In the 1990s, a vision emerged of a frictionless world of globalization in which the West would become ever richer on the basis of a tech-based service economy, all underpinned by a rules-based liberal international order. It became the basis for the mainstream politics of centre-left and right.

Philip Pilkington argues that this vision was always delusional and is now dying. It is based on a doctrinaire and unrealistic form of liberalism and has given rise to hollowed-out financialised economies and disintegrating societies that can barely even reproduce their population or meet their energy needs. The US and UK find themselves ill-equipped to compete with China and other non-liberal states within an emerging post-liberal order in which what really matters is industrial capacity, realpolitik and military strength. Only by abandoning our liberal delusions and advancing our own brand of hard-headed post-liberalism can the West survive.

No clear-sighted observer of contemporary geopolitics can afford to miss this bracing diagnosis of the West’s malaise and bold agenda for renewal.

Also available as an audiobook.

Philip Pilkington is a macroeconomist and investment professional. He is the author of a book on economic theory, The Reformation in Economics and the co-host of the popular geopolitics podcast Multipolarity.