THE AGE of Globalization is slowly giving way to the Age of Bifurcation.
It’s not necessarily a return to the Cold War, but the world won’t be as united as it once was in the past few decades.
The old myths and institutions that had once existed to prop up ideological liberalism, communism or developmental capitalism are being replaced those that serve a Cynical Nationalism, and if you doubt that, look at Xi Jin Ping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Donald Trump of the United States. All these men are nationalists, and in the case of the latter two, cynical pragmatists.
In contrast, globalization was inspired by delusion and hypocrisy. It was the delusional hope that by bringing China to the world trade system it would become a post-national, liberal democracy.
It was the delusional hope that humans could be transformed if they were just given the correct Universal institutions.
It was the hypocrisy that sought to turn Iraq and Afghanistan into Nordic countries, and when they failed sought to bring in millions of migrants to developed countries, presumably to transform them by exposure to Universal institutions.
All of this has failed, and the only reason the old Globalist, Universalist still cling to today, is morality. They argue that should the world split between BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and NATO+, that if nations become ethnocentric again, Machiavellian, and if countries start operating according to interests rather than universal abstractions, the old global institutions will be destroyed.
But those institutions have already lost much of their power, and in the future will likely be ignored by large powers if they don’t serve their interests. Consider China and the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) arbitration ruling for example.
Humanity, by whatever definition, has always been divided. It was a mistake to try and unite them, and now comes the correction. This correction means that there will no longer be global, universal, impartial institutions as we once understood them. Rather, we will have institutions that serve different blocs./PN
