About the Book
Exit is grounded in a key insight from Ibn Khaldun: political orders are never permanent. They rise when societies share cohesion, vision, and purpose, and they decline as those bonds weaken. Maçães uses this lens to interpret our current moment, showing how geopolitical shocks, technological disruption, and economic realignment reveal the growing fragility of Western institutions.
He argues that the United States has lost its ability to enforce or maintain global order, that globalization no longer operates under American direction, and that new centers of power—driven by technology and industrial capacity—are emerging beyond the Western world.
“For those contemplating the world from inside the existing order, change looks like collapse.”
– Bruno Maçães
I. Collapsing Order
The first chapter analyzes the psychological and political dynamics of hegemonic decline over time. Dominant powers tend to view challenges to their prominent position as moral affronts, rather than as natural, recurring historical processes. The chapter contrasts Robert Kaplan’s argument that the world faces a “geopolitical Weimar” requiring stronger Western power with Ibn Khaldun’s assertion that such responses accelerate decline, not prevent it.
The chapter identifies three major markers of order collapse:
Shift from Structural to Coercive Power
The Collapse of Legitimacy
Emergence of Extraction Over Insurance
This chapter draws parallels to external conflicts as symptoms of more deeply-rooted dysfunction. Sudan’s privatized militias (the Rapid Support Forces) exemplify how the absence of order creates new, more destructive forms of violence. When the legitimate authority recedes, the return maximization logic of private militias spreads.
On Gaza, the scale of destruction combined with the suppression of debate in Western democracies marks a more qualitative shift. Previous American administrations maintained some semblance of balance, such as Reagan stopping the 1982 Beirut bombing and Baker pursuing the Madrid framework. The current approach in Gaza abandons even tactical hipocracy.
II. Ukraine, Gaza, and Other Warnings
This chapter examines Ukraine and Gaza as two conflicts that are clear indications of systemic failure. Ukraine reveals the limits of Western economic coercion, whereas Gaza reveals the collapse of Western normative claims.
On Ukraine
On Gaza
III. The Search for Universalism
This chapter systematizes positions on Ukraine and Gaza using a quadrant framework.
Westernists (bottom right)
Oppositionists (top left)
Darwinists (bottom left)
Universalists (top right)
The analysis included in this chapter draws a crucial conclusion. Since Westernists and Oppositionists both apply principles selectively, only Darwinists are intellectually honest. If universal principles apply only to one side, they aren’t universal. The world is therefore moving toward Darwinist outcomes because the alternative requires principles surviving difficult tests in different contexts.
This chapter further argues that this trend represents the terminal phase of the liberal international order. Not because liberalism is wrong, but because its proponents have applied it selectively, revealing it as an ideology rather than a principle. The result now is that no one believes in the rules any longer.
IV. The Dialectic and Asabiya
This chapter presents Ibn Khaldun’s core concepts and their contemporary applications.
The Dialectic
Power contains its own negation. Success breeds luxury, luxury destroys the qualities that enabled success. Ibn Khaldun quotes Persian poetry: “Like the silkworm that spins and then, in turn finds its end amidst the threads itself has spun.” This isn’t moral commentary but historical observation of a pattern that repeats across civilizations.
Asabiya (Group feeling)
The social cohesion enabling collective action. Strong asabiya makes societies nearly invincible because members willingly sacrifice individual interests for the interests of the collective. But victory and wealth dissolve asabiya as competition for spoils replaces unity against external threats.
The chapter details Ibn Khaldun’s cycle of state formation:
- A group with strong asabiya conquers territory
- The ruling class grows wealthy and sophisiticated
- Internal competition intensifies as asabiya weakens
- The state loses control of peripheries
- A new group with strong asabiya challenges the weakened state
- Collapse and replacement
Contemporary Applications
On Religion and Universalism
V. Cycles of Money
This chapter applies Ibn Khaldun’s dialectical Framework to the dollar system, demonstrating that reserve currency status contains contradictions that undermine the power it’s meant to support.
The Privilege
- U.S. exchanges printed dollars for real goods
- Foreign exporters accumulate dollar reserves, which they invest in U.S. assets
- Allows massive consumption funded by debt that never needs to be repaid in real terms
The Curse
- To supply the world with dollars requires running trade deficits
- Deficits destroy domestic manufacturing
- Perpetually overvalued currency makes U.S. exports uncompetitive
- Capital inflows get recycled into consumption and asset bubbles rather than productive investment
- Result: deindustrialization of economy that must provide military backing for dollar dominance
Trump's Dilemma
The Policy Trilemma
The question isn’t whether China will replace the dollar, but whether the U.S. can manage the transition away from a system that’s becoming mathematically and politically unsustainable.
Bruno Maçães
VI. Two Principles of Order
The final chapter proposes an alternative framework. Not another blueprint for permanent order, but principles for managing the cycle of rise and fall. The core argument coalesces around the understanding that orders rise and fall through indefinable processes, so we should build a second-order system of rules that govern how orders change rather than attempting to freeze one particular order in place.
Principle One: Every Country Should be Free to Change
Principle Two: Every Country Should be Free to Choose
Implementation Framework
About the Author
Bruno Maçães
Bruno Maçães is one of Europe’s most original geopolitical voices. A former Portuguese Secretary of State for European Affairs, he has advised governments and multinational corporations on the geopolitics of technology, digital sovereignty, and civilizational change. He is also the author of several acclaimed works including:
About the Ibn Khaldun Institute
Ibn Khaldun Institute
Exit from our Age of Disorder is one of the first works produced as part of the newly founded Ibn Khaldun Institute.
Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) was a North African historian, philosopher, and scholar whose Muqaddimah pioneered an empirical science of societies. He studied states not as ideals but as living organisms, rising, thriving, and decaying according to internal forces.
He introduced concepts still relevant today:
- ʿAsabiyyah: social cohesion as the engine of power
- State cycles: predictable rise and decline
- Political economy: taxation, labor, and human capital
- Innovation and growth: technological advances as multipliers
The Ibn Khaldun Institute seeks to preserve, expand, and apply his legacy to modern challenges: structural reform, sovereignty, prosperity, and global economic networks.
→ Learn more here: ibnkhaldun.com
Media Inquiries
To request interviews with the author, schedule speaking engagements, or host launch events: [email protected]