When Liberal Order Collapses ...
Sudan and the Future of Democracy in the Compound Age.
By Dr. Isaiah (Ike) Wilson III
I. The Heat, the Dust, and the Silence
The road into Khartoum is quiet now, but not the quiet of peace. It is the quiet of emptied streets, of shuttered storefronts, of neighborhoods where the only movement comes from stray dogs and plastic bags whipped by desert winds. Somewhere beyond the horizon, the rumble of artillery bleeds into the hot air. In the neighborhoods that still have walls, residents whisper about what’s left of the hospitals, about who controls which checkpoint this week, about how much grain is left in the market.
Anne Applebaum, in her September 2025 cover story for The Atlantic, calls Sudan’s civil war “the most nihilistic conflict on earth.” It is an apt phrase.
The fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has devoured not only lives and homes, but the very premise of a shared future. This is not a war for territory in the traditional sense; it is a war to deny the other side the capacity to govern, even if it means ensuring that no one governs at all.
For the United Nations, this is another “Level 3” crisis—their highest tier of emergency designation.
For the people of Sudan, it is something else: the implosion of the state, the end of predictability, the collapse of what the political scientist Samuel Huntington once called “the third wave of democracy.”
From my vantage point as a security strategist, Sudan is not an anomaly. It is the template for what the collapse of the liberal order looks like in the compound security age.
II. Layers of Collapse: A Compound Security View
When analysts describe a “failed state,” they often speak as if one thing failed—corruption, war, famine, a coup—and everything followed from there. Sudan is not that simple. Here, multiple crises intersect and reinforce one another:
Political disintegration: The 2019 revolution ousted Omar al-Bashir and briefly birthed a civilian–military power-sharing agreement. It did not survive the weight of old patronage networks, security force rivalries, and foreign interference.
Humanitarian disaster: Food prices have doubled in months; over 25 million Sudanese face acute hunger. Water systems have collapsed in urban and rural areas alike.
Armed fragmentation: Beyond SAF and RSF, militias and local defense committees carve up their own fiefdoms.
Regional entanglement: Iran supplies drones to the SAF; the UAE supports the RSF; Chad and Egypt pursue their own security and economic agendas.
Environmental stress: Drought cycles and flooding compound displacement, turning humanitarian crises into long-term population shocks.
In compound security terms, this is convergence-in-action.
Each dimension of insecurity—political, economic, environmental, and military—feeds back into the others. No single lever will restore order. No single actor can even claim to be “the government” in the sense that international law would recognize.
III. Polycentric Resistance: The ERRs
Applebaum’s piece focuses on the collapse of formal aid structures—how USAID pulled back, how UN convoys were blocked or looted. But she also highlights a remarkable counterpoint: Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs).
ERRs are community-run networks that deliver food, medicine, water, and even education. They are not NGOs in the Western sense; they are “polycentric governance nodes.”
In compound security strategy, these represent the only scalable form of resilience in a collapsed state: decentralized, adaptive, and embedded in local legitimacy.
ERRs have sprung up across Sudan—over 600 documented hubs. They are staffed by volunteers, financed through local donations and diaspora remittances, and protected not by peacekeepers but by the communities they serve.
In the absence of the state, ERRs have become the state.
Sidebar: ERRs in Practice
Structure: Local committees coordinate supplies, identify vulnerable households, and manage security risks.
Scope: Some ERRs focus on one block; others cover entire districts.
Strength: They operate beneath the notice of high-level combatants, avoiding the “capture” problem that plagues larger NGOs.
For polycentric strategists, ERRs are not stopgaps—they are the foundation of any future Sudanese civic order.
IV. The Psychology of Collapse: Perceived Relative Deprivation
To understand why Sudan collapsed so quickly after the promise of 2019, we must examine not just the institutions, but the grievances. Here, “Perceived Relative Deprivation” (PRD) is key.
PRD is the feeling of being unfairly worse off compared to others—whether those “others” are neighboring tribes, urban elites, or foreign powers. In Sudan, decades of uneven development created deep PRD divides:
Darfur, long marginalized, saw minimal infrastructure and chronic insecurity.
Khartoum elites enjoyed the lion’s share of state investment.
Oil revenues benefitted the center while border regions languished.
When the transitional government faltered, these grievances reactivated.
People were not only hungry; they believed they were deliberately kept hungry. Hunger became political. And when hunger is political, war becomes personal.
V. Sudan Through the Lens of ‘Third Wave’ Democracy
The late-Harvard University political scientist, Samuel Huntington’s third wave democracy thesis posits that democratization spreads in waves, often triggered by legitimacy crises in authoritarian regimes, supported by international actors, and sustained by elite bargains and civic mobilization.
By that logic, Sudan in 2019 was on the cusp of joining the democratic wave:
Trigger: Mass protests ended Bashir’s 30-year rule.
Elite bargain: The transitional military–civilian government.
Civic mobilization: Grassroots movements that sustained demonstrations.
Yet Sudan’s case exposes the fragility of third wave assumptions under compound conditions:
The “reverse wave” here was not a minor setback but a total system collapse.
External actors were neither unified nor committed to democratic consolidation.
Civic mobilization remained urban-centric; rural PRD was not addressed.
Polycentric structures (like ERRs) emerged parallel to, not integrated with, the democratization process.
In this sense, Sudan challenges the notion that a “return” to democratic transition is inevitable once the fighting stops.
This is where Huntington’s theory fails in ground testings. In a compound era, democracy must be rebuilt alongside—not after—humanitarian and security systems.
VI. The War of Many Fronts
Foreign intervention in Sudan is not new, but the current war’s network of patrons is unusually complex:
Iran: Armed drones and training for SAF.
UAE: Weapons and logistics for RSF.
Egypt: Border security and influence over SAF leadership.
Chad: Regional counterweight, with shifting RSF contacts.
This polycentric geopolitical environment means that Sudan’s sovereignty is no longer singular—it is fragmented across external nodes. For mediators, this requires a diplomatic map that accounts for multiple capitals, not just Khartoum.
VII. Humanitarian Collapse as Strategic Failure
When Applebaum quotes a UN diplomat describing “starvation as a weapon of war,” she underscores that this is not an accidental famine—it’s engineered.
SAF blockades starve RSF-held areas; RSF looting prevents aid from reaching SAF-controlled zones. Both sides weaponize deprivation.
WHO reports confirm that over two-thirds of Khartoum’s hospitals are non-functional. Cholera outbreaks in White Nile state and malnutrition in Darfur show how quickly humanitarian crises metastasize in compound conditions.
Here, humanitarian collapse is a governance collapse—not just an outcome of war, but a driver of it.
VIII. From Theory to Practice: A Maxi-Min Strategy
In the compound age, the idea of restoring a single, centralized Sudanese state as a precondition for peace is not only unrealistic—it is strategically counterproductive. Instead, a maxi-min approach aims to:
Maximize leverage at multiple, smaller points of stability.
Minimize the resource and legitimacy costs of interventions.
Five Maxi-Min Actions for Sudan:
Scale ERRs with discreet international support—supplies, training, secure comms.
Protect local supply chains from armed interference using low-profile security guarantees.
Map and monitor PRD hot zones to preempt flashpoints.
Negotiate layered ceasefires—local first, national later.
Embed democracy-building in humanitarian aid—teach governance skills alongside food distribution.
IX. Rethinking the Third Wave
Sudan’s tragedy forces us to reconsider whether the “third wave” model can survive in a world where wars are polycentric, and crises are compound.
Three adaptations are essential:
Integrate polycentric governance into democratization: The ERRs are not obstacles to a central government—they are its future scaffolding.
Address PRD “before” constitution-writing: Without grievance resolution, new political orders inherit the old conflicts.
Simultaneity over sequencing: In compound crises, peace, democracy, and development must be pursued in parallel.
X. The Bitter Warning
Applebaum warns that Sudan is “what will replace the liberal order” when it fails.
She is right.
But Sudan is not just a warning—it is a living lab for what survival looks like in the ruins.
If we learn from it, we will see that the future is neither the old, centralized state nor the romanticized democratic wave of the 1990s. It is polycentric, adaptive, grounded in local legitimacy, and conscious of the deep psychology of deprivation. It is compound security made real.
If we ignore it, Sudan’s war will not be “the most nihilistic conflict on earth” for long.
It will be the first of many.