Why the West is in Perpetual Crisis
Western nations are predominantly nations that are part of the European Union, North America, and other nations linked to liberal democracies and Western European cultures, particularly what constitutes Europe politically and culturally is much larger than Europe itself.
West has been moving in perpetual crisis since the 2008 financial crash due to political leadership and even the general public not being willing to use power in the geopolitical sense due to four main reasons:
· The legacy of colonialism
· Unfounded belief that the West is evil in the United States is an evil empire and finally
· Society and political leaders not accepting the true nature of international politics and geopolitics
· Europe has been in a state of war since the fall of the Western Rome Empire in 476AD
According to Konstantin Kisin, a British and Russian author, writer, and podcaster, it is the application and use of power to serve your citizens.
The United States, the world’s greatest superpower, consumes five times as many resources as any other nation and people on this planet.
This success is caused by the protection and economic security created by the United States post-World War II world order, which has led to prosperity throughout the West until today.
The Legacy of Colonialism
European nations from the late 15th century until the collapse of the old colonial powers, Spain and Portugal, in the early 19th century and the withdrawal of French and British from their old colonial territories in the mid-20th century.
The British Empire officially disbanded with the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, marking the end of Britain as an empire.
With the European nation’s colonial legacy, there is a robust, ingrained reluctance to interfere in African countries outright to interfere in other nations’ politics, the very least directly.
However, it must be stated the political situation is more complicated. For instance, the French have held a quasi-empire in northern Africa due to influencing government with them using the currency African franc, the French language as a common language and the recent coup d’états in Niger in 2023, marking the end of French influence in that region.
The French, British, German and others are reluctant to handle the European migrant crisis, which has been an ongoing crisis since 2013 due to the Arab Spring from 2010 to 2019, and this year, a net inflow of migrants is at least 1,200,000 people.
There is a misplaced view within European leadership, particularly in Germany, which is responsible for two world wars and the deaths of nearly a hundred million people, including 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, that they need to atone for their sins, and this is why Germany opened its borders to migrants.
Under the leadership of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in 2015, the nation had 1 million migrants, and as of 2022, that figure is now 2.7 million, though this data may not be accurate.
The Evil Empire
There is a view pushed by the enemies of democracy, freedom, and the American world system created after the Second World War that the United States is a force for evil in this world.
Furthermore, this viewpoint is being driven by the world becoming geopolitically multipolar.
What this means in politics and international relations terms is that the world is now becoming home to more than one superpower. In practical terms, it is more likely to be regional powers, with each region having one or more great powers dominating the politics within their areas.
This is driven by two factors: the industrialisation and prosperity that the United States created, which enabled nations who did not have access to resources to have the security of global oceans, which enabled free trade and for countries to begin industrialisation and specialisation.
Two great examples of specialisation are the Republic of Taiwan, which creates 90% of global semiconductor chips and the British, which is still the global leader in financial services.
What globalisation did was turn the world into one giant marketplace for goods and services, as well as affordable, which is why poor villages in Africa or People living in the Gaza Strip living in poverty have access to smartphones.
Nations don’t just fight wars with guns and rockets; they fight with war using culture, pushing forward their narrative, rightly or wrongly, that they should influence their regions, such as the Russians, Chinese, Iranians and India, to a lesser extent wanting to be out of the influence of the American system.
What these nations want is to be free of American influence, be free of Western influence and pursue geopolitical policies which they believe rightly or wrongly will be better off without being influenced by the United States of America.
Four people reading this who are curious about what an international world would look like if the United States dismantled its navy and permanently withdrew from geopolitics would see a world reminiscent of the 19th century.
For Europe, due to its declining geographical region, the dominant powers would be the French and English.
In the Far East, it would be China, India and Japan, though to a lesser extent for that nation due to its demographic decline and having more adults in diapers than newborn babies.
As for Africa, my money would be on Nigeria and South Africa. As for North America, that would still be the United States, a continental nation like India and China, and they will most likely have a powerful position in the world.
The Middle East would have to be Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel to a lesser extent because Turkey and Israel are most likely to make arrangements to carve up their interests in the region. However, Turkey and Greece may go to war over influence in the Aegean Sea.
Western Liberalism
In 2017, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared Canada the first postnational state; this means he does not see a landmass that any people living there have a claim to that land or that national identity is a genuine belief.
What we consider nationhood was created in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789 because the People in France who identified as French were mainly the intelligentsia and people living in cities, so around just 20% of the population.
Therefore, to create unity in the new French Republic and later under the first French Empire was to create a nation-state with one particular ethnic group or people’s belief in similar ideologies, speaking the same languages and believing their nation and its history special.
Nation-states were created and became the predominant method of ruling a land mass area dominated by one or similar ethnic groups due to this being the most straightforward method to govern nations.
With empires typically made of multiple ethnic groups, one ethnic group ruling a nation-state is far easier to manage.
The reason this attitude of not identifying with a nation’s history is making the West have a perpetual crisis is that if you do not believe in your nation, believe in its own right to exist, or believe in its identity, then no political leader or even its people will fight to protect it.
Using the analogy used by the historians David Starkey and Edward Gibbon, the Roman Empire did not fall to armies or farming, but due to its people no longer caring if it existed or if it was destroyed, it did not fall in a cataclysm instead died in a whimper because the Roman people no longer cared.
Suppose the Western people no longer care about their cultural legacy and are unwilling to share their national story with its history and culture. In that case, that too will fall into perpetual crisis, just like what happened to the Roman Empire.
The End of the Roman Empire
Watson Roman Empire finally collapsed in 476 A.D. From then until 1945, Europe was in a state of perpetual wars either internally or externally with its neighbours with kingdoms fighting for dominance, which lasted 1469 years or just short of 1 ½ millennium.
These wars and people reading this who are of European descent either by culture or by genetics, our grandfathers or even parents lived through two world wars in the 20th century, and they are the descendants of multiple wars stretching back to the fall of the Roman Empire.
This legacy of violence and destruction has traumatised Western European and Western psyches both emotionally and politically, with nations that are part of the West no longer interested in engaging in international politics and geopolitics the way they used before 1945.
The reason why this is leading the West into perpetual crisis is that, collectively, in our national memories, we have had enough of war and violence and are no longer willing to make decisions for our security that have instead outsourced to the United States of America that doesn’t have over millennia worth of trauma to deal with.
However, it must be highlighted that the United States has had enough of foreign wars and conflicts with American presidents since 1992, with the election of Bill Clinton having become increasingly isolationist and reactive, not proactive to a perpetual crisis.
