Disorder

Over the past few decades leaders like Trump, Orban, and Bolsonaro have ridden a wave of popular outrage to rise to power. But what came first: the Neo-Populists or the era of Global Enduring Disorder?    In this episode we chart the rise of the Neo-Populists, their impact on global order, and what we can do to stop them...

It has long been held that the primary disorderers on the global stage are China and Russia. Let’s not forget, though, that medium powers, such as Iran, are also able to majorly disorder geopolitics. Meanwhile, imploded post-conflict countries like Libya are capable of injecting serious financial and jihadi contagion into neighbouring states and fuelling the Global Enduring Disorder...

Migration has become one of the most emotive political topics. Fears surrounding the topic are essential to the rise of Neo-Populism. All the while, migration is increasing; over the past decade over 50 million more people have been moving internationally than in previous decades...

Nation states no longer work effectively in tandem. Gone are the days of hegemonic US power directly ordering the allies. Furthermore, groups like the UN are ineffective, with disruptors often calling the shots. However, NATO stands apart as an example of how countries can work together successfully and how a global institution can remain largely uncontroversial, while doing serious coordinating work to solve real world problems...

From London to Miami, illicit cash has been flowing through the West’s financial systems. Coordination failures have allowed disruptors like Russia to prop up a transnational kleptocracy – while groups like the UN, IMF and NATO are ill-equipped to deal with this problem, especially as key players in Britain and America, actively encourage the financial deregulation on which the kleptocrats thrive...

Across the world, there are vast swathes of the planet (especially our oceans and atmosphere) that have been left without governance, and into that space have stepped terrorist groups, disordering non-state actors, drug cartels, and polluting and exploitative corporations...

As the Israeli-Hamas war enters a new phase, Alex and Jason discuss how hard it is to speak publicly and diplomatically about an issue that’s become so partisan and so emotive. Plus: the pair talk about Jason’s idea for interim post-war governance of Gaza involving a Qatari-Saudi-Egyptian-Emirati condominium which would need to be mediated by American and British diplomats...

In this week’s episode, Alex and Jason are joined by former US congressman Tom Malinowski (D-NJ). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Malinowski...

Climate change is the perfect example of what happens on a pressing global challenge when no one leads, or even takes responsibility, for a collective action problem – nothing happens, the crisis builds until it becomes seemingly unmanageable/unfixable. Without strong collective action and tough compromises, climate change will get more and more geopolitically intractable making life saving compromises even harder...

Disinformation and culture wars are an existential problem for democracies. They foster negative feedback loops: whereby internal divisions inside democracies make us more vulnerable to hostile external actors spewing misinformation, who then exploit those divisions to create more vulnerability to misinformation, culminating in culture wars. These kind of negative feedback loops are another symptom of our era of Global Enduring Disorder...