The West isn’t dying, but it’s working on it

A decline in values, not power

A motley crew of centrist pundits in Europe, the Global South, and, following Donald Trump’s election victory, the US believe that the West is in decline. To be sure, never has so much power been concentrated in the hands of so few people (and postcodes) in the West, but does that alone mean Western power is doomed?

Europe’s waning influence

In Europe, there is good reason to embrace the narrative of decline. Just as the Roman Empire shifted its capital to Constantinople to extend its hegemony by another millennium, abandoning Rome to the barbarians, so did the West’s centre of gravity shift to the US, abandoning Britain and Europe to the stagnation that is rendering them inert, backward, and increasingly irrelevant.

Confusing decline with a shift in values

But there is a deeper reason for the pundits’ gloomy sentiment: the tendency to confuse the decline of the West’s commitment to its own value system (universal human rights, diversity, and openness) with its decline. Like a snake shedding its old skin, the West is gaining power by shedding a value system which sustained its ascendancy during the 20th century but which, in the 21st, no longer serves that goal.

Western power was built on exploitation

Democracy was never a prerequisite for the rise of capitalism, and what we now think of as the West’s value system is not a prerequisite for it, either. Western power was built not on humanist principles but, rather, on brutal exploitation at home coupled with the slave trade, opium trade, and various genocides in the Americas, Africa, and Australia.

A new era of power

During its ascendancy, Western power went unchecked abroad. Europe sent millions of colonists to subjugate peoples and extract resources. Europeans pretended the natives they saw were not human and declared their land terra nullius, a land without a people for settlers craving that land – the first act of every genocide from the Americas, Africa, and Australia to Palestine today.

The shift to neoliberalism

But, while unassailable abroad, Western power was challenged at home by its wretched lower classes who rose up in response to economic crises caused by the inability of the many to consume enough of the goods they were producing in the factories belonging to the few. These conflicts spilled over into industrial-scale warfare between Western powers vying for markets, culminating in two world wars.

A new era of globalisation

As a consequence, the West’s elites had to make concessions. Domestically, they acquiesced to public education, health systems, and pensions. Internationally, outrage at the West’s cruel wars and genocides led to decolonisation, universal declarations of human rights, and international criminal courts.

The rise of Big Tech and the decline of democracy

For a couple of decades after World War II, the West basked in the warm glow of distributive justice, the mixed economy, diversity, the rule of law at home, and a rules-based international order. Economically, these values were served extraordinarily well by the centrally planned, US-designed global monetary system known as Bretton Woods, which allowed America to recycle its surpluses to Europe and Japan, essentially dollarising its allies to sustain its own net exports.

The decline of the West’s value system

But then, by 1971, America had become a deficit country. Rather than tighten its belt in Germanic style, the US blew up Bretton Woods and blew out its trade deficit. Germany, Japan, and later China became net exporters, whose dollar profits were sent to Wall Street to buy US government debt, real estate, and shares in companies that the US allowed foreigners to invest in.

The rise of neoliberalism and deindustrialisation

Then, the American ruling class had an epiphany: Why manufacture stuff at home when foreign capitalists could be relied upon to dispatch both their products and their dollars to the US? So, they exported whole production lines abroad, triggering the deindustrialisation of America’s manufacturing heartlands.

The rise of Big Tech and the decline of democracy

Wall Street was at the heart of this audacious new recycling mechanism. To play its role, it had to be unrestrained. But wholesale deregulation needed an economics and a political philosophy to support it. Demand created its own supply, and neoliberalism was born.

The West’s current state

Before long, the world was awash in derivatives surfing the tsunami of foreign capital inundating New York’s banks. When the wave broke in 2008, the West nearly broke with it. Panicked Western leaders authorised the minting of US$35 trillion to refloat the financiers while imposing austerity on their populations. The only part of these trillions that was actually invested in machinery went to building up the cloud capital that gave Big Tech its pervasive power over Western populations’ hearts and minds.

Conclusion

The West is not dying, but it is working on it. The West’s value system is in the gutter, and its penchant for engineering its decline is growing stronger. The irony is that China, the only country capable of challenging Western power, does not want to be a hegemon but simply wants to sell its wares unimpeded.

FAQs

* What is the West’s current state?
The West is not dying, but it is working on it. Its value system is in the gutter, and its penchant for engineering its decline is growing stronger.
* What is the main reason for the West’s decline?
The main reason for the West’s decline is the shift away from its value system, which is no longer serving its goals.
* How did the West’s power rise?
The West’s power rose on the back of brutal exploitation at home and abroad, including the slave trade, opium trade, and various genocides.
* What is the current state of the world?
The world is awash in derivatives, with foreign capital inundating New York’s banks, and the West is struggling to maintain its power.