War, aid cuts, and migration are treated as separate crises. They are not.
A system that, however imperfectly, once recognised some degree of shared responsibility for global stability is being replaced by one that prioritises immediate national interest, even where that interest undermines the conditions that make stability possible.
The difficulty is that interdependence does not disappear when it is politically inconvenient. The supply chains remain connected. The flows of capital, energy, and goods remain intertwined. And so do the consequences. Joseph Kiprono’s field is not separate from decisions made in London or Washington. It is downstream from them. And so too are the movements of people who can no longer remain there.
The question is not whether we are connected. It is whether policy is willing to recognise what that connection implies. Currently, it is not.
And that is why the system feels increasingly unstable. Not because the problems are new, but because the frameworks that once attempted – inadequately – to manage them are being dismantled without anything coherent to replace them. What remains is a set of policies that assume problems can be contained, even as they are systematically being reproduced.