Among those sayings that encapsulate political wisdom but are either inaccurate or apocryphal (such as the ancient Chinese curse, ‘May you live in interesting times’ that is neither Chinese nor ancient, or the misinterpretation of the Chinese character for crisis as fusion of danger and opportunity), I have a soft spot for the one by Harold Macmillan. When asked either what he most feared or what was most troubling when he was UK Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, he may have replied, ‘Events, my dear boy, events.’

If he didn’t say it, he should have. The press of events is the bane of those trying to steer a strategic path in government. Today, it is particularly difficult because there are so many events consuming so much government oxygen while we face five major hinge points in global affairs that complicate everything.

The five hinge points are (not in order of importance),

• World order and geopolitics
• The ecological crisis
• The forward march of technology
• Demography
• The rise of populism

1. World order and geopolitics

I wrote a series of posts last year about the growing instability of the world order – roughly speaking, the way in which international relations are arranged through institutions, treaties, law and norms. As respect for the norms, laws and treaties decline, the global institutions can’t manage conflict, handle the ecological crisis, achieve disarmament, promote human rights or support economic and social development – the tasks that are their reason to exist.

It is part of this overall change in the terms of international engagement that the USA’s allies in Europe, Northeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas face an especially daunting period as it becomes radically unclear how many of their basic assumptions about the USA will still hold in another five or ten years’ time.

We do not know what new arrangement of international relations might emerge as the current one weakens further. I will come back to the topic in future posts. But we do know that it is only possible to address a number of issues – including international trade, managing cyberspace, pandemic risk, and ecological crisis – through international cooperation. As our need for cooperation grows, the appetite for it declines in important places, such as Washington, DC. It’s one of the dilemmas of our age and gets in the way of policy even when the intention is constructive and the implementation capacity is in principle adequate.

2. Ecological crisis

The ecological crisis and its links to insecurity, conflict and the prospects for peace are another theme on which I have been holding forth.

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change aims to keep global warming ‘well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels’ (defined as the period from 1850 to 1900), while trying to stay below a 1.5°C increase. A decade later, 2024 was the first year on record in which the average global temperature was clearly more than 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average. It will not be the last. We are heading towards approximately 3°C; this will lead to huge disruptions.

Climate change is one dimension of ecological disruption. Some other dimensions are also on the international political agenda but with an equally questionable record. In 2022, international agreement on radical measures to slow the loss of biodiversity and biomass set targets to achieve by 2030. A November 2024 follow-up conference on financing broke up in disarray but reconvened February this year, patching together an agreement but, perhaps predictably, it deferred a decision on a new fund until 2028 (remember – to meet action targets by 2030). On plastic pollution, the UN Environment Assembly agreed in March 2022 to develop a legally binding treaty by the end of 2024. The deadline came and went and the extended effort ended in acrimony in August 2025.

At least climate change, biodiversity and plastics are on the international agenda. Among aspects of environmental disruption that are not on the agenda is anti-microbial resistance, estimated likely to lead to 10 million premature deaths annually by 2050. Another is air pollution, in which over 90 percent of the world’s population live; alongside its direct health effects, it leads to increases in depression, anxiety, violent crime and aggression among children.

Against that bleak record, there are some achievements, not least with the High Seas Treaty coming into force with the potential to protect the oceans from further environmental damage.

Taken overall, however, the natural foundations on which all social and economic life is based are changing and weakening. It is no surprise if that contributes to social and political instability and disputes up to and including violent conflict, increasing the pressure on international institutions and harried political leaders.

3. The forward march of technology

As a way of trying to understand the challenge of technological development, a handy term is ‘the fourth industrial revolution‘, popularised by Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum. Whereas the first industrial revolution utilised steam for mechanisation and the second brought in electrification and mass production, the third initiated the digital age of computing and the internet, and the fourth links advanced information technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), genetics and robotics. It is a contested term, with some arguing that what it describes is simply part of the third industrial revolution, even as others (including the World Economic Forum) contend we are moving or have already moved onto the fifth. It is nonetheless useful for underlining how fast innovations are coming, piling one on top of the other, and playing off each other.

Digitalisation has an impact on everything – education, travel, finance, health, warfare, you name it, and, of course, crime. A common view of cyber crime places all the criminal activity in cyber space – online malware attacks, identity theft and fraud – virtual crime, implicitly non-violent even if traumatising to those whose identity is stolen, for example.But hyper-modern cyber crime can also be brutal in old-fashioned way. Evidence of huge cyber scam compounds in Myanmar and Cambodia, where the UN estimates at least 220,000 people are held against their will, having been trafficked and fraudulently lured there, shows there is a huge amount of traditional crime wrapped up in cyber-age criminality.

The revolution will continue to throw up challenges for governments, regardless of whether the helter-skelter development of artificial intelligence really does take us into the realm of super intelligence. The rush to AI continues, placing enormous demands upon energy provision, and so do the risks, including to our mental health.

There are, you might think, clear grounds and openings for cooperation to address these issues, from the point of view of law and order, health and energy security alike. But an equally powerful force is the urge of governments to compete against each other and get a better piece of the AI action. It is not clear what the balance between cooperation and competition will be in the long run.

4. Demography

Until quite recently, a section headed ‘demography’ meant a discussion of looming overpopulation. The statistics are familiar – global population reached 1 billion in 1800-1810, 2 billion in the 1920s, 4 billion in 1975 and 8 billion in 2022, on track for around 10 billion in the 2050s. But the story the stats tell is no longer about relentless increase. In fact, they reveal a slowing rate of population increase.

This has given rise to concern about ageing populations in regions like Europe and Northeast Asia. That leads economists and businesspeople to see the need for immigration from poorer to rich countries, so cheap labour can maintain the latter’s economic prosperity. This in turn leads to a rising tide of sentiment against immigration (see next section, ‘Populism’) even though the idea a boom in migration is largely illusory. The proportion of the world population that lives outside their native country has been stable for over 60 years..

But that is a misleading version of the issues. In the 15 most populous countries, the fertility rate is below replacement rate (usually calculated as 2.1 children per woman) (and no, I don’t know if there is a technical reason why the statistic is per woman rather than person). The 10 billion figure in the 2050s is the peak; after that, the global population will shrink, including in Africa and South Asia where it is currently still growing. The fertility rate is falling and in most countries has been for a long time. That may seem counter-intuitive but population increase in the 20th century was the result of improved health: fewer babies were born but more survived to adulthood.

For those brought up to think overpopulation is the problem, depopulation might look like the solution. But think again. Though human activity pollutes, emits, warms and degrades all round, the two centuries of population growth have also been an era of progress, innovation, improved health and prosperity.

Governments are attempting to increase fertility rates but are pushing against a strong current. At best, it seems the record is mixed. Neither coercive measures nor tax breaks and financial incentives have resulted in higher fertility rates and there is no reason to think that will change. Governments will probably continue to try to increase fertility rates and reduce immigration but, on current form, will likely misunderstand the trends and apply poorly focussed policies.

5. Populism

An internet search for ‘populism’ produces ‘rise of’ in most results. It’s taken as a fact of our time. But the issue is full of uncertainties.

The definition of populism is contested and uncertain so it is hard to figure out the data. A study by the Tony Blair Institute and another by International IDEA address the same problem, but one found the populist surge into government tapering off, while the other saw it continuing.

But the ‘rise’ is not just about forming the government; in Croatia, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and the UK among others, it is also about influence, possibly sharing power, and, beyond that, perhaps most significantly about its increasingly strong place it in political discourse.

Populism is not an ideology or a set of beliefs. The ‘ism’ part of the word is misleading. It is not inherently either right- or left-wing, nor is it inherently authoritarian. More than anything it is a mode of political communication and mobilisation, an approach to politics. An analysis I find persuasive posits four core elements, common to all populism everywhere:

• It claims to speak as the voice of the people, often through charismatic leaders,
• Speaking out against the elite (any kind – social, military, economic, intellectual)
• With a binary, un-nuanced moral absolutism, spurning consensus and compromise, and articulating, therefore,
• Deep distrust of process, norms and institutions.

Populism also often features a narrow definition of the ‘people’ and intolerance to those who fall outside that definition, opposition to immigration, and a sense of wounded dignity, victimhood and betrayal.

Populism has always been well suited to mobilising opinion by pointing to real inequalities of opportunity and outcome. Today, it works even better. Challenging values such as tolerance and inclusivity, it feeds off the anger of the age, meeting a widely felt wish for immediacy, simplicity and authenticity – immediacy in political narratives, simplicity in analysis, and authenticity in the appeal to group identity.

Depending on how they perform in government and whether they efficiently deliver the services their constituencies want, populism in power may come and go. But its place in political discourse may be more persistent. And that will likely create problems for the handling of each of the other major hinge points and all complex crises from pandemics to war.

Populism will always pull to the simple, the clear, the binary choice with one absolutely correct answer but the world’s problems just ain’t like that.

In sum

To maintain prosperity while addressing the ecological crisis, exploiting the fourth industrial revolution without being overhwlemed by it, and despite the changes in population make-up demand subtle, nuanced, strategic, integrated political approaches that maximise cooperation despite the crisis of the world order. Compromise will be essential, along with far-sighted steadiness.

Impelled by two catastrophic world wars in the first half of the twentieth century, political leaders understood that their national interest lay in acting on shared interest. It was never flawless but it worked. Can we do it again, this time without a hundred million deaths?

Each of the five hinge points has its discreet drivers and consequences but they impact on each other all over the place, intersecting, interacting, fusing, synthesising. Part of the problem for political leaders is that they can’t address one properly without addressing others. And that’s part of the opportunity if only they could find a way to grab it – when you address one, you address others too.