, Columnist
It Looks Like a Trump-Putin-Xi World, But It's Really Orwell's
How the Alaska summit reflects the superpower carve-up foretold in ‘1984.’
Shades of Yalta hang over the Trump-Putin meeting.
Photographer: Bettmann/Getty
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Vladimir Putin’s encounter with Donald Trump in Anchorage summons bad memories of past summits in Munich or Yalta, in which the destiny of smaller Eastern European nations was decided by greater powers without their participation. But a fictional model from the postwar era seems more prophetic.
George Orwell’s 1984, written in 1948, tells of a world divided into three great powers. They are: