Each camp was armed with thermonuclear weapons of such massive power that the concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) was the principal reason that the ensuing protracted Cold War did not become a very hot one.

Even those countries not directly involved in the simmering conflict between the western powers and those of the communist world were compelled to tread exceedingly carefully. The merest hint of accommodation with one side in preference to the other could lead to serious political and economic problems.

Neither the USA nor the USSR had much compunction about imposing their will by whatever means necessary ranging from coups d'état, assassination and economic sanctions through to more benign but often just as effective "soft power" strategies such as aid funding, overt propaganda and what we now call "fake news".

It was a world in which people tended to develop very clear and uncomplicated ideas about what was right and what was wrong. In the west we learned about the obvious virtues of liberal democracy and capitalist economics. In the east, they learned about the imminent collapse of capitalism and the inevitable triumph of Marxist-Leninist inspired communism.

We were all wrong, as it turns out, but no-one thought so at the time.

It was a world in which there was a very real, existential fear that we could inflict a nuclear Armageddon upon ourselves merely by making a mistake. History now records that this fate was only narrowly averted several times over the years, when panicked and ill informed politicians on both sides came very close to unleashing hell in response to events that were wrongly perceived as mortal threats.

This then was the world which Papua New Guinea and many other former colonial possessions were born into and in which their nascent leaders formed their views about the world beyond their borders.

In 1975, when PNG became independent, all of the political and ideological certainties of the Cold War era were still in place. In some respects, this made the business of running the new country rather less complicated.

After all, friends and enemies were easy to identify. It also made the business of selecting an approach to economic and financial management a clear choice between two mutually exclusive philosophies and systems.

But such choices were, as we now know, based upon the false dichotomy of liberal democratic capitalism versus communism, between which there supposedly was no middle ground.

Fast forward to 26 December 1991 when the USSR was formally dissolved and communism as a coherent and viable system was consigned to the scrap heap of history.

It was, according to prominent American academic political economist Francis Fukuyama, "the end of history". By this he meant that all remaining ideological issues had been settled and liberal democracy was destined to become the inevitable and natural choice as the system of government across the world.

Unhappily, as Professor Fukuyama has since conceded, history did not end and the triumph of liberal democracy and capitalism seems as remote now as it did during the Cold War.

The neo liberal capitalism now implemented across most of the globe has demonstrated that while it can lift many people out of poverty and stimulate technological innovation on a truly massive scale, it does so at a sometimes fearful cost to those caught up in what its proponents, without any apparent sense of irony, refer to as "creative destruction".

Having your livelihood creatively destroyed is not an amusing experience and having some idiot tell you that it is necessary for the greater good inspires resentment, anger and alienation, not insight or understanding.

The collapse of the ideological certainty and the related political stasis that was a feature of the Cold War era has, I think, been one of the major reasons why our political systems in much of the western world seem to have become detached from their historic and traditional moorings.

Basically, in a post Cold War world where, with the globalisation of the economy, it is every man or woman for themselves and the devil take the hindmost, the ideological and intellectual glue that held our societies together has begun to dissolve.

Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the UK, was one of the greatest advocates for neo-liberal capitalism and imposed it upon Britain with almost messianic zeal. In doing so, she famously said:

"And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour."

This was a radical recasting of a commonly held view that the wants, needs and aspirations of society as a whole ought to be the primary consideration of government, not merely those of individuals within it.

The subtext was that the pursuit of self interest was an inherently good thing. In this regard, Thatcher was echoing Adam Smith's famous idea about the virtues of the "invisible hand" created by people pursuing their own self interest.

In essence, like Smith, Thatcher was an advocate for the idea that the rising tide raises all boats. It was thus the role of government to get out of the way of hugely more efficient private enterprise and let it get on with the business of creating wealth.

This philosophy, like communism before it, is fatally flawed by its hopeless internal contradictions.

The rising tide does not raise all boats: it tends to raise the splendid yachts of the mega-rich much more than the more humble vessels of the "little people".

It is also evident that many of the boats occupied by the little people will founder and sink in the rising tide, but this seems of no consequence to those in positions of power and influence. Their apparent indifference lies at the heart of the very genuine anger and contempt now felt by the little people.

They have come to understand that a great lie sits at the heart of our modern representative democracy, which is much lauded notion that their voices matter and will be heard. They will not. The great and the powerful are the only voices really heard, the rest is window dressing.

In such a world, the central role of government is to create a legal, economic and financial environment in which business can flourish, while casting enough scraps to those who Marx correctly named "the masses" to suppress any unpleasant revolutionary tendencies.

The implicit social contract between the masses and those who govern is thus based upon a false premise. Instead, the endless prattle about the virtues of economic "reform" that somehow always favours the rich, the fictional drive to achieve equality of opportunity for all, the equally fictional ideas about universal human rights and so forth has largely been a smoke screen behind which the great and the good have got on with the business of becoming hugely wealthy.

Globalisation has merely helped facilitate this process by allowing the emergence of truly gargantuan transnational corporations which owe allegiance to no-one but themselves. The recently released Paradise Papers are clear testament to the true extent of how these corporations contrive to avoid contributing to the supposed social contract by which everyone supposedly benefits from their activities.

But now, it is my sense that the foundations of the neo-liberal age are beginning to shudder and groan, at least in the western world.

The centre is no longer holding as the masses desert the traditional political parties of both the left and right, preferring instead to listen to demagogues like Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin whose words, if not actions, echo the masses' anger and resentment.

More and more people believe in nothing, only the avarice, venal self interest and duplicity of those who purport to represent them.

Politicians themselves have not helped correct this view. Across the globe, a cascade of stories about abuses of office, questionable moral behaviour and almost unbelievable ineptitude in dealing with the growing maldistribution of wealth, the re-emergence of regional separatist movements within some hitherto stable European states and the management of large scale unsanctioned immigration, have accelerated a collapse in trust in social institutions of the likes previously unseen in my life time.

The situation has not been helped by the now obvious and rampant hypocrisy uncovered within many religious institutions, the widespread corruption being exposed by organisations devoted to this purpose across the world and the cynical and sometimes sinister activities brought to light by organisations like Wikileaks.

In such an environment, when the only apparent rule of the game is achieving and holding political power for personal gain, what does it matter who you vote for? You might as well vote for your favourite populist demagogue or, in the case of PNG, a wantok who might at least deliver some lamb flaps and a carton of beer.

The world has become increasingly atomised and disjointed as it sinks into a morass of ideological, economic, philosophical, religious and ethnic conflicts that have polarised opinions and for which there seem to be no viable solutions.

Worse still, in what some call a post truth world, the internet allows the rapid propagation of ideas that are true but misleading, or not supported by any credible evidence or simply malicious fiction. This makes it hard for even a reasonably intelligent and diligent person to ascertain what the truth may be about any given issue or situation.

This, of course, has been a great boon to both state and non-state actors wishing to create doubt, confusion and discord to further their own ends. Many of us are literally being overwhelmed by a barrage of "information" that we either cannot understand or which serves to reinforce our existing prejudices rather than enlighten us.

As an historian, I am struggling to make sense of all this. Where is this all leading us? Are we lurching blindly into the abyss of world war once again, just as the European Empires did in 1914? Are we on the path towards a new global consensus upon how we govern ourselves in future?

The questions are many and the answers still seem to lie beyond the horizon.

My best guess is that we are collectively experiencing one of those baffling and traumatic moments in history where past verities are contested or ignored or simply dispensed with and no new consensus about how to reorder our lives has yet emerged. We are in the midst of a "paradigm shift", with little to guide us through the process and no clear idea about where we are heading.

This has happened before. For example, in Europe the collapse of the Roman world was followed by a centuries-long period of disorder and disruption we call the Dark Ages before the modern Europe finally began to emerge.

Similarly, the Chinese might point to the long series of national agonies and humiliations they experienced from the mid 19th century until the emergence of the modern Chinese autocratic regime that currently still pretends it is a communist party.

For both Australia and PNG, we are left trying to stabilise our own internal governance arrangements whilst at the same time trying to manage our relations with a frequently unstable and unpredictable wider world.

Experience to date suggests that this task will be exceedingly difficult in the short to medium term and the outcomes still very uncertain. Our current crop of politicians, and the systems and institutions that support them are, on the face of it, not managing very well at all.

So, we are all caught up in a veritable maelstrom of uncertainty, change and disorder, where the first priority is to keep the ship of state afloat and prevent the passengers from indulging in some type of existential panic that could result in catastrophe. The decision about how and where to navigate the ship seems to be a contestable one at this point.

We can only hope that we are collectively up to the task and, in the meantime, endure what is becoming an increasingly dangerous and uncomfortable voyage.