Since the 80s’, a Neoliberal Global Order has replaced the Liberal World Order, that shaped the international system from Second World War to 1989. Similarly to the path, which determined the Titanic’s wreck, the world has embarked on a dangerous path. Global leaders have undertaken a new route, different from the original one. This new route, the book argues, is corroding the Liberal World Order because – contrary to the principles of Liberalism – it allowed the Market to define the contours of Democratic life, and not the other way around. The iceberg in this story has four sides: first, the decline of American leadership and the emergence of Chinese and Russian authoritarian powers; second, the molecular fragmentation of the ‘security threat’; third, the triumph of Trump’s revisionist turn; forth, the takeover of populism and technocracy to the detriment of democratic politics. Aside, the book also reflects on the efforts the European Union and European members States seem eager to make to re-establish the original route of the Liberal World Order. Yet, the book suggests that, in order to succeed, European democracies should re-instituting a renewed political balance between the market’s ‘imperative’ of economic growth and social solidarity.

Vittorio Emanuele Parsi is professor of IR at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan and in the Università di Lugano (Switzerland). He is director of the Graduate School of Economics and International Relations (ASERI). He is the author of different publications in Italian and English, which include The Inevitable Alliance: the US and Europe Beyond Iraq (Palgrave Macmillan 2006). He is commander in the Italian Navy Reserve.