overreliance on familiar liberal narratives that obscure more than they illuminate. A critical reading reveals an argument that is rhetorically compelling but analytically uneven, and one that ultimately underestimates the structural forces reshaping global politics.

A Framing Built on Nostalgia

Schmemann begins with a stark assertion: America has changed, and Donald Trump is the face of that change. He describes Trump as a president who “demeaned allies and courted autocrats,” and who sought to accumulate powers beyond constitutional limits. This framing is not inaccurate — Trump’s tenure has been marked by norm-breaking and institutional strain — but Schmemann treats Trump as both symptom and cause without clearly distinguishing the two. The article implies that Trump’s rise represents a deviation from an otherwise stable liberal democratic trajectory. Yet the political, economic, and cultural conditions that enabled Trump — polarization, inequality, institutional decay, and distrust of elites — long predate him.

By anchoring his narrative in Trump’s personality, Schmemann inadvertently narrows the scope of his analysis. The question is not whether America can “return” to its role as a global beacon of democracy once Trump is gone. The deeper question is whether the post-1945 liberal order was ever as stable, inclusive, or universally admired as Schmemann suggests. His essay assumes a golden age of American leadership that can be restored through renewed commitment to democratic values. But this assumption glosses over decades of contested U.S. foreign policy — from Vietnam to Iraq, from covert interventions to support for authoritarian allies, and most deplorably, Washington’s unwavering backing of Israel even as leading human‑rights organizations and international legal bodies have accused it of committing atrocities amounting to genocide in Gaza — all of which complicate the notion of America as a consistently principled global actor.

I. The Problematic Ideal of the “Shining City on a Hill”

In the “America Makes a Comeback” scenario, Schmemann imagines a future in which a law-abiding, globally minded president restores America’s moral authority. Europe welcomes the United States back as a trusted ally, Russia stabilizes after Putin’s departure, China surpasses the U.S. economically but cooperates peacefully, and the United Nations is revitalized. This is the most optimistic of his three visions, and it reads like a liberal internationalist wish list.

The problem is not the aspiration but the plausibility. Schmemann’s scenario assumes that American leadership is both necessary and sufficient for global stability. Yet the world he describes — multipolar, technologically disruptive, economically fragmented — cannot be governed by a single hegemon, even a benevolent one. The rise of China, the resurgence of Russia, the assertiveness of middle powers, and the erosion of Western dominance are structural shifts, not temporary deviations. They cannot be reversed simply by electing a more conventional American president.

Moreover, Schmemann’s invocation of America’s “new birth of freedom” echoes Abraham Lincoln but overlooks the uneven and contested nature of American progress. The expansion of rights has always been driven by social movements, not by presidential leadership alone. To suggest that America can reclaim its global moral authority through executive virtue is to misunderstand the sources of democratic renewal.

II. The Muddling Middle: A More Realistic but Underdeveloped Scenario

Schmemann’s second scenario, “We Muddle Along,” is arguably the most realistic. It envisions a world in which the United States remains powerful but no longer admired, China grows more assertive, alliances weaken, and global governance stagnates. This is not a dramatic collapse but a slow erosion of influence.

Yet even here, Schmemann’s analysis is incomplete. He attributes America’s diminished standing primarily to domestic polarization and inconsistent foreign policy. While these factors matter, they are not the whole story. The decline of U.S. influence is also driven by:

• Economic shifts: The diffusion of manufacturing, the rise of Asian markets, and the limits of dollar dominance.
• Technological disruption: The emergence of digital ecosystems not controlled by Western institutions.
• Demographic changes: Aging populations in the West and youthful, dynamic societies elsewhere.
• Ideological pluralism: The spread of governance models that challenge liberal democracy’s universality.
• Parallel multilateralism — The proliferation of non‑Western institutions such as BRICS+ and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which increasingly coordinate global norms and economic frameworks without U.S. participation.
• Resource bottlenecks — Growing vulnerability in critical mineral supply chains, coupled with domestic fiscal constraints and mounting debt, which limit America’s ability to project power or sustain long‑term strategic commitments.
• Alliance hedging — Traditional allies pursuing strategic autonomy, from Europe’s defense integration to Gulf states’ multi‑alignment strategies, leaving the United States facing multi‑theater over‑extension without guaranteed coalition support.
• Asymmetric deterrence — The rapid proliferation of cyber capabilities, gray‑zone tactics, and low‑cost anti‑access/area‑denial (A2/AD) technologies that erode U.S. military dominance and empower smaller states and non‑state actors to challenge American influence at minimal cost.

Schmemann acknowledges some of these trends but treats them as background conditions rather than central drivers. His muddling scenario is persuasive, but it lacks analytical depth.

III. The Decline Scenario: A Familiar Dystopia

The third scenario, “Unchecked Decline,” is the darkest. Here, polarization paralyzes the United States, alliances collapse, China annexes Taiwan, AI runs amok, climate change wreaks havoc, and regional conflicts proliferate. This is a classic dystopian projection, and Schmemann uses it to warn against complacency.

Yet the scenario suffers from two weaknesses. First, it relies heavily on worst-case assumptions without explaining how they interact. For example, China’s annexation of Taiwan is presented as both a sign of American weakness and a trigger for global instability, but the geopolitical dynamics behind such an event are left unexplored. Second, Schmemann’s depiction of AI as a source of “rogue incursions and raids” feels more like science fiction than grounded analysis. The real risks of AI — algorithmic bias, surveillance, labor displacement — are serious but more mundane.

The decline scenario is rhetorically effective but analytically thin, relying on fear rather than structural reasoning.

IV. A Missing Fourth Scenario: A Post-American World

The most striking omission in Schmemann’s essay is the absence of a scenario in which the world adapts to a reduced American role without descending into chaos. He presents only three options: American restoration, muddling stagnation, or catastrophic decline. What he does not consider is a world in which regional powers, multilateral institutions, and transnational networks evolve new forms of governance that do not depend on U.S. leadership.

Such a scenario is not only plausible but already emerging. The European Union is developing autonomous defense capabilities. India and Brazil are asserting independent foreign policies. African nations are forming new regional blocs. Southeast Asia is navigating U.S.–China competition with strategic flexibility. These developments suggest a future in which global order is not defined by American primacy but by distributed leadership.

Schmemann’s failure to consider this possibility reflects a deeper bias: the assumption that America’s centrality is both inevitable and indispensable. This is not analysis; it is nostalgia.

Conclusion: A Thoughtful but Limited Vision

Serge Schmemann’s article is thoughtful, elegantly written, and grounded in genuine concern for the future of democracy. But its analytical framework is constrained by a longing for a liberal order that no longer exists. The world is not waiting for America to return to its former role. It is already moving on, reshaping itself through new alignments, new technologies, and new centers of power.

A more rigorous analysis would acknowledge that America’s future will be determined not only by its domestic politics but by structural global transformations that cannot be reversed by leadership alone. Schmemann’s scenarios are useful as provocations, but they fall short as predictions. The challenge is not to restore an old order but to understand — and shape — the new one.

---

Dr. Siddiqui is a peace and human rights activist who is author of several books including: Democracy, Politics and Terrorism - America's Quest for Security in the Age of Insecurity(2008)

Ovi History #eMagazine #24: Black Thursday

 

On October 24, 1929, the New York Stock Exchange plunged into chaos as a record 12.9 million shares traded in a single day, later known as Black Thursday. A coalition of bankers, led by Richard Whitney, attempted to stabilize the market by buying large blocks of stock, temporarily reversing the crash and restoring prices to near pre-panic levels.

The temporary reprieve ultimately failed, as the market collapsed further the following week and stocks lost a third of their value within two weeks. The historian Richard Sylla noted that although the bankers tried to stop the panic, the intervention “ultimately failed to shore up the market”.

For this issue of Ovi History, a historical fiction short story from Lucas Durand and a new book review.

So, turn the pages and ...take cover.

Read the Ovi History eMagazine online HERE!
View, read it online or download it in PDF/epub format HERE!
And enjoy viewing & reading it online or download in PDF format HERE!
All eMagazines and eBooks downloads are FREE!

You can find it in the Ovi Pedia pages, HERE!
Or Ovi Thematic eMagazines pages, HERE!

With the hope that you will read and learn from the articles,
so take cover and ...do read this historic chronicle

Thanos Kalamidas

Canada’s accidental gift by Timothy Davies

Sometimes history gives a country a gift wrapped in somebody else's arrogance. For Canada, Donald Trump's treatment of its northern neighbour may be one of those gifts. It is an extraordinary proposition: a president of the United States, governing the country with which Canada has built one of the world's deepest economic, military and diplomatic relationships, has managed to make Canadians reconsider assumptions that generations regarded as permanent.

The border suddenly looks less permanent. American trade access looks less guaranteed. Continental defence no longer feels quite so automatic. And the idea that Canada's prosperity can safely depend overwhelmingly on its southern neighbour has acquired a very different meaning.

Trump's tariff policies have been particularly revealing. Canada and the United States are not two distant economies occasionally doing business with each other. They are deeply integrated. Yet the trade relationship was subjected to escalating tariffs and uncertainty, forcing Canadian companies and governments to reconsider supply chains and markets. Statistics Canada reported that Canadian merchandise exports to the United States fell by 5.4% in 2025, while exports to countries other than the United States rose by 15.8%.

That is not economic liberation. It is economic adaptation under pressure. And adaptation is precisely where the unexpected Canadian dividend begins. For decades, Canada's geographic relationship with America encouraged a comfortable strategic assumption: why build every alternative when the world's largest economy, its most powerful military and its enormous consumer market sit immediately across the border?

Trump's confrontational approach has attacked that comfort. Suddenly, diversification is no longer an academic policy recommendation. It is survival insurance. Canadian businesses have been pushed to look elsewhere. Canadian politicians have been forced to discuss European, Asian and Middle Eastern markets with considerably greater urgency. Defence planners have stronger reasons to examine domestic capacity and partnerships beyond Washington. Energy policy increasingly has to consider whether Canada should develop more routes to international markets instead of depending so heavily on continental infrastructure.

Even Canadian national unity has acquired another dimension. Nothing concentrates a population quite like an external threat or the perception that a powerful neighbour is questioning the permanence of the relationship. The effect should not be exaggerated; Canada still contains serious regional and political divisions. Yet the October 2026 Alberta referendum, in which 76% voted to remain part of Canada, demonstrated substantial support for maintaining the federation even amid arguments over provincial autonomy.

There is an almost comic historical irony here. A president who speaks about making America stronger may be helping Canada discover the value of becoming less dependent on America. That does not mean Canada should abandon the United States. Quite the opposite. Geography will not disappear because politicians exchange threats. The countries share an extraordinary volume of commerce, infrastructure, intelligence, family connections and security interests. Canadian prosperity remains deeply connected to the American economy.

But friendship becomes healthier when dependence becomes smaller. That may be the most important lesson of the Trump era. Canada does not need to become anti-American. It needs to become more Canadian in its economic and strategic calculations.

The figures already show why. Although the United States remained Canada's overwhelmingly dominant trading partner, its share of Canadian merchandise exports fell from 75.9% in 2024 to 71.7% in 2025, while trade with countries outside the United States increased substantially.

The shift is hardly revolutionary. But it is psychologically revolutionary. For generations, Ottawa could assume that Washington was the dependable centre of Canada's external economic universe. Trump has made that assumption considerably harder to defend.

And perhaps Canada needed that shock. A mature country should not build its economic security around the permanent goodwill of any foreign president, not even the president of its closest ally. Today it is Trump. Tomorrow it will be somebody else. That is the point. Countries survive political personalities by building institutions, markets, alliances and capacities that are larger than personalities.

If Canada's response to Trump's pressure is greater trade diversification, stronger defence capacity, deeper relations with Europe and Asia, more resilient domestic industries and a renewed understanding of Canadian sovereignty, then the long-term result could be profoundly different from what Washington intended.

The irony would be magnificent. Trump wanted America First. Canada may have discovered Canada First. Not as nationalism against America, but as the overdue realisation that friendship is strongest when neither friend can casually threaten the other's existence.

And perhaps that is the best present Canada has received in decades: not because Trump intended to give it, but because his behaviour forced Canadians to discover what they should never have forgotten. A neighbour can be an ally. A neighbour can be indispensable. But a neighbour is still a neighbour.

Ghostin’ #138 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

They are like neighbours we are aware of,
except we are NOT aware of and
they have absolutely nothing to do with Halloween.

For more Ghostin’, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

---

Green hypocrisy by Brea Willis

In Turkey, where COP31 will take place in November, environmental activists are facing arrests, prosecutions, intimidation and restrictions on peaceful protest. Apparently, the planet is welcome to discuss its future, provided its defenders do not make too much noise.

Human Rights Watch raised the alarm on October 13, warning that Turkish authorities were arbitrarily arresting and prosecuting people involved in environmental protests ahead of the summit. Its findings describe villagers confronting coal mining, residents opposing gold exploration, and activists subjected to police intervention and legal pressure. Some cases involve allegations that peaceful demonstrators were detained without proper legal process. These are not abstract diplomatic disagreements. They concern people defending their homes, land, forests and water.

And these are precisely the voices a climate summit should be listening to. Instead, the international community prepares another magnificent gathering of government delegations, negotiators, corporate representatives and political celebrities, complete with carefully choreographed speeches about sustainability and the future of humanity. There will be declarations, photographs, promises and probably enough recycled conference stationery to make somebody feel environmentally responsible.

Meanwhile, a villager standing between a mining operation and a threatened forest may discover that defending the environment is a much more dangerous occupation than delivering a speech about it. Welcome to the green hypocrisy industry. The problem extends beyond Türkiye. International institutions repeatedly depend on governments whose domestic practices contradict the values their international events are supposed to promote. The host receives prestige, global visibility and an opportunity to present itself as a responsible international partner. The organisers receive their conference facilities, diplomatic access and another opportunity to announce that multilateralism is alive and well.

Everybody gets a photograph. The people challenging destructive projects get handcuffs. Of course, hosting a major international conference does not require a government to possess a flawless human-rights record. If it did, finding suitable hosts would become considerably more complicated. Nor should climate diplomacy be abandoned because a host government behaves repressively. Climate change does not wait for democratic perfection, and international cooperation remains indispensable.

But there is a difference between engaging an imperfect government and allowing international prestige to become a convenient shield against scrutiny. The United Nations climate process cannot credibly demand that governments listen to scientific evidence while ignoring citizens who document environmental destruction on their own doorsteps. It cannot celebrate public participation in conference halls while communities outside those halls face intimidation for opposing coal mines, forest clearance or potentially damaging mineral exploration.

Climate policy is not merely a negotiation between ministries. It determines who breathes polluted air, who loses access to water, whose farmland disappears and whose community is sacrificed in the name of economic development. Local residents are not decorative extras in this story. They are often the first people to recognise the consequences of decisions made far above their heads. When authorities criminalise peaceful opposition, they do more than violate individual rights. They weaken the public scrutiny necessary to expose bad environmental decisions before the damage becomes irreversible.

And what does the international community do? It books the conference centre. This is where the hypocrisy becomes particularly infuriating. Governments routinely praise grassroots action when activists provide attractive photographs for climate campaigns. Young people holding banners make excellent publicity. Indigenous communities defending forests become inspiring symbols. Villagers protecting their water supply are celebrated in carefully selected speeches.

But when these people obstruct the comfortable narrative of economic progress, suddenly they are accused of disrupting public order. The activist is welcome as a photograph, not as a political participant. Turkey’s COP31 preparations should therefore be judged not only by the agreements negotiated inside the summit but also by whether environmental defenders outside it can exercise their rights without intimidation. International delegates should raise these concerns publicly and insist on meaningful guarantees for peaceful assembly, freedom of expression and civil-society participation.

The summit's organisers should make clear that access to international prestige does not mean immunity from scrutiny. Governments must not be allowed to use global conferences as public-relations machinery while treating domestic dissent as a security problem. And if that sounds politically inconvenient, good. Climate diplomacy is supposed to confront inconvenient realities. The planet does not need another polished declaration promising a sustainable future while the people protecting that future are being dragged away from their forests. It needs governments prepared to accept criticism, examine evidence and change destructive policies. It needs international institutions willing to defend the right of ordinary people to challenge powerful interests.

Most of all, it needs fewer ceremonies in which the language of environmental responsibility is used to conceal the absence of political courage. COP31 may produce important agreements. It may advance negotiations that genuinely matter. But no diplomatic achievement should exempt its host from questions about repression, and no climate agreement can fully claim legitimacy while peaceful environmental defenders are being silenced.

A green future cannot be built on a blackmail of fear. If governments want applause for protecting the planet, they should begin by protecting the people who dare to defend it. Otherwise, COP31 risks becoming another expensive exercise in diplomatic greenwashing: a global celebration of environmental responsibility, hosted by a government whose critics are being taught the price of speaking up.

The forests will not care how many delegates attended. The rivers will not applaud the final declaration. And the planet will certainly not be impressed by the photographs.

Economies without people by Zakir Hall

A nurse buys a one-way ticket. An engineer accepts a job abroad. A young entrepreneur closes a business before it has a chance to grow. A hotel owner searches desperately for staff while the electricity bill climbs faster than the price of a room. And somewhere in a ministry, an economist presents a colourful graph showing that the economy is growing. Welcome to the developing world, where economic growth increasingly risks becoming a statistical achievement in countries that are losing the very people expected to produce it.

Across many island economies and developing markets, the collision between skilled-worker emigration, labour shortages and stubborn energy inflation exposes the limitations of the traditional development model. Governments are encouraged to attract investment, stimulate private enterprise, modernise infrastructure and improve productivity. All perfectly sensible objectives. But they become exercises in economic fiction when the workforce disappears and the cost of keeping a business alive becomes unbearable.

An economy cannot manufacture prosperity out of PowerPoint presentations. Consider the predicament of a small island state. Its tourism industry needs chefs, technicians, cleaners, drivers, accountants and managers. Its hospitals need nurses and doctors. Its construction sector needs engineers and skilled tradespeople. Its emerging technology companies need programmers and digital specialists. Yet many of its youngest and best-educated citizens look abroad and see higher wages, better career opportunities, more reliable public services and a future less dependent on the next electricity-price shock.

Can anyone seriously blame them? Patriotism is a wonderful political commodity, particularly when politicians demand it from people whose salaries barely cover rent, food and transport. But patriotism does not pay a mortgage. National pride does not repair a failing electricity grid. And a minister's speech about retaining young talent becomes rather insulting when that talent cannot afford to establish an independent life at home.

People leave because staying has become an economic calculation they cannot justify. The consequences extend far beyond an employer's difficulty filling vacancies. When a country loses experienced workers, it loses institutional knowledge, professional mentors, future business founders and the people capable of training the next generation. Businesses delay expansion because they cannot recruit. Hospitals become overstretched. Schools struggle to retain teachers. Public investment in education increasingly benefits wealthier foreign economies that receive trained professionals without bearing the full cost of educating them.

The sending country pays the bill; somebody else collects the dividend. Then comes energy inflation, the second punch in this increasingly unpleasant economic boxing match. Small island economies often face particular vulnerabilities because they depend heavily on imported fuels, exposed shipping routes and limited domestic energy alternatives. When international energy prices surge, the consequences travel through electricity tariffs, freight charges, agricultural inputs, food prices and the operating costs of almost every private enterprise. Businesses cannot simply absorb every increase. They raise prices, reduce investment, postpone hiring or close their doors.

Workers respond by demanding higher wages. Employers insist that margins are disappearing. Consumers cut spending. Governments subsidise bills, frequently at considerable fiscal cost, while postponing the structural reforms that might reduce future vulnerability.

And around the merry-go-round we go. The cruel irony is that governments often respond to labour shortages by discussing immigration restrictions, training incentives or temporary recruitment schemes without confronting the conditions driving their own citizens away. Importing workers may be necessary, and migration can benefit everyone involved. But treating labour as a disposable input rather than a human population with legitimate expectations guarantees that shortages will keep returning.

The problem is not that young people have forgotten their national obligations. It is that too many governments have forgotten theirs. Traditional development strategies frequently assume that investment creates jobs, education supplies workers and economic growth eventually improves living standards. But these relationships are not automatic. Investment cannot generate sustainable productivity if firms cannot obtain reliable energy or recruit the people needed to operate their equipment. Education cannot build a competitive economy if its graduates regard emigration as the only credible career plan.

Development requires more than attracting capital. It requires making it possible for people to build worthwhile lives where they already live. That means investing in renewable energy and resilient electricity networks, improving vocational and technical education, supporting small businesses, strengthening public services and creating credible paths from training to decent employment. It means treating housing affordability, transport and childcare as economic infrastructure rather than inconvenient social expenses. It also means building relationships with emigrant communities that encourage investment, knowledge-sharing and voluntary return without pretending that people owe their governments a lifetime of economic sacrifice.

None of this is cheap. Neither is permanent dependence on imported energy, imported expertise and imported solutions. The private sector has responsibilities too. Businesses cannot demand loyalty from workers while offering poverty wages, insecure contracts and no prospects for advancement. Productivity must improve through better management, technology and investment, not through the endless fantasy that exhausted employees can somehow work miracles.

And international financial institutions must recognise that fiscal discipline without productive capacity can become a beautifully balanced road to stagnation. Cutting expenditure may improve a short-term balance sheet, but cutting the foundations of education, health and infrastructure can make an economy less capable of generating future revenue.

The ultimate question is whether developing countries want economies that merely attract investors or economies in which their own people can become investors, entrepreneurs, professionals and employers. Because a country that exports its brightest minds while importing increasingly expensive energy is not simply experiencing a labour shortage. It is exporting its future and importing the cost of its own dependence.

One day, the ministers may look at their impressive economic projections and wonder why prosperity never quite arrived. Perhaps they should look at the departures board instead.

The election before the election by Markus Gibbons

Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed the boundaries of presidential power over elections, and when changing the rules nationally has proved more difficult than advertised, the fight has not simply disappeared. It has moved elsewhere, to states, cities, courts, election boards and the bureaucratic machinery that determines how Americans actually vote.

That is where the real danger lies. Democracy is often imagined as a dramatic moment: citizens arrive, cast their ballots and somebody counts them. In reality, elections are built from thousands of mundane decisions about registration, identification, polling locations, absentee ballots, counting procedures, certification and access. Change enough of those rules, and the political landscape can be altered without ever touching the ballot itself.

This is why Trump's attempts to reshape election administration deserve scrutiny even when they encounter legal and institutional resistance. The American president is not supposed to be the owner of the electoral system. The Constitution deliberately distributes responsibility among federal institutions and the states. That arrangement can be frustrating, slow and occasionally chaotic. But it also creates barriers against any president who decides that the rules should bend around his political interests.

Those barriers matter. Trump's political movement has repeatedly attacked election procedures and questioned the legitimacy of electoral outcomes when the results have not gone its way. That history makes every new attempt to influence election administration more consequential. When political leaders convince millions of citizens that an election is legitimate only when they win, they are not merely campaigning. They are weakening the foundation on which peaceful transfers of power depend.

And now cities and states are preparing for the possibility of political mischief. That preparation is not paranoia. Election officials have learned, painfully, that elections can become targets for political pressure, intimidation, misinformation and legal manoeuvring. The sensible response is stronger procedures, independent administration and transparent counting, not blind faith in whoever happens to occupy the White House.

The most dangerous phrase in American politics may therefore be “trust me.” No president should receive automatic trust over elections. Not Trump. Not Biden. Not Obama. Not anyone. The answer to political manipulation is institutional independence. There is also a particularly ugly contradiction in Trump's politics. He presents himself as the defender of voters against a supposedly corrupt political establishment, yet his repeated attempts to influence the mechanisms through which votes are cast and counted create precisely the suspicion he claims to oppose.

If the system is trustworthy, why must political leaders constantly pressure it? If elections are genuinely decided by voters, why should any president need to interfere with the rules governing those voters? And if Trump believes his political support is as overwhelming as he repeatedly claims, why not simply let Americans vote and accept the result?

That last question should not belong to one political party. It belongs to the entire republic. The danger is not only that election rules might be changed. The greater danger is that Americans become accustomed to the idea that whoever controls government should also control the conditions under which government can be replaced.

That is how democratic systems become hollow. Not necessarily through tanks in the streets, but through administrative pressure, partisan manipulation, intimidation, legal games and the slow normalisation of the idea that losing an election is unacceptable.

Trump has not been able to simply rewrite America's voting system according to his wishes. The courts, states, election officials and constitutional structure have placed limits on presidential power.

Good. Those limits are not obstacles to democracy. They are democracy's firewalls. The coming elections will therefore test more than candidates. They will test whether America's institutions can remain independent when political power desperately wants them to become obedient.

The ballot box belongs to the voter. Not to Trump. Not to either party. And certainly not to whoever happens to occupy the Oval Office. The simplest defence against election theft is also the oldest one: count every lawful vote, protect the process, publish the rules and accept the result. Anything less is not democracy. It is politics preparing the crime scene before the crime has even happened.

Screws & Chips #135 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

In a galaxy far, far away, intelligence demonstrated by screws and chips,
boldly gone where no robot has gone before!

For more Screws & Chips, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

---

Christians must wake up to national reality by Tunde Akande

Christians must stop restricting themselves to the four walls they erroneously call the Church. There is nothing in their Bible that forbids their participation in politics.

I didn’t get to read the Daily Trust newspaper’s story where 1000 Islamic clerics were said to have called on Muslims not to vote for President Bola Tinubu when the election comes up in January 2027. But I read it in Lasisi Olagunju’s column in Saturday Tribune which he edits. Their grouse is his policies, which they say have pauperized the north. They are careful in the choice of the place to make their call. Kano, the fiery city of the north, a city of the Hausas which the Fulani overlords have strategically cornered, is their choice. The Hausas are fighting to repossess their city and they look like succeeding. The city is known for its fiery character and has become notorious for the start of many northern upheavals. Bola Tinubu experienced one such riot.

These clerics know that Nigeria, over which Bola Tinubu presides as president, is not just a Muslim country, they know there are equally strong numbers of Christians and animists in the country. They also know that the policies which President Bola Tinubu and his acolytes call reforms do not carry a Christian label but equally affect all citizens of the country. But they choose to speak only for the Muslims.

Here, they openly declare their intention. And they are very brazen about it. They want Nigeria divided along religious fault lines. A friend I shared the Lasisi Olagunju column with invited my attention to the fact that all the names mentioned by Lasisi Olagunju as participants in the meeting are Fulani names, meaning that it is a Fulani tribal strategy.

This won’t be new to Nigerians in the south, but the ones in the north might pretend newness. Who is behind the move? It can be nobody other than Atiku Abubakar, the man who wants to be president of Nigeria by all means. With this strategy, Atiku does not mind bringing the nation down. Atiku has become a serial presidential contender having contested now for about seven times without winning once. When Olusegun Obasanjo won in 1999, Atiku won beside him as the running mate.

But he blundered his opportunity to succeed his principal as president by his well known character. Obasanjo accused him of bribing Ghali Na’aba, now late, who was speaker of the House of Representatives, to impeach the sitting president. Atiku has consistently denied this, but Nigerians cannot be fooled. Atiku has a way of using bribes to get his way through anything. Obasanjo has said this openly. This author heard very reliably from politicians in Oyo state that Atiku gave Seyi Makinde the state governor $5 million so that his candidate will clinch the chairmanship of PDP so that Atiku may succeed in his plan to be nominated as the party’s presidential candidate.

The scheme failed as Atiku and Seyi Makinde fell out because Atiku wanted both the presidency and control of the PDP. Seyi Makinde teamed up with Nyesom Wike, then fiery governor of River State and used the PDP to enthrone Bola Tinubu as president. Here we are in another election cycle, Atiku, now 79, still wants to be president. He is back at his schemes.

Why do we think Atiku is behind the current call by the Fulani clerics who masquerade as northern Muslim clerics? Atiku is Fulani. He is said to be broke, having spent so much money in the past seven election runs. Observers think he wants to recoup his money. An Ibadan-based politician told this writer: “once Atiku steps into Dubai, we know the money will soon come.” He wants him to participate because that will mean money and appointments for those of them who support him. Of the 2023 largesse which Atiku took to Ibadan, the share of this politician was twenty-five million naira. If Atiku can give, as Obasanjo alleges, $5 million to bribe Ghali Na’aba to impeach Obasanjo, the man who preferred him as Vice President even when their party had another candidate, there is nothing conceivable or inconceivable he cannot do to accomplish his ambition. He will not think about the health of the nation or the progress of the party he works through.

But those of us in Nigeria who prefer a united Nigeria must warn Atiku and his Muslim clerics that their attempts to inflame religious passions will not benefit them or Nigeria. I’m one that always argues for a united Nigeria because of the dangers of allowing the nation to go up in flames especially by religion and the benefits of a large and culturally diverse nation. It will take forever to war if we allow the nation to slip into war. Now, if the Muslim clerics acting out their masters script wants it, those of us on the other side of the divide may just as well sign onto it also.

We must warn the north cannot continue to hold this nation at the jugular. The nation has been held down by the religious preferences of the north since independence in 1960. Efforts by Chief Obafemi Awolowo to provide the north western education were rebuffed by the oligarchists in that part of the nation. They did everything to shield the people of the north from seeing the goodies this man did in the southwest and promised to do in the north. This disdain for education is the principal reason for the multidimensional poverty in the north which the disguised Atiku clerics are now complaining of.

Northern oligarchy will rather prefer to sponsor people on a pilgrimage to Mecca than send them to school. They would rather encourage mass marriage for people who have no skills. If a man has no money to marry a wife, how can he have money to sustain the wife and to raise the children? Yet these feudalists in the north will blame southern leaders who are trying to modernize the economy for making their people poor. Yet the money used to execute all the foolish agendas in the north is sourced mostly from the south. There are mineral resources in the north but they would rather be stolen by foreigners in collaboration with the religious and hypocritical feudalists.

Both the north and the south are grovelling under the economic policies of President Bola Tinubu. The Yoruba, in their egalitarianism, because of western education, are the fiercest critics of President Bola Tinubu, even though he is one of them, not because they are excluded from the pains of the policies, but because they will still give him some breather because they know that President Muhammadu Buhari, a Fulani from the north, practically ruined the nation. During the Buhari era, the north went comatose and said nothing despite the fact that Buhari was taking the nation down the drain. I do not trust the praises of the Breton-wood institutions on Nigeria’s economy because any statistics that do not reflect the real lives of the citizens must be regarded as propaganda. But so it was in the time of the northern scion, military president, Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, who in his so-called Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) caused great poverty in the nation. Yet the mouthy northerner had nothing but praise for the gap-toothed general. The south is getting by because of their western education; they are able to migrate to nations abroad where they easily get jobs and the ones who remain are enduring hope as the government continues to tell them that the nation will soon be out of the woods.

The north, especially the Muslims, must stop threatening other parts of the nation. If it wants to go, it can. The nation must be one of equals. Atiku Abubakar must be warned not to pull the country down in his ambition. If he wants to be president, Nigeria must first be one and in existence and he must take steps to reform his character. Nigeria needs men and women of character who will not steal the nation dry but give the nation good governance. Christians must stop restricting themselves to the four walls they erroneously call the Church. There is nothing in their Bible that forbids their participation in politics. They must as their Bible commands let their light shine in politics and economics and all spheres. They must be prepared to give these so-called northern clerics a run for their money if they won’t stop threatening the nation with religious conflagration.

First Published in METRO

***********************

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

The nitrogen trap by Edoardo Moretti

Everyone is watching the oil tankers. That may be the first mistake. Every time the Strait of Hormuz appears on the television screen, the conversation immediately turns to oil prices, petrol stations, inflation and the familiar nightmare of another energy shock. Politicians panic about the price at the pump because the price at the pump is visible, immediate and politically poisonous.

But there is another cargo moving through the world's maritime arteries, and its importance is brutally simple: fertilizer. Without fertilizer, modern agriculture does not simply become more expensive. It becomes less productive. And that means the war around Hormuz is quietly moving from the energy market to the dinner table.

Two commercial vessels have now sunk near the Strait after being struck by projectiles, an escalation that demonstrates how dangerous the waterway has become for civilian shipping. The immediate images are ships burning, crews abandoning vessels and containers disappearing beneath the water. But the real consequences may arrive months later, in fields thousands of kilometres away.

That is the part the political class still seems spectacularly bad at understanding. A cargo ship does not have to carry bread to threaten food security. It can carry the ingredients that allow somebody else to grow the wheat that becomes bread. Before the current crisis, roughly a third of globally traded urea and nearly half of seaborne sulphur passed through Hormuz. Sulphur is particularly important because it is used to produce sulphuric acid and phosphate fertilizer. The disruption is therefore not merely delaying a few shipments; it is attacking links in an agricultural production system that has been engineered around global trade.

And agriculture has a nasty characteristic that politicians cannot negotiate away: seasons. A farmer cannot tell a crop to wait politely until Washington, Tehran or some other capital finishes its geopolitical argument. Planting windows exist. Fertilizer must arrive when it is needed. Miss that window and the lost yield cannot simply be recovered by making a speech six months later.

A senior UN official has already warned that failure to get fertilizer moving through Hormuz within weeks could mean missing planting seasons, with potentially serious consequences for agricultural productivity and food security in parts of Asia and Africa.

This is where the stupidity of modern security thinking becomes almost embarrassing. Governments talk endlessly about “critical infrastructure” and usually mean electricity grids, telecommunications, ports, pipelines, military bases and data centres.

Fine. Add fertilizer. Add the ships that carry it. Add the ports that unload it. Add the railways, trucks, warehouses and chemical plants that move it from ocean to field. That entire chain is infrastructure for human survival. A destroyed refinery is economically devastating. A disrupted fertilizer supply can become something worse: an agricultural shock that eventually becomes a food shock, particularly in countries already dependent on imports.

And unlike oil, you cannot simply tell people to consume less food. That is why the obsession with energy prices alone is dangerously short-sighted. A government may spend billions trying to suppress petrol prices while ignoring the agricultural consequences accumulating underneath the surface. It may celebrate another tanker reaching port while farmers quietly reduce fertilizer application because prices have become impossible.

That is not resilience. That is political accounting with a blind spot. The current crisis is already showing the connection. UN agricultural officials say fertilizer disruption, higher fuel and transport costs, El Niño and problems affecting Black Sea wheat supplies are combining to increase pressure throughout the food chain. Existing fertilizer and fuel stocks initially provided some protection, but prolonged uncertainty is already influencing planting decisions.

The brutal irony is that modern globalisation was supposed to make food systems safer by spreading supply across borders. Instead, it has created extraordinary efficiency and extraordinary vulnerability. One narrow strip of water becomes dangerous, ships hesitate, insurance explodes, cargoes stop moving, fertilizer becomes scarce, farmers cut inputs, harvests weaken and food prices rise.

The missile does not need to hit a supermarket. It only needs to hit the supply chain. This is why the world needs to stop treating maritime security as somebody else's naval problem. The Strait of Hormuz is not merely a military chokepoint or an oil problem. It is a food-security chokepoint.

If governments genuinely believe that food security is national security, then fertilizer logistics must be protected with the same seriousness applied to energy infrastructure. Otherwise, we will keep staring at the burning tanker while ignoring the farmer. And by the time the consequences reach the supermarket shelf, it will be far too late to discover that the real weapon was never the oil. It was the nitrogen.

The ballroom republic by Jennifer Stephenson

When a political system in which billionaires and corporate giants can pour $333 million into a president's grand architectural vanity project while their companies conduct business with the very government that president controls then there is something seriously and damaging wrong with that system. It may be presented as philanthropy, civic generosity or a patriotic contribution to the nation's heritage. Call it whatever makes the press release sound respectable. The fundamental question remains: when the people who need government decisions are financing the president's personal vision of the White House, who is buying whom?

Donald Trump's proposed White House ballroom has become an extraordinary illustration of transactional politics. Major corporations, technology giants, defence contractors and wealthy individuals have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars towards the project. Nvidia and Apple reportedly committed $25 million apiece. Microsoft, Lockheed Martin and Palantir are among the companies associated with substantial contributions, while the total raised from private donors reached approximately $333 million.

These are not neighbourhood businesses passing a collection plate around a village hall. These are some of the most powerful economic actors on the planet, companies whose interests intersect with federal contracts, regulatory decisions, antitrust investigations, technology policy and national security.

And they are writing very large cheques for the man sitting in the Oval Office. Naturally, nobody needs to prove that every donation purchases a favour before asking uncomfortable questions. That is precisely the point. The danger lies in a system that allows the appearance of a financial relationship to become so entangled with public power that citizens cannot confidently distinguish generosity from calculated access.

The available reporting has documented substantial overlaps between donors' business interests and federal decisions, but it has not established that every donation secured favourable treatment. That distinction matters. Yet the absence of proven quid pro quo does not magically eliminate conflicts of interest or make secrecy an acceptable foundation for public trust.

If a corporation gives millions to a president's building project while competing for government contracts worth billions, the public is entitled to ask why, under what conditions and with what safeguards. Apparently, asking questions is the unfashionable part of modern American democracy. The defenders of this arrangement have a convenient argument: private money saves taxpayers from paying for the project. Wonderful. But this argument assumes that the only cost worth considering is the amount appearing on a government invoice.

Public governance is not an accounting trick. A donation may spare taxpayers an immediate construction expense while creating an entirely different cost in public confidence. If corporate benefactors gain privileged access, if regulators become more accommodating or if government decisions appear suspiciously convenient for contributors, the public pays through weakened institutions and diminished trust.

The ballroom is not merely a building. It is a symbol of a political culture in which access to power increasingly resembles an exclusive club, with membership fees measured in millions. And Big Tech has every reason to understand the value of proximity. These companies operate in sectors where a regulatory decision can reshape entire markets, where government contracts can generate enormous revenues, and where decisions about artificial intelligence, competition, data and national security can determine the direction of future business.

A $25 million contribution may look spectacular to ordinary citizens. For a corporation operating on a global scale, it can be a relatively modest expenditure if the political environment becomes more favourable. That does not prove an improper motive. It does explain why transparency is indispensable.

The situation becomes even more troubling when donors can remain anonymous through arrangements involving private nonprofit organisations. Citizens should not have to rely on leaks, investigative discoveries or accidental disclosures to learn who is financing a major project at the nation's most important political residence.

The White House belongs to the American public, not to a collection of wealthy patrons. Its institutional significance should not depend on the generosity of executives who may have business before the administration. Nor should philanthropy become an alternative route around the rules governing political influence. Campaign donations are subject to disclosure and other legal requirements. A gift to a presidential project may fall under a different framework, but changing the destination of the money should not make legitimate scrutiny disappear.

Otherwise, the lesson for every ambitious billionaire is deliciously simple: if the ordinary political donation creates too much paperwork, find a grand public project, attach a patriotic label and let the cheques do the talking. This is not an argument against private philanthropy. Private contributions can support museums, parks, hospitals and cultural institutions. The problem arises when a donor's generosity intersects with the discretionary power of the administration that receives it, especially when disclosure is incomplete and independent oversight is weak.

A healthy democracy needs enforceable safeguards: public donor registers, transparent agreements, independent ethics reviews and clear restrictions on using presidential projects to cultivate privileged relationships with government decision-makers. Without them, the distinction between public service and private patronage becomes dangerously blurred.

The greatest irony is that the corporate world loves to lecture everyone about accountability, efficiency and good governance. Yet when political access is at stake, some of its most powerful participants appear willing to operate through arrangements that would make an ordinary procurement officer deeply uncomfortable.

The ballroom may eventually host presidents, diplomats and carefully selected guests. Its architecture may be impressive, its security sophisticated and its chandeliers spectacular. But the question hanging above the entrance will be much harder to decorate away: who really paid for the privilege of being close to power?

When corporations finance the architecture of political prestige while depending on the same government for decisions worth billions, philanthropy risks becoming lobbying with better lighting. And democracy becomes a ballroom where the public is expected to admire the chandeliers while somebody else quietly controls the guest list.