The collapse of global norms: How 2026 is shaping a no-rules world

Taut Bataut | New Eastern Outlook

The world welcomes 2026 with intensified geopolitical and geo-economic tensions and persistent conflicts.

A Fracturing International Order and the Rise of a "No-Rules World"

As 2025 comes to an end, the world is replete with geo-economic and geopolitical tensions and ongoing regional conflicts. Amidst the world grappling with uncertainty and volatility, US President Donald Trump's America First unilateralist approach has further fueled global instability. The US-led so-called rules-based international system is bound to decline further in the coming months. Due to the United States' unilateralist policies, multilateralism would face further strain in 2026. Similarly, the Western global dominance will also decline further. However, the US-led Western nations will still continue to influence the international system.

On the other hand, the new Eastern superpowers, Russia and China, will have a greater role and power on the global stage. Nonetheless, volatility and instability will be the defining factors of the international landscape. In addition, the world would see a sharp rise in multipolarity, with middle powers playing an unprecedentedly increasing influence in shaping global geopolitics. Given the ongoing international events, the world will see a surge in shifting alliances, increasing unpredictability, and eroding regulations - leading to an unprecedented shift in the international geopolitical landscape.

Read more

The Deep Roots of Today’s Geopolitics

Peter Turchin | Cliodynamica

China, Russia, and Iran—what is the common denominator? Most obviously, they are the main geopolitical rivals of the United States today. As Ross Douthat recently wrote in an NYT opinion, Who Is Winning the World War?, “it’s useful for Americans to think about our situation in global terms, with Russia and Iran and China as a revisionist alliance putting our imperial power to the test.”

Today’s post is about a much less appreciated similarity, having to do with deep history of these Eurasian empires.

As I have argued in a series of publications over the past 20 years, and most comprehensively in the forthcoming book, the main driver of “imperiogenesis” (processes underlying the rise of empires) is interstate competition. The intensity of this competition, in turn, is dialed up by advances in military technologies. Each military revolution, thus, generates a set of mega-empires. Today we live in the historical shadow of two most consequential military revolutions.

The iron-cavalry revolution dates to about 1000 BCE. Although horse riding and iron smelting were invented independently (and in different regions, see the infographic below), by 500 BCE they were spreading together (for the spread maps, see Figures 2 and 3 in our article, Rise of the War Machines). And the detailed story of this military revolution and its profound effects on world history are in my book Ultrasociety.

Read more

My Role in Weaponizing ‘Moral Equivalence’ and ‘Religious Freedom’

James George Jatras
Strategic Culture

It’s confession time …

Without getting overly autobiographical, it is worth noting that my perspectives (whatever their value) on American public policy and global affairs reflect decades of first-hand, professional experience in both the Executive and Legislative branches of the US government. The former was at the Department of State as a commissioned US Foreign Service Officer, the latter at the US Senate as a policy adviser to the Republican leadership.

I’d like to believe that at all times my intentions were to serve the best interests of my country as viewed in light of the most venerable principles of the American nation, as well as the Christian, European, and human values that once undergirded that nation.

However, the consequences of my efforts, together with those of others, sometimes went horribly wrong. On at least two occasions, there was, to say the least, a disconnect between good intention and sound judgment, between what I had hoped and expected could be achieved – and what turned out to be the results.

For example, as the (first) Cold War was entering its terminal phase, I was one of the primary planners and organizers of the May 1985 international conference in Washington, DC, “Moral Equivalence: False Images of U.S. and Soviet Values,” sponsored by the State Department and the Shavano Institute for National Leadership. As described byImprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College, which later incorporated Shavano and published the remarks of some of the speakers, the conference brought together “forty-five participants from the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France, Italy, Latin America, and Central Europe accepted the invitation to examine the issue of an alleged ‘moral equivalence’ between the two ‘superpowers.’ The attention this conference has received has been substantial. Articles have appeared in dozens of national publications such as Time, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Policy Review, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the New York Post, and the New York Times, as well as in over 500 other newspapers throughout the nation.”

Among the headline participants were UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, Tom Wolfe, the late, great Joseph Sobran, Richard Pipes, Sidney Hook, and many others spanning the spectrum from paleoconservatism, to libertarianism, to social democracy. As conceived by myself and other planners, the conference had a single message: that the godless ideology of Marxism-Leninism with its record of mass murder, destruction, and degradation (exemplified then by the USSR and its satellites) was not morally comparable to normal, non-ideological societies and states (then represented – so I believed at the time – by the United States and our allies.)

The conference was a smashing success (definitely worth the $45,000 allocated by the Department, though in the end Shavano commendably declined to accept the public funds, as reported by Imprimis). The phrase “moral equivalence” – which had been launched by Kirkpatrick a year earlier – became a widespread meme, with the communist Evil Empire weighed in the balances and found wanting.

Unfortunately “moral equivalence” is a meme that now just won’t die, even though the context for it receded into history a few years following our conference. What has since become evident (and maybe already was to eyes more discerning than mine at the time) was that the US and our (let’s be honest) satellites are every bit as ideological as the old Soviet Union. In fact, in some ways ours is the same ruling ideology as communism but shifted from economic class conflict of 
Bourgeoisie/Proletariat to new Oppressor/Victim paradigms defined by sex, race, religion, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, migration status, and so forth.

Read more