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A FINANCIAL TIMES ECONOMICS BOOK OF THE YEAR

‘Compulsively readable… An essential course in geopolitical self-help’ – Adam Tooze

‘Full of fresh – and often surprising – ideas’ – Niall Ferguson

‘Extraordinary… One of those rare books that defines the terms of our conversation about our times’ – Michael Ignatieff

We thought connecting the world would bring lasting peace. Instead, it is driving us apart.

In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, global leaders have been integrating the world’s economy, transport and communications, breaking down borders in the hope of making war impossible. In doing so, they have unwittingly created a formidable arsenal of weapons for new kinds of conflict and the motivation to keep fighting. Rising tensions in global politics are not a bump in the road – they are part of the paving.

Troublingly, we are now seeing rising conflict at every level, from individuals on social media all the way up to full-blown war in eastern Europe. The past decade has seen a new antagonism between the US and China; an inability to co-operate on global issues such as climate change or pandemic response; and a breakdown in the distinction between war and peace, as the theatre of conflict expands to include sanctions, cyberwar and the threat of large migrant flows.

As a leading authority on international relations, Mark Leonard has been inside many of the rooms where our futures, at every level of society, are being decided – from the Facebook HQ and facial recognition labs in China to meetings in presidential palaces and at remote military installations. In seeking to understand the ways that globalisation has broken its fundamental promise to make our world safer and more prosperous, Leonard explores how we might wrest a more hopeful future from an age of unpeace.

Publisher Review

Compulsively readable, Mark Leonard's globe-trotting book not only offers us a fascinating and disturbing panorama, it redefines realism for an age of massive and toxic connectivity. Rather than fleeing into anachronistic visions of grand architecture and Cold War rhetoric, it demands that we face our actual problem. An essential course in geopolitical self-help. -- Adam Tooze, author of Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World There was a time when we all naively thought that a networked world would be awesome. But, as Mark Leonard argues in The Age of Unpeace, 'The connections that knit the world together are also driving it apart. It is not that the Internet and globalization have led to a war of all against all; more that the distinction between war and peace has broken down. 'Connectivity conflicts' are the signature style of the new 'unpeace', an old Anglo-Saxon word that, as Leonard persuasively argues, nicely describes our new era of financial sanctions, trade wars, infowars and cyberwars. Leonard, once a true believer in the European project, is that rare thing: a public intellectual willing to question his own assumptions and come up with fresh - and often surprising - ideas. If you want to understand the geopolitical significance of Grindr, the gay hook-up app, or the historical consequences of Sun Yatsen's Hawaiian childhood, look no further. -- Niall Ferguson, author of The Square and the Tower and DOOM: The Politics of Catastrophe We now understand that we live and must live between the duelling utopias of unrestricted globalization and national sovereignty. The task is to make the best of our connections, and here Mark Leonard offers a creative and clarifying way forward. -- Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny One of Mark Leonard's great strengths is his sensitivity to the zeitgeist. This book is no exception. Rather than rejecting or ignoring the growing rebellion against connectivity, he accepts it and seeks to find ways of responding to it. The result is a highly readable book packed full of insights and ideas about what needs to be done. -- Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules The World Mark Leonard has done something extraordinary: written a powerful and persuasive analysis of our 'age of unpeace', in which the three 'empires of connectivity' that define our time-China, the US and Europe-are competing for hegemony by exploiting the very connectedness that ties our world together. This is one of those rare books that defines the terms of our conversation about our times. -- Michael Ignatieff, President and Rector, Central European University