How the Slow Death of a World Order Will Define the Rest of Our Lives
In 1983, at the frothing height of the Cold War, a film slouched onto the screen: The Day After. It wasn’t a good film—not a clever script, not an inspired plot, and the visuals were about as exciting as watching oatmeal congeal. Yet it burned itself into memory. Especially for the teenager I was, marinated in the conviction that the world might vanish in a flash, ending not with a whimper but with a blinding instant of nuclear incandescence.
Everything, we were told, would end in one singular heartbeat. One strike, one blast, and history itself would fracture neatly into a “before” and an “after.” Brutally efficient.
Few events in human memory are that mercilessly defined, that cleanly etched. The collapse of the Berlin Wall. The shock of 9/11. The sudden global paralysis of COVID. Nuclear war, of course, would have been the king of finales—a hard stop for civilization with no sequel.
This post first appeared in 2024, back when I still entertained hope that rational arguments might sway public sentiment. I’ve since remastered it—sharpened the edges, clarified the threat, and realigned it with the Grimwright ethos: use what works, discard the rest, and always—always—question the narrative. The date remains unchanged as a historical marker. The content does not.
What we face now is not quite as dramatic, but it is epochal nonetheless. We are living through a slow-motion cataclysm that will transform the world beyond recognition. It lacks the cinematic fireball, and one could almost feel disappointed by its anticlimactic nature—no mushroom clouds, no ruins at dawn. Yet make no mistake: the changes unfolding now will slice time into a “before” and an “after” every bit as sharply as a nuclear blast would have done. The “after” is already upon us.
Globalization—the great, overhyped deity of our age—is unraveling. The model of “produce cheap and drown the planet in exports” is cracked beyond repair. Tariffs rise like medieval walls. Industries retreat home at speed. Regional blocs congeal to repel global pariahs. It reeks, uncannily, of the world on the eve of the Second World War.
The unsettling truth: almost no one alive today remembers a pre-WW2 world. Those who were born into it, like my mother, are ancient now, and far too young then to have retained the atmosphere of that time. For the rest of us, globalization has been the only catechism we ever knew. To watch it dissolve feels wrong, alien, vaguely apocalyptic. Yet if we could resurrect our ancestors from a century ago, they’d shrug and say: “What’s the fuss? This is how things were.” For them it would feel familiar, not alien at all.
In the first part of this series, I examined why globalization is collapsing. Now let us descend into the consequences—how this fracture will shape the world’s regions and its power centers. Not every nation will be dissected, but enough of the important ones to sketch the new order clawing its way into existence.
The most immediate shift is that supply chains—the sacred arteries of globalization—are fraying. Depending on faraway factories and fragile transport networks will become unsustainable, if not impossible. Global trade assumes a policeman on the seas, someone to keep order among the pirates and predators. For decades, this sheriff was the U.S. Navy, whose dominance rendered most of the world’s watery real estate remarkably safe. Only a few backwaters were deemed unsafe.
That, too, is ending. Piracy is resurgent around the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Guinea. Southeast Asian waters grow increasingly treacherous. Yes, the Philippines and Somalia have long been pirate havens, but what is new is the professionalization of piracy and the rise of state-sponsored raiders. Groups like Yemen’s Houthis openly menace major sea lanes. The U.S. Navy, meanwhile, has little interest in burning treasure to protect trade routes that serve Asia more than America. Why secure the Red Sea so Chinese cargo can glide safely through? Why bleed in the Indian Ocean so Japan’s imports arrive unmolested? The logic has worn thin.
This inward turn has been bipartisan and relentless. Since George H.W. Bush, every U.S. administration—Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, and even Biden—has tilted toward American protectionism. Trump was bombastic about it, but Biden has doubled down in quieter, sterner ways. It is a one-way trajectory.
Refocusing inward means a renaissance of American self-reliance: reshoring industries, exploiting domestic energy and resources, and insulating the homeland. COVID only accelerated the process, reminding nations that dependence on China for even detergent and wipes was lunacy. America, blessed with shale oil and gas, now enjoys one of the most stable energy ecosystems on Earth. Two decades ago, talk of U.S. energy independence was a punchline. Today it is conventional wisdom, contested by no one with a straight face.
This return to continental self-sufficiency is not novel. The Monroe Doctrine proclaimed the Americas as the natural U.S. sphere of influence long ago. Then, the young republic had to contend with mightier empires. Today, the United States is militarily and economically peerless. China dreams of eclipsing it, but so far those dreams have birthed more embarrassment than empire.
That is not to say America is flawless. Far from it. Its problems are legion and, almost without exception, self-inflicted—deranged policies crafted by idiots in office. Yet the very chaos of America’s federal structure, paradoxically, prevents total collapse. In most “federations” the term is code for centralized control wrapped in theater. In the U.S.—as in Switzerland—federalism is real. Each state is practically a nation unto itself. So while some states dutifully follow Washington’s suicidal policies, others resist, innovate, and thrive. The result: America cannot wholly destroy itself. Some corner of the Union always survives to drag the rest forward.
This dynamism attracts talent. High-value immigrants—the engineers, doctors, entrepreneurs—flock to America. Europe, meanwhile, serves as the retirement home for freeloaders seeking welfare. America also maintains a demographic edge: higher birth rates, newer immigrants having children, a still-growing populace while much of the world grays and withers.
Add to this the orbital frontier. U.S. space companies are on the cusp of an orbital economy. SpaceX dominates, with Starship poised to slash launch costs so radically that orbit becomes just another industrial estate. Other countries have rockets, yes—China, Russia—but none can match America’s efficiency or scale. Cheap transport to orbit changes everything. Hardware can be bulky, maintenance can be on-site, redundancy can be pared down, and space will become less the playground of elites and more a marketplace.
Of course, space will be militarized. Spare me the pious sermons: good intentions evaporate the moment bad actors sniff weakness. Trump’s much-mocked “Space Force” may, in hindsight, look prophetic. Once there are supply chains in orbit, they will need guardians. The human mess of Earth will simply float upward.
Because America will continue to guard its own oceans and orbital perimeters, the entire hemisphere will benefit. From Canada to Argentina, the Americas will enjoy relative safety under America’s umbrella, even if they contribute little themselves. Free-riders, but safe free-riders.
Beyond the Americas, things turn ugly. Russia, hooked on commodity exports, and China, dependent on both imports and exports, face daunting futures. Neither has a navy capable of guaranteeing sea lanes. India dominates the Indian Ocean, Japan dominates its own sphere, and both have the ability to strangle China’s vital lifelines. Even a middling blockade could starve Beijing of fuel and resources. The aggressiveness of both Russia and China all but guarantees that smaller nations will scurry toward Washington for protection, offering bases and sweetheart deals in exchange for security. The United States, once desperate for allies, will soon find itself courted.
Does this mean a return to ancient tribalism? No. Trade will continue, but it will be cautious, hedged, transactional. Access to North America’s markets will carry a price. Risk assessment will be mandatory. The age of frictionless globalization is over.
For three decades, America was perceived as the lone superpower yet refused to act the part, clipping its own wings. That indulgence is finished. In the new era, the United States will be what it was always destined to be: hegemon of the Western Hemisphere, and arbiter of the wider world.
None of this erases America’s internal problems. It will wrestle, quarrel, implode and recover, again and again. But it has the resources, the demographics, the geography, and the institutions to endure.
The American age is not fading. It is accelerating. Buckle up. The ride grows faster from here.
