The Insecurity Trap: A short guide to transformation

By Paul Rogers, with Judith Large

by Molly Scott Cato 18th April 2025

The global order that has dominated our lives since 1945 is breaking down. For many of us, US hegemony and nuclear deterrence constituted a threatening rather than reassuring order. But it did have at its heart at least a rhetorical commitment to democracy and human rights. As US democracy fails, strong men in some of the world’s most powerful countries are seeking to build a new world order that resembles the 1930s, a world of national rivalries and disdain, a world that sets us on the path to inevitable future conflict.