The writer is the author, most recently, of ‘Homelands: A Personal History of Europe’
A poem bequeathed us by the epically gloomy Canadian seer-singer Leonard Cohen ends with the words: “oh and one more thing / you aren’t going to like / what comes after / America”.
As we pass the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war in Europe, every day brings further evidence that a remarkably long-lived US-led international order is over. Everyone is now scrambling to work out what might succeed it. A new multi-polar order? Spheres of influence? A worldwide version of the 19th-century Concert of Europe? By far the most plausible answer, however, is a prolonged and dangerous period of global disorder.
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