Srinagar, May 29 -- The myth of global village has given way to a new face-off between the great-power blocs

Yanis Varoufakis

To exorcise my worst fears about the coming decade, I chose to write a bleak chronicle of it. If, by December 2030, developments have invalidated it, I hope such dreary prognoses will have played a part by spurring us to appropriate action.

Before our pandemic-induced lockdowns, politics seemed to be a game. Political parties behaved like sports teams having good or bad days, scoring points that propelled them up a league table that, at season's end, determined who would form a government and then do next to nothing.

Then, the COVID-19 pandemic stripped away the veneer of indifference. By June 2020, as lockdown...