“Things can only get better” felt like the anthem for the 1990s. Released in 1993, four years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the song was the perfect soundtrack for a decade in which apartheid ended, democracy came to eastern Europe, peace came to Northern Ireland and the Oslo accords promised an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
In the 1990s, the spirit of the age favoured peacemakers, democrats and internationalists. Today, it is nationalists, warmongers and conspiracy theorists who have the wind in their sails.
There is a growing danger that Russia will gain the initiative in its war with Ukraine over the coming year. In the Middle East, the tentative optimism fostered by the Abraham peace accords between Israel and several Arab states has been shattered by the Hamas attacks and the Israeli invasion of Gaza. A wider Middle Eastern war currently looks more plausible than a reinvigorated peace process.