Trump's wild card on Turkey

2016 has been the year when the West desperately started to question whether this was the end of the hegemonic liberal democratic order as we know it. The Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, Donald Trump's election victory in the United States and - as a final ring in the chain - Italy's referendum emerged as strong symbols of rising populism in global politics. 

Last week in Rome, I had the chance to spend some time with the leading European intelligentsia who are working their heads off to decipher the codes of our new prospective global order. The drama is, though, that the European think tank community's interests have been so deeply entangled in the liberal order that they now seem to struggle with reconnecting with the motives and demands of the average European citizen on the street, just like the politicians from elitist establishment who are losing ground on both sides of the Atlantic. 

In fact, American academic Walter Russell Mead's insight as to why people are slipping toward disturbing, unconventional but flamboyant figures was quite on the spot. According to Mead, we have come to the end of an era, which was run by institutions, organizations and bureaus. The new era will be shaped by people's hunger for big personalities. Who is Mr. or Mrs. Europe, asks Mead, while drawing attention to the need to humanize the European Union. 

It is true that the EU has been too bureaucratic, too mechanical and too "top down," to the point that Europeans have increasingly started to become annoyed by the lack of soul in Brussels politics. But does that mean that Westerners are close to totally rejecting the core values of the liberal democratic order? 

At a dinner debate at the American Academy in Rome, responding to a question on...