In geopolitics, 2026 has kicked off on a roller-coaster. From the abduction of the Venezuelan president, over the open US threats to ‘take’ Greenland, be it by force, be it by trashing NATO, to, by the time of writing, a looming US intervention in Iran. And yet, in an eerie sense, nothing of all this is entirely unexpected.
Rather, it seems a logical continuation of a shift from a rules-based international order (imperfect as it has always been) to one of a few superpowers and their zones of influence is in the making, at least since Russia invaded Ukraine four years ago.
Next to a prevailing new sense of insecurity, there is a host of consequences: trade, once governed by a set of shared rules, has become an instrument of domination through tariff-threats that are constantly thrown around; the UN is increasingly reduced to a forum that registers the wishes of the competing superpowers; and the climate catastrophe as all but disappeared from the international policy agenda.
With this dossier, the Progressive Post tries to gauge the question: what’s next? What new world order is in the making? Or is the endgame of what we are currently living through the simple law of the strongest – in other words: disorder?
