The new world order: The long sweep of global economic history has repeatedly turned on the axis of trade—its expansion or contraction, and the ideologies that animate it. In the centuries before the Second World War, mercantilism dominated global statecraft. Nations competed for gold, colonies, and captive markets, viewing trade as a zero-sum game. The relentless pursuit of export surpluses and the erection of barriers to imports became the norm. These inward-looking instincts culminated in a spiral of tariffs, economic fragmentation, and ultimately, the Great Depression—accelerating the descent into global conflict.
This collapse was not merely economic miscalculation—it was a systemic failure of global cooperation. Protectionism, national insecurity, and imperial rivalries fermented into one of the darkest chapters in human history.
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Bretton Woods and a new world order
In the aftermath of World War II, a radically different vision took hold. The United States, now the undisputed global hegemon, led the creation of institutions to anchor a new world order rooted in interdependence. The United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and later, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)—which evolved into the World Trade Organisation—embodied this vision.
This was the age of “managed prosperity,” where economic liberalism was tempered by multilateral safeguards. Trade became not just an economic tool, but a strategy for peace. Tariffs fell, supply chains stretched across borders, and goods, capital, and ideas began flowing at an unprecedented scale. Shared prosperity was seen as the guarantor of global stability.
Liberalism triumphant: The global boom
From the 1980s through the early 2000s, globalisation blossomed. Market liberalisation spread like wildfire, driven by revolutions in communication, logistics, deregulated finance, and a near-religious faith in market-based systems.
Anchored by the Washington Consensus, capital chased efficiencies across borders, leveraging talent, skirting regulations, and fuelling the rise of multinational corporations. These firms became the true citizens of the new world order, tethered more to supply chains and shareholders than to sovereign states. This era delivered unprecedented wealth—but also bred systemic vulnerabilities.
The rise of multipolarity
This golden era of globalisation coincided with the unipolar dominance of the United States. But history rarely accommodates sustained hegemony. The meteoric rise of China, the enduring economic strength of Japan, the regulatory and cultural heft of the European Union, and India’s quiet but decisive emergence over the past decade have dramatically altered the geopolitical landscape.
Where Washington once wrote the rules of global trade, it now grapples with competitors who have mastered—and in some cases, rewritten—those very rules. China’s state-capitalist model, India’s digital leapfrogging, and Europe’s regulatory sovereignty have all posed alternative visions of development.
The outcome: a new world order—fragmented, contested, and increasingly sceptical of globalisation’s uneven rewards.
The return of self-interest
In this more fractious landscape, strategic self-interest has reemerged as the dominant ethos. Trade is no longer framed as a win-win proposition. Nations are singularly focused on securing autonomy—in semiconductors, green energy, digital infrastructure, and critical minerals.
Global rules are being reinterpreted—or outright ignored. The once-sacrosanct principles of free trade are giving way to national security imperatives, populist politics, and techno-economic anxieties. The Trump-era tariffs, introduced under the banner of “national security” and the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) doctrine, marked a turning point.
The Trump Doctrine: From global custodian to economic nationalist
The symbolic pivot came at Mar-a-Lago, where America began its retreat from global stewardship. Trump’s MAGA doctrine was not merely electoral rhetoric—it marked a systemic overhaul of US engagement with the world: tariffs, bilateralism, immigration controls, and a reassertion of industrial policy.
Ironically, these moves found echoes around the world. From Buy American to Atmanirbhar Bharat, from Europe’s pursuit of strategic autonomy to China’s dual circulation model, the impulse was unmistakable: sovereign control over the levers of prosperity.
Trump’s political success, regardless of its polarising nature, revealed a deeper shift in the global psyche. Cooperation, climate, and equity receded; what rose was a hardened realism—one that sees nations as instruments of domestic welfare, with all else negotiable.
Walls in a digitally connected world
Here lies the great paradox. Just as humanity builds more digital bridges—AI, cloud computing, quantum technologies, biotech—it is simultaneously erecting new economic and political walls. The very tools that once promised a post-national world are now being weaponised in strategic competition.
Oil and gas are no longer the ultimate geostrategic assets. Today, it is data, compute power, and proprietary algorithms. New battlegrounds have emerged: AI models, cloud infrastructure, biotech platforms, and quantum technologies. Yet these are increasingly siloed, hidden behind export controls, digital firewalls, and ideological barricades.
What we are witnessing is a slow, then sudden, unravelling of liberal globalisation.
The playbooks of power
In this fragmented world, the 10 most powerful nations are rewriting their strategic playbooks. China pursues data autarky. India champions digital public infrastructure. The EU promotes green industrial policy. The US and its allies chase tech sovereignty, while Russia flexes cyber power.
Each state is aligning technology with national interest—not as collaborators, but as competitors:
- AI-powered governance in China
- Sovereign chip manufacturing in the US and EU
- Population-scale inclusion through India’s DPI
- Energy transition as geopolitical leverage in the Middle East
This is not a Cold War redux—it is a strategic tech race with overlapping arenas and asymmetric rules.
The productivity leap: Machines as co-creators
Yet amid all this division, a gestalt shift is underway. Robotics, agentic AI, quantum sensing, and synthetic biology are ushering in a new productivity frontier. In agriculture, healthcare, logistics, education, and energy, machines are becoming collaborators rather than threats.
This technological revolution promises abundance. But abundance will not automatically translate into equity. It will demand new governance frameworks, ethical norms, and mechanisms of redistribution.
A new world order: GOOD societies, inclusive growth
Looking ahead, a new world order seems both necessary and inevitable. It will be neither unipolar nor anarchic. Instead, it may rest on three emerging axioms:
- Competition will persist—but within rules shaped by technological standards and ecological limits.
- Growth will be redefined—not by GDP alone, but by inclusion, health, and planetary sustainability.
- A new elite will rise: GOOD societies—Governance-Oriented, Open, and Digitally capable—focused not on exclusion, but on delivering universal basic services, income, and stewardship.
- In this emerging world, technology is the new currency, AI the advisor, and ethics the compass.
Seen through this futurist lens, the Trump tariffs were more than just protectionist policy—they marked a turning point in a century-long arc. They heralded the return of sovereignty, a recalibration of globalisation, and a fundamental rethinking of what prosperity means in a world increasingly run by machines, networks, and code.