The New World Crisis – a Substack to analyze the pressing problems of today

As wars and crises worldwide worsen, I have decided to start a Substack, a popular form of online newsletter which allows readers to support authors whose work they like by paying for a subscription. Interested readers are welcome to subscribe to my analysis at The New World Crisis at https://newworldcrisis.substack.com/

See the text of my introductory Substack post, which explains the choice of name, below:

The title of this Substack recalls the title of Winston Churchill’s memoirs of the First World War, “The World Crisis.” Published in five volumes from 1923 to 1931, these were Churchill’s personal reminiscences of, and historical reflections on, the worst war in history up to that time. At the end of the fourth volume, published just before the Wall Street Crash in 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression, Churchill wrote presciently that “the danger of war has by no means passed from the world.” Churchill would live to lead Britain through another World War, and write its world-famous six-volume history.

Now, on Friday 15 March 2024, as this introductory text is written, the world is once again in grave crisis, and well on the way to slipping into another military catastrophe. The world’s most dangerous war since the Second World War, Russia’s attempt to subjugate all of Ukraine, is in its 751st day. Israel’s war to destroy Hamas, after the worst act of mass murder against Jews since the Holocaust, has already lasted 161 days. Multiple other wars continue across the world, prominently in Mali, Myanmar (Burma), Sudan and Syria.

Even as the crisis worsens, most people in the West take but little notice. In the United States, the world’s richest, most powerful and hence most important country, only 3% of those polled by Gallup think that “foreign policy” is the country’s most important problem. In comparison, 28% are acutely concerned about immigration and 20% hold such concerns about the state of the US government. America, and much of the rest of the West, has turned inward, thereby worsening both the global security crisis and the internal divisions which are so prominent in many contemporary Western societies.

The purpose of this Substack is to analyze why this has come to pass, and to discuss ways of emerging from the present crisis, so that no future multi-volume histories of another World War will have to be written, especially since it is not certain that there would be anyone left to write them.