Brexit, Donald Trump’s rise and Israel’s war in Gaza signal the collapse of the post-Cold War political, economic and moral order. Populism, unchecked power, geopolitical conflict and growing economic instability are pushing the global system towards breaking point.
Two anniversaries confront us. The first is the 10th anniversary of November 2016, when Donald Trump’s first election – along with the Brexit referendum a few months earlier – marked a decisive rupture in the post-Cold War world order.
The second, which passed last week, was 7 October 2023. That date not only demonstrated humanity’s enduring capacity for barbarism, but something arguably more disturbing: Israel’s response to Hamas’ massacre has laid bare just how profoundly the supposedly “civilised” world order has broken down.
When historians look back on this post-Cold War period, they are likely to reflect that there were several discrete periods. The first was from 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall until the accession of China to the WTO.
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This was a kind of neoliberal spring; the triumphant age of globalisation, liberal democracy and Francis Fukuyama’s End of History. The genocides and wars in Central Africa and the Balkans were inconvenient reminders that history had, indeed, not got the memorandum.
History returned with China’s emergence as the world’s manufacturing powerhouse and, increasingly, its creditor. An unsustainable economic imbalance emerged as Chinese savings financed Western consumption, particularly in America.
Exotic debt instruments
The resulting capital glut was…