Can we escape this global ‘time of monsters’?

The headlines scream of a world in flux. The rise of populist leaders, the erosion of global trade partnerships, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Gaza war and the specter of renewed great power competition all paint a picture of an international order on the verge of collapse.

But beneath the surface of these dramatic events, deeper currents flow. The French historian Fernand Braudel, with his concept of layered temporalities, offers a framework to comprehend these complexities — to put current events into perspective and to discriminate between what is being transformed in the international space and what is not. 

Braudel proposed three distinct layers of historical analysis: “la longue durée” (the long term), characterized by slow, almost imperceptible change over centuries or millennia; “la conjuncture” (the conjuncture), encompassing broader shifts lasting decades or more; and “l’histoire événementielle” (event history), the realm of immediate events and political drama.

Adopting such a perspective alerts us to the possibility that what we have been witnessing in the last few years is more than just “event history.” The rise of China, the weakening of American hegemony and the fracturing of the global economic order are not simply passing episodes, but rather symptoms of a more profound transformation.

Adopting a Braudelian frame indicates that the transformations of the past decade or so do not portend any definitive shift in international order at the level of the longue durée. The fundamental drivers of international politics — the nation-state, the anarchic state system, the struggle for power, the search for security and the pursuit of prosperity — remain constant.

Rather, viewed through Braudel’s lens, the events of recent years suggest that we are witnessing the definitive end of one “conjuncture” in the history of international order and the painful birth of another.

The dying conjunctural order, of course, is the liberal international order (LIO) that the victorious allies built in the aftermath of the Second World War. This order was a constellation of norms, rules and institutions — the United Nations, the Bretton Woods system, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade — meant to govern international politics in ways that precluded the reemergence of the conditions and policies that led to the horrors of the first half of the 20th century.

In the realm of political economy, the LIO championed free trade, but a system of free trade mitigated by Keynesianism. The fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of globalization saw Keynesianism disappear and neoliberalism — nearly unfettered free trade — become ascendant.

In the domain of war, the LIO also enshrined a set of crucial norms. Two were foundational: the “war of aggression” norm, which delegitimized the use of force for territorial conquest, and the “war of self-defense” norm,” which provided a legal justification for states to use force in response to an armed attack.

But that order has been under considerable stress for some time now. As the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci put it, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

This dynamic is perhaps most prominent in the realm of international economics. The rise of China as a major economic power, coupled with its mercantilist practices and push for an alternative global economic architecture, has significantly weakened the LIO’s free-trade orthodoxy. Indeed, the LIO has been rebranded as the Rules-Based International Order (RBIO), implying a more minimalist and decidedly less liberal political-economic order.

The most chilling manifestation of this erosion of norms concerns the “war of aggression” principle, a cornerstone of the post-war order enshrined in the U.N. Charter. The Russian invasion of Ukraine stands as a stark example. Russia’s justifications for the invasion — “denazification” and protecting breakaway republics — have been widely condemned as fabricated pretexts for territorial expansion.

This blatant act of aggression, launched by a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council with veto power, throws the entire concept of a rules-based international order into question. If a major power can so easily disregard the principle of non-aggression, what meaning does it hold for smaller states? The specter of a return to a world governed by Thucydides’ maxim that “the strong do what they will; the weak suffer what they must” looms large.

The “war of self-defense” norm faces a unique challenge in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This norm guarantees all states, regardless of size or power, the legal and moral right to defend themselves from armed attack. However, the intense scrutiny and opprobrium Israel faces when exercising this right against Hamas threatens to erode the broader norm itself. While the proportionality of Israel’s response and the issue of civilian casualties are complex and warrant discussion, the singling out of Israel for defending its territory weakens the principle of self-defense for all states, thus undermining a cornerstone of the international order and creating a dangerous precedent where the right to self-defense becomes conditional on the political winds.

The specter of the new world order looms. If we are to avoid a world of Gramscian monsters, what will replace the crumbling order?

If the past offers any clues, the emerging order might resemble the “Concert of Europe” system cobbled together after the Napoleonic Wars. Established at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, this system saw the major European powers — Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia and France — playing a balancing act, managing their rivalries to maintain a semblance of peace. This order, though flawed, ushered in a relative lull in European interstate warfare for nearly a century.

In the 21st century, the emerging order might see a similar return to great power management, with the U.S., China, the European Union and perhaps a resurgent Russia as the key players. These powerhouses, if they can agree on the rules of the road (think avoiding thermonuclear war and maybe even settling disputes without resorting to tanks), could manage the dynamics of competition in a multipolar world. Emphasis here on “could.” The globalized economy and transnational threats like climate change demand a level of cooperation the old Concert system wouldn’t recognize.

The road ahead promises to be bumpy, with periods of intense rivalry punctuated by moments of grudging cooperation. The established institutions of the LIO might be sidelined or repurposed to serve the needs of the new order, a world less wedded to grand liberal ideals and more focused on the art of the deal.

But amidst the potential perils lies an opportunity. A new kind of stability could emerge, one based not on American dominance but on a more balanced distribution of power. As the Austrian statesman Metternich once quipped, “when France sneezes, Europe catches a cold.” Perhaps in this new multipolar world, the great powers will learn to manage their sniffles — or at least develop a collective decongestant.

Only time will tell what shape this new order will take. But the unipolar moment is over and its residual RBIO is on life support. 

We have entered a Gramscian interregnum, a period between Braudleian conjunctures. Will the monsters of instability and chaos reign, or can we forge a new order based on a prudent understanding of the new distribution of power — decidedly less liberal than its predecessor, but nevertheless marked by at least a modicum of peace and prosperity?

Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, and a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities in Washington, D.C. Follow him @aalatham.