THE US-based NGO Freedom House recently observed that, among the 88 countries categorised as ‘free’, the US had experienced the sharpest fall, dropping to its lowest level since the organisation began publishing its scores in 2002. Meanwhile, Sweden’s V-Dem Institute lamented that America was witnessing the most “severe magnitude of democratic backsliding ever”, could no longer be described as a “liberal democracy” and was in the midst of the process of “autocratisation”.

Political scientist Giuliano da Empoli in The Hour of the Predator (2025)says that “in the new world, everything that needs to be settled will be settled by fire and sword”. Currently, the most violent characters “find meaning in life only when they are in conflict”. War is back in fashion and “leaders who rattle sabres win elections, and some of them follow through on their threats”. It is noted that over “the last five years, global military spending has increased by 34 per cent”.

In a prescient declaration, Empoli wrote about the current US president being “at the head of a motley procession of shameless autocrats, tech conquistadors, reactionaries and conspiracy theorists, all spoiling for a fight”. He warned that the era we were living through was Machiavellian, wherein modern-day princes care least for the norms of legitimate power. The author of The Prince haddepicted “how power can be asserted amid chaos”. “The hour of the predator is upon us,” says Empoli. The current lot “draw their strength from instability, unpredictability, aggression”.

The world has entered an era of “wrecking-ball........

© Dawn