Are Countries Okay

There’s a bit more of phrases like “plunged into chaos” going around these days than an impartial observer of world affairs might generally hope for. A “spasm of political turmoil” here, a “huge jolt of uncertainty” there. “Upheaval” abounds.

For the moment, this is all more vibes-based than anything else, but reading world news over the last month or two has felt a bit like falling slowly but painfully down a flight of stairs. A quick summary: Two of the G7 countries, France and Germany, have seen their governments collapse in recent weeks, with no-confidence votes and splintering party coalitions raining down over Europe; another, the U.K., has seen such a “shaky start” to Keir Starmer’s PM tenure that he felt the need to launch more or less a reset to Labour’s time in control this week, suggesting a premiership “in crisis“; and South Korea, of course, is still reeling from a brief but chilling autogolpe attempt on Tuesday, with a declaration of martial law for the first time since the country’s military dictatorships were ousted in the 1980s. Syria’s civil war has reignited; Ukraine is reeling from renewed Russian offenses; Israel’s ceasefire with Hezbollah is a joke, and its genocide in Gaza continues.

And that’s before we look inward, where Trump’s surprise victory has thrown the world’s richest country into its own version of turmoil. Since the election, grossly unqualified nominees for various appointments have already come and gone, while others still on tap have openly threatened to break the Constitution into tiny pieces.

It is not, of course, every country that is going up in flames. Mexico seems pretty happy with its new president, climate scientist Claudia Sheinbaum, with high early approval ratings; though she is about to have a very petulant northern neighbor and primary trading partner to manage. President Biden is currently in sub-Saharan Africa, touring Angolan slavery museums and committing to billions of dollars in aid, in particular for a railway corridor linking Angola with Zambia — a positive move, though one largely intended to rival China’s outsized and growing influence on the continent.

And of course, all the countries recently got home from Azerbaijan, where they failed in shrieking, egregious fashion to amp up the climate action ambition the entire world so desperately needs. All this — turmoil, upheaval, chaos — and it’s not even summer.