Civilisations Believe that They are Forever, Right Up Until They are Not! By James Reed

 "No system of government, no economic system, no currency, and no empire lasts forever, yet almost everyone is surprised and ruined when they fail." With that simple observation, hedge-fund founder Ray Dalio captures one of the most consistent lessons of history: civilisations believe they are permanent right up until the moment they collapse. Dalio spent years studying the rise and fall of major empires — from the Dutch to the British to the American — and he concluded that global power tends to move in long cycles lasting roughly a century or so. Empires rise through discipline, productivity, and technological innovation, reach a peak of wealth and influence, and then gradually decline under the weight of debt, internal division, and geopolitical rivalry." https://thomas-oppong.medium.com/a-major-reset-of-the-world-order-is-coming-0a2dc7b8e875

What makes Dalio's argument unsettling is not merely the theory but the timing. He believes the present moment bears many of the classic signs of the late stage of such a cycle: enormous sovereign debt, widening inequality, political polarisation, and the breakdown of international cooperation. When those conditions appear together, history suggests that the global order built by the dominant power begins to fragment. The institutions created to maintain stability — financial systems, trade agreements, alliances — lose legitimacy or become instruments of rivalry. In short, the rules that once governed the world stop working.

For most people in the West this possibility feels unthinkable, because the modern international system has been built around American and European power since the end of the Second World War. The so-called liberal international order, built through institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, NATO, and global trade agreements, created an era of unprecedented prosperity in many parts of the world. It also fostered the ideology of hyper-globaliswation: the belief that increasing trade, financial integration, and liberal democracy would gradually unify the planet into a single cooperative system.

But that period now appears to be ending. Political scientist Amitav Acharya argues that the world is entering what he calls a "multiplex" order, a system in which no single power or ideological bloc dominates the global system. In Acharya's vision the age of Western hegemony fades and power becomes dispersed among regional actors, emerging economies, corporations, and transnational institutions. The old assumption that the West sets the rules for the world no longer holds; the global system becomes more fragmented and pluralistic, with different regions pursuing their own political and economic models.

At first glance this shift might sound positive. After all, many critics of the old order point out that Western dominance also produced colonialism, financial crises, and geopolitical interventions. A more decentralised world, in theory, could be more balanced and inclusive. Yet the transition from one global order to another has rarely been peaceful or orderly. Historically, such transitions tend to produce instability, competition, and conflict precisely because the old rules disappear before new ones emerge.

The decline of the current system is visible in several overlapping trends. Globalisation itself — the defining economic force of the past four decades — is slowing and even reversing. Supply chains that once stretched across continents are being reorganised around geopolitical blocs. Trade wars, technology embargoes, and financial sanctions are replacing the optimistic rhetoric of global integration. Instead of a single global marketplace, the world increasingly resembles competing economic spheres aligned around major powers.

At the same time, domestic political divisions inside many Western societies have reached levels not seen in decades. Economic inequality, cultural polarisation, and declining trust in institutions have weakened the internal cohesion that historically sustained great powers. Dalio has warned that such divisions often precede periods of authoritarian politics or social upheaval, because populations facing economic insecurity and political distrust become receptive to extreme solutions.

Internationally, the shift of economic gravity toward Asia has accelerated the erosion of Western dominance. China, India, and other emerging economies now possess economic and technological capacities that rival those of traditional Western powers. Their political systems and strategic interests, however, do not necessarily align with the liberal norms that shaped the post-1945 order. The result is not a smooth transition to a new consensus but a contested landscape in which multiple powers pursue competing visions of global governance.

The concept of a "multiplex" world therefore carries an implicit warning. In a cinema multiplex several different films are shown at the same time, each with its own plot and audience. Acharya uses the metaphor to describe a world in which multiple political systems, alliances, and economic models coexist simultaneously rather than converging toward a single global framework. The danger is that without a dominant stabilising power or widely accepted rules, coordination becomes more difficult and conflict more likely.

Ironically, the old Western-led order may end up looking comparatively stable in hindsight. For all its flaws, it provided relatively predictable rules for trade, finance, and diplomacy. The emerging system may be far less orderly. Instead of one dominant framework, we may see overlapping regional alliances, competing currencies, fragmented supply chains, and frequent geopolitical crises. The world could begin to resemble the unstable balance-of-power politics that characterised the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries rather than the institutionalised cooperation of the late twentieth.

History offers a sobering lesson about such transitions. The fall of the Dutch empire led to British dominance. The decline of Britain eventually gave way to the American century. But these transitions were rarely smooth; they involved financial crises, global wars, and long periods of instability before a new equilibrium emerged. The uncomfortable possibility is that the current shift away from Western dominance may follow a similar pattern.

In that sense Dalio's warning about the fragility of empires becomes less an abstract historical observation and more a description of the present moment. The institutions, currencies, and geopolitical structures that defined the modern era are beginning to strain under pressures they were never designed to handle. As confidence in the existing system erodes, nations will experiment with new alliances, new economic arrangements, and new forms of power politics.

Whether the resulting world order will be better or worse than the one it replaces remains uncertain. But history suggests that the transition itself is unlikely to be calm. The emerging global system may be more fragmented, more competitive, and more unpredictable than the one that dominated the past seventy years. And if Dalio is right about the cycles of history, the greatest danger is not that the old order will end, but that most people will only recognise its fragility when it is already gone.

https://thomas-oppong.medium.com/a-major-reset-of-the-world-order-is-coming-0a2dc7b8e875