America’s small and big mistakes pave the way for China’s rise as leader of a new multipolar world. Clumsiness in European politics could spin all out of control. Will Trump rethink?

After the AfD victory in Saxony-Anhalt, the loudest noise was French radical-right leader Marine Le Pen’s silence. She may fear that the AfD scares moderates and the French public in general, who still haven’t forgotten the Nazi invasion in WWII.

The day after the vote, Hungary expelled ten Russian diplomats, marking a shift even from the approach of the previous Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán. The UK hard right was also silent about the offspring of those who bombed London 85 years ago.

Without other European parties, the AfD, openly pro-Russia, is isolated, and the EU overall opposes it. The AfD’s victory, in other words, created a first consensus in Europe against it.

A lesson for the US?

Right after the vote, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz canceled a call with US President Donald Trump. Trump had congratulated the AfD on its win,.

The English translator of the Chinese epic, Moss Roberts, retells the points of the story and its importance for present-day China

(This is an edited version of an interview that Professor Roberts had with Joseph Harmer of the Anglo-Chinese Friendship Association.)

After I graduated and came to NYU, I began playing around with translation. I had done a few things earlier, but an editor I knew at Pantheon approached me about doing an abridged Three Kingdoms. So (my first translation) came out in 1976 and eventually led to an invitation from the Foreign Languages Press i in Beijing. That was a kind of halcyon moment in US-China relations, and so culture became a prominent bridge. I began doing the work.

I went there in 1983 and began working on the translation, and a few months later an editor from the University of California came by and wanted to do a joint publication. So that’s what eventually happened.

Relations between America and China were friendly. Ostensibly friendly, since tensions and conflict stretch back two hundred years..