“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters”, Antonio Gramsci I recall vividly that I was in New York City when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were locked in their historic contest for the American presidency in 2016.

Within diplomatic circles, media houses, academic institutions, and policy forums, the expectation of a Clinton victory seemed almost axiomatic.

Trump’s candidacy was widely regarded as an aberration, a populist spectacle that would ultimately yield to institutional gravity.

Yet beyond the confident rhythms of Manhattan, I sensed a different current.

Beneath the surface of elite complacency and certainty, there existed a deeper reservoir of unease, of economic anxiety in the industrial heartlands of America, cultural resentment in communities that felt bypassed by globalisation, and a growing distrust of institutions perceived as distant and self-contained.

The signs were not dramatic; they were diffuse, subtle, and easily dismissed.

But they were real.

I remarked to colleagues that Trump might well prevail.

When the results confirmed that intuition, it became clear that what had occurred was not merely an electoral surprise.

It was the visible eruption of structural forces long in gestation.

The rest, as they say, is history — but it is a history that continues to unfold with dramatic insistence and palpable consequences.

What many described as abnormal in 2016 has since revealed itself to be something more enduring.

The Trumpian moment was not simply a deviation from the liberal international norm; it marked the transition into a post-normal condition in which the norm itself has fractured.

The abnormal presumes a stable reference point to which politics will eventually return.

The post-normal suggests that the reference point has shifted irreversibly — perhaps even shattered altogether.

For decades after the Second World War, and especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the liberal international order rested upon a constellation of assumptions that appeared unassailable.

Globalization would deepen interdependence.

Democracy would expand across continents and resolve conflict.

Multilateral institutions would arbitrate disputes.

State sovereignty would be respected.

American leadership would remain both indispensable and benevolent.

These were not merely policy frameworks; they became ideological certainties.

The Trumpian recalibration unsettled that certainty.

Multilateral commitments were no longer sacred but conditional.

Trade agreements were treated as negotiable contracts rather than solemn compacts.

Alliances were assessed in transactional terms.

Immigration, once celebrated as an emblem of openness, was reframed as a threat.

Withdrawal from international agreements signaled not isolationism, but reprioritisation.

The language of universal mission gave way to the language of national interest.

This shift echoes an earlier moment in American history.

When Richard Nixon assumed office in 1969, the United States was burdened by the war in Vietnam, domestic upheaval, racial polarisation, and economic strain.

Nixon responded with recalibration rather than retreat.

He opened diplomatic relations with China, adjusted alliance expectations, and restructured global finance by ending the dollar’s convertibility into gold.

His moves appeared disruptive at the time, yet they represented adaptation to structural constraints rather than abnormality.

The Trumpian shift similarly reflects structural recalibration — though in a more fragmented and technologically accelerated environment.

Unlike Nixon, who maneuvered within a bipolar Cold War framework, Trump operated in an emerging multipolar system characterised by rapid information flows, social media amplification, and intense domestic polarisation.

The environment itself had changed.

The deeper transformation is epistemological as much as geopolitical.

We have entered what scholars describe as a....