Getting to grips with the overlapping geopolitical economic and political crises faced by
Western democratic societies in the 2020s. The 21st century has brought a powerful tide of
geopolitical economic and democratic shocks. Their fallout has led central banks to create
over $25 trillion of new money brought about a new age of geopolitical competition
destabilised the Middle East ruptured the European Union and exposed old political fault
lines in the United States. Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century is a long history of
this present political moment. It recounts three histories - one about geopolitics one about
the world economy and one about western democracies - and explains how in the years of
political disorder prior to the pandemic the disruption in each became one big story. It shows
how much of this turbulence originated in problems generated by fossil-fuel energies and it
explains why as the green transition takes place the long-standing predicaments energy
invariably shapes will remain in place. The Afterword brings these geopolitical economic
and political crises up to date by reflecting on the development and impact of the war in
Ukraine.
