It began with that awkward handshake — Trump smiling too wide, Xi standing still. I watched it on my laptop one evening while the ceiling fan in Karachi hummed and the city lights flickered after another power cut.
In Munich, my daughter Fareha texted that they were keeping the heating low again. Baby Salar was asleep in his cot wearing a wool cap, though it was only October. She joked, “Baba, we live like monks with a mortgage.”
The handshake was supposed to calm markets. But what it really showed was a planet run by men who mistake showmanship for wisdom.
Maybe Fareha is right. Maybe we are governed by algorithms, not adults.
When the Courts End at the Border
Inside countries we still pretend there are limits — laws, courts, the idea of justice. But between nations, no such thing exists. There is no referee, no father to say “enough.”
Trade wars, sanctions, embargoes — they are modern words for the oldest game of domination. A few months ago, I overheard a trader in Bolton Market muttering over shipping rates as if reciting a prayer. His profit depended on how two distant men smiled in Seoul.
That is what global order means now: one leader’s tantrum, another’s patience, and a shopkeeper in Karachi forced to double his prices overnight.
The Moral Decay of Superpowers
Both Washington and Beijing talk about values. Both really mean leverage.
The United States has turned friendship into an investment — expendable when returns fall. Kissinger once said it was dangerous to be America’s enemy but fatal to be its friend. China, on the other hand, wraps power in the language of national humiliation and revenge. Two empires, two myths, one absence of conscience.
Trump’s tariffs and Xi’s stillness were not opposites; they were reflections in the same mirror. Power without empathy.
My son-in-law in Munich recently learned his firm would cut hours again because components from Shenzhen were delayed. One email from a supplier in Guangdong meant one less grocery trip that month. The empires never notice such arithmetic.
Chimpanzees With AI
A reader wrote to me, “We are still on chimpanzee level.” I think he’s right. We have built machines that can imitate wisdom but not practice it.
China speaks of the “century of rejuvenation.” America chants about “freedom.” Both confuse destiny with dominance. And the rest of us, the middle nations, translate their ambitions into inflation and anxiety.
When Fareha told me they now measure baby formula by the scoop, it struck me how grand politics becomes intimate pain. That is globalization in 2025 — a sleepless mother counting grams, a father watching the news half a world away.
The Century of Nobody’s Father
There was once a time when people believed in some moral North — the UN, human rights, a code larger than markets. Now it feels like those ideas have been sold for short-term gain. Institutions talk, missiles fly, currencies tremble.
When no one is wise, the market becomes God. Countries behave like corporations; citizens become data points. Artificial intelligence will only amplify the noise.
We are clever, not kind. Fast, not wise.
And yet, hope lingers in small places. In Salar’s laugh when Fareha video-calls from Munich. In Karachi’s evening breeze after the first rain. Maybe his generation will rebuild what ours has squandered — a sense of restraint, a touch of humility, a moral language larger than GDP.
Until then, we live in the century of nobody’s father.
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