Breaststroke for disorder as major power changes begin

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The writer is the author, more recently, of “Homelands: to Personal History of Europe”

A poem gave us the Canadian shady Canadian Canadian Leonard Cohen ends with the words: “Oh and one more / you will not like it / what comes next / America.”

When we spend the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, it brings out more evidence every day that an international order led by the United States is over. Everyone is now being searched to find out what can be successful. A new multi-flutter order? Spheres of influence? A world version of the 19th -century Europe concert? However, the most plausible response is a prolonged and dangerous period of global disorder.

Of course, there was never a golden age of universal liberal international order. But in large parts of the world, in Europe, Asia and Oceania, there was an order of security and economic directed by the “liberal leviathan”, as Princeton’s scholar, John Ikenberry, baptized the United States after 1945. This order, which reached its zenith at the beginning of this century, has been declining for some time, in part due to the increase in the rise of globalization. Directed by the United States and, in part, due to the United States Autonomous Hubristic Self -Breastus.

President Donald Trump is now demolishing what is left of the building with unmatched speed and recklessness. Even in the unlikely case that North -American Democracy comes out of four years of Trumpian revolution, in terms of relations between the United States and its allies, it will be “never again The lost leader)).

With three or even four significant wars now furor (Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Nuclear Armed India and Pakistan faced with Kashmir) and three -digit rates that stop between the two largest economies in the world, who can doubt that we are currently in a dangerous disorder period? Some expect that we will come out quite soon, either due to a miraculous restoration of the previous order or by the creation of a new one. Well, we hope, but here are several good reasons to doubt it.

Even if an increasing superpower (China) and a relatively diminishing superpower (US) cannot fall into the “Tucydides Trap” And go to war, periods of great changes in power almost invariably invariably international tensions. The leaders of China and Russia have just set the end of the European part of World War II, being in Moscow to reaffirm their collaboration against the West. Xi Jinping even equals the “arrogant fascist forces” defeated in 1945 with “unilateralism, hegemony and harassment” today. (Suppose who is.) Russia now has a war economy and Vladimir Putin leaned to restore the maximum of the Russian Empire. Narendra Modi India has its own nationalist ambitions and an obsessive enmity towards Pakistan with Chinese support.

Next to these great rival powers, there are a number of medium powers such as Turkey, Brazil and South -Africa. Amazingly, these countries often see opportunities in the new disorder. They can align with great power with one purpose, another for another, all the time advancing their own goals. In the meantime, small states like Gulf can play with and among all the great powers, such as the Egyptian bird that blooms cleaning the detritus between the crocodile teeth.

For 80 years since nuclear weapons were dropped to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the taboo in its use has maintained. But as the world watches a significant war for a nuclear armed Russia against Ukraine, a country that voluntarily abandoned its nuclear weapons of the Soviet era in 1994 in exchange for the guarantees of security of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Black Comedy) of Russia, the fragile prey against nuclear proliferation seems to be exploded.

South Korea, agonizing what Russia has promised North Korea in exchange for substantial military support against Ukraine, has an active debate on the acquisition of nuclear weapons and the technology to do so. The theme is found in many minds in the Middle East, as the region is between a nuclear weapon Israel and a nuclear threshold, while Europeans begin to feel that they need their own nuclear umbrella.

In the meantime, a continuous technological revolution generates new dimensions of geopolitical rivalry, including control over data, software and communication networks. The AI, in particular, brings the danger of a new arms race, more unpredictable than the nuclear of the Cold War. If China can surprise the United States with a Deepseek, why could you not secretly develop a Deepstrike? Continuous population growth and climate change will aggravate competition for resources and pressures for mass migration.

By the way, there are compensatory forces. China has a clear economic interest in preserving an open world trade system from which it has been the largest beneficiary. Even the most opportunistic average powers must be afraid that disorder will become total breakdown. There are encouraging signs of liberal struggle in Canada, Australia and Europe. Pope Leo XIV promises to “build bridges” in a problem with problems.

Nothing in history is inevitable. However, those of us who believe in the ideal never realizable of Liberal International Order will be advised to assume that the Melancholy Cohen was right. We should be actively preparing for a global disorder period.