The Generation Conflagration

“Events in Ukraine, war in the Persian Gulf, growing stress in the American alliance system, greater cohesion among America's opponents, social unease about artificial intelligence: 2026 won't go down in history as a calm year.

 

Now, we can add generational conflict to the mix. In 2024 youthful protesters drove Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from power and challenged Serbia's political establishment. The following year, generational unrest shook and sometimes toppled governments from Nepal and Madagascar to Morocco and Peru. The riots that shocked France last week and the "Cockroach" movement across India show generational politics moving from the margins to the center of world politics, challenging established orders in some of the most powerful and influential nations.

 

Youth movements can be consequential. In 1968 youth revolts in both Western Europe and the U.S. took place whose consequences (and elderly survivors) still shape Western politics. The large post-World-War II generations of the West were born into unprecedented affluence and met new realities, including oral contraception, that gave them wildly different experiences and expectations from those of their war- and depression-scarred parents and grandparents. As these large generational cohorts reached voting age and began working, they reshaped their societies in their own image -- not always, it must be said, for the better.

 

Globally, the generation gap has grown into a chasm. From the advent of social media to the rise of artificial intelligence, young people face conditions their elders struggle to understand. At the same time, baby boomers like your Global View columnist and our elders are living longer, more active lives. Warren Buffett might have stepped down at 96, but octogenarians and septuagenarians like Larry Ellison, Stephen Schwarzman and Michael Bloomberg are still at their desks. In politics, Donald Trump (80), Elizabeth Warren (77) and Bernie Sanders (85) continue to rule the roost.

 

Generational conflict may be an inevitable part of contemporary politics, but it plays out very differently in different parts of the world. Take last week's most prominent examples, in India and France.

 

In India, the world's largest Generation Z cohort is finding that even economic growth projected to reach 7.1% isn't enough. Since the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government came to power in 2014, rising incomes and falling prices for cellphones and data have connected hundreds of millions of Indians to the internet. Indian young people want to live the kind of lives they see on their screens, but even as educational levels rise, that affluence remains tantalizingly out of most people's reach. If India's current government can't address the aspirations of India's Zoomers, Indian National Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and his allies in the opposition coalition are ready to take up the slack.

 

The French generational gap is different. As in growing numbers of countries today, France's population is aging and projected to shrink, delaying the inevitable generational transfer of power. French boomers cling to the keys to the treasury, and it shows. According to France's National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, the poverty rate for children (22.4%) is more than double that of retirees (10.4%). France's Pensions Advisory Council reports that 24.3% of public spending in 2025 went to pensions, while the Finance Ministry puts the share of the Education Ministry's proposed 2027 budget going to pension payments at 32%.

 

The French generational gap is about more than age. Ethnically and culturally, French young people are more likely to have Islamic or immigrant backgrounds than older people. In 2024 the median age for French residents was 41.6 years. The median age for second-generation immigrants (with one or more immigrant parents) was estimated at around 25.

 

This mix of economic grievances that tend to unite young people in France and ethnic and religious tensions and alienation that affect some young people more than others helps explain the complex nature of France's youth rebellion. Some protesters want to lobby city hall. Some want to burn it to the ground. Some don't care much about city hall but enjoy looting stores and rioting in the streets.

 

This is bad news, but France's problems aren't only generational. Where young and old agree in France, they are generally both wrong. The best way to open opportunities for youth would be to slash taxes and dismantle restrictions on new housing, infrastructure, business, employment and almost everything else strangling the French economy with red tape.

 

But such policies would be anathema to Frenchmen young and old, immigrant and indigenous. President Emmanuel Macron has never recovered from the political blowback against his hesitant steps toward economic sanity early in his administration.

 

As we see in India, it is hard for any government to manage the conflicts between old and young in a rapidly changing world. When as in France you add a clash of civilizations to the conflict over resources and toss in a social consensus that is as deeply misguided as it is widely entrenched, you get a conflict that conventional politics may be unable to resolve.” [1]

 

1. The Generation Conflagration. Walter Russell Mead.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 20 Oct 2026: A17.