Lately I have not had time to study world events as in the past. But I will at least sketch the way that things appear.
In 1900, the world was at the zenith of the European world empires. That world order was destroyed by two world wars, and replaced by our world with three high-tech superpowers (four, if India can fulfill its potential) striving for influence in a world of almost 200 states. From this perspective, the great "cold war" between Russia and America was simply an episode in the relations of the postcolonial great powers.
Thirty years after that cold war ended with people power in eastern Europe, the G-20 globe is again haunted by people in the streets, but there's no united front. In the west, Extinction Rebellion creates urban inconvenience with its climate strikes. In Hong Kong, the students shut down the city, but to protest Chinese power. In Iraq and Lebanon, dissatisfaction with sectarian oligarchy may become the latest challenge to Iranian influence. In Chile they protest neoliberal inequality, in Bolivia they supported the coup against the leftist Evo Morales, in Ecuador they marched against an IMF-friendly "Lenin". The gilets jaunes just came out again in France and I have no idea what agenda is ascendant there now.
Among the great powers, China and Russia remain domestically secure, but struggling with the west for influence in the world. And within America itself, the struggle over whether western countries will become the progressive version of a "managed democracy" continues, with the Democrats still trying to undemocratically oust Trump for being undemocratic (the first narrative was that he got Putin to hack the election, the new narrative is that he bribed Ukraine to investigate Biden).
