Clever conceits cannot hide the world’s jagged edges
FT.com
03 Maggio 2008
Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall politicians and pundits have been imposing patterns on the world. The search has been for something to replace the reassuring symmetry of the cold war. This undoubtedly noble endeavour has written a lot of speeches and sold a lot of books. We are little the wiser for it.
The myriad theories of the new global order (or disorder) share several characteristics: a yearning for tidiness; unshakeable certainty in their enunciation; and flimsiness in the face of predictably unpredicted events. Over two decades we have thus seen the world described and redescribed in perhaps a dozen different guises.
We started off, some will remember, with the end of history, a trite but beguiling phrase claiming the triumph of economic and political liberalism. We have since encountered, in quick succession, George H.W. Bush’s new global order, the US …
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