Arda Tunca

The latest ministerial meeting  of the World Trade Organization ended not with compromise, but with drift. No agreement on e-commerce tariffs. No meaningful progress on institutional reform. What should have been a forum for coordination instead became a reflection of fragmentation. It was, in many ways, a fitting conclusion to a decade that has steadily eroded the foundations of the global trading system. A Decade of Disruption The unraveling unfolded through a sequence of shocks that...

" A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will ." Such language does not belong to deterrence or negotiation. It belongs to total destruction. Presidents, leaders, and states may have deep and serious conflicts with one another, but the idea of wiping out an entire civilization falls into a category that can only be described as massacre. This war is increasingly being interpreted as a crusade . When framed in these...

Introduction China represents the only major civilization whose cultural foundations extend roughly five millennia into the past, whose written historical record spans more than three millennia, and whose state institutions have exhibited recognizable continuity since the imperial unification of 221 BCE. While the political form of the Chinese state has repeatedly disintegrated and reconstituted itself across more than two millennia, the underlying civilizational framework—its language,...