To this day, hardly anyone in the West is willing to acknowledge their own share of responsibility for the failure of the global order-or how they themselves contributed to the formation of rival blocs.

In the fourth and, for now, final installment of the Chronicles of the New World Disorder, the central focus shifts to the defining systemic conflict of our time: the rise of China and the gradual erosion of American global dominance. Two powers, inextricably intertwined economically-and yet trapped in a prisoner's dilemma that could escalate into a major war.

While the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 exposed the fragile foundations of American dominance, China calmly positioned its pieces: Belt and Road, RCEP, its own payment systems, and its own global institutions. Beijing claimed its place in the sun-and Washington denied it with all its might and growing paranoia.

Yet the fracture does not run only between great powers. It cuts straight through Western societies themselves. A wave of deindustrialization devastated America's Rust Belt-much like Russia's Red Belt before it. Despair, a loss of trust, and populism filled the vacuum. Obama was followed by Trump-not by chance, but as a systemic consequence of an order that failed to account for its own losers.

At the same time, the West is losing the Global South: countries that have long seen through Western double standards-free trade for us, insurmountable barriers for you-and have already begun seeking new partners.

Where do we stand today? The Chronicles offer no comforting answers. But they show that the global markets created by globalization are more resilient than their would-be gravediggers believe-and that we may be witnessing the birth pains of something entirely new.