THE world is in ferment but is South Asia feeling the rumble? Europe is on edge. It’s losing the Ukraine war, and the leaders of France, Germany and the UK, to name a few, are facing the economic and political heat. The US is becoming ever more unpopular abroad and fractured at home, the slide underscored by the killing of a white supremacist by a white youth belonging to a family of Donald Trump’s supporters. The Republican governor of Utah, where the killing happened, bemoaned the fact that the killer was white and not someone from a minority community or immigrant, robbing the right-wing of a handy ruse to target what the Americans call the left.

Trump seems also to be reheating the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine that imperiously forbade foreign intrusion in the American hemisphere. Venezuela, for one, has been targeted for its ties with Iran and China. In Brazil, President Lula jailed right-wing opponent Jair Bolsonaro for attempting a coup against his elected government. Argentina’s pro-US president is reportedly losing the plot and possibly confidence too in the advice he would get from his pet dog whose bark or woof decided political and economic matters. In Eura­sia, by contrast, the Shanghai club has got a new spring in its march since China hosted a landmark summit followed by an earthshaking display of preparedness for war should one ever be imposed.

In West Asia, the Arab and Muslim world is grappling with Israel’s genocidal impunity in........

© Dawn