World Run Aground

A discomfiting, heterodox response to our era of polycrisis, seeking to inspire questions and deepen our understanding of world affairs.

Have we returned to a world where states have primacy, where ethnicity and ethnonationalism hold significant sway, and where global cooperation is being dramatically reorientated? The relative decline of America is a major factor in this dynamic, but so too is the renewed role of China, India and Brazil on the international stage.

Emanating from the Ideas Workshop of the Open Society Foundations, A World Run Aground brings together sharp, often heterodox analyses of pressing global issues. It covers a wide range of topics, including the current condition of global political economics, liberalism and democracy (and their future); the state of the Anthropocene; and the perils and contradictions of artificial intelligence. Rather than trying to convince readers of right and wrong, to push a particular policy position or ideological hobby horse, the contributors offer a big-tent set of perspectives and critical takes on contemporary issues—without demanding that readers take sides. In a volume that rejects politics based on divisive party lines, more questions are raised than answered.

With contributions from Quinn Slobodian, Iza Ding, Kaiser Kuo, Evgeny Morozov, Basharat Peer, Nesrine Malik, Ivan Krastev and others, this is a thought-provoking new look at today’s turbulent world.

Leonard Benardo is Senior Vice President of the Open Society Foundations and Director of its Ideas Workshop. His intellectual background is in Eurasian geopolitics and society, though his interests span all continents. He has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books and Prospect, among others.