Miscellaneous
A world far from normal is, overnight, pushed back into the COVID tunnel by a new variant — Omicron. The same haphazard pattern of response and travel bans have followed. Have we really learned nothing in our two-year battle against COVID-19? COVID-19 is a final warning shot across the bows — a warning by the 21st century to nation-states and institutions conceived in and by the 20th century. The real monster at the door, however, is not COVID, or the migrant on the border, or trade—it is bigger than all of these put together. The monster at the door is the flailing institutions of global governance, and the failing nation-state members of those institutions, all unable to contend with or govern the forces unleashed by the 21st century.