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The world might feel a little more chaotic, a little more antiquated, these days. But how exactly should we describe that feeling?

In Europe, Russia and Ukraine are fighting a war that looks distressingly like the darkest moments of the 20th century — trench lines, tank battles, cities razed to the ground — but are struggling to muster mustering the necessary manpower and materiel.

In the Middle East, non-state militant groups, with backing from Iran, are taking on some of the most powerful militaries in the world; and in the case of Yemen’s Houthis, causing major disruption to the global economy.

In the US, it’s become hard to find consensus on nearly any political topic,, and self-described patriots are increasingly hostile toward national institutions, from Congress to the military. 

What do all these developments have in common? 

They are symptoms of a chaotic world in which nation-states boast historically destructive firepower but in many ways appear weaker than ever, unable to mobilize their populations around a common call or control their international environment.

To comprehend this chaotic era … we need to go beyond the well-worn 20th century analogies like the Cold War or World War II. As I write in a new article for Vox, we may need to get medieval.

A recent paper published by the RAND Corporation argued that to understand the risks involved in superpower competition between the US and China, it’s vital to understand that we live in what the authors describe as a “neomedieval era.” 

That doesn’t mean we’re returning to the days of broadswords and chain mail. The authors define the neomedieval era, which they argue began around 2000, as being “characterized by weakening states, fragmenting societies, imbalanced economies, pervasive threats, and the informalization of warfare.”

It’s a world that resembles the recent past less than it does Europe before the 17th century, when state power was often fractured and overlapping and nationality existed with what one historian describes as a “fluidity which is startling to the modern mind.”

Back then, governmental authority was often divided between royal families and religious authority, and royals could be of a completely different nationality from the people they governed. The authority of a king could be challenged by local barons and dukes. States weren’t the set entities we know them to be today, and — perhaps most importantly for today — they didn’t enjoy a monopoly on force or a special authority in global politics.

The “neomedievalism” idea isn’t new. In international relations theory, it dates back to at least the 1970s and had a revival during the “end of history” era in the 1990s, but some analysts say it still has things to tell us about today’s messy geopolitics.

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Take the war in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s personalist authoritarian regime increasingly looks like what the UK-based Russia analyst Mark Galeotti describes as “a peculiar hybrid: an almost medieval court perched atop a modern, bureaucratic state.” That is, Russia largely functions on a day-to-day basis, but it’s also a state where ultimate power derives from proximity to the leader — like a medieval court. 

For all that Putin constantly invokes the legacy of the “Great Patriotic War,” as World War II is called in Russia, it’s clear that he doesn’t have the ability to devote Russia’s entire population and industrial might to the war like Joseph Stalin did. 

On the other side, the difficulties in equipping Ukraine with sufficient artillery ammunition to keep pace with Russia show that modern states are simply not built for this type of warfare. The war in Ukraine might look, at first glance, like a return to 20th century-style industrialized warfare, but it’s just as revealing of the differences. 

A neomedieval perspective can also be helpful in analyzing the dizzyingly complex interlocking conflicts in today’s Middle East — and not only because it’s one of the few regions where absolute monarchies, like Saudi Arabia and its Gulf neighbors, are still major power players. 

The groups in Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the various Shiite militias of Iraq and Syria — occupy a sort of in-between status in the international system, not quite one thing or another. 

In other words, it’s a region where looking at the lines on the map will only tell you half the story of what’s happening. 

If there’s good news in neomedievalism, it’s that it suggests an all-out war between the US and China is less likely than many analysts suspect. Both countries are contending with major social problems and an erosion of state legitimacy that would make it difficult to mobilize for the kind of fighting — and the kind of losses — that a true World War III would entail.

Rather than chaos or violent anarchy, a neomedieval world may instead be characterized by what some authors have caused “durable disorder,” where some power is distributed from state to non-state actors but where key problems and global challenges can still be addressed.

But getting to a place where this kind of progress can be made requires a radical shift in perspective after centuries of seeing states as the defining units in world politics.  

“[Neomedievalism] helps people make sense of a world that doesn't have order, but it's not collapsing,” the military contractor-turned-academic Sean McFate told Vox. “And I think increasingly, that's what the 21st century kind of looks like.”

— Joshua Keating, senior correspondent

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