23.11.2025
The Walking Chaos V
The Better Way
Klaudia Grote

In the shadow of the collapse of destructive leadership figures, a paradox often emerges: destruction exposes vulnerabilities, but it also reveals unused possibilities for redesign. Once the hubris of the Walking Trump Chaos becomes visible, the deeper lesson behind it becomes clear. A world order built on hegemony, monopolized power, and the illusion of stability is structurally fragile. History shows with painful clarity what happens when humanity refuses to learn from its own downfalls.

After 1945, the world vowed “never again.” Yet it drifted back into geopolitical rivalry, arms races, and proxy wars. After the oil crises of 1973 and 1979, we understood how dangerous energy dependency is. Yet, societies continued to build their economies on fossil leverage.

After the end of the Cold War, a window for cooperative security opened. Yet arrogance, triumphalism, and miscalculations enabled the rise of new revisionisms.

After the financial collapse of 2008, we declared that the system would be fundamentally reformed. Yet too big to fail, and moral hazard survived with renewed force, and global inequality deepened.

Most strikingly, destructive political figures, from Putin to Trump to Netanyahu and others, faced few real consequences, until their damage had already become global.

Putin tested Western reactions for decades in Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea, and Syria. Each time he was allowed to advance a little further. The world responded too slowly, too fragmented, and too cautiously.

Trump’s rise showed how vulnerable even established democracies are when institutions fail to confront pathological leadership early. Had previous lessons been taken seriously, from Watergate to Berlusconi to countless corruption scandals, Trump would likely be facing prison instead of a return to power.

This recurring pattern reveals a deep structural problem. Warnings are ignored, aggression is tolerated, institutions respond too late, and societies normalize what should never be normalized. The result is a global architecture built on denial, short term incentives, and the hope that the next crisis will somehow remain survivable.

But unlike previous crises, the next great challenge will not be political or financial. It will be planetary. The climate crisis confronts humanity as a single species. The atmosphere does not care about borders or ideology. It reacts only to physics, and physics does not negotiate, delay, or forgive.

If we fail to learn from our past downfalls, the climate crisis will not be a temporary shock. It will become the final teacher, the one from which we cannot walk away untouched. Perhaps climate change is the only force that will stop humanity from destroying itself.

This is why “The Better Way” is not an idealistic fantasy but an act of rational self-preservation. It begins with the recognition that global stability cannot depend on a single nation, especially not on one vulnerable to narcissistic leaders, polarized societies, and volatile electoral cycles. A fairer world order requires at least four interconnected pillars.

1. A Neutral World Currency

A digitally supported, globally backed currency basket could serve as a stable unit of account for energy, raw materials, international loans, and climate funding. Detached from national interests, it would prevent the weaponization of currency systems and ensure predictability in global investment, especially for developing nations facing the harshest climate impacts.

2. Multipolar and Cooperative Governance

International institutions must no longer function as extensions of a single hegemonic actor. Europe, China, India, Brazil, and the African Union must share responsibility as coordinated stewards of global stability. Europe, with decades of supranational collaboration, is uniquely positioned as an architect and mediator of such a structure.

3. Decoupling Energy From National Dominance

Energy remains the primary battlefield of geopolitical coercion. A depoliticized, neutral energy trading system would reduce coercion, accelerate the transition to renewable sources, and remove one of the most dangerous levers of global instability.

4. Ending Proxy Wars

Conflicts in regions such as Sudan consume resources that could instead be used to fight hunger, poverty, and climate damage. The cost of proxy conflicts vastly outweighs what would be required for global climate adaptation. A world committed to fairness must dismantle the incentives that keep these wars alive.

These pillars are not moral appeals. They are strategic imperatives. A fairer world order is not charity. It is humanity’s survival strategy.

The epilogue to these reflections is almost trivial, yet unavoidable.

A species capable of annihilating itself multiple times over stands permanently before the choice between destruction and cooperation. From the imagined perspective of distant observers, it seems irrational how often humanity drifts toward self-inflicted catastrophe. Yet this proximity to collapse may finally be the impulse we need to build structures that limit our destructive psychological tendencies and release our cooperative potential.

If we truly want a better way, we must learn from our past downfalls.

If we do not learn, the climate crisis will be the last warning we ever receive.