Reviving Westphalia

It is a time of great uncertainty in international affairs. U.S. troops are deploying to Saudi Arabia for the first time in 16 years, presaging an increasingly probable showdown with Iran. The Anglosphere is likely to soon see a second, intensely nationalistic and straw-maned populist rise to the seat of government. The U.S. president has shredded much of the network of alliances and trade arrangements that circled the globe through decades past. The EU and the UN are both adrift. Some form of reckoning between Washington and Beijing looms ever closer.