‘Hell hath no fury like a superpower in decline’

By Saeed Naqvi In 1952, like a bolt from the blue, came UP Chief Minister, Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant’s order abolishing zamindari (landlordism). The abrupt drop in prestige and lifestyle caused a relative across the Ganga to hide his arsenal of a few rifles and 12 bore shotguns along with boxes of Eley cartridges with LG or Large-Goose loads.
Whenever courtiers in rags, with some previous pique, stoked his fragile ego with stories of rampant lawlessness in the villages because “huzoor’s” power had ended, “huzoor” would come out with his preferred shotgun. This sad, fake “dadagiri” (gangsterism) lasted as long as the boxes of Eleys did.
This trans Ganga tragic hero came to mind when my eye fall on a bold headline of a piece written by Graham E Fuller, Ex high CIA officer, on the aggressive style of Biden-Blinken early outings in Foreign Affairs: “Hell Hath No Fury Like A Superpower in decline” said the headline.
Fuller writes: “The US leadership must have set some kind of new record in managing to personally insult the powers of the world within 48 hours of each other in these early days of Biden administration’s Foreign Policy. President Biden called, Vladimir Putin a “killer” and lacking “a soul”. Blinken was equally insulting on China.