It is that time of year. What single word, an old friend challenged, best describes the forces that have been shaping the world. If I am allowed only one choice it has to be “fragmentation”. Were I permitted a second, it would be “identity”.
The splintering of the old order is at its most stark and brutal in the Middle East. In Iraq, Syria and Libya the state has all but collapsed. Whatever one thinks of Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, the map they drew almost a century ago no longer describes territorial reality. These states will probably never properly be rebuilt.
The fragmentation dynamic reaches well beyond the murderous sectarian conflicts engulfing the Arab world. The founding assumption of the post cold war settlement was that global economic integration would drive closer political cohesion. In today’s post, post cold war order, economic and political nationalism are marching together in the opposite direction.