The New World Order

After five centuries concentrated in the West and North, power is dispersing to the East and South. 

From 1990 to 2025, the share of the world’s gross domestic product held in the Group of Seven (France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan, the UK and the US) shrunk from half to a quarter, 

while the share held by China, India and Southeast Asia rose from 15% to 55%.

Trump has de facto disavowed territorial integrity, self-determination, free trade and human rights — bedrock principles America has championed for 80 years.

What Ernest Hemingway wrote about going bankrupt can also be said of the end of the rules-based international order. It happened in two ways: gradually, then suddenly.

More nations, especially developing ones, are exercising regional and even global leadership.

Poland will soon have Europe’s strongest military. Turkey has the world’s third-largest diplomatic footprint. Qatar has become an essential conflict mediator. 

The second trend is an ongoing shift in power from states toward companies, NGOs and other so-called non-state actors. 

For the better part of the past 100 years, countries formed relatively stable blocs based on ideology, political systems or culture. Communism versus Capitalism, the West versus the Rest, the Clash of Civilizations.

So what comes now? Many think something far worse: “The Great Unraveling,” a “New World Disorder,” or mere anarchy and greed.

It has become fashionable to quote Thucydides.

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/search?q=Thucydides

The Strong Do What They Can and the Weak Suffer What They Must

https://ces.fas.harvard.edu/news/2025/08/the-strong-do-what-they-can-and-the-weak-suffer-what-they-must

Though often proclaimed dead, globalization appears to have weathered populism and a pandemic. 

Gordon LaForge Bloomberg April 10, 2026 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-10/the-new-world-order-will-be-more-dangerous-and-more-cooperative