The parallel between happenings in 2025 and the dystopian novel 1984 is unmistakable. Between them, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping have all but created the fictional nations of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, imagined in George Orwell’s novel. Showing remarkable prescience, Orwell’s novel showed the three nations in perpetual conflict, but with the tacit understanding that the hostilities were only a tool to perpetuate a state of emergency, one that justified the dictatorial and totalitarian measures by rulers of the three superpowers.

That said, Trump is the undoubted protagonist of 2025. True to his impatient and megalomaniacal nature, within a year of inauguration, Trump has rewritten domestic and international politics, leaving alliances and allies of long standing in the lurch, weaponizing trade to bring the rest of the world to heel, withdrawing the USA from the Paris accord on climate change, supporting genocide by Israel and attacking Iran for no justifiable reason, scrapping USAID, deploying the armed forces to crack down on migration at the border, ordering the National Guard into US cities, terminating all diversity programmes in government, and cancelling policies supporting renewable energy.

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However, the world economy adapted to Trump’s tariff shock remarkably well; new trading opportunities emerged, and the volume of world trade remaining largely unaffected. Rather, Americans bore the brunt of Trump’s depredations: “Liberation Day” tariffs in April 2025 led to a precipitate fall in stock markets, with the S&P 500 tumbling by about 11 per cent in two days, and inflation inched upwards throughout the year. Fortunately for the US, Trump’s billionaire supporters made him see reason; most tariffs were eventually lowered or postponed, and stock markets bounced back.

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All said, the net effect of Trump’s antics was transitory; the world economy and the American economy, both are forecast to grow by around 3 per cent in 2025. Twenty twenty-five was a momentous year for India. Massacre of 26 innocent, unarmed tourists, in Pahalgam by Pakistani militants on 22 April 2025, plunged the country into grief. India retaliated swiftly, by launching Operation Sindoor on May 9, destroying terrorist bases deep inside Pakistan, and........

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