On Car­ni­val Mon­day, oceans away from fes­tiv­i­ties in T&T, British Prime Min­is­ter Keir Starmer spoke in the House of Com­mons. He unit­ed the British Par­lia­ment across par­ty lines be­hind him, as he shared his ex­pe­ri­ences and as­sess­ment of the week be­fore and out­lined where Britain and Eu­rope were head­ed.

Prime Min­is­ter Starmer was lead­ing the Par­lia­ment and the Unit­ed King­dom from in front, but with cour­tesy and fi­nesse, ap­pre­ci­at­ing that there is a lead­er­ship void in Eu­rope which had to be filled to achieve at least three ob­jec­tives: Eu­ro­pean uni­ty, greater self-suf­fi­cien­cy for Eu­rope in eco­nom­ic, mil­i­tary and geopo­lit­i­cal terms, and a non-com­bat­ive bridge to US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and the Re­pub­li­can Con­gress and Sen­ate, even while the UK and Eu­rope coped with un­cer­tain­ty on NA­TO and neb­u­lous­ness on the North At­lantic al­liance front.

These con­tend­ing ob­jec­tives in the midst of chang­ing con­di­tions of in­creas­ing com­plex­i­ty, which de­mand a leader who can not on­ly chew chew­ing gum and walk, but who can al­so ef­fec­tive­ly, com­mand gym­nas­tic com­pe­tence on a tightrope, did not con­strain Starmer from say­ing clear­ly and un­equiv­o­cal­ly with­out apol­o­gy and with­out re­buke: “Rus­sia is the ag­gres­sor; (Volodymyr) Ze­len­skyy is a leader of a coun­try at war whose coun­try has been in­vad­ed; and, we should not be fawn­ing over (Vladimir) Putin.”

At the same time, Starmer did not hes­i­tate to em­pha­sise that the US was an in­dis­pens­able part­ner to the UK and to Eu­rope, and vi­tal to the achieve­ment of any peace be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine. But he stood aligned with Ze­len­skyy on the need for se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tees to Ukraine to en­sure a last­ing peace with Rus­sia.

Lat­er that same day, the US Pres­i­dent abrupt­ly with­drew mil­i­tary sup­port for Ze­len­skyy and uni­lat­er­al­ly re­solved to im­pose a 25 per cent tar­iff on Cana­da, the same as Mex­i­co, and a 20 per cent tar­iff on Chi­na.

On Car­ni­val Tues­day morn­ing, when rev­ellers were high on mu­sic and in­tox­i­cat­ed by a good time in Port-of-Spain, Rio and New Or­leans, Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau was speak­ing to the Cana­di­an peo­ple, the Amer­i­can peo­ple and the world, say­ing that his coun­try had been left with no choice but to rec­i­p­ro­cate fierce­ly. Chi­na had al­ready sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to re­tal­i­ate and rec­i­p­ro­cate. And Mex­i­can Pres­i­dent Clau­dia Shein­baum, who has al­so re­solved to meet like with like, will out­line de­tails of her tar­iff re­sponse at a po­lit­i­cal ral­ly in a pub­lic square in Mex­i­co on Sun­day. The con­di­tions for a trade war have now been set in mo­tion.

Lat­er that day, Ze­len­skyy made con­cil­ia­to­ry state­ments, hop­ing to bridge the di­vide and to soothe the rup­ture which had tak­en place on Car­ni­val Fri­day in the White House Oval Of­fice. Pres­i­dent Trump sim­ply ac­knowl­edged this in his Pres­i­den­tial speech on Tues­day.

Mean­while, the stock mar­ket all over the world plum­met­ed, as con­sumer prices were poised to soar fur­ther on the news of a trade war and the Ze­len­skyy fall­out. It is al­so like­ly that Putin might be a bit con­fused at how and why the Unit­ed States is destab­lis­ing her strongest al­lies and neigh­bours; and Chi­na too, must be try­ing to make sense of what is hap­pen­ing and why this route was cho­sen by the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent.

When the time came on Tues­day evening, Pres­i­dent Trump was in full flight, the Re­pub­li­cans were on a high, the De­moc­rats were clear­ly jad­ed, the US Leg­is­la­ture was stark­ly di­vid­ed, but Trump was on a roll. Yes, there might be some pain, Trump told Amer­i­cans, but his com­mit­ment was to Amer­i­ca first. He said no coun­try will be al­lowed to take ad­van­tage of the US; he will cut waste and cor­rup­tion, sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce tax­es, bring prices down, and build a fortress Amer­i­ca that mul­ti­plies its wealth, im­proves peo­ple’s lives, gar­ners min­er­al re­sources world­wide, strength­ens mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ty and plants an Amer­i­can flag on Mars.

Mean­while, un­cer­tain­ty, un­pre­dictabil­i­ty and ten­sion reign. And as big pow­ers con­tend, the de­vel­op­ing world tar­ries on and watch­es from the mar­gin as a rules-based world or­der, which big pow­ers have of­ten vi­o­lat­ed, gives way to a Trump Amer­i­ca re­set, where it is dif­fi­cult to dis­cern now where the lines are go­ing to be drawn and what prin­ci­ples be­sides raw pow­er, are go­ing to de­ter­mine the new rules.

Mean­while, on Ash Wednes­day, Chi­na be­gan a week-long Com­mu­nist Par­ty Con­gress to dis­cuss strat­e­gy, pol­i­cy and their own way for­ward, 44 days in­to an un­clear, Trump world.