"We’re now facing a system of grave, correlated hazards unlike any our species has previously confronted. Great-power rivalry has returned, but it is far more dangerous than the rivalries that led to the First World War, because all of the participants have nuclear weapons, and it is taking place under conditions far less stable than the bipolar competition of the Cold War. We have destroyed the alliance system that prevented nuclear proliferation. Insanely dangerous work at the frontier of biotechnology continues. We learned no lessons from Covid whatsoever. Climate change is wreaking havoc on our habitats, economies, and social trust. The Internet and social media have fractured and atomized our societies, causing a rapid degeneration in human intelligence, leaving us unable to govern ourselves. The unconstrained development of AI is both an existential risk in its own right and an accelerant of a host of other risks, from cyberattacks and bioterrorism to malevolent mass persuasion and autonomous weapons. And precisely when effective international coordination to mitigate these risks is more urgent than it has ever been before, we have an arsonist at the helm of the country that has historically organized that coordination."
And all included among the many items that make up the polycrisis, Claire. Add them to your ledger of things you need to watch, not merely worry over. In Nevil Shute's novel, On the Beach, the submarine team thought they would be safe by skedaddling to the Antipodes. Once they learned their error, they also realized it made no difference to their, and the world's, destiny.
Hello Clair! I enjoy this comprehensive article! We are being marched into many and long difficult times😱😁Posible we will overcome! I do agree with the opinion that the allies cary great responsibility of its own for the way relations with USA turned into 😱!!
"A giant, America-sized power vacuum, around the world, is an invitation to a cataclysmic global war. I cannot see what force remains capable of preventing that outcome."
Grim but persuasive. Thank you for thinking it through. I think that the chances are far from zero that Trump himself initiates a nuclear war by lobbing a "strategic nuke" at Iran or other adversary that has humiliated him.
“Europe could have consolidated into a coherent military power. Japan and South Korea could have built vast conventional forces. Regional coalitions could have deterred Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.” (Claire Berlinski)
Yeah. And pigs might learn to fly.
Americans got sick and tired of serving as the world’s policeman because our European and Asian allies contributed next to nothing to our common defense. Those allies helped us (marginally) win the Cold War but after the Soviet Union was defeated, they rejected all responsibility for protecting the liberal international order that benefited them at least as much as it benefited the United States. Instead, these make-believe allies spent their time bitching, moaning and calling balls and strikes from the peanut gallery.
The then German Chancellor, Frau Merkel (the most destructive German leader since Adolph Hitler) had the temerity to suggest that Germany didn’t need to contribute militarily because it was serving the liberal order through its generous foreign aid programs. So pathetic were our European allies that they couldn’t even handle the problems in the former Yugoslavia without American intervention.
To make matters worse, while eschewing military strength, our faux-allies in Europe pretended that they were doing their part to uphold democratic values by supporting despicable institutions like the international criminal court. The irony is that the Europeans hoped (at least implicitly) that the ICC would constrain the United States which Europe believed in its heart of hearts was an international bully. What Europe forgot is that without a policeman, laws don’t matter very much. Europe’s support for the ICC was little more than performative virtue signaling just like its support for green energy programs.
As for the Japanese, who could forget their incessant complaining about American bases in Okinawa or their pride in their pacifism? While the United States protected Japan from China and South Korea from North Korea, American auto workers watched their tax dollars flow to the defense of our Asian “allies” at exactly the same time that their jobs were leaving America while landing in Asia. Yet Claire Berlinski can’t fathom why Americans became fed-up with all of this.
As Claire has mentioned to her readers many times over the years, the burden of international responsibility that fell to Americans was worthwhile because the United States disproportionately benefited from its role as the world’s hegemon.
Unfortunately as the neoliberal juggernaut gathered steam starting in the early 1990s, economic power became increasingly bifurcated in the United States with a small educated elite at the top and tens of millions of struggling or impoverished Americans at the bottom all because of the globalism that Claire Berlinski champions. . As they watched their jobs disappear and their communities turn to dust is it any wonder that Americans got sick of subsidizing Europe and Asia?
Claire is beginning to sound an awful lot like Tom Friedman; she keeps writing the same column over and over again. Trump is destroying this. Trump is ruining that. The world that we knew and loved is coming to an end. Maybe Claire is emulating chicken little or maybe she’s right.
Blaming it all on Trump and the United States while completely ignoring the grotesque failures of America’s European and Asian allies is to view the demise of the Pax Americana through jaundiced eyes.
Maybe someday, Claire will share her views about what the European and Asian allies did to bring us to the place we find ourselves in.
"Americans got sick and tired of serving as the world’s policeman because our European and Asian allies contributed next to nothing to our common defense. Those allies helped us (marginally) win the Cold War but after the Soviet Union was defeated, they rejected all responsibility for protecting the liberal international order that benefited them at least as much as it benefited the United States."
You have this relationship backwards, WigWag; in its creation, its propogation, its sustainment, its success. Now it all falls away and the world will become, once again, unruly. Unfortunately, now (vs before) we can reach around the world's curve and hit each other with existential blows. Rock 'em/Sock 'em and zero-sum, two fever dreams of a future for one imagination-bereft political party, now loom large as a nightmare for us all.
I’m not sure what you mean, David. Are you suggesting that our European allies have been anything other than languid sybarites when it comes to meeting even the most minimal requirements for enforcing the liberal international order? Have you compared what the US spends versus the Europeans (and Japanese) on defense since the end of the Cold War?
Isn’t it true that while Americans underwrote international security our allies luxuriated while taking long vacations, retiring early and enjoying world class infrastructure?
Don’t the Europeans pay only a tiny fraction of what Americans pay for new and revolutionary medicines because Americans subsidize practically the entire cost of developing those medicines?
Claire is living in the past. Her nostalgia, while charming, prevents her from seeing the reasons we are in the pickle in which we find ourselves. There was a time that Americans disproportionarely benefited from the Pax Americana. In those days, the costs associated with being the world’s policeman were worth it. To put it colloquially, the juice was worth the squeeze.
As the globalism that Claire cherishes impoverished millions of Americans, produced an opioid epidemic and destroyed midwestern towns is it any wonder that Americans simply lost interest in subsidizing our lazy and self-satisfied European and Asian allies?
Brilliant essay, invaluable conspectus. As I read, I kept wondering, “was it W’s invasion of Iraq that was the essential first domino in this apocalyptic unraveling? Why on Earth did they decide to do that, really?“ I’ve never seen a convincing anatomy of that question beyond the role of some deficient personalities and very basic greed and hubris.
Which leads directly to questions of the structural defects in the American system and our national character.
Most urgently, though, “If no Bush, then no Trump???” Perhaps you’ve written about that elsewhere, but I’m shell-shocked and curious about your views, perhaps at another time when this essay has had more time to sink in. Thank you!
I agree. Our invasion of Iraq—despite Iraq’s stated and actual absence of weapons of mass destruction—pushed every adversary to race full-speed toward acquiring nuclear weapons. The U.S. proved that any country that dismantles its WMD, exactly as Washington D.C. demands (including Congress), becomes acutely vulnerable. All adversaries saw and learned.
We urgently need your comprehensive assessment of civilization’s structural vulnerability to existential threats. Please avoid the attraction of local insanities, and zoom out to analysis of the globe - your extraordinary gift.
On 21 February 2026, you wrote about "The Logic of Catastrophe" and associated "Game Theory" of a multi-player system. I impatiently waited for you to return to this. Thank you.
"A state that feels existentially threatened and abandoned will not wait for certainty before it acts... Every state will revise their calculations accordingly - and act in accord militarily with existential fortitude."
Please wake up like this more often. But recover by walking around Le Marais.
"We’re now facing a system of grave, correlated hazards unlike any our species has previously confronted. Great-power rivalry has returned, but it is far more dangerous than the rivalries that led to the First World War, because all of the participants have nuclear weapons, and it is taking place under conditions far less stable than the bipolar competition of the Cold War. We have destroyed the alliance system that prevented nuclear proliferation. Insanely dangerous work at the frontier of biotechnology continues. We learned no lessons from Covid whatsoever. Climate change is wreaking havoc on our habitats, economies, and social trust. The Internet and social media have fractured and atomized our societies, causing a rapid degeneration in human intelligence, leaving us unable to govern ourselves. The unconstrained development of AI is both an existential risk in its own right and an accelerant of a host of other risks, from cyberattacks and bioterrorism to malevolent mass persuasion and autonomous weapons. And precisely when effective international coordination to mitigate these risks is more urgent than it has ever been before, we have an arsonist at the helm of the country that has historically organized that coordination."
And all included among the many items that make up the polycrisis, Claire. Add them to your ledger of things you need to watch, not merely worry over. In Nevil Shute's novel, On the Beach, the submarine team thought they would be safe by skedaddling to the Antipodes. Once they learned their error, they also realized it made no difference to their, and the world's, destiny.
PS. Forgot to include a review of a new book that discusses another item of concern
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/aug/19/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-artificial-state-by-jill-lepore-review-an-ominous-warning-of-tech-takeover
Actually, I forgot to include a whole boatload of items. Well, too late; that ship has sailed.
Channeling Pope Leo? https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html
Hello Clair! I enjoy this comprehensive article! We are being marched into many and long difficult times😱😁Posible we will overcome! I do agree with the opinion that the allies cary great responsibility of its own for the way relations with USA turned into 😱!!
"A giant, America-sized power vacuum, around the world, is an invitation to a cataclysmic global war. I cannot see what force remains capable of preventing that outcome."
Grim but persuasive. Thank you for thinking it through. I think that the chances are far from zero that Trump himself initiates a nuclear war by lobbing a "strategic nuke" at Iran or other adversary that has humiliated him.
“Europe could have consolidated into a coherent military power. Japan and South Korea could have built vast conventional forces. Regional coalitions could have deterred Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.” (Claire Berlinski)
Yeah. And pigs might learn to fly.
Americans got sick and tired of serving as the world’s policeman because our European and Asian allies contributed next to nothing to our common defense. Those allies helped us (marginally) win the Cold War but after the Soviet Union was defeated, they rejected all responsibility for protecting the liberal international order that benefited them at least as much as it benefited the United States. Instead, these make-believe allies spent their time bitching, moaning and calling balls and strikes from the peanut gallery.
The then German Chancellor, Frau Merkel (the most destructive German leader since Adolph Hitler) had the temerity to suggest that Germany didn’t need to contribute militarily because it was serving the liberal order through its generous foreign aid programs. So pathetic were our European allies that they couldn’t even handle the problems in the former Yugoslavia without American intervention.
To make matters worse, while eschewing military strength, our faux-allies in Europe pretended that they were doing their part to uphold democratic values by supporting despicable institutions like the international criminal court. The irony is that the Europeans hoped (at least implicitly) that the ICC would constrain the United States which Europe believed in its heart of hearts was an international bully. What Europe forgot is that without a policeman, laws don’t matter very much. Europe’s support for the ICC was little more than performative virtue signaling just like its support for green energy programs.
As for the Japanese, who could forget their incessant complaining about American bases in Okinawa or their pride in their pacifism? While the United States protected Japan from China and South Korea from North Korea, American auto workers watched their tax dollars flow to the defense of our Asian “allies” at exactly the same time that their jobs were leaving America while landing in Asia. Yet Claire Berlinski can’t fathom why Americans became fed-up with all of this.
As Claire has mentioned to her readers many times over the years, the burden of international responsibility that fell to Americans was worthwhile because the United States disproportionately benefited from its role as the world’s hegemon.
Unfortunately as the neoliberal juggernaut gathered steam starting in the early 1990s, economic power became increasingly bifurcated in the United States with a small educated elite at the top and tens of millions of struggling or impoverished Americans at the bottom all because of the globalism that Claire Berlinski champions. . As they watched their jobs disappear and their communities turn to dust is it any wonder that Americans got sick of subsidizing Europe and Asia?
Claire is beginning to sound an awful lot like Tom Friedman; she keeps writing the same column over and over again. Trump is destroying this. Trump is ruining that. The world that we knew and loved is coming to an end. Maybe Claire is emulating chicken little or maybe she’s right.
Blaming it all on Trump and the United States while completely ignoring the grotesque failures of America’s European and Asian allies is to view the demise of the Pax Americana through jaundiced eyes.
Maybe someday, Claire will share her views about what the European and Asian allies did to bring us to the place we find ourselves in.
I won’t hold my breath.
"Americans got sick and tired of serving as the world’s policeman because our European and Asian allies contributed next to nothing to our common defense. Those allies helped us (marginally) win the Cold War but after the Soviet Union was defeated, they rejected all responsibility for protecting the liberal international order that benefited them at least as much as it benefited the United States."
You have this relationship backwards, WigWag; in its creation, its propogation, its sustainment, its success. Now it all falls away and the world will become, once again, unruly. Unfortunately, now (vs before) we can reach around the world's curve and hit each other with existential blows. Rock 'em/Sock 'em and zero-sum, two fever dreams of a future for one imagination-bereft political party, now loom large as a nightmare for us all.
I’m not sure what you mean, David. Are you suggesting that our European allies have been anything other than languid sybarites when it comes to meeting even the most minimal requirements for enforcing the liberal international order? Have you compared what the US spends versus the Europeans (and Japanese) on defense since the end of the Cold War?
Isn’t it true that while Americans underwrote international security our allies luxuriated while taking long vacations, retiring early and enjoying world class infrastructure?
Don’t the Europeans pay only a tiny fraction of what Americans pay for new and revolutionary medicines because Americans subsidize practically the entire cost of developing those medicines?
Claire is living in the past. Her nostalgia, while charming, prevents her from seeing the reasons we are in the pickle in which we find ourselves. There was a time that Americans disproportionarely benefited from the Pax Americana. In those days, the costs associated with being the world’s policeman were worth it. To put it colloquially, the juice was worth the squeeze.
As the globalism that Claire cherishes impoverished millions of Americans, produced an opioid epidemic and destroyed midwestern towns is it any wonder that Americans simply lost interest in subsidizing our lazy and self-satisfied European and Asian allies?
Brilliant essay, invaluable conspectus. As I read, I kept wondering, “was it W’s invasion of Iraq that was the essential first domino in this apocalyptic unraveling? Why on Earth did they decide to do that, really?“ I’ve never seen a convincing anatomy of that question beyond the role of some deficient personalities and very basic greed and hubris.
Which leads directly to questions of the structural defects in the American system and our national character.
Most urgently, though, “If no Bush, then no Trump???” Perhaps you’ve written about that elsewhere, but I’m shell-shocked and curious about your views, perhaps at another time when this essay has had more time to sink in. Thank you!
I agree. Our invasion of Iraq—despite Iraq’s stated and actual absence of weapons of mass destruction—pushed every adversary to race full-speed toward acquiring nuclear weapons. The U.S. proved that any country that dismantles its WMD, exactly as Washington D.C. demands (including Congress), becomes acutely vulnerable. All adversaries saw and learned.
Brilliant, Claire.
We urgently need your comprehensive assessment of civilization’s structural vulnerability to existential threats. Please avoid the attraction of local insanities, and zoom out to analysis of the globe - your extraordinary gift.
On 21 February 2026, you wrote about "The Logic of Catastrophe" and associated "Game Theory" of a multi-player system. I impatiently waited for you to return to this. Thank you.
"A state that feels existentially threatened and abandoned will not wait for certainty before it acts... Every state will revise their calculations accordingly - and act in accord militarily with existential fortitude."
Please wake up like this more often. But recover by walking around Le Marais.
Geoff
What happened to the cute animal videos?
Yeah, sorry. I figured I owed to everyone to warn them. Animal videos soon.