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We are witnessing a decisive phase for the global order. Contemporary international politics are being shaped by armed conflicts. Like the Russo-Ukrainia war, these not only involve third-party powers, pitting many international actors against each other, but they have freshly destabilised the international chessboard with a threat once unthinkable: the use of nuclear weapons, tactical or strategic.

Just as unthinkable, considering the triumphalistic self-importance of liberal democracy is the genocide Israel is waging against the Palestinian people. A genocide that no country, bloc or international instance, not even the UN, has been able to prevent. In this sense, the public now beholds the open hijacking of multilateral spaces: the United States, defending its decadent hegemony; China, building a cunningly multipolar protagonism; Europe, growing ever increasingly fractious; and Russia, together with its allies, through vetoes or complicity… they are enabling the inhumanity of a genocide that has killed tens of thousands of children and the entrencment of warmongering as a pillar of international security.

Topping up this scenario is the rise of ultra-nationalist narratives—supremacism to overcompensating for mediocrity—, climate change denialism—another chapter of the anthropocentric saga of domination and destruction—, the hardening of anti-migration policies—tools to marginalise manufactured poverty—and resistance to women’s rights—setbacks to historical conquests. Under this global picture, it becomes harder to imagine a horizon of a dignified life that includes us all, from the privileged to the most vulnerable.

Ultimately, we face the inevitable crisis of this competitive, self-centred, disciplined and deceptively meritocratic logic that has transformed the totality of the mundane into a resource—human, natural, technological or economic. Under its workings, states are dispensable and citizenship unwanted. The planet has become “Earth Ltd”: earthlings who embraced the simulation surrendered their communal essence and existential range to become entrepreneurs, bureaucrats or managers. Simultaneously, an exclusive group encased in bubbles of luxury serve as CEOs, surveying and lavishly speculating in and out of “Earth Ltd”—for the success of their business and the guarantee of their profits depends on externalities: a population, a river, a forest, a piece of knowledge, a gene, a mineral, and ultimately another planet to colonise and exploit.

Beyond Existing Structures: The Interregnum as a Time of Struggle

Phenomena such as exploitation, forced migrations, technology and a multi-billion dollar arms race have plunged contemporary society into global uncertainty. These are what Antonio Gramsci called “the times of the interregnum”, which Rune Moller Stahl described as a prolonged crisis, where the old hegemonic equilibrium is depleted, with no alternative hegemonic project emerging and no social forces capable of installing it. [1][1] R. Møller Stahl (2019): Ruling the Interregnum: Politics and Ideology in Nonhegemonic Times. Politics and Society vol. 43, No 7. A moment that exposes the exhaustion and failure of the existing structures, their contradictions and limits. An illustration of the latter is the current multilateral system, which has amply demonstrated its inadequacy and shortcomings by failing to prevent wars. And yet, for now, there is no viable alternative either: those who seem like they aspire to change or dispute global hegemony, such as the BRICS, are not succeeding in creating a new world order. One thing is clear: we find ourselves in a period of a breakdown of consensus and a struggle for common sense, where emerging forces will find it increasingly difficult to assert their ideas.

As we warned in the first issue of this volume, this global scenario of uncertainty is conducive to the rise of reactionary extremism. Preserving democratic consensuses—locally and globally—in the face of rising, internationally articulated radical groups easily to do without them is probably the most urgent task we now face.

This the theme of Ariel Goldstein‘s article, “Deciphering the Global Far-Right: Alliances, Narratives and Strategies”. Based on an analysis of the structural and disruptive factors generating a widespread public discontent towards the traditional political class—be it due to corruption scandals, poor economic performance or other issues—, this Argentinean researcher sheds light on the growing irrationality driving the expansion of this type of political movement. These present authoritarian responses to structural issues, supported by mass-disinformation campaigns visa social networks and new technologies. In this era of uncertainty, characterised by technological changes, the author warns that religion and other reactionary stances can be a tempting refuge for disaffected segments of society.

In her article “Fabricating fear: How war Profiteers Lead Us Into AI-driven Warfare”, Brazilian researcher Laura Varella details how the technology and arms industries have encouraged and profited enormously from the rhetoric of the “AI arms race”, based on militaristic and patriarchal notions of security. The discourse around the supposed inevitability of AI-driven warfare raises several ethical, moral and legal dilemmas, creates tensions between states and hinders progress towards the drafting of multilaterally agreed norms against the development and use of so-called ‘autonomous weapons’. The author’s central thesis is the need to systematically refute and challenge narratives that normalise AI-driven warfare. A war that benefits and is being promoted by the minds of speculators and those who profit from it.

Following on with the analysis of the multi-faceted crises, Pedro Arrojo Agudo, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the Right to Water and Sanitation, examines a particularly paradoxical dimension of the environmental breakdown of our era: the global water crisis. As he explains in his article “Water Scarcity or Ambition Surplus?”, the paradox lies in the fact that the vast majority of those without guaranteed access to safe drinking water live next to rivers and lakes or above aquifers, yet these are polluted or overexploited by unsustainable productive developments. Thus, like climate change, the global water crisis also hits the most vulnerable and impoverished sectors of the planet disproportionately hard. The author, proposes, therefore, to reflect on the nature of this and all the other crises compounding the climate emergency and ask ourselves whether the fundamental problem is really one of water scarcity or of ‘surplus greed’ on the part of those who profit at the expense of the most basic resources.

Luciana Lemos’ piece appears to flesh out this problem with an example that illustrates this environmental vulnerability in a more specific way. With “Manaus: Water Management Challenges in the Middle of the Amazon Forest”, the Brazilian researcher analyses the case of the Amazonian city of Manaus, where the water challenge is aggravated by social dynamics, especially impacting the numerous indigenous communities living along the banks of the river. Water security involves much more than providing drinking water—it is a matter of public health as well as preserving the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples. To guarantee it, it is imperative to overcome Western developmental visions of resource management, integrating instead the paradigms of indigenous communities and their ways of engaging with nature.

Lastly, in her article “Keys to the Future: Deciphering the failures of global governance yesterday and today”, analyst Barbara Adams brings together the voices of the Global South at first hand. Testimonies from numerous countries speaking out in the framework of the Future Summit and other UN forums, arguing it is not possible to speak of multilateralism while the structures of world governance reflect an unjust and unequal world order. One that—in line with the Gramscian interregnum discussed aboive—is not ready to relinquish, concede or share power; yet also realises that it cannot continue to rule as it used to.

The debt burden on the necks of the world’s most impoverished perfectly portrays the biases of the international financial architecture today: a ‘morally bankrupt’ financial system – as the UN Secretary General himself described it – that rewards investors and prioritises repayment to creditors over promoting sustainability. A “reverse Marshall Plan”, in which the poorest finance the richest, running out of the fiscal space needed to do the things that are required to do the things that are suggested to them.

In her piece, Adams takes the pulse of the demands and frustrations of the Global South, the clamour for a “new Bretton Woods” or against the veto system within the UN. Just as the UN Security Council is today seen by most countries in the world as an ‘outdated relic’ that does not reflect today’s reality, the veto is, for many countries in the South, ‘the source of imperfection’. The “original sin” of the UN system renders it incapable of reacting to war and, indeed, of achieving peace for our species.

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