By threatening to seize Greenland by force, US President Donald Trump has exposed the childlike illusions of his European admirers. Having spent years cultivating their bromances with him, the continent’s right-wing populists – the United Kingdom’s Nigel Farage, Jordan Bardella in France, Alice Weidel in Germany, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Robert Fico in Slovakia, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and Mateusz Morawiecki in Poland – imagined themselves fellow travelers in a revolt against liberal internationalism. Now their idol and patron has been threatening to swallow whole or in part (if the supposed “deal” he has announced comes about) the sovereign territory of a European ally.

For Singapore, the China-U.S. relationship is much more than a bilateral concern. It has profound implications for the sense of security, strategic expectations and assessments of the future by all medium-size states.

Partisan polarization, electoral pressures and factional strife function together, driving Trump to take a tough stance abroad as his main tool in his political gamesmanship.

The United States is undergoing a historically familiar phase of imperial decline, marked by internal dysfunction, economic overreach, and diminishing global credibility, alongside the rise of China and a broader shift toward a multipolar world order.

Despite recent signs of stabilization in Sino-Indian relations at the national level, subnational cooperation between the two countries remains largely stagnant and closely constrained by broader bilateral dynamics. While local governments in both China and India have clear incentives and precedents for collaboration, political tensions, structural competition, and limited institutional follow-through continue to impede the revival and expansion of these ties.

India’s 2026 BRICS chairship unfolds amid a fragile but continuing thaw in Sino-Indian relations that, despite unresolved territorial disputes, is opening space for de-politicized economic cooperation, supply chain realignment, talent and people-to-people exchanges, with Hong Kong positioned as a practical bridge for sustained engagement between the two countries.

Justin Trudeau’s visit to China was a significant development in contemporary global politics, reflecting not only growing Western engagement with the East, but also signaling a broader shift in which the East itself is emerging as a focal point of global political and economic attention.

The U.S. president’s strategic shift is not temporary. It represents a medium- to long-term trajectory that stems from the confluence of simmering contradictions and various domestic and international factors.

By January 2026, the first year of the second four-year—and constitutionally final—term of U.S. President Donald Trump was complete. This initial quarter of his tenure has jolted the world, unnerving the global community on economic, trade, and security matters while weakening the post-war international order. The resulting shocks reverberate across the international system, amplified by the scale of U.S. power and global entanglement. This disruption is unfolding in real time.

Europe has again gained an advantage in its sustained competition with Russia to influence the United States. While Washington is likely to continue pursuing a calibrated re-engagement with Russia and to further reduce its direct role in European security, the scope for abrupt and highly oscillatory shifts in U.S. policy on Ukraine appears to have narrowed.