From the Abnormal to the Post-Normal: The Trumpian New World (Dis)Order, by Usman Sarki

2026-03-04 - 00:27

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters”— Antonio Gramsci I recall vividly that I was in New York City when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were locked in their historic contest for the American presidency in 2016. Within diplomatic circles, media houses, academic institutions, and policy forums, the expectation of a Clinton victory seemed almost axiomatic. Trump’s candidacy was widely regarded as an aberration, a populist spectacle that would ultimately yield to institutional gravity. Yet beyond the confident rhythms of Manhattan, I sensed a different current. Beneath the surface of elite complacency and certainty, there existed a deeper reservoir of unease, of economic anxiety in the industrial heartlands of America, cultural resentment in communities that felt bypassed by globalization, and a growing distrust of institutions perceived as distant and self-contained. The signs were not dramatic; they were diffuse, subtle, and easily dismissed. But they were real. I remarked to colleagues that Trump might well prevail. When the results confirmed that intuition, it became clear that what had occurred was not merely an electoral surprise. It was the visible eruption of structural forces long in gestation. The rest, as they say, is history — but it is a history that continues to unfold with dramatic insistence and palpable consequences. What many described as abnormal in 2016 has since revealed itself to be something more enduring. The Trumpian moment was not simply a deviation from the liberal international norm; it marked the transition into a post-normal condition in which the norm itself has fractured. The abnormal presumes a stable reference point to which politics will eventually return.