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The writer is the author, most recently, of ‘Homelands: a personal history of Europe’
A poem washed us from the epically canadian viewer, Leonard Cohen ends up with the words: “Oh and one more thing / you won’t like / what comes after / America.”
As we spend the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, every day brings further evidence than an extremely long international order led by the US are now trying to create what can succeed. A new polar new order? Spheres of impact? A version around the world of the 19th century European concert? However, the most reliable response is a prolonged and dangerous period of global disorder.
Of course there has never been a golden era of the universal liberal international order. But in large areas of the world, in Europe, Asia and the Ocean, there was a security and economic order led by Leviathan Liberal, after Princeon John Ikenberry’s scholar called the US after 1945. This order, which reached its zenith at the beginning of this century, has fallen for some time, partly because of the other part of the other. Sh.
President Donald Trump is now destroying what remains of the building with speed and recklessly unparalleled. Even in an impossible case that American democracy emerges unsafe from the four years of the Trumpian Revolution, in terms of relations between the US and its allies, it will be “never happier in the morning again” (to quote Robert Browning’s Lost leader).
With three or potentially four important wars that are now enraged (Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Nuclear Armed India and Pakistan facing Kashmir) and stopping three-digit trade among the two largest economies in the world, who may suspect we are currently in a period of dangerous disorder? Some still hope that we will come out of it very soon, whether from a wonderful restoration of the previous order or by creating a new one. Well, let’s hope, but here are some good reasons to doubt it.
Even if a growing superpower (China) and a relatively declining superpower (sh.ba) are not fortunate to fall into the “trap of thysydides” and go to war, periods of great power shifts almost invariably bring increased international tensions. Chinese and Russia leaders have just marked the end of the European part of World War II by meeting in Moscow to reaffirm their partnership against the West. Xi Jinping even equates the “arrogant fascist forces” defeated in 1945 with “unilateralism, hegemony and today’s harassment”. (Guess who is.) Russia now has a war economy and Vladimir Putin is bowed to restore the Russian Empire as much as possible. India and Narendra Modi has its own nationalist ambitions and an obsessive hostility to Pakistan backed by the Chinese.
In addition to these great rivalry powers, there is a group of middle powers such as Turkey, Brazil and South Africa. Surprisingly, these places often see opportunities in the new disorder. They can be aligned with a great power for one purpose, another for another, all the time advancing their goals. Meanwhile, small states like those in the bay can play with and among all the great powers, such as the Egypt Bird Plover which blooms by cleaning the detritus between the crocodile teeth.
For 80 years since nuclear weapons were thrown into Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the taboo in their use has kept. But while the world looks at a major war that was waging by a nuclear Russian against Ukraine, a country that voluntarily renounced its nuclear weapons of the Soviet era in 1994 in exchange for security insurance by the US, the United Kingdom and (the darkest comedy) Russia, the fragile damn nuclear propagation.
South Korea, agoning over what Russia has promised North Korea in exchange for considerable military support against Ukraine, has an active debate on the purchase of nuclear weapons – and technology to do it. The subject is in many minds in the Middle East, as that region goes between an armed nuclear Israel and a nuclear threshold, while Europeans have begun to feel they need their nuclear umbrella.
Meanwhile, a continuous technological revolution generates new dimensions of geopolitical rivalry, including control over data, software and communication networks. He, in particular, brings the danger of a new race of weapons, more unpredictable than the Nuclear Cold War. If China can surprise the US with a deepseek, why can’t it secretly develop a deepstric? Continuous population growth and climate change will exacerbate competition for resources and pressures for mass migration.
To be safe, there are counter -acting forces. China has a significant economic interest in maintaining an open world trade system from which it has been the largest beneficiary alone. Even the most opportunistic middle powers should be afraid of the disorder made by becoming total division. There are encouraging signs of a liberal fight in Canada, Australia and Europe. Pope Leo XIV promises to “build bridges” on a troubled land.
Nothing in history is inevitable. However, those of us who believe in the ever fully feasible ideal of the international liberal international order will be well advised to assume that Cohen melancholy was right. We must actively prepare for a prolonged period of global disorder.
