A consistent source of frustration for a curmudgeonly old centrist like me is recurrent failures, lack of vision, and inability to connect with the public of those who supposedly stand for moderation and (whisper it) compromise around the world from Japan and Korea to Alabama to the Middle East. It is easy to complain about populist revolts within the West. Not so easy to reconcile anxieties about migration, communities, and culture wars with making peace. The European Union’s legalistic structure does not do well on inspiring popular loyalty.
For close on 70 years now the threat of nuclear annihilation has made many of us scared of tribal loyalties. But more recently menace is joined by bribe in the form of the global economy and communications soon to be reinforced with virtual cryptocurrencies which would almost certainly require international cooperation to regulate at all. (Organised criminals love all this.) There looks to be no prospect of the world’s feuding tribes, ethnic and ideological alike, being stopped by ‘moderates’ or weak and ill-judged appeals to rationality (whatever that means) or even human compassion for those caught in the crossfire. More likely, a global version of the classic Hobbesian and Schmittian solution to conflicts, where some ruthless bastard with the firepower (paid for with Bitcoin?) shuts everybody up. I don’t look forward to that, but I look forward to World War III even less.