Editor’s note: A little liberal for my moderate tastes but our society will do better once we realize that the old “world order” is not coming back.
“In an age of hyperconnectivity and distributed power, the divisions that once structured foreign affairs – like Communism versus Capitalism or the West versus the Rest – have broken down. Countries, now with more agency and more options, are fluid, opportunistic and contradictory in their relations. “Polyamory” is the new norm in geopolitics.
Middle powers are major players in this new landscape. And intensifying great-power coercion creates added incentive for these countries to join forces — to hang together to avoid hanging separately.
This means that the new world order might be more cooperative and fairer than its predecessor — in certain areas, at least. Progress is most likely on issues that are mostly technical in nature, including trade, public health, transnational crime and AI standards.
But security is one issue that benefits from centralized authority. Today more countries are in conflict than at any other point since World War II, the risk of another world war is rising and the list of existential threats worth considering is worryingly long.
More possibility and more peril. This is the paradox that defines the new world order. States and ideologies have risen and fallen, but the world has never seen these levels of connectivity and complexity.”
