Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century

by Helen Thompson

Overview

Getting to grips with the overlapping geopolitical, economic, and political crises faced by Western democratic societies in the 2020s. The 21st century has brought a powerful tide of geopolitical, economic, and democratic shocks. Their fallout has led central banks to create over $25 trillion of new money, brought about a new age of geopolitical competition, destabilised the Middle East, ruptured the European Union, and exposed old political fault lines in the United States. Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century is a long history of this present political moment. It recounts three histories - one about geopolitics, one about the world economy, and one about western democracies - and explains how in the years of political disorder prior to the pandemic the disruption in each became one big story. It shows how much of this turbulence originated in problems generated by fossil-fuel energies, and it explains why as the green transition takes place the long-standing predicaments energy invariably shapes will remain in place.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192634214
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	02/24/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	343,777
File size:	987 KB

About the Author

Helen Thompson is Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University. She is the author of Oil and the western economic crisis (2017); China and the mortgaging of America (2010); and Might, right, prosperity and consent: representative democracy and the international economy (2008). Since 2015, Helen has been a regular contributor to the podcast Talking Politics and has written articles for the London Review of Books, The New York Times, and The Financial Times.

Table of Contents

Introduction: DisruptionI: Geopolitics1. Eurasian limits2. The impossible oil guarantee3. Eurasia remadeII: Economy4. Our currencies, your problem5. Made in China, need dollars6. We are not in Kansas any moreIII: Democratic politics7. Democratic time8. The democratic tax state9. Whither reformConclusions: The more things changeIndex

Editorial Reviews

"Brilliant" — Steven Poole, The Guardian

"majestic" — Neal Lawson, The Observer

"Thompson's analysis of the West is complete, compact and an indispensable reference for International Relations scholars and those with an interest in the political tensions of the modern system. The book offers a unique detailed review of the current circumstances rather than a prescriptive text. Thompson's work exhibits the best traditions of British academic historical inquiry: observation without doctrinal attachments, description without meandering thematic focus and a dry warning of dire consequences." — Shane McLorrain, American University of Paris, France, International Affairs

"The best eight politics books of the year - "Helen Thompson expertly joins the dots between debt, energy prices, inflation and political instability."" — Eoin O'Malley

"Startlingly Relevant" — Michael Laver, Society

"Helen Thompson's book stands tallest among the recent titles that attempt to make sense of our age of crises. Disorder is a singular work owing to the skill with which Thompson maps the intersecting relationships between energy, global monetary policy, and the state of liberal democracy." — New Statesman

"A stimulating read." — Howard Davies, Literary Review

"Excellent." — Peter Franklin, Unherd

"Exceptional" — Gavin Jacobson, New Statesman

"Most of us struggle to keep up [with the news], but not Helen Thompson - she doesn't merely grip each strand, but ties them together." — Tom Clark, Prospect

"Bold and brilliant, studded with insights...one of the year's most essential books." — Christopher Bray, The Tablet

"Fascinating" — Simon Nixon, The Times

"A powerful guide to modern Hard Times...any reader will finish it with a deeper understanding of our contemporary challenges." — Paschal Donohoe, Irish Times

"[Disorder is] as disturbing as it is thought-provoking." — Martin Wolf, Financial Times, Summer Books 2022: Economics

"Excellent" — Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Mail

"Disorder is a brilliant extended essay on the troubles of the era in terms of energy, global finance, governance and democracy...So much of this tortuously fascinating book gives the background to the global crisis now upon us, specifically in energy and governance." — Robert Fox, Reaction

"Bursting with ideas." — James Barr, The Critic

"Readers will understand the world better once they have finished reading Disorder." — Michael Laver, Society

"If you are looking for a well-developed and convincing theory of our time, I advise you to start here." — Gilles Gressani, Le Grand Continent, 'What to read this summer'

"Stimulating" — Luuk van Middelaar, NRC Handelsblad

"We are on the verge of a fascinating epoch that Thompson might write about in a second volume, but that doesn't invalidate her first. Instead, it underscores her larger point that energy and finance are often at the heart of geopolitics." — Tony Yates, Chatham House

"If you want to understand why Russia invaded Ukraine then this book will help." — Richard Lofthouse, QUAD

"Deftly weaving together the history of energy, economics, and politics, Disorder restores depth to contemporary history. Refusing familiar stereotypes, Thompson offers a truly eye-opening account of our current predicament and points the way to a deeper understanding of the energy transition that lies ahead. Challenging and essential reading." — Adam Tooze, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History, Director of the European Institute, Columbia University

"A remarkable history of the complex ways in which the global energy economy has shaped the wealth and politics of nations. Helen Thompson's command of her subject is second to none.Disorder is revelatory, sobering, and indispensable." — Gary Gerstle, author of The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World during the Free Market Era

"To read Thompson on the history of the past century is to see it in a sudden sharp definition. It is akin to looking through glass after the window-cleaner has been." — Tom Holland, bestselling author and co-host of The Rest is History podcast

"There could be no better guide than Helen Thompson to the turbulence of the 21st century, with its successive disruptions, from financial crisis to energy transition, from Brexit to emerging geopolitical conflicts. When history seems to have come for us with a vengeance since the turn of the millennium, this magisterial book brings into focus the key structural forces driving, not only recent events, but also the inevitable changes still to come." — Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy, University of Cambridge

"In this absorbing and wide-ranging study Helen Thompson unravels the complex intersections of oil, money, and democracy for understanding the politics of the last century. She provides an indispensable and illuminating guide to our current predicaments." — Andrew Gamble, Professor of Politics, University of Sheffield

"Thompson's conceptual work is...elaborate...full of revelations." — Thomas König, Austrian Journal of Political Science

From the Publisher

2022-02-09
An astute analysis of the purported breakdown of the once-liberal international order.

Thompson, a professor of political economy at Cambridge, begins with a geopolitical history focused on energy. As the 20th century began, oil was replacing coal as the driving force of military power. Though the U.S. had plenty of oil, the Western European great powers did not. During World War I, Britain and France made efforts to control the fading Ottoman Empire, but they required oil and money from the U.S. and ended the war in significant debt. American oil and money were pivotal to the outcome of World War II, but by the 1970s, the U.S. joined Europe in their dependence on oil from the Middle East. By 1974, the Soviet Union was the world’s leading oil producer. In recent decades, the development of fracking restored America’s global leadership, just in time for China, entirely dependent on imported gas and oil, to become the nation’s main rival. Already dominating in renewable energy manufacturing, China is poised to lead the energy wave of the future. Turning to economic history, Thompson writes that the end of the dollar-based Bretton Woods monetary order in the 1970s eliminated fixed exchange rates, soon to be followed by the end of government controls by the “neoliberalism” of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. This produced a vast increase in debt, further problems with the world’s oil supply, multiple economic crashes in 2007 and 2008, and sharper geopolitical conflict. The author concludes with a sharp and disturbing evaluation of both American and European democracies. Although long proclaimed to be superior to other political systems, they have been historically reliant on the destabilizing idea of nationalism and vulnerable to economic crises. The years since 1970 have seen Americans obsessed with numerous misplaced notions about immigrants, susceptible to plutocratic tendencies that favor the wealthy, and “increasingly unresponsive to democratic demands for economic reforms that would increase the return to labor.”

Dense but lucid, insightful, and unsettling global survey.

Kirkus Reviews