Opinion Sur
It is as difficult to imagine the West as a subaltern space in the world context as it is to imagine it in an egalitarian and peaceful relationship with other geopolitical spaces.
What Westerners call the West or Western civilization is a geopolitical space that emerged in the sixteenth century and expanded continuously until the twentieth century. On the eve of World War I, about 90% of the globe was Western or dominated by the West: Europe, Russia, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and much of Asia (with partial exceptions of Japan and China). From then on, the West began to contract: first with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the rise of the Soviet bloc; then, from the middle of the century, with the Chinese Revolution and the decolonization movements. Terrestrial space (and soon after, the extraterrestrial) became a field of intense dispute. Meanwhile, what Westerners understood as the West was changing. It began as Christianity, colonialism, then capitalism and imperialism, to metamorphosing into democracy, human rights, decolonization, self-determination, “rules-based international relations” – always making it clear that the rules were established by the West and only fulfilled when they served its interests – and, finally, in globalization.
By the middle of the last century, the West had shrunk so much that a group of newly independent countries made the decision not to align themselves with either the West or the bloc that had emerged as its rival, the Soviet bloc. Thus, from 1955 to 1961, the Non-Aligned Movement was created. With the end of the Soviet bloc in 1991, the West seemed to go through a period of enthusiastic expansion. It was Gorbachev’s time and his desire for Russia to become part of Europe’s “common home,” with the support of President Bush Sr., a desire reaffirmed by Putin when he took power. It was a short historical period, and recent events show that, however, the “size” of the West has suffered a drastic contraction. In the wake of the War in Ukraine, the West, on its own initiative, decided that it would only be Westerners who applied sanctions to Russia. They are currently around 21% of the UN member countries, which is less than 15% of the world’s population. If it continues along this path, the West could even disappear. Several questions arise.
Is contraction decay? One might think that the contraction of the West favors it because it allows the West to focus on more realistic goals with more intensity. A careful reading of the strategists of the hegemonic country of the West, the United States, shows, on the contrary, that, without apparently realizing the flagrant contraction, it manifests an unlimited ambition. Just as easily as they hope to reduce Russia (the largest nuclear power) to a ruin or as a vassal state, they hope to neutralize China (on its way to being the world’s leading economy) and soon provoke a war in Taiwan (similar to Ukraine’s) for that purpose. On the other hand, the history of empires shows that contraction goes hand in hand with decay and that this is irreversible and involves much human suffering.
At the current stage, the manifestations of weakness are parallel to those of strength, which makes analysis very difficult. Two examples in contrast. The United States is the world’s largest military power (though it has not won any wars since 1945), with military bases in at least 80 countries. An extreme case of domination is its presence in Ghana where, by agreements established in 2018, the United States uses the Accra airport without any control or inspection, American soldiers do not even need a passport to enter the country and enjoy extraterritorial immunity, that is, if they commit any crime, however serious, they cannot be tried by the courts of Ghana. On the contrary, the thousands of sanctions on Russia are, for now, doing more damage in the Western world than in the geopolitical space that the West is building as a non-Western. The currencies of those who seem to be winning the war are the ones that are most devalued. Looming inflation and recession lead JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to say a hurricane is coming.
Is contraction a loss of internal cohesion? Contraction can actually mean more cohesion, and this is clearly visible. The leadership of the European Union, that is, the Commission, has been in the last twenty years much more aligned with the United States than the countries that make up the Union. It was seen with the neoliberal turn and the enthusiastic support for the invasion of Iraq by Durão Barroso and we see it now with Ursula von der Leyen transformed into undersecretary of defense of the United States. The truth is that this cohesion, if it is effective in the production of policies, can be disastrous in the management of its consequences. Europe is a geopolitical space that since the sixteenth century lives on the resources of other countries that directly or indirectly dominates and to which it imposes an unequal exchange. None of this is possible when the partner is the United States or its allies. In addition, cohesion is made up of inconsistencies: after all, is Russia the country with a GDP lower than that of many European countries, or is it a power that wants to invade Europe, a global threat that can only be stopped with an investment that is already around 10 billion dollars in arms and security by the United States in a distant country of which there will be little left if the war continues for a long time?
Does the contraction occur for internal or external reasons? The literature on the decline and end of empires shows that, except in exceptional cases in which empires are destroyed by external forces – such as the Aztec and Inca empires with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors – internal factors generally dominate, although the decline may be precipitated by external factors. It is difficult to unravel the internal from the external, and specific identification is always more ideological than anything else. For example, in 1964 the well-known American conservative philosopher James Burnham published a book entitled The Suicide of the West. According to him, liberalism, then dominant in the United States, was the ideology of this decline. For the liberals of the time, liberalism was, on the contrary, the ideology that would allow a new world hegemony to the West, more peaceful and more just. Today, liberalism died in America (neoliberalism dominates, which is its opposite) and even old-guard conservatives have been totally overtaken by neoconservatives. That is why Henry Kissinger (for many, a war criminal) made anti-Russian proselytes uncomfortable by calling for peace talks in Davos. Be that as it may, the war in Ukraine is the great accelerator of the West’s contraction. A new generation of non-aligned countries is emerging, in fact aligned with the power that the West wants to isolate: China. The BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Forum are, among others, the new faces of the non-West.
What comes next? We do not know. It is as difficult to imagine the West as a subaltern space in the world context as it is to imagine it in an egalitarian and peaceful relationship with other geopolitical spaces. We only know that for those who govern the West any of these hypotheses is impossible or, if possible, apocalyptic. That is why meetings have multiplied in recent months, from the Davos Economic Forum (May) to the most recent meeting of the Bilderberg group (June). In the latter, of the 14 themes, seven had to do directly with the rivals of the West. We will find out what they discussed and decided by closely following the front pages of The Economist over the next few months.
Text first published in Other News sent by the author’s office
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