As 2026 begins, what a strange planet we find ourselves on. The two great empires of my youth, the Soviet Union (now Russia) and my own country, are clearly experiencing some version of imperial decline, even if Vladimir Putin is acting otherwise in Ukraine (as is Donald Trump in his own strange fashion in the Caribbean Sea and Venezuela).

No less curiously, the country visibly on the rise, China, is distinctly not acting like a typical imperial power of history (at least the history I’ve known). In a world where the United States still has 750 or so military bases around the world, China, as far as I can tell, has at most just one (in Djibouti, Africa). While its economy has become significant globally (imperially significant, you might say), unlike essentially every imperial power from the Portuguese and Spanish in the 15th and 16th centuries on, it has no colonies and only the most minimal military presence abroad, though it does continue to build up its military power (and its nuclear arsenal) at home.

Of course, it’s worth remembering that we are distinctly on a different planet than the one any of those older powers inhabited. And even if America’s great man (my joke!), President Donald J. Trump, doesn’t seem to know it, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, certainly does.

Vladimir Putin’s version of imperial aggression is, at present, aimed at Ukraine in a war that will in the—and yes, I can hardly avoid the word!—end undoubtedly prove a disaster, not just for Ukraine but for Russia and the rest of the planet, too. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s version of imperial aggression, which is likely (again, in the end) to prove disastrous, is for the time being (and, with him, you always have to add a qualifier) aimed at the Caribbean Sea, the Eastern Pacific Ocean, and Venezuela (which he now seems intent on turning into an oil colony), even as he prepares to build his own “golden fleet,” including “Trump-class” (old-fashioned) battleships. On the other hand, China’s major “aggression” (and indeed, that word does have to be put in quotation marks!) is aimed—setting aside the island of Taiwan (which it claims not as a colony but as a part of China itself)—at the conquest of the future global green economy.

In essence, Donald Trump and crew have been doing their best to dismantle or get rid of anything in this country that might effectively impede climate change and the future broiling of Planet Earth.

Or put another way, to give credit where it’s due, despite the fact that China continues to open coal plants in an unnerving fashion, its great-power desires are at least aimed at something—in fact, the thing—that truly matters on this distinctly beleaguered planet of ours. It is intent on becoming the Earth’s global powerhouse when it comes to the sale of green energy and the ways to produce it. Consider that its imperial target, one unlike any other in history (though perhaps a comparison could be made to the industrialization of what became imperial Great Britain in the 19th century). Moreover, it’s already selling and delivering green energy production units to countries globally, while far outpacing anyplace else on this planet in producing electric vehicles (EVs).

Last year, China installed more wind turbines and solar panels than any other country, indeed more than the rest of the planet combined. And as the New York Times reported earlier in 2025, “Not only does China already dominate global manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, EVs, and many other clean energy industries, but with each passing month it is widening its technological lead.”

While Donald Trump’s America is putting so much of its energy (so to speak) and money into coal, oil, and natural gas production, China’s government has been giving hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to wind, solar, and electric car manufacturers. And it is now hard at work spreading the products for producing wind and solar power globally. As the Times also reported, “Chinese firms are building wind turbines in Brazil and electric vehicles in Indonesia. In northern Kenya, Chinese developers have erected Africa’s biggest wind farm. And across the continent, in countries rich with minerals needed for clean energy technologies, such as Zambia, Chinese financing for all sorts of projects has left some governments deeply in debt to Chinese banks.”

And of course, China is unequaled in the production of electric vehicles. There are now at least 129 brands selling such vehicles in China, and they are exporting more than one-fifth of their products globally, while Chinese companies continue to out-innovate those elsewhere on this planet.

In this distinctly post-modern age, there should be a term for such wars and the way—in addition to the hell on Earth they have created since time immemorial—they are now helping produce an environmental hell through the release of greenhouse gases in vast quantities into the atmosphere.

On the other hand, Vladimir Putin, who once joked that global warming might be good for Russians because they could then “spend less on fur coats,” at least now acknowledges its reality. Nonetheless, he only recently signed a decree that would allow his country, already heating up 2.5 times faster than the global average, to increase its emissions of greenhouse gases 20% by 2035. And of course the United States is now led by a president who all too bluntly ran for office the second time around on the campaign slogan “drill, baby, drill” and is making policy based on “ending the green new scam.”

Only recently, in fact, his administration “paused” the leases on and halted the building of five major wind projects under construction off the East Coast of the United States, supposedly due to “national security risks.” In essence, Donald Trump and crew have been doing their best to dismantle or get rid of anything in this country that might effectively impede climate change and the future broiling of Planet Earth. That is, in fact, the definition of his America, which is also........

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