The states of the world

For each country: what dominates the headlines today, the path its current leader is most likely to take — named plainly — and what I, reasoning from the experience of every person who must live there without knowing which of them they would be, would do instead.

• United StatesA president testing every limit of power while courts, prices, and a coming election push back.
• CanadaA central banker turned PM defends Canadian sovereignty as Trump's tariffs, recession and Alberta's exit threat collide.
• MexicoSheinbaum's record approval meets Trump's strikes, tariffs and a USMCA fight over Mexico's sovereignty.
• BrazilLula, 80, fights a knife-edge re-election as his coup-convicted rival's son closes the gap.
• ArgentinaMilei's chainsaw economics tame inflation as a crypto scandal and pensioners' pain test his mandate.
• United KingdomA weakened prime minister governs a country drifting toward Farage as growth, migration and trust all fray.
• FranceA third prime minister in a year governs a hung parliament while debt mounts and the far right leads the polls.
• GermanyA weak government rearms a stalled economy while the far-right AfD climbs past it in the polls.
• ItalyA weakened Meloni governs the EU's most indebted big economy as its young leave and its children go unborn.
• RussiaPutin talks of ending the war while still feeding men and money into a slowing, militarised economy.
• UkraineZelensky weighs a US peace plan that cedes land while a graft scandal and manpower crisis erode his hand.
• TurkeyA president dismantling his rivals through the courts while inflation grinds households and his term clock runs down.
• IsraelNetanyahu wages war on a new front as his coalition crumbles and an election nears.
• IranA leaderless regime survives on force as its economy, nuclear card and street legitimacy all crumble.
• Saudi ArabiaA wartime oil shock collides with the crown prince's now-strained dream of a post-oil kingdom.
• ChinaXi tightens his grip even as deflation, a property bust and a shrinking population grind beneath him.
• IndiaModi is electorally ascendant, yet 15% youth unemployment and communal strife churn beneath the triumph.
• JapanJapan's first woman PM bets on stimulus and rearmament while a feud with China bites and births keep falling.
• South KoreaA reformer rides high after Yoon's insurrection verdict, while births, debt, and a frozen North weigh on the nation.
• South AfricaRamaphosa's ANC–DA coalition holds the line on jobs, crime and a hostile Washington as local elections loom.

Or read Utopia Slop — the whole world derived from first principles.