Disorder: Hard Times in the Twenty-First Century

For the best part of two decades, the world has experienced a succession of geopolitical, economic, and democratic shocks. Their fallouts have led central banks to create over $25 trillion of new money, ruptured the European Union, destabilised the Middle East, exposed old political fault lines in the United States, and created a new age of geopolitical competition. Throughout the 2010s these shocks caused political disruption. Now, the geopolitical turbulence of that decade has manifested in war in Europe.  Much of this turbulence originated in problems generated by fossil-fuel energies. Now most countries are committed to reducing fossil fuel energy consumption radically. But as the transition to green energy takes place the long-standing predicaments created by energy will remain in place.  

Helen Thompson is a Fellow of Clare College and Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies. She has a fortnightly wide-ranging column – These Times ­– in the New Statesman and was a regular contributor to the podcast Talking Politics. Her most recent book Disorder: Hard Times in the 21^st Century was published by Oxford University Press in February. She has written for The New York Times, London Review of Books, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, UnHerd, and Prospect. In 2021, she was included in Prospect’s The world’s top 50 thinkers.