Understanding of what is required to function effectively as a global society is reduced. Generally it is believed that only super humans can do social change. The crisis in systems of authority is creating leadership incapable of dealing with highly complex issues and of leading on behalf of the whole society. Government modes of operation seeks to gratify only immediate individual desires.
The scale of the modern nation-state has become so large that leaders are unable to act according to the principles of interdependence, even if they wished to. Decisions are instead made according to economic principles – in the name of "progress" – often disregarding the implications for individual members of the society and for the rest of the living world.
The leadership of the USA, as a stabilizing hegemonic power, is unprepared for a world in which the ideological simplicities of the struggle against communism have been replaced by the complex logic of national interest and the intractable realities of history and cultural difference.