The world used to be a familiar place, but then along came Donald Trump. Since the end of World War II, people around the world have come to expect certain things, and certain ways of doing things. It’s not that the world has not changed since 1945, but the change was largely predictable. As another Donald, erstwhile US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, famously said, there were known unknowns and unknown unknowns. We were in a world of known unknowns. Now it seems as though we are in a world of unknown unknowns.
Since the middle of the last century, there has been a general acknowledgement, if not agreement, that for the world to progress, we need rules for global engagement — that unilateralism and conflict can be costly for all. That led to the establishment of global bodies such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organisation.
It can be contested whether these institutions were nurtured or not, but the need for the existence of such global bodies was not questioned.
Extract from an article by Partha Chatterjee, Shiv Nadar University, India.
Read the full article here.
