The liberal international order is slowly coming apart. Its collapse could be sudden and irreversible.

America has boomed even as its trade war with China has escalated. Germany has withstood the loss of Russian gas supplies without suffering an economic disaster. War in the Middle East has brought no oil shock. Missile-firing Houthi rebels have barely touched the global flow of goods.

This is pure copium lol

America has boomed even as its trade war with China has escalated. Germany has withstood the loss of Russian gas supplies without suffering an economic disaster. War in the Middle East has brought no oil shock. Missile-firing Houthi rebels have barely touched the global flow of goods.

Literally almost all of this is wrong

where might is right and war is once again the resort of great powers.

gestures vaguely in the direction of the tens of millions of corpses piled up by western powers since the end of ww2

A subsidy war is under way, as countries seek to copy China’s and America’s vast state backing for green manufacturing.

This is bad or a worrying sign?

The return of Donald Trump to the White House, with his zero-sum worldview, would continue the erosion of institutions and norms.

Donald Trump is the norm and perfectly represents the values of liberalism and its fetid institutions.

But the achievements of the 1990s and 2000s—the high point of liberal capitalism—are unmatched in history. Hundreds of millions escaped poverty in China as it integrated into the global economy.

Schrodinger's china. Authoritarian and communist when libs bray for more sanctions and tech wars, liberal and capitalist when it comes to its undeniable economic achievements.

The latest research shows that the era of the “Washington consensus”, which today’s leaders hope to replace, was one in which poor countries began to enjoy catch-up growth, closing the gap with the rich world.

Virtually all of this growth occurred under anti-liberal economic regimes and Eastern Europe recovering from the liberal imposed collapse of the 1990s. The track record of liberal economic policies is a steaming pile of dogshit, and the only reason the liberal political order is collapsing at all is because people cannot stand the smell anymore.

Only liberals can achieve the miraculous feat of being handed a whole world free of major enemies and squander it in less than 30 years.

Without trust and an institutional framework for co-operation, it will become harder for countries to deal with the 21st century’s challenges, from containing an arms race in artificial intelligence to collaborating in space. Problems will be tackled by clubs of like-minded countries. That can work, but will more often involve coercion and resentment, as with Europe’s carbon border-tariffs or China’s feud with the IMF. When co-operation gives way to strong-arming, countries have less reason to keep the peace.

True, so you should do more to preserve this order, no? Instead of resorting to coersion to solve all problems?