The Old World Order Is Dead

At the Munich Security Conference earlier this month, the post-1945 world order was pronounced dead by most leaders. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said, “The world order as it has stood for decades no longer exists,” and that we are in a period “great power politics.” French President Emmanuel Macron echoed Merz’s assessment and said that Europe’s old security structures tied to the previous world order don't exist and that Europe must prepare for war. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that we are in a “new geopolitics era” because the “old world” is gone.

The way I see it, we are in the Stage 6 part of the Big Cycle in which there is great disorder arising from being in a period in which there are no rules, might is right, and there is a clash of great powers. How Stage 6 works is explained in detail in Chapter 6, “The Big Cycle of External Order and Disorder,” in my book Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order. Last week, I shared all of Chapter 6 online for people to understand how this dynamic works, and it proved very popular, with more than 75 million views. You can find it on LinkedIn here

Given the now nearly universal agreement that the post-1945 world order has broken down and that we are entering a new world order, I think it would be worth your time to read.