By Jeff Fountain - Posted at Evangelical Focus:
Published August 18, 2025
The disturbing spectre of two self-styled ‘strongmen’ meeting in Alaska to discuss the fate of Ukraine suggests they both want to turn the clock back to the pre-1848 world order.Trump and Putin seem to want to pull the world back toward a pre-1848 style of governance when constitutions were seen as dangerous concessions to popular sovereignty; censorship was rampant; and security networks spied on dissenters.
The defeat of Napolean at Waterloo in 1815 ended a quarter-century of revolution and war and ushered in the ‘Concert of Europe’ era.
In short, the pre-1848 world was one in which rulers saw themselves as the natural guardians of order, above popular accountability. The post-1848 trajectory pointed toward mass politics, rights-based governance and legal limits on rulers’ power.
The overriding fear was that the spirit of the French Revolution — liberté, egalité, fraternité— would spread again. Leaders like Austria’s Chancellor von Metternich were determined to preserve a hierarchical, paternalistic order.