Comment: Trump new world order brings Orwell’s 1984 dystopia to life
Trump tariffs are ultimately about political power, not economics
US president Donald Trump gestures while speaking during a “Make America Wealthy Again” trade announcement event in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025 in Washington, DC
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was the most influential novel of the twentieth century. It was intended as a dystopian warning, though I have an uneasy feeling that its depiction of a world split into three great power blocs – Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia – may increasingly now be seen in US president Donald Trump’s White House, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin or China president Xi Jingping’s Zhongnanhai compound in Beijing more as some kind of training manual or world map to aspire to instead.
Orwell was writing in 1948, when 1984 seemed a distantly futuristic date that he would make legendary. Yet, four more decades have taken us now further beyond 1984 than Orwell was ahead of it. The tariff trade wars unleashed from the White House last week make it more likely that future historians will now identify the 2024 return of Trump to the White House as finally calling the post-war world order to an end.
The great power conflict which Orwell imagined differs from our emerging world disorder. As the cold war alliances of his era took shape, Orwell put America, Russia and China in rival blocs. So Orwell had “Eurasia” stretching from Russia across all of Europe, though Stalin’s successors only went on to control the eastern half of the continent in the decades to 1989. Orwell’s London was no longer a national capital. Britain was simply “Airstrip One” to signal its subservience within the English-speaking world that Orwell labels “Oceania”.
Yet the Trump-Putin axis is key to Washington’s rejection of the core assumptions of western security and economic policy.So what is Trump up to? Almost every economist has explained the irrationality of his tariffs – if they are considered in economic terms. The theory of comparative advantage explains why trade can be of mutual benefit. But Trump is a zero-sum thinker for whom there must always be a winner and a loser. So these were not so-called “reciprocal tariffs”, where the US might emulate the tariffs that it faces, as a bargaining chip to try to negotiate them away. Instead, a crude blanket global formula reflected the Trump trade doctrine that any country managing to export more to America than it imports must be “cheating” at trade – and that the optimum trade balance with every country, however rich or poor, is zero. A president who campaigned on lowering inflation will hike up prices for Americans – on the false prospectus that it is foreign countries who pay for tariffs.
Trump's tariffs are ultimately about political power, not economics. Trump’s protectionism is the power play of the protection racket. The invisible hand of the market is replaced by the presidential power to grant favoured access, to countries abroad or sectors and institutions at home, prepared to pledge loyalty and offer fealty to Trump. Modi’s India may be Washington’s top target for showing there are still deals to be done. Smaller developing countries, like Bangladesh, which faces a 37 per cent tariff, will be hit hard, as sky-high tariffs follow deep cuts in development aid too.
Britain has often been cast satirically as America’s 51st state – though Trump now pushes that label on a deeply unwilling Canada. His likely reward there looks set to be the backlash of an anti-Trump landslide in this month’s Canadian election. Seeking a mandate on the campaign trail, Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, has been the leader to speak most clearly about how much has changed. British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer and opposition Conservatives leader Kemi Badenoch sound much less sure about how to respond. Both declare that this is the end of an era – and that it will be important to keep calm and strike a sensible trade deal with Trump. Starmer hopes to reset the UK-EU relationship too.
The genius of Orwell’s fictional depiction of a post-truth world was its insistence on always aligning the past with the present. When allies and enemies change sides, enormous effort goes into rewriting newspaper archives. In reality, adapting to foundational shifts is much harder to come to terms with. America has been a partner for Britain and Europe for decades in security, trade and multilateral institutions. But the Trump administration is not merely retreating into isolation. Its disdain for NATO, appetite for trade wars and social media attacks on erstwhile allies go much further. Leaders and the public alike lack a mental map or language for an unfamiliar world in which an American government appears to present a new threat from the West to our peace, prosperity and democracy.
Despite the dystopian fears of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the post-war era in which Orwell wrote was a time of hope, too. The constructive creativity of that age shaped peace and prosperity in its time. Avoiding the nightmare scenarios today may depend on how far democratic leaders can somehow revive that spirit.
Sunder Katwala is the director of thinktank British Future and the author of the book How to Be a Patriot: The must-read book on British national identity and immigration
Chief prosecutor of Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) Mohammad Tajul Islam (C) speaks during a press conference outside the ICT court in Dhaka on June 1, 2025, after the start of the trial against Sheikh Hasina. (Photo by MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
FUGITIVE former prime minister Sheikh Hasina orchestrated a "systemic attack" to try to crush the uprising against her government, Bangladeshi prosecutors said at the opening of her trial on Sunday (1).
Hasina, 77, fled by helicopter to India as the student-led uprising ended her 15-year rule, and she has defied an extradition order to return to Dhaka.
The domestic International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) is prosecuting former senior figures connected to Hasina's ousted government and her now-banned party, the Awami League.
"Upon scrutinising the evidence, we reached the conclusion that it was a coordinated, widespread and systematic attack," Mohammad Tajul Islam, ICT chief prosecutor, told the court in his opening speech.
"The accused unleashed all law enforcement agencies and her armed party members to crush the uprising."
Islam lodged charges against Hasina and two other officials of "abetment, incitement, complicity, facilitation, conspiracy, and failure to prevent mass murder during the July uprising".
Hasina, who remains in self-imposed exile in India, has rejected the charges as politically motivated.
As well as Hasina, the case includes ex-police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al Mamun -- who is in custody, but who did not appear in court on Sunday -- and former interior minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, who like Hasina, is on the run.
The prosecution of senior figures from Hasina's government is a key demand of several of the political parties now jostling for power. The interim government has vowed to hold elections before June 2026.
The hearing is being broadcast live on state-owned Bangladesh Television.
Prosecutor Islam vowed the trial would be impartial.
"This is not an act of vendetta, but a commitment to the principle that, in a democratic country, there is no room for crimes against humanity," he said.
Investigators have collected video footage, audio clips, Hasina's phone conversations, records of helicopter and drone movements, as well as statements from victims of the crackdown as part of their probe.
The ICT court opened its first trial connected to the previous government on May 25.
In that case, eight police officials face charges of crimes against humanity over the killing of six protesters on August 5, the day Hasina fled the country.
Four of the officers are in custody and four are being tried in absentia.
The ICT was set up by Hasina in 2009 to investigate crimes committed by the Pakistani army during Bangladesh's war for independence in 1971.
It sentenced numerous prominent political opponents to death and became widely seen as a means for Hasina to eliminate rivals.
Earlier on Sunday, the Supreme Court restored the registration of the largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, allowing it to take part in elections.
Hasina banned Jamaat-e-Islami during her tenure and cracked down on its leaders.
In May, Bangladesh's interim government banned the Awami League, pending the outcome of her trial, and of other party leaders.
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An all-party delegation led by BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad in London (X/@rsprasad)
AN all-party delegation led by BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad has arrived in London to reiterate India's zero-tolerance stance on terrorism.
The multi-party delegation, including MPs Daggubati Purandeswari, Priyanka Chaturvedi, Ghulam Ali Khatana, Amar Singh, Samik Bhattacharya, M Thambidurai, former minister of state MJ Akbar and ambassador Pankaj Saran, is scheduled to meet community groups, think tanks, parliamentarians and diaspora leaders.
"The All Party Delegation of MPs led by Ravi Shankar Prasad arrived in London on Saturday evening and was received by High Commissioner Vikram Doraiswami," the Indian High Commission in the UK said in a post on X.
During their three-day visit to the UK, the delegation will engage with House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle, foreign office minister for Indo-Pacific Catherine West, parliamentarians, think tanks and Indian diaspora representatives, the High Commission said.
The Prasad-led delegation is touring six European countries as part of India's diplomatic outreach following the terrorist attack in Pahalgam that claimed 26 lives. The delegation arrived in London after concluding visits to France, Italy and Denmark over the past week.
In Denmark's capital, Copenhagen, the delegation interacted with Danish parliamentarians, foreign affairs officials and Indian diaspora groups.
"The delegation emphasised India's zero-tolerance towards terrorism and stance that any act of violence would be responded to appropriately. India's appreciation of Denmark's public stance condemning the Pahalgam terrorist attack and the expression of solidarity with India was conveyed to the Danish side during the meetings," the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement earlier.
From the UK, the delegation will head for discussions and meetings with a cross-section of parliamentarians, political leaders and diaspora groups in the European Union (EU) and Germany.
The delegation is one of seven multi-party delegations India has tasked to visit 33 global capitals to reach out to the international community to stress Pakistan's links to terrorism.
Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated after the Pahalgam terror attack, with India carrying out precision strikes on terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir in the early hours of May 7.
Pakistan attempted to attack Indian military bases on May 8, 9, and 10. The Indian side responded strongly to the Pakistani actions.
The on-ground hostilities ended with an understanding to stop military actions following talks between the directors general of military operations of both sides on May 10.
(PTI)
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MBDA director of Mechanical Engineering Matt Beaumont shows defence secretary John Healey a Storm Shadow missile on an assembly line at the MBDA Storm Shadow factory on May 31, 2025 in Stevenage, England. Dan Kitwood/Pool via REUTERS
BRITAIN will invest £1.5 billion ($2bn) in new weapons factories to ramp up defence production capacity, the government said, ahead of a major review of its armed forces and military strategy.
The Strategic Defence Review, due to be published on Monday (2), will assess the threats facing the UK amid Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine and pressure from US president Donald Trump for NATO allies to bolster their own defences.
The Labour leader also aimed to hike spending to three per cent by the next parliament, due around 2029.
The review will recommend "creating an 'always on' munitions production capacity in the UK" which would allow weapons production to be "scaled up at speed if needed".
It also urges the government to "lay the industrial foundations for an uplift in munitions stockpiles to meet the demand of high-tempo warfare", the Ministry of Defence said in a statement.
The government has said it would procure 7,000 domestically built long-rang weapons and build "at least six munitions and energetics factories".
This investment -- which will see £6bn spent on munitions this Parliamentary term -- will also create and support 1,800 jobs, the ministry said.
"The hard-fought lessons from Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine show a military is only as strong as the industry that stands behind them," defence secretary John Healey said.
"We are strengthening the UK's industrial base to better deter our adversaries and make the UK secure at home and strong abroad."
Healey also told The Times newspaper that Britain would spend three per cent of GDP on defence during the next parliament.
The government has said it would cut the UK’s overseas aid budget to help fund the spending.
The defence review, led by former NATO secretary general George Robertson, warns that Britain is entering "a new era of threat" as drones and artificial intelligence transform modern warfare, The Guardian newspaper reported.
The document will warn of the "immediate and pressing" danger posed by Russia, as well as focusing on China, Iran and North Korea.
Robertson has described the four countries as a "deadly quartet" which were "increasingly working together".
The government this week pledged over £1bn for improving battlefield technology by bolstering AI and cybersecurity.
In that announcement Healey warned that "ways of warfare are rapidly changing" and that the UK was "facing daily cyber-attacks on this new frontline".
(AFP)
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'It was getting very bad. It was getting very nasty. They are both nuclear powers,' Trump said. (Photo: Getty Images)
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has said that the “deal” he is most proud of is his effort to stop a “potentially a nuclear war” between India and Pakistan through trade instead of through “bullets.”
In recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly claimed that he told India and Pakistan that the US would stop trade with both countries if they did not stop the conflict.
India on Thursday said that trade was not discussed at all in talks between Indian and American leaders during the military clashes with Pakistan, rejecting Washington’s claims that trade stopped the confrontation.
Trump on Friday said, “I think the deal I’m most proud of is the fact that we’re dealing with India, we’re dealing with Pakistan and we were able to stop potentially a nuclear war through trade as opposed through bullets. Normally they do it through bullets. We do it through trade. So I’m very proud of that. Nobody talks about it but we had a very nasty potential war going on between Pakistan and India. And now, if you look, they’re doing fine,” Trump told reporters.
“It was getting very bad. It was getting very nasty. They are both nuclear powers,” he said.
Trump said Pakistani representatives are coming to Washington next week.
“India, as you know, we’re very close to making a deal with India,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews after departing Air Force One. “I wouldn’t have any interest in making a deal with either if they were going to be at war with each other. I would not and I’ll let them know,” Trump said.
This was the second time in a day that Trump repeated his claim that his administration stopped India and Pakistan from fighting.
“We stopped India and Pakistan from fighting. I believe that could have turned out into a nuclear disaster,” Trump said during remarks in the Oval Office Friday afternoon in a press conference with billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who left the Trump administration after helming the Department of Government Efficiency.
Trump added that he wants to thank the “leaders of India, the leaders of Pakistan, and I want to thank my people also. We talked trade and we said ‘We can’t trade with people that are shooting at each other and potentially using nuclear weapons’.”
Trump said that leaders in India and Pakistan are “great leaders” and “they understood, and they agreed, and that all stopped.”
“We are stopping others from fighting also because ultimately, we can fight better than anybody. We have the greatest military in the world. We have the greatest leaders in the world,” Trump said.
India has been maintaining that the understanding on cessation of hostilities with Pakistan was reached after direct talks between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) of the two militaries.
An all-party delegation of Indian parliamentarians, led by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, will arrive in Washington DC around June 3 after completing their visit to Guyana, Panama, Colombia, and Brazil conveying India’s resolve against terrorism and emphasising Pakistan’s links to terrorism.
The multi-party delegations from India to different countries have been underlining that the recent conflict with Pakistan was triggered by the Pahalgam terror attack and not Operation Sindoor as alleged by Islamabad.
The retaliatory Operation Sindoor launched by India targeted terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
About two weeks after the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir in which 26 civilians were killed, India launched Operation Sindoor targeting terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
India and Pakistan reached an understanding on May 10 to end the conflict after four days of cross-border drone and missile strikes.
(With inputs from agencies)
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General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Pakistan's chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said the two militaries had started reducing troop numbers. (Photo: Reuters)
PAKISTAN and India are close to reducing troop levels along their border to those before the latest conflict began earlier this month, a senior Pakistani military official told Reuters on Friday. He cautioned, however, that the recent fighting had raised the risk of escalation in the future.
Both sides used fighter jets, missiles, drones and artillery in four days of clashes before a ceasefire was announced.
The fighting began after an attack in Indian Kashmir on April 22 that killed 26 people, most of them tourists. New Delhi blamed the attack on "terrorists" backed by Pakistan, a charge denied by Islamabad.
On May 7, India launched missiles at what it said were "terrorist infrastructure" sites across the border. Pakistan responded with its own attacks, and both countries increased their troop presence along the frontier.
General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Pakistan's chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said the two militaries had started reducing troop numbers.
"We have almost come back to the pre-22nd April situation... we are approaching that, or we must have approached that by now," said Mirza, the most senior Pakistani military official to speak publicly since the conflict.
India's ministry of defence and the office of the Indian chief of defence staff did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment on Mirza's remarks.
Speaking in Singapore at the Shangri-La Dialogue forum, Mirza said there was no move towards nuclear weapons during this conflict, but it was a dangerous situation.
"Nothing happened this time," he said. "But you can't rule out any strategic miscalculation at any time, because when the crisis is on, the responses are different."
He said the risk of escalation in the future had grown, as the fighting this time was not limited to Kashmir. Both sides attacked military installations in their mainlands, but neither has acknowledged any serious damage.
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi warned Pakistan this month that New Delhi would target "terrorist hideouts" again if there were new attacks on India.
'Dangerous trend'
India blames Pakistan for an insurgency in its part of Kashmir that began in 1989 and has killed tens of thousands. Pakistan says it provides only moral, political and diplomatic support to Kashmiris seeking self-determination.
"This (conflict) lowers the threshold between two countries who are contiguous nuclear powers... in the future, it will not be restricted to the disputed territory. It would come down to (the) whole of India and (the) whole of Pakistan," Mirza said. "This is a very dangerous trend."
Reuters has reported that the rapid escalation of hostilities ended in part because of behind-the-scenes diplomacy involving the US, India and Pakistan, and the key role played by Washington in brokering peace. India has denied any third-party role in the ceasefire and said that any engagement between India and Pakistan has to be bilateral.
Mirza said international mediation might be more difficult in the future because of a lack of crisis management mechanisms between the two countries.
"The time window for the international community to intervene would now be very less, and I would say that damage and destruction may take place even before that time window is exploited by the international community," he said.
He said Pakistan was open to dialogue, but apart from a crisis hotline between the directors general of military operations and some hotlines at the tactical level on the border, there was no other communication between the two countries.
New Delhi has maintained a hard line on any possible talks.
“If there are talks, it will only be on terrorism and (Pakistan Kashmir)," Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh said on Friday. "If Pakistan is serious about talks, it should hand over terrorists... to India so that justice is served.”
Mirza said there were no backchannel discussions or informal talks to ease tensions. He also said he had no plans to meet General Anil Chauhan, India's chief of defence staff, who is also in Singapore for the forum.
"These issues can only be resolved by dialogue and consultations, on the table. They cannot be resolved on the battlefield," Mirza said.