The New World Disorder

“New temperature records have been set and broken this summer; the land is parched by drought and forest fires are raging. The debt of advanced economies is approaching historically high levels. Cuts to medical and food aid, particularly by the United States, have caused preventable deaths and fuelled the spread of diseases, one of which, sooner or later, could turn into a new pandemic. Artificial intelligence continues its rapid and unregulated rise, threatening jobs, security and, in the bleakest projections, human existence itself. Revisionist powers are flouting rules and norms with impunity. Voters are angry and volatile. Slow, measured and necessarily discreet diplomacy – which builds trust and understanding – has given way to a performative and brazen style, better suited to the attention span of TikTok users or a school playground. The Uppsala Conflict Data Programme recorded 65 state-based conflicts last year, the highest number since 1946. The major powers find themselves mired in asymmetric wars with countries that are making the most of new technologies. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, which was supposed to be won within a few days, is now dragging on into its fifth year. Iran, using cheap, mass-produced drones to attack American forces and allies, has gained – perhaps permanent – control of a crucial global trade corridor, drastically reducing US missile stocks and trapping President Trump in a war of his own making. A world war is not inevitable, but the threat of a catastrophic conflict between major, well-armed powers is closer than it has been for decades.”

This is the assessment made by Canadian historian Margaret Macmillan, who has taught at both the University of Toronto and the University of Oxford and has studied numerous periods of crisis around the world. Her article was published in the New York Times on 3 September, the first in a new series, ‘The Disorder of the New World’, in which the newspaper will examine the dissolution of the post-war international system and the way in which various countries are adapting, whilst America steps aside.

The first recommendation made by the Canadian scholar – but echoed by all scholars in the field – is not to ignore the warning signs. We must be able to recognise the signs that point to the new disorder, but – I would add – we must also understand what the positive aspects of this new disorder are, whether a new order can emerge from it, and what form that order might take.

Many years ago, a well-known economist explained very clearly – and not entirely in jest – that there would be a new global economic crisis once those who had lived through the one that began with the Wall Street crash (1929–1933) had passed away. The crisis that began in 2008 proves that this prediction was correct.

A second reason for identifying the right symptoms and then making the correct diagnosis is that this new disorder is accompanied by a high degree of unpredictability and uncertainty – a factor that does not only affect the world’s leading power, the United States of America, where the public authorities, which have served as a model for the world for at least two centuries, appear to be governed by contradictory, arbitrary and unpredictable behaviour.

First and foremost, a distinction must be drawn between unrest occurring between states and unrest occurring within states, and between ancient phenomena manifesting in new ways and new phenomena manifesting in old ways. One example is that of wars. World history is punctuated by wars, but today these are waged in ways that differ from the past. Once they were fought with weapons; now they are also waged through the manipulation of information, to exert pressure on public opinion. Once wars were fought on the battlefield, between people; today they are fought between ‘unmanned’ military organisations.

The second key symptom is the failure to tackle the most urgent challenge – the environmental one – which can only be addressed by states working together, yet for which emerging economies blame those who have exploited the environment for their own development and argue that it is now their turn, a right they are unwilling to relinquish. Consequently, global equilibrium requires many sacrifices and many concessions.

A third factor contributing to the crisis is the shifting balance of power amongst the world’s major players. What was to unfold over the past two centuries had been predicted in 1835 by Alexis Tocqueville, who wrote: ‘There are today on earth two great peoples who, having set out from different points, seem to be advancing towards the same goal: they are the Russians and the Anglo-Americans. Both have grown up in obscurity; and, whilst the eyes of men were fixed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the forefront of nations, and the world has learnt, almost at the same time, of their birth and their greatness. All other peoples seem to have reached, more or less, the limits that nature has set for them, and have nothing left but to preserve what they have; but the Americans and the Russians are growing, whilst all the others stand still or advance only with great effort; they alone march with an easy and rapid stride along a path whose end the eye cannot yet discern. The American struggles against the obstacles nature throws in his path; the Russian is grappling with other men. One battles the desert and barbarism; the other, civilisation armed to the teeth: thus the American’s conquests are achieved with the farmer’s ploughshare, those of the Russian with the soldier’s sword. To achieve his aim, the former relies on self-interest and allows the strength and reason of individuals to act, without directing them. The latter, in a sense, concentrates all the power of society in a single man. For one, freedom is the principal means of action; for the other, servitude. Their starting points are different, their paths diverge; yet both seem called by a secret design of Providence to hold, one day, the destinies of half the world in their hands” (A. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, in Id., Political Writings, edited by N. Matteucci, Vol. II, Turin, Utet, 1968, pp. 483–484).

Now the situation has changed radically, for three reasons: because the United States, too, relies on servitude as its primary means of action and concentrates all of society’s power in a single man; because both imperial powers are clashing, in different parts of the world, with far smaller powers without managing to prevail over them; because the global landscape has expanded and new forces have entered the fray, as Branco Milanovic most recently observed: “Global disorder speaks to these two developments that have marked the zenith and decline of neoliberalism worldwide: the rise of Asia, and of China in particular, and the emergence of new plutocratic elites in the United States and China. These new ruling classes owe their very existence – and their power – to global neoliberalism, and it was their own success that created the conditions for their decline. The actions of a Trump or a Xi Jinping, and of many other leaders, are – despite what they and their supporters probably think – reactions against the winners of neoliberal globalisation and their excesses. These reactions have brought one historical period to an end and ushered in another, the contours of which are only now beginning to emerge vaguely” (Branco Milanovic, World Disorder: The United States, China and the New Capitalism, Rome–Bari, Laterza, 2026).

The fourth reason for the crisis is this: for the first time in world history, global powers have emerged that have no public roots – the Big Tech companies, private organisations that have arisen as universal powers, exercising functions once carried out by states, and sometimes operating in concert with states, as demonstrated by the Guillou case. Their precursors were the East India Companies. This development also has a positive side, because the major digital powers need a peaceful, barrier-free, ‘flat’ world.

Luisa Torchia observed that digital power has three characteristics. “Given the raw material it uses and the tools through which it ‘processes’ it, digital power can be defined, first and foremost, as a reductionist power, because the aggregation of data is aimed at reducing differences and bringing them within a general framework whose value depends to a large extent on the fact that variations are, as far as possible, suppressed or rendered irrelevant (with a consequent effect of emphasising and polarising the few alternatives). The profiling mechanisms underpinning recommendation systems – and therefore advertising and guidance towards goods or services to be purchased – are precisely designed to reduce individual diversity to a specific profile and to place each individual in a box that records, but also defines, their orientations, preferences and choices. […] Secondly, these are systems based on the ability to measure and classify data without considering their quality or significance, with the dual consequence of attributing equal weight to verified data and to data lacking reliability, whilst simultaneously lending a presumption of – hypothetical, unproven and, indeed, often illusory – objectivity to the results obtained. Political choices, prejudices and opinions are thus ‘mixed together’ and cloaked in a neutrality and objectivity that is only apparent, as has repeatedly emerged when attempts have been made to take political decisions using automated tools (to cite only the most famous cases, examined in a later chapter: to whom to provide certain services, how to determine the sentence for a crime, how to identify dangerous individuals or prevent potential crimes). Thirdly, the digital sector emphasises its uniqueness and distinctiveness and demands to be treated differently from any other industry, category of business, or type of product or service, citing the difference between online and offline life. Behaviours which in real life constitute a crime, or at least have significant consequences in terms of liability, should, on the other hand, be free from any constraint or control in the digital sphere, thus evading the law as well as morality and ethics” (Luisa Torchia, Potere digitale, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2026, pp. 20–21).

The latest sign of crisis is the breakdown of that unity we call the West, which had established an Atlantic foundation, uniting Europe and America across the Atlantic – just as the Roman Empire united Europe with North Africa across the Mediterranean – and which had branches extending to distant countries such as Japan, Canada and Australia.

The factors contributing to the crisis between states are compounded by those within states. The first of these is the erosion of mature democracies, resulting from the ruling classes’ inability to understand that a multi-class state, by its very nature, leads to a pluralisation of power and requires a capacity for coordination that the political classes are unable to ensure, resulting in disaffection amongst the ‘real country’.

At the same time, the very foundations of states are becoming more precarious. It was once said that the state consists of a population, a territory and sovereign power. Today, populations are increasingly unstable. One need only consider that the number of Italians abroad stands at 6,604,000, whilst the number of foreigners in Italy is 5,560,000.

Another sign is the ruling classes’ inability to guide society and provide it with objectives, whilst at the same time seeking to maintain its support, not least because the viewpoint expressed by Giuseppe Bottai in the 1930s is now outdated; he observed that ‘the crisis of the modern state cannot be overcome without the economic, political and moral unification of society within the state: this was achieved by the Fascist state’ (G. Bottai, Esperienza corporativa (1929–1934), Florence, Vallecchi, 1934, Part I, March 1930).

A fourth sign is highlighted by the economist Acemoglu, who argues that “mass manufacturing has lost ground, the share of the services sector has increased, and new digital technologies have emerged. Together with globalisation, these technologies have severed the link between corporate growth and wage growth, making shared prosperity more difficult to achieve. The most pervasive transformation has been the growing importance of knowledge – that is, the cognitive skills acquired through higher education. In my view, the rise in the social power of the educated classes has played a crucial role in triggering the crisis” (Daron Acemoglu, “La democrazia ce la farà”, interview with Maurizio Ferrera, in Corriere della Sera, La lettura, 6 September 2026).

A fifth sign of internal crisis is that identified by Cass Sunstein, according to whom serious threats arise from a government unbound by the constraints of the separation of powers. This, he observes, is an umbrella concept encompassing six distinct separations, each with its own logic and typical violations: the legislature cannot exercise executive power; the legislature cannot exercise judicial power; the executive may not exercise legislative power; the executive may not exercise judicial power; the judiciary may not exercise legislative power; the judiciary may not exercise executive power. These six separations do not all protect the same interest: some safeguard individual liberty (no one shall be punished except by a judge, on the basis of a law not written for them); others safeguard self-government (general rules are made by the representative assembly, not by the head of state); and still others safeguard the efficiency and accountability of the administration. Above all, the threats are not symmetrical: each era sees different violations prevail – there have been times when the danger was an overreaching legislature, others when it was overambitious courts – and our era has one main culprit (Cass R. Sunstein, Separation of Powers: How to Preserve Liberty in Troubled Times, The MIT Press, February 2026).

The solution identified by the Canadian scholar from whom I took my cue is to embark on a laborious process of building something new, drawing on what she calls ‘middle powers’ such as Canada, Australia and Japan – to which the European Union might perhaps be added. But are intellectuals in these countries merely specialists, each living shut away in their own ivory tower?

It is a long journey, and to undertake it, we must also listen to other voices, such as those of Amitav Acharya, "The History and Future of the World Order: Why Global Civilisation Will Survive the Decline of the West", Rome, Fazi, 2026, and Alexander Stubb, "The Triangle of Power: From Western Hegemony to the New World Order", Venice, Marsilio, 2026.