April 17, 2026

On April 12th, 2026, the 81st anniversary of the death of President Franklin Roosevelt, we discussed in the dialogue above, the current perilous state of world affairs. Presently, the Western political-financial elite, which sometimes goes by the name of the rules-based international order, is in disarray, collapsing. It is displaying a complete incompetence in dealing with the multiple crises facing civilization.

We should not insult the concept of genuine strategy by using it to describe President Trump’s conduct in his preemptive, unilateral regime change war against Iran that is entering its eighth week. True political strategy comes from a vision of the future, an idea in one’s mind, of how to improve conditions in the world. President Trump’s decisions are made on a day-to-day, sometimes hour to hour, in a haphazard manner, with no uplifting vision for the future of humankind. His lack of strategic thinking is not only endangering the world with the potential for new and expanded wars, it is also causing harm to the citizens of the United States,

Before the United States even entered World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt had developed in his mind a Grand Design for the world following the defeat of the Third Reich. A critical element of his strategy  was to provide economic assistance to the less developed nations, to assist them in raising their standard of living. This was to be accomplished through long-term development credits with the creation of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), known as the World Bank today. President Roosevelt understood correctly that unless conditions of life improved for all people of every nation, we would never achieve lasting peace and security. That is why he made the IBRD the essential feature of his Brenton Woods Conference of July 1944. However, President Roosevelt’s policies, and his vision for the post-war world died with him on April 12th, 1945, even before Brenton Woods agreement was officially enacted. For eighty years, with some notable exceptions, the world has been dominated by the rules based-order with its diseased zero-sum mentality.

Today we have a collapse of the global system, which has ruled the world since the end of World War II. We desperately need a new paradigm to govern relations between nations. A paradigm based on development, which is in the common interest of all nations, as President Xi Jinping has emphasized, all nations have a shared common future. Therefore, it is incumbent on the so called advanced sector nations to align themselves with the needs of the majority of the world that is designated as the Global South. These nations of the Global South represent the majority of the world’s population, occupy the majority of the globe’s land mass, and are endowed with the largest concentration of natural resources and critical and rare earth minerals.

It should be obvious to every leader, that it is in a country’s national self-interest to eradicate poverty in every nation, as President Roosevelt well understood.

Read below my earlier posts on this topic.

• Presidents Roosevelt and Xi Would Have Agreed on Developing the Global South
• West In Worse Crisis Since WW II: An Opportunity For Change?
• Franklin Roosevelt Intended to Industrialize the ‘Global South’: The Case of Ethiopia
• Trump Failing in Regime Change War Against Iranian Nation State
• Trump Adopts Neocon Regime Change: Was His MAGA A Hoax?
• Tariffs Do Not Create Economic Wealth: Trump Is Wrong!

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for over 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica