Embed Notice

1/ What a time to be alive!

In the US, Trump is re-elected, and in Europe, governments are collapsing (Germany), teetering on the edge of collapse (France), heading toward a last-ditch centrist coalition that nobody believes in (Austria), or have already flipped to the far-right (Hungary, Slovakia, Italy, Netherlands).

It’s clear the liberal world order has collapsed and will not recover—not only at the periphery, where it was always fragile and embroiled in wars (hence the easy alignment of Harris and Cheney), but also at the center. At the periphery, which no longer accepts the status of periphery and has become present in many forms in the center, few will shed tears—except the Ukrainians and, possibly, the Taiwanese. The pious bromides about human rights and a rules-based order can no longer provide justification and soft power, with the genocide in Gaza the final nail in the coffin.

At the center, the order collapsed because of its own contradictions. Though there are many, they manifest themselves in different ways, but I think they boil down to the neoliberal state being unable to manage two really deep transformations.