In the midst of World War II George Orwell wrote a novel, 1984, in which he described a global organization of three huge countries called Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia.  These were all totalitarian states. A leader, “Big Brother”, strictly controlled and limited people’s lives as though they lived in a prison, walked a narrow line and were supervised by snooping machines and a cadre of police thugs. Orwell was English so London was the capitol of Oceania.

The world according to Orwell, was divided into powerful political blocks at constant war with each other.  He did not live to see how the current world divisions played out.  He would not have been surprised to be looking at the American union and its continental allies, except for Cuba.  Client states of the U.S. are located all over the globe and include parts of Asia, leftovers of the British Commonwealth when that entity was an Empire. Some client states are Japan (a casualty of WWII) and South Korea along with the Islands in the South Pacific including the big ones of Australia and New Zealand. Geographically, it includes a great deal of territory while the population is not as significant as that in India. India is a democracy, allied with the U.S. against its neighbor, Pakistan. Pakistan is Islamic and nuclear.

China is the odd-man-out. We used to love and back Taiwan. China is not a democracy and has the largest mass of humans tethered by the will of a totalitarian Marxist Party dictatorship. Russia, China’s neighbor, is not yet a democracy in our sense and still reeks as center of a power that challenged the might of the United States.

The rest of the world has three other divisions.  One is all the Islamic countries, united and divided by faith and national boundaries. The second is Europe the continental entity and once all Christian, all the time. The third and last, is the continent of Africa that is only part Islamic, part Christian and non-aligned. African nations are not really independent - either in the continental or national sense. Africa, once the colony of European Christians, is mostly Black.

This picture is of a world that has many divisions. The United Nations, originally designed as government for the whole world was once useful. Reality makes us pose the question: Why is the United States, the putative single most powerful nation in the world, surrounded by uneasy and distrustful “allies” and old friends who are drawing into a tighter collection of countries fearful of those outside their circle?

The “Christian” European Union is fearful over the admission of a Muslim (although secular) nation, Turkey, into its membership. The creation of a real functioning European Union with a single currency is attractive to the countries on its periphery. In the same way, the military union of NATO (that has geographically grown beyond its original conception) has flirted with including Poland, Greece and other “client” countries way beyond the North Atlantic. Russia may eventually be persuaded to join NATO if only as a buffer against China.

This picture is not hard and fast but will be interesting to see how it will play out. Orwell would not be surprised at anything at all.