War and expansionism: Consign both to history

Trump's talk of an expansionist US may only be rhetoric, but it still entails big risks. Globally, authoritarian leaders might get emboldened to pursue their own territorial ambitions

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little over 85 years ago, on 1 September 1939, the Wehrmacht attacked Poland under orders from Adolf Hitler, sparking off World War II. At the end of a conflict whose body count from military and civilian casualties is estimated at around 70-85 million, a global world order emerged in which the sanctity of territorial boundaries, democracy and liberal values were enshrined as non-negotiable. Old institutions were repurposed and new ones set up to protect these values and embed them in social, political, cultural and economic practices. True, this edifice has faced threats from all kinds of actors in the years since, even though popular belief exuded confidence in its doctrines. But the emerging political grammar in democracies across the globe today prompts an unavoidable question: Have we reached a tipping point?