April’s ‘Liberation Day’ just one aspect of the Don’s new world disorder

Donald Trump has declared April 2 ‘Liberation Day’ as he prepares to unveil reciprocal tariffs on all US trading partners. But that’s just one aspect of the Don’s new world disorder. Excerpts from This Week, Those Books, which has three relevant reads. Sign up at https://thisweekthosebooks.substack.com/ and get the post and readthrough the day it drops

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The Big Story:

No prizes for guessing which country would get the most nominations right now for the world’s not-so-super superpower: the United States.

Some say that an America (mis-) led by Donald Trump is on a blunder-fest of epochal proportions because it is:

• dismantling the rules-based trade and political world order it created.
• bullying and insulting countries in its own hemisphere…
• embracing authoritarian Russia…

Russia’s dramatic elevation on the world stage includes:

• Vladimir Putin graciously receiving respect from Trump’s America, on Ukraine and sanctions.
• Hollywood, a bastion of American soft power, making much of an actor who’s been called the “Russian Ryan Gosling”. Yura Borisov who plays the henchman with a heart in the Oscar-winning film Anora, is one of Russia’s biggest heartthrobs.

This Week, Those Books:

• Since 1945, America has tended the garden that is liberal democracy.
• Part of Russia’s cultural influence is its hardball negotiating tactics.
• A novel about the planet’s future – it’s greater than geopolitics.

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The Back Story:

The US has slapped tariffs on its largest economic partners…

In the first address of his second term to the US Congress, Trump insulted Lesotho as a country “nobody has ever heard of”. Lesotho’s textile and garment industry is a major supplier to US brands.

The Jungle Grows Back

By: Robert Kagan

Publisher: Alfred A Knopf

Year: 2018

It is almost painful to read this book, which Robert Kagan wrote midway through Trump’s first term. Then, as now, to quote Kagan, the “jungle is growing back. History is returning. Nations are reverting to old habits and traditions”. The “jungle” is a reference to the vines and weeds that “constantly threaten to overwhelm” the “garden,” which is the liberal world order.

Then, as now, the US is letting the system unravel.

And yet, there is a crucial difference between 2018 and today…this book…underlines some basic truths. That the post-WWII liberal order was an “aberration” and always “fragile and impermanent”. And that history should not be “viewed as a progressive upward march…”

The Kremlin School of Negotiation

By: Igor Ryzov

Publisher: Canongate Books

Year: 2019

This book made modest news in Britain back in 2021 when it was revealed that the UK’s Brexit negotiator turned to Igor Ryzov’s hardball Russian tactics to get the results he wanted. It was a vote of confidence by Lord David Frost, a veteran diplomat…

Ryzov, a business coach, says negotiation is “combat” and that “a street thug is stronger than any sportsman trained in a sports hall”…

The book has some gems, not least…

Orbital

By: Samantha Harvey

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Year: 2023

Samantha Harvey became top of mind for the reading world last year when Orbital won the Booker Prize. She is the very writer for this moment in time. And Orbital, which is more vignettes than novel, is the right book because it reminds us that we share a home…

Harvey is part philosopher, part poet of the planet…In Orbital, she examines how human lives intersect with that of the planet…

Choice quote:

How are we writing the future of humanity? We’re not writing anything, it’s writing us. We’re windblown leaves. We think we’re the wind, but we’re just the leaf.

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Originally published at This Week, Those Books