Letter From the Editors

Operation Epic Fury is in full swing. And besides the literal damage it brings, it’s blowing up whatever remains of international law. At least that’s how Ilya Budraitskis portrays it in his “obituary” to the previous world order. When Putin announced the launch of the “special military operation” to invade Ukraine, he justified it by saying that the “rules” Russia broke were merely a façade the West used to disguise its arbitrary rule. In Putin’s Nietzschean world, the “democracy of equals” is a false concept – you are not equal if you don’t have force to back up your claim.

Fast forward to 2026. Donald Trump is taking a page right out of Putin’s playbook with his operations in Venezuela and Iran. If a leader of a nation is an “inconvenient” negotiating partner, why not swap him for someone more suitable? “To Putin, Russia’s war against Ukraine is life rebelling against the tyranny of the dead letter,” writes Budraitskis. To Trump, it’s The Art of the Deal, only on the battlefield instead of in the boardroom.

According to Aleksei Fenenko, this brave new world torpedoes the “Beijing consensus” – a term coined by political analyst Joshua Cooper Ramo all the way in 2004. It popularized such Chinese development concepts as “peacefulness, the cult of stability, the priority of geoeconomics over geopolitics and the separation of ideology from politics,” Fenenko states. In part, it’s what boosted China’s standing with the Global South, since it offered a different and seemingly more harmonious development model that the “top down” approach used by the West.

But now, Epic Fury has essentially stripped bare the biggest problem with the “Beijing consensus” – any economic project can be scuttled with an armed conflict. And, as the Digest has previously noted, China is not up to backing its economic clout with military force yet. “Beijing can create whatever forums it wants, but Washington can simply instigate wars along potential transit routes,” Fenenko writes.

Has China found a loophole? Tajikistan’s parliament will review a project to bolster its border security, financed by Beijing. The cost – a whopping $60 million – is being given as “nonrepayable assistance.” According to experts, the reasons for the generous gesture are clear – Tajikistan borders Afghanistan and China’s restive Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, “with all the ensuing consequences for China’s security.” This way, Beijing can still ensure security along its coveted One Belt, One Road project without having to deploy its own forces. Instead, it will help Tajikistan modernize infrastructure, reinforce border outposts and train its own border guards.

While China continues to make inroads (literally) in the post-Soviet space, the row between Budapest, Bratislava and Kyiv continues to escalate. This week, Ukraine prevented Slovak and Hungarian delegations from inspecting the Druzhba oil pipeline, which has allegedly been damaged by Russian drone strikes. For their part, Hungary and Slovakia accused their neighbor of an energy blockade. Tensions have escalated to alleged death threats against Viktor Orban and Budapest’s blockage of EU financial aid to Ukraine. The arrest of Ukrainian bank workers who were transporting millions in dollars and euros, as well as gold, from Austria to Ukraine via Hungary added another twist to this thriller. According to Oleg Karpovich, “It would be very difficult for the EU to uphold Ukrainian interests” if the allegations turn out to be true. Kyiv accused Budapest of “hostage-taking,” so money vs. brute strength is once again the main means of negotiating.

How’s the view from Canada? PM Mark Carney recently described international law as an “ideological illusion” that smaller countries used to rely on. Today, the term “international law” is merely part of “diplomatic parlance” global superpowers use in their high-stakes bargaining. In geopolitics, as in reality TV, the stakes keep rising and the rules keep changing. What the superpowers call strategy, smaller nations call cheating – either way, it’s all just another round of Deal or No Deal: Global Edition.