The one certain thing about 2009 is that it will enter history as the year that shattered a number of certainties. The benevolent empire, the unilateral moment, the American century all seem to have gone the way of the Charleston. So seem to be the unshakable paradigms of the free market, liberal capitalism, global finance, and athletes as role models. Foreign policy has not fared much better. What happened to the Atlantic bond, the special relationship, or, for that matter, to the West? When an agreement is to be hammered out on global warming, it takes the Big Five of Brazil, India, China, and South Africa along with the US. Europe does not count. Nor does Russia. (When things cool down, though, as they always do in winter, Russia and its gas and oil are very much back in the picture.) And speaking of global warming, while it still may be near certain that it exists and that large parts of it are human-caused, the proposed scenarios for stopping it increasingly look insufficient/ineffective/ill-advised.

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Does it mean, as some would suggest, that ours is a civilization in decline, based on flawed assumptions, and dissipating ideas, energy and drive? Not necessarily. The big ideas driving the global economy and the global society—be it connectivity, the “cloud”, genetic engineering, cashless society, and the aspirations of individuals everywhere to dignity, equality and human rights—are all, without exception, Western inventions. What has changed, or rather has not, is that these ideas are in competition and often in conflict with different ideas of the world as a system of managed economies, sovereign democracies, divinely ordained autocracies and peoples’ republics. So flushed with success were we at the turn of the century, that we left all these for dead or at least discounted them as marginal. Yet all this time they remained there, regrouping, recovering energy, biding their time. Now they are back.

It would be foolish to think once again that one or more of these social models could not provide an alternative to the existing world order. Although invariably less efficient as ways to generate wealth, they are conceivably more efficient as ways to discipline society, extract obedience, cope with austerity, make do with less. Should the world experience a catastrophic depression, a devastating war or an environmental meltdown, they could prevail in large parts of the world. All it would take is for good men to do nothing. The plot has thickened, not changed. Shall we concede defeat or put up a fight? As others have noted, this is too good a crisis to be wasted.