Pity the poor lexicographer. Every year at this time, they must divine the word that captures the year that was. "Brexit" is at the top of many lists, as is "Trumpkin" (a supporter of the U.S. president-elect), while the Oxford Dictionary decided "post-truth" is its word of the year.
Each of those words captures but a facet of the year that is concluding. All refer to the collapse of the established order throughout the world, the erosion of old verities and certainties, and a readiness to gamble with the unknown. Poet W.B. Yeats captured this sentiment well in his poem "The Second Coming," when he observed that "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold." Key events in 2016 were moments of disintegration that exposed a frail and fragile political order.
The year began with North Korea claiming that it had tested a thermonuclear device, which, if true, would mark a qualitative shift in its capabilities. This might in the hand of an untested and increasingly mercurial leader was not only a direct threat to North Korea's neighbors and their allies, but it signaled the failure of the international order created to prevent this very eventuality as well as the concerted efforts of the world's most powerful governments to slow, stop and rollback this program.