Is the World on a Hard Reset?

I have been thinking about this for a while. Is the world actually going through another hard reset, or are we simply witnessing the gradual collapse of an order that has been losing its relevance for years?

Look around. Wars, economic instability, political polarisation, shifting alliances, institutional distrust, technological disruption, rising authoritarian tendencies and an increasingly fragile global economy. Everything seems to be happening simultaneously. Different countries, different conflicts, different political interests, yet somehow all these developments seem to be connected to a much bigger transition.

And no, I don't necessarily mean that there is one secret organisation sitting in a room somewhere controlling every world event. I mean something much more fundamental. The existing global order is under pressure, the rules are changing, and the balance of power is being renegotiated.

History has a habit of repeating certain patterns, even if the circumstances and the players change.

In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia helped establish the foundations of the modern state system after decades of religious and political warfare in Europe. In 1815, following the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna redrew Europe's political landscape and attempted to establish a new balance of power. The First World War dismantled four major empires, and the settlement that followed attempted to create a new international framework through the League of Nations.

It failed to prevent another world war.

Then came the Great Depression of 1929. Financial markets collapsed, banks failed, unemployment skyrocketed, international trade contracted and entire economies struggled to survive. The economic crisis was followed by a period of extraordinary political upheaval. It contributed to the conditions in which extremist movements gained ground, although it was certainly not the only reason the world eventually descended into another war.

The Second World War completely changed the geopolitical landscape. The Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 laid the foundations of the postwar financial architecture. The IMF and World Bank emerged, the United Nations was established, European colonial powers began losing their empires, and two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, came to dominate international politics.

That was a hard reset.

Then, in 1971, Nixon suspended the dollar's convertibility into gold, effectively dismantling a central pillar of the Bretton Woods monetary system. By 1973, the major currencies had moved towards floating exchange rates. Another fundamental change in the global financial architecture.

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. In 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved. The bipolar world order came to an end, and the United States emerged as the dominant global power. What followed was an era of American-led globalisation, expanding international trade and the widespread assumption that liberal democracy and free-market economics would eventually become the dominant global model.

For a while, the world operated as though this arrangement was permanent.

It wasn't.

We are now witnessing the gradual erosion of many of the assumptions that defined the post-Cold War era. China's rise, Russia's confrontation with the West, the growing influence of regional powers, the expansion of BRICS, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the increasingly aggressive use of economic sanctions and trade restrictions are all changing the geopolitical equation.

The unipolar moment is being challenged. Whether what emerges is genuinely multipolar or simply a different configuration of competing power blocs remains to be seen.

But one thing is becoming increasingly apparent: economic interdependence is no longer being treated as a guarantee of political cooperation.

Trade is being weaponised. Technology is becoming a national security asset. Semiconductor supply chains, rare earth minerals, energy resources, shipping routes and financial infrastructure are now part of the geopolitical chessboard. Countries that once prioritised efficiency and cheap production are increasingly prioritising strategic autonomy, supply-chain resilience and economic security.

We are moving towards a world where economic policy and national security are practically inseparable.

And then there is the economy.

Personally, I think we are going through another Great Depression, no matter what economists, governments or international institutions eventually decide to call it.

Perhaps it doesn't look exactly like 1929. Perhaps the mechanisms are different, the financial instruments are more sophisticated and the global economy is far more interconnected. But look at the underlying conditions. Purchasing power is under pressure, housing is becoming unaffordable, wealth inequality continues to be a serious concern, employment is increasingly uncertain, public debt is mounting and ordinary people are finding it harder to maintain the standard of living that previous generations considered attainable.

We have become so accustomed to economic terminology that sometimes I wonder whether changing the terminology also changes the reality.

Call it stagflation, a structural economic crisis, a global slowdown, a cost-of-living crisis or a prolonged period of economic uncertainty. Whatever. The lived experience of millions of people is becoming increasingly difficult.

A depression does not necessarily have to begin with a dramatic Wall Street crash. Economic deterioration can be gradual. It can happen through declining purchasing power, stagnant wages, shrinking opportunities, rising household debt and a growing disconnect between financial markets and the actual lives of ordinary people.

GDP figures might show growth, stock markets might recover and corporations might report record profits, but that doesn't necessarily mean the average household is doing better.

There is a difference between an economy performing well on paper and people actually being able to afford their lives.

And that disconnect has political consequences.

The Great Depression of the 1930s demonstrated how economic insecurity could destabilise societies, undermine confidence in democratic institutions and create fertile ground for radical political movements. We should be careful about drawing direct parallels with the present, but we would be equally foolish to ignore the historical relationship between economic collapse and political upheaval.

Another major variable is technology.

The Industrial Revolution fundamentally altered the relationship between labour, capital and production. It created enormous wealth, but also disrupted traditional livelihoods, intensified inequality and forced societies to reconsider labour rights and economic structures.

Artificial intelligence could be another such inflection point.

We are no longer discussing a technology that simply makes existing processes faster. AI is increasingly entering fields involving research, administration, writing, analysis, customer service and decision-making. Entire business models are being reconsidered. The concentration of data, computing infrastructure and technological capabilities is creating new centres of economic and political power.

The question is not merely how many jobs AI will replace. It is who will own the infrastructure, who will capture the productivity gains and what happens to the people whose economic value is suddenly being redefined.

We could be heading towards another major redistribution of economic power, except this time the industrial machinery is being replaced by algorithms, data and computational infrastructure.

Then there is climate change, resource competition and the growing pressure on global food and energy systems. These are not isolated environmental concerns. They are national security issues, economic vulnerabilities and potential sources of future geopolitical friction.

Water scarcity, agricultural disruption, extreme weather and mass displacement will increasingly influence domestic politics and international relations. Developing countries will bear a disproportionate share of these costs despite having contributed far less to historical emissions.

And perhaps the most unsettling part of all this is the erosion of institutional trust.

Democracy is not simply about holding elections. It requires constitutional supremacy, independent institutions, judicial accountability, freedom of expression and the protection of fundamental rights. When institutions become increasingly politicised, when accountability becomes selective and when citizens begin to lose faith in the systems meant to protect them, the social contract starts weakening.

History has shown us that institutional decay is often gradual. The Weimar Republic did not collapse in a single afternoon. Economic distress, political polarisation, institutional weaknesses and the exploitation of democratic processes contributed to its eventual destruction.

The circumstances today are different, but the importance of institutional resilience remains the same.

Now, whenever conversations about a global reset come up, someone inevitably brings up the Great Reset associated with the World Economic Forum.

I think it is important to separate documented initiatives from conspiracy theories. The WEF publicly introduced its Great Reset agenda in 2020, proposing changes to economic and social priorities after the pandemic. That is a matter of public record. But there is no established evidence that every war, economic crisis, political transition and technological development is being orchestrated through one central command.

That doesn't mean powerful interests are not shaping the direction of events.

States pursue strategic interests. Corporations lobby governments. Financial institutions influence policy. Technology companies compete for control over emerging markets. Powerful countries attempt to establish favourable rules for the next generation of global commerce.

This is how power operates.

Sometimes a new world order does not need a single architect. It emerges because the old one can no longer accommodate the competing interests, economic realities and technological developments surrounding it.

And this is where I think developing countries need to pay particular attention.

A multipolar world could create opportunities for countries that have historically had limited influence over international decision-making. But multipolarity does not automatically mean equality. It can simply mean more powerful players competing for influence over the same smaller economies.

Pakistan, for instance, cannot afford to look at these developments in isolation. Its relationships with China, the United States, Gulf countries and neighbouring states, its energy dependence, economic vulnerabilities and strategic geography all become more significant when the international balance of power shifts.

The question is whether countries like Pakistan will develop the institutional capacity, economic resilience and strategic autonomy to benefit from a changing world, or whether they will continue navigating one dependency after another.

Because a change in the global power structure does not automatically translate into freedom for smaller states.

I don't think we are simply witnessing another period of geopolitical instability. I think we are witnessing the convergence of multiple systemic crises. An economic transition, a technological revolution, a redistribution of global power, an institutional legitimacy crisis and an environmental emergency, all unfolding within the same historical window.

Perhaps this is what a hard reset actually looks like.

Not one dramatic event, not one declaration, not one war that suddenly changes everything. Rather, a gradual breakdown of existing arrangements until the old system becomes increasingly incapable of sustaining itself.

And there is something worth remembering about every major historical reset: the collapse of an old order does not guarantee that what replaces it will be better.

The end of colonial empires did not automatically bring economic independence. The end of the Cold War did not bring universal peace. Globalisation did not distribute prosperity equally. Technological progress did not eliminate inequality.

A multipolar world is not necessarily a more just world. A new financial architecture is not necessarily a fairer one. And the redistribution of power does not necessarily mean that power will move closer to ordinary people.

Perhaps the real question is not whether the world is on a hard reset.

It is who is negotiating the terms of the new arrangement, whose interests are being protected, who is paying the price of the transition and, most importantly, who gets to write the rules when the dust settles.

Because history has repeatedly shown us that when an old order collapses, the people who shape the new one rarely ask permission from those who will have to live under it.

And I think that is the part we should be paying much closer attention to.