The New Great Game

A physicist’s idea, a century-old humiliation, and a Cold War opening all converge as Trump and Xi meet to redraw the world’s political map.

- Wajahat Qazi

Three themes, two historical events and the other a concept from physics, may best describe (or even define) the meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.

Physics first.

In this schema, singularity is a point of infinite density and spacetime curvature [....] where concepts of space and time break down. A derivative from mathematics, ‘singularity is a point where the mathematical function is not “well behaved”. Conjoined together and meshed with technology, singularity is a point in time in the future where stupendous and irreversible changes lead to unknown and unpredictable changes to human civilization’.

Now consider historical events.

In the 19th century Qing China, when country ran a trade surplus with the world, exporting more and importing less, imperial Britain sought to open China to the Opium trade.

Resisted by China, all in vain, leading to the First Opium War, this era, a defining one for the country, led to the unravelling of Qing China. (This including territorial losses over regions like Hongkong.) Thus was born what Chinese scholars called ‘the century of humiliation’.

A pivotal time for China, the ‘century of humiliation’ can, in modern parlance, be held to be the country's ‘foundational myth’ (that has roots in real history).

The implications of ‘the century of humiliation’ have been stark. A bedrock principle internalized by China's political and intellectual elite, the lessons drawn are: never again and never negotiate from a position of weakness.

Historical event two.

In 1971, at the peak of the Cold War, between the United States and the former USSR, the able but very cynical practitioner of realism, Henry Kissinger, made an opening to Mao Tse Tung’s China. The aim was to engineer a split between Soviet Russia and China.