World

Written weeks after Hiroshima, Orwell speculates that weapons too costly and complex for ordinary people to produce or seize tend to concentrate power in the hands of a few states, pointing toward a world frozen into rival superpowers. This is the essay that coined the phrase "cold war," a foundational text for thinking about deterrence and great-power stalemate.

Written as the Cold War was ending, Fukuyama argues that the exhaustion of viable alternatives to liberal democracy marks not just the end of a conflict but the endpoint of humanity's ideological evolution. It remains a touchstone essay for debates about world order, provoking decades of rebuttal from those pointing to nationalism and great-power revival as unresolved contradictions.

The authors map the six competing stories people tell about globalization, from the establishment case for free trade to left-wing, right-wing, corporate-power, and global-threats critiques, showing each captures a partial truth about who wins and loses. They argue good policy requires holding several of these narratives in mind at once rather than treating any single one as definitive.

Gardels argues that the West's attempt to preserve a unipolar, rules-based order is running up against a genuinely multipolar world in which rising powers no longer accept Western values as universal defaults. He suggests the more durable strategy is for Western democracies to renew their own institutions and appeal by example rather than try to enforce a fading hegemony.

Drawing on long-run trade and poverty data, this data-driven essay argues that expanding trade has significantly contributed to global poverty reduction and rising living standards over recent decades. It tempers that claim by noting the gains have been distributed unevenly within and between countries, making the case for social policies that cushion globalization's localized costs.