Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Inderjeet Parmar, Professor in International Politics, City St George’s, University of London

As Donald Trump’s second term unfolds, the contradictions at the heart of his “America First” agenda are increasingly apparent. What began as a populist revolt against elite globalism appears to have morphed into policies that alienate the very rural and small-town constituencies that backed him in 2016, 2020 and 2024.

These rust-belt and rural counties were drawn to his promises of economic revival, border security and non-interventionism. Yet, emerging signs of fracture in this Maga base suggest a potential backlash in the upcoming midterms.

The administration’s domestic policies, coupled with aggressive foreign postures, are accelerating disillusionment among Trump’s core supporters.

Domestically, Trump’s intensified immigration enforcement has backfired. Ramped-up ICE raids were sold as fulfilling pledges of mass deportations targeting “criminals”. But these operations have swept up undocumented workers essential to rural economies. Small family farms and businesses in states including California, Idaho and Pennsylvania are reliant on immigrant labour for harvesting crops, dairy operations, and meatpacking. They now face acute shortages.

Agricultural employment dropped by 155,000 workers between March and July 2025, reversing prior growth trends. Farmers in Ventura County, California, for example, denounced raids that targeted routes frequented by agricultural workers. Fields lie unharvested signalling financial ruin for some operations. Family-run farms struggle to find replacements. Low wages and gruelling conditions simply fail to attract American-born labourers.

This labour crisis exacerbates a broader sense of betrayal. Rural voters supported Trump for his anti-elite rhetoric, expecting protection for their livelihoods. Instead, the administration’s actions have hollowed out local workforces without viable alternatives.

The H-2A visa programme, meant to provide temporary foreign workers, has been streamlined – but remains insufficient amid ongoing raids, which deter even legal migrants. These disruptions ripple through small-town economies, where agriculture underpins community stability. Democrats, sensing opportunity, are investing in rural outreach, emphasising economic populism to woo disillusioned voters who feel abandoned by Trump’s enforcement zeal.

Compounding these woes are the ongoing tariff disruptions. Trump touts his tariffs as tools to “make America great”, but in fact they have driven up costs for the same rural groups. Between January and September 2025, tariffs on imports from China, Canada, Mexico, and others have surged, collecting US$125 billion. However, the figure may be even higher according to experts.

But while the administration claims these taxes punish foreign adversaries, the burden falls squarely on American importers and consumers. Small businesses, which account for around 30% of imports, faced an average of US$151,000 in extra costs from April to September 2025, translating to $25,000 monthly hikes. Farmers, already squeezed by low grain prices, pay more for necessities, such as fertilisers (hit by 44% effective tariffs on Indian imports) and machinery parts.

Midwest producers of soybeans, corn, and pork – key US exports – suffer doubly from retaliatory tariffs abroad, which reduce demand and depress revenues. In Tennessee and Pennsylvania, builders report 2.5% rises in material costs, while food prices climb due to duties on beef, tomatoes and coffee.

Trump, meanwhile, is perceived as profiting personally. His properties and branding deals benefit from economic nationalism, even as family farms teeter on the verge of bankruptcy. This disparity fuels resentment. Polls show Trump’s approval slipping in swing counties, with economic anxiety eroding the loyalty that once overlooked his character flaws.

Foreign policy compounds domestic fractures

These domestic fractures are mirrored in foreign policy, where Trump’s interventionism starkly contradicts his campaign pledge of “America First” restraint. Having promised no new wars, he has instead pursued aggressive postures that many Republicans view as unnecessary. The most emblematic is his renewed bid to acquire Greenland, apparently by negotiation or force, which has swiftly followed the US raid on Venezuela in the first week of January, accompanied by threats against other Latin American countries including Cuba and Colombia.

The US president has justified demands for control over the Arctic island – citing threats from Russia and China – as a strategic necessity. But but Nato allies such as Denmark – of which Greenland is a constituent part – have rebuked it as an potentially alliance-shattering move. Congressional Republicans, including Mitch McConnell and Thom Tillis, have broken ranks, warning that force would obliterate Nato and tarnish US influence.

Such dissent highlights broader paradoxes. Trump’s populist realism prioritises tough rhetoric for domestic consumption but yields aggressive, even reckless actions abroad. His administration is effectively dismantling post-1945 institutions while embracing 19th-century spheres-of-influence and outright colonialist thinking, including invoking an updated version of the 1823 Monroe doctrine.

Read more:
The ‘Donroe doctrine’: Maduro is the guinea pig for Donald Trump’s new world order

Rural voters, weary of endless wars, supported his non-interventionist promises. Now they see echoes of past entanglements in Trump’s suggestion that the US could intervene in Iran. This cognitive dissonance is accelerating disillusionment with his presidency.

These self-inflicted but inherent contradictions are hastening a pivotal reckoning for Trumpism. In many counties that have thrice backed him – and especially in swing counties – economic hardship and policy betrayals erode the cultural ties binding rural America to the Republican party. Democrats, through programmes such as the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, are betting on this “betrayal” narrative, spotlighting farmers’ plights to flip seats in November 2026.

Polls show Latinos and independents souring on Trump, with the US president’s base turnout potentially waning as the midterm elections approach in November. If Republicans suffer larger-than-expected losses in those elections, it could mark the decline of Trumpism’s grip by exposing its elite-serving underbelly beneath populist veneer.

Yet, without a compelling alternative vision, Democrats risk squandering this opening. For now, the fractures signal that Trump’s “America First” policies may ultimately leave its rural and rust belt champions behind. Whether Trumpism proves resilient or begins a long decline may well be decided not in Washington and Mar-a-Lago, but in the county seats and small towns that once formed its unbreakable base.

Inderjeet Parmar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Signs that Trump’s economic policies are alienating his rural Maga base – https://theconversation.com/signs-that-trumps-economic-policies-are-alienating-his-rural-maga-base-273876

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Francesco Grillo, Academic Fellow, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University

Donald Trump’s newly launched “Board of Peace” presents itself as a bold attempt to break with what its founders describe as decades of failed international diplomacy. Its charter opens with a declaration that few would openly dispute: “Durable peace requires pragmatic judgment, common-sense solutions, and the courage to depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed.”

It is true that the world urgently needs to overcome decades of inertia to reform its international organisations. It is true that new institutions are needed to solve global problems rather than merely managing never-ending crises.

This is perhaps why Donald Trump decided to hold the signing ceremony for his new board on the margins of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Here, more than any other place, is where results-oriented global business leaders supposedly gather. At the signing of the charter, a jubilant Trump was among 20 heads of state and prime ministers (of the 60 who had been invited).

The “most prestigious board ever formed” so far includes the presidents of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and the prime ministers of Mongolia, Armenia and Pakistan. Rightly, representatives of the governments more directly involved in the “Gaza peace plan” are also present, including Israel, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt.

From south-east Asia we have Indonesia and Vietnam and from South America, President Javier Milei from Argentina. Hungary, Bulgaria and Kosovo are the only European countries to join so far.

The board’s charter goes on to set out a “partnership” that would be even less accountable than the old United Nations security council and even less democratic than any publicly listed company whose CEO is attending Davos.

It has potential as an instrument for building peace in Gaza, but risks failure if its scope becomes too diluted. And Davos itself risks losing credibility as a place where people “make sense of global challenges and move the world forward together”, if the search for a new world order becomes the celebration of one single man.

I have been to Davos several times. It’s certainly not one of the most prestigious ski resorts of the Swiss Alps. And this year, more than ever, I have felt increasingly sceptical about its capacity as a forum for generating the ideas that the world desperately needs to make sense of those global challenges.

Out of about 3,000 delegates, less than one out of ten seems to be under 30, to my eye. The gender balance is not good either. There are lots of Americans and most pay expensive attendance fees. It’s a world in which power lines are not clearly drawn unless you are in the know.

The Board of Peace is far more transparent when it comes to asserting where the power lies. Trump is expressly nominated by the charter as the chairman for life. He is the only one who can invite states to become members – and revoke their membership. He alone nominates his successor. He holds a veto over any decision.

At the security council, this is a power held by the five nations that won the second world war. Trump may continue to serve even if he is no longer president of the US. Nobody may, of course, seek to dismiss the chairman, although the charter graciously acknowledges that a removal may happen in case of “incapacity” of the supreme leader, if the other members of the board agree unanimously.

This is more power than most modern dictators can claim. Putin has to win elections, and Xi Jinping is nominated by a party. It is more power than even Roman emperors, who were formally designated by the senate (and in reality chosen by the army). Trump has proposed a document that hands him powers of which Augustus himself could not even dream.

What is striking is that most EU member states are “considering” the invitation to join. Some are even said to be trying to work out how they would navigate conflicts such a move would present with their own national constitutions or with the EU treaties (it should be obvious to any student of law that there is no such possibility for a self-declared liberal democracy).

It would be catastrophic if they did. They would be agreeing that an international organisation based on the unaccountable leadership of one single individual could be a starting point for constructing a new world order.

Trump’s advisers are right when they write in the charter that “too often the approaches to most of the global problems foster perpetual dependency, and institutionalise crisis rather than leading people beyond it”. We need to make sure that international organisations are rewarded according to their ability to solve problems and not just manage them endlessly. Yet this requires more accountability and participation – not less. We need proposals that are creative but serious.

I am sure that many have doubts about the World Economic Forum becoming the stage for the never-ending show of the producer of The Apprentice.

Francesco Grillo is affiliated with Vision, the think tank

– ref. Donald Trump’s Board of Peace signed at Davos – key points I took away from my visit to the ski resort – https://theconversation.com/donald-trumps-board-of-peace-signed-at-davos-key-points-i-took-away-from-my-visit-to-the-ski-resort-274140

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael Richardson, Professor of Animal Development, Leiden University

Over the past few years, studies have suggested that plastic particles from bottles, food packaging and waste have been detected in human blood, lungs, placentas, arteries and even the brain. But a recent investigation by the Guardian suggests that some of these claims may be less robust than they first appeared.

The idea that tiny fragments of plastic might be accumulating in human bodies is unsettling. This concern stems largely from evidence that nanoplastics – the very smallest plastic fragments – can harm animal embryos and human cells grown in the laboratory. Slightly larger particles, called microplastics, are not known to be as harmful to living things when ingested. At least, we are not aware of any studies to this effect.

The Guardian report found that some scientists think that these reports of plastics in the human body may be false alarms. They are not suggesting any scientific misconduct. Rather, they suggest that the tissue samples were unintentionally contaminated in the laboratory or, in another example, that natural body fat in the samples produced readings that looked like plastic.

For instance, in February 2025, the journal Nature Medicine published a paper in which the authors suggested “a trend of increasing MNP [microplastics and nanoplastics] concentrations in the brain and liver”. But in November 2025, the same journal published a letter from another group of scientists criticising the methods used in that original paper.

Controversies such as this raise an awkward question: are small plastic particles really present throughout the human body, or is the science still too uncertain to support such claims?

Plastic pollution in our environment is not in dispute. Small plastic particles are everywhere, and so exposure is inevitable. However, detecting these particles, especially nanoparticles, in human tissue is no easy task and typically requires advanced analytical tools.

Most studies follow a similar path. A biological sample, such as blood or tissue, is collected as a biopsy during surgery or at a postmortem. The sample is then analysed using sensitive instruments designed to identify plastics based on their chemical fingerprints.

Contamination is a major challenge. Plastic fibres and fragments are everywhere: in laboratory air, operating theatres, clothing and equipment. Most problematically, plastic particles are probably in disposable labware, such as syringes, pipettes and centrifuge tubes – the very equipment used to process the tissue samples.

Even tiny amounts of plastic contaminants can overwhelm a signal when researchers are looking for extremely small particles in equally small numbers.

Standard practice in analytics is to run blank samples alongside real ones, or use tissue samples that are less likely to contain plastics (such as chicken embryos sealed inside the egg) to show how much background contamination is in the laboratory. Critics argue that some studies did not always compare the human samples with such “controls”.

We have to remember that the studies criticised by some scientists in the Guardian article were sincere attempts to answer an urgent question in a rapidly growing field. Regardless of the particular debate over each study criticised, the issues raised highlight that the entire field of detecting microplastics inside the human body is still very new, and many teams are working hard to find the best analytical techniques.

Disagreement and correction are part of how science works, and controversies are to be expected — especially when a topic attracts such intense public attention.

Scientists may be studying the wrong type of plastic particle

As noted earlier, small plastic particles fall into two broad categories: microplastics (typically the size of pollen grains) and the much smaller nanoplastics (the size of some viruses). Microplastics are fairly easy to detect, but nanoplastics are so small that only the most advanced techniques can identify them.

Most studies reporting plastic particles in the human body have focused on microplastics because they are easier to detect. Yet nanoplastics may be far more relevant to human health. Nanoplastics can cross biological barriers, are toxic to human cells grown in petri dishes and, in studies we have conducted, have been shown to harm developing embryos in animal studies.

Nanoplastics can also be taken up by cells, causing cellular damage or cell death. By contrast, microplastics are mostly too large to be taken up into cells.

This does not mean that microplastics are harmless, however. It is at least possible that they are recognised as foreign by the immune system and cause inflammation, although more research is needed to explore this possibility. Microplastics can also act like tiny sponges, soaking up toxic chemicals, such as persistent organic pollutants, from the environment and potentially carrying them into the body.

Controversies about the true risks posed by small plastic particles may create the false impression that the entire field is in question – which it is not. That is why researchers who work on measurement methods have been especially vocal about the need for higher standards. The good news is that those standards are improving quickly.

Laboratories are becoming more aware of contamination risks. Multiple analytical techniques are increasingly being used on the same samples to cross-check results. Hopefully, researchers will be able to develop standard operating procedures for analysing microplastics in human tissues and other biological samples.

If you have read alarming headlines about small plastic particles, the current state of knowledge calls for caution rather than panic. There is no clear evidence yet that large amounts of plastic are building up in human organs, or that reported increases over time reflect real biological trends rather than methodological errors.

At the same time, it may be sensible to reduce everyday exposure to plastic particles where practical. We can try to avoid food and drink that has come into contact with plastic packaging or containers, improve indoor ventilation, and use simple water filtration, such as charcoal filters, to reduce exposure.

The intense debate about these studies may feel unsettling, but it reflects an emerging scientific field finding its footing. As methods improve and human tissues are tested more rigorously, the picture will become clearer. What matters most is that claims about plastics in the human body are backed by robust evidence.

Michael Richardson receives funding from Nederlands Wetenschappelijk Organisatie (Duch Government Funding Agency).

Le Yang receives funding from China Scholarship Council and Nederlands Wetenschappelijke Organisatie (Dutch Government Funding Agency) .

– ref. Questions are being raised about microplastics studies – here’s what’s solid science and what isn’t – https://theconversation.com/questions-are-being-raised-about-microplastics-studies-heres-whats-solid-science-and-what-isnt-273511

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

In the summer of 1959, a group of American soldiers began carving trenches in the Greenland ice sheet. Those trenches would become the snow-covered tunnels of Camp Century, a secret Arctic research base powered by a nuclear reactor.

It was located about 150 miles inland from Thule, now Pituffik, a large American military base set up in north-western Greenland after a military agreement with Denmark during world war two.

Camp Century operated for six years, during which time the scientists based there managed to drill a mile down to collect a unique set of ice cores. But by 1966, Camp Century had been abandoned, deemed too expensive and difficult to maintain.

Today, Donald Trump’s territorial ambitions for Greenland continue to cause concern and confusion in Europe, particularly for Denmark and Greenlanders themselves, who insist their island is not for sale.

One of the attractions of Greenland is the gleam of its rich mineral wealth, particularly rare earth minerals. Now that Greenland’s ice sheet is melting due to global warming, will this make the mineral riches easier to get at?

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we talk to Paul Bierman, a geologist and expert on Greenland’s ice at the University of Vermont in the US. He explains why the history of what happened to Camp Century – and the secrets of its ice cores, misplaced for decades, but now back under the microscope – help us to understand why it’s not that simple.

Listen to the interview with Paul Bierman on The Conversation Weekly podcast. You can also read article by him about the history of US involvement in Greenland and the difficulty of mining on the island.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Gemma Ware is the executive producer.

Newsclips in this episode from New York Times Podcasts, the BBC and NBC News.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.

Paul Bierman receives funding from the US National Science Foundation and the University of Vermont Gund Institute for Environment

– ref. What a US military base lost under Greenland’s ice sheet reveals about the island’s real strategic importance – https://theconversation.com/what-a-us-military-base-lost-under-greenlands-ice-sheet-reveals-about-the-islands-real-strategic-importance-274067

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Neville Morley, Professor in Classics, Ancient History, Religion, and Theology, University of Exeter

In his speech to this year’s World Economic Forum at Davos, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney mourned the demise of international cooperation by evoking an authority from ancient Greece.

“It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must. And this aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable, as the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself.”

Journalists and academics from Denmark, Greece and the United States have quoted the same line from the ancient Greek historian when discussing Donald Trump’s demand for Greenland. It is cited as inspiration for his adviser Stephen Miller’s aggressive foreign policy approach, not least towards Venezuela.

In blogs and social media, the fate of Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have been interpreted through the same frame. It’s clearly difficult to contemplate today’s world and not react as W.H. Auden did to the collapse of the old order in 1939: “Exiled Thucydides knew.”

The paradox of the “strong do what they can” line is that it’s understood in radically different ways. On the one hand, it’s presented as a description of the true nature of the world (against naive liberals) and as a normative statement (the weak should submit).

On the other hand, it’s seen as an image of the dark authoritarian past we hoped was behind us, and as a condemnation of unfettered power. All these interpretations claim the authority of Thucydides.

That is a powerful imprimatur.

Thucydides’ insistence on the importance of seeking out the truth about the past, rather than accepting any old story, grounded his claim that such inquiry would help readers understand present and future events.

As a result, in the modern era he has been praised both as the forerunner of critical scientific historiography and as a pioneering political theorist. The absence of anything much resembling theoretical rules in his text has not stopped people from claiming to identify them.

The strong/weak quote is a key example. It comes from the Melian dialogue from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. In 416BC, an Athenian force arrived at the neutral island of Melos and demanded its surrender. The Melian leaders asked to negotiate, and Thucydides presents a fictional reconstruction of the subsequent exchange.

The quote comes from the beginning, when the Athenians stipulated that they would not claim any right to seize Melos, other than the power to do so, and conversely would not listen to any arguments from principle. “Questions of justice apply only to those equal in power,” they stated bluntly. “Otherwise, such things as are possible, the superior exact and the weak give up.”

Within modern international relations theory, this is sometimes interpreted as the first statement of the realist school of thought.

Scholars like John Mearsheimer claim that Thucydides identified the basic principle of realist theory that, in an “anarchic” world, international law applies only if it’s in powerful states’ strategic interest, and otherwise might makes right. The fate of the Melians, utterly destroyed after they foolishly decided to resist, reinforces the lesson.

But these are the words of characters in Thucydides’ narrative, not of Thucydides himself. We cannot simply assume that Thucydides believed that “might makes right” is the true nature of the world, or that he intended his readers to draw that conclusion.

The Athenians themselves may not have believed it, since their goal was to intimidate the Melians into surrendering without a fight. More importantly, Thucydides and his readers knew all about the disastrous Athenian expedition to Sicily the following year, which showed the serious practical limits to the “want, take, have” mentality.

So, we shouldn’t take this as a realist theoretical proposition. But if Thucydides intended instead simply to depict imperialist arrogance, teach “pride comes before a fall”, or explore how Athenian attitudes led to catastrophic miscalculation, he could have composed a single speech.

His choice of dialogue shows that things are more complicated, and not just about Athens. He is equally interested in the psychology of the “weak”, the Melians’ combination of pleading, bargaining, wishful thinking and defiance, and their ultimate refusal to accept the Athenian argument.

This doesn’t mean that the Melian arguments are correct, even if we sympathise with them more. Their thinking can be equally problematic. Perhaps they have a point in suggesting that if they give in immediately, they lose all hope, “but if we resist you then there is still hope we may not be destroyed”.

Their belief that the gods will help them “because we are righteous men defending ourselves against aggression”, however, is naive at best. The willingness of the ruling clique to sacrifice the whole city to preserve their own position must be questioned.

The back and forth of dialogue highlights conflicting world views and values, and should prompt us to consider our own position. What is the place of justice in an anarchic world? Is it right to put sovereignty above people’s lives? How does it feel to be strong or weak?

It’s worthwhile engaging with the whole episode, not just isolated lines – or even trying to find your own way through the debate to a less bad outcome.

The English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, introducing his classic 1629 translation, noted that Thucydides never offered rules or lessons but was nevertheless “the most politic historiographer that ever writ”. Modern readers have too often taken isolated quotes out of context, assumed that they represent the author’s own views and claimed them as timeless laws. Hobbes saw Thucydides as presenting complex situations that we need to puzzle out.

It’s remarkable that an author famed for his depth and complexity gets reduced to soundbites. But the contradictions in how those soundbites are interpreted – the way that Thucydides presents us with a powerful and controversial idea but doesn’t tell us what to think about it – should send us back to the original.

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Neville Morley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Mark Carney invoked Thucydides at Davos – what people get wrong about this ancient Greek writer’s take on power – https://theconversation.com/mark-carney-invoked-thucydides-at-davos-what-people-get-wrong-about-this-ancient-greek-writers-take-on-power-274086