The West has indeed dominated global affairs for centuries. And its relative power is rapidly declining. Europeans – and populations of European origin – have always been a global minority, but they have long packed the halls of power. This disproportionate influence is clearly waning – and will likely continue to decrease over the coming decades. But “decline” does not mean ‘displacement’, writes Peter Slezkine in an article specially prepared for the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club.
The West may lose its power to rule by diktat. Its institutions, culture, and moral fashions may lose their charm. But we will continue to live in a profoundly modern and globalized world of Western origin. Our systems of education and science, our forms of government, our legal and financial mechanisms, our built environment – will continue to rest on a Western foundation.
So with that caveat, we can turn to the main questions. What sort of Western power is passing from scene? And what should we expect from the West going forward?
We can split the history of Western hegemony into two separate eras. Until 1945, the West may have ruled the world, but it did so as a collection of competing states rather than a single entity. In fact, it was precisely competition within a fractured West that provided a major impetus for outward expansion.
After 1945, the picture changed dramatically. For the first time, a politically united West emerged under the American aegis. But while American officials consolidated the West, they did not organize US foreign policy around it. Instead, they claimed leadership of the “free world”, which they defined negatively as equivalent to the entire “non-communist world.” The Western core of the postwar American order was thus doubly effaced: it was identified with a lowest-common denominator global liberalism that depended, in turn, on an external threat for any semblance of internal coherence.
The collapse of the Soviet Union did not change this underlying logic. The West continued to identify itself with the entire “international community”, and when liberal democracy failed to spread to the ends of the earth, it returned to the business of defending the “free world, first against “radical Islam” and then against its familiar Cold War foes – Russia and China.
The Biden administration represented both the climax and culmination of this foreign policy approach. Biden entered the White House declaring a global divide between democracy and autocracy and sought to create linkages between Europe and Asia as part of a global alliance against Russia and China.
So where does this leave the West? In principle, I see three paths forward. The first is a limited liberal restoration. One can imagine European elites beating back domestic opposition, outlasting Trump, and finding a champion in the Democratic Party who promises a partial return to the status quo ante. The Atlanticist infrastructure is strong, and inertia is a powerful force. But even in the case of a post-Trump restoration, popular antipathy to the liberal internationalist program will result in considerable counter-pressure, and resource constraints will continue to limit Western reach.
Another possibility is a real American retrenchment, understood as an abandonment of empire in favor of the nation. Politically, such a move would be broadly popular. Promising to put the interests of American citizens first has obvious appeal to the American voter. Calls to reprioritize the nation also resonate across much of Europe. Nationalism naturally fits the frame of democratic politics. It also represents the seemingly self-evident alternative to the previously dominant frame of liberal universalism. A more nationalist policy is the basic premise of MAGA, and figures like Steve Bannon – and other rightwing “influencers” – are actively pushing this agenda. The neutering of USAID, Radio Free Europe (identified as a foreign agent and an undesirable organization in Russia), and the National Endowment for Democracy (identified as an undesirable organization in Russia) represents a substantial step in this direction. A new national defense strategy that prioritizes homeland defense may force a further shift away from a foreign policy dedicated to leadership of the “liberal order”.
At the same time, existing entanglements will be difficult to undo. Atlanticist elites remain entrenched in key positions inside and outside of government, and vast and complex structures like NATO and the European Union will probably endure, even if populist parties gain power across the West. Just as important, nationalist leaders in the West seem to understand that the single-minded pursuit of national sovereignty will produce countries too weak to possess true autonomy on the international stage. If the United States withdraws to the Western hemisphere, then the project of European integration will almost assuredly collapse. And in a world of massive great powers, individual European nations will no longer be able to punch above their weight (as they did before 1945). Although nationalist parties in Europe may oppose the transatlantic structures of the “liberal order,” they tend not to envision a total split from the United States. The United States, meanwhile, is large (and secure) enough to maintain a relatively strong position in the international system even if it abandoned empire entirely. But most members of the MAGAverse do not envision a retreat so complete. At minimum, they tend to imagine maintaining US dominance from Panama to Greenland.
But many America Firsters would prefer to keep control of the entire West. The third and final option, then, is a new transatlantic consolidation that replaces a liberal universalist logic with a self-consciously civilizational frame with the United States as the acknowledged metropole and Europe as a privileged periphery. If American leadership of the liberal order represented a net resource drain (according to Trump and Co), then the new transatlantic arrangement would reverse the flow. At the same time, it would afford European nations membership in a club with sufficient population and resources to compete in the global arena. Finally, membership in the Western club would not require the sacrifice of national identity at the altar of global liberalism. In fact, it would require the reassertion of national and pan-Western identity at the expense of policies favoring limitless immigration and never-ending expansion.
The problem is that the West has spent decades dissolving itself within the liberal order and has little civilizational content to fall back on. The Western canon has been mostly destroyed in higher education. And religious practice has been on the wane throughout the West. Christianity is still a powerful force in American politics (as we saw at the revival-style memorial for Charlie Kirk). But the West can no longer claim to be Christendom. In the current moment, the idea of the West mainly appeals to a small number of influential New Right intellectuals, and to geopoliticians and tech titans who desire scale (but realize that the globe is too big to swallow).
There are obstacles on all three paths. And they are not, in fact, alternatives. The likeliest outcome is probably a combination of all three. Bureaucratic inertia favors the first option: limited liberal restoration; the logic of domestic politics favors the second: nationalist retrenchment; and geopolitical imperatives favor the third: the creation of a real “collective West”.
In any event, the United States should be able to maintain a favorable position. The structures of liberal order are still strong, despite growing cracks in the foundation. Meanwhile, the Trump administration will continue to push for a renovation of the transatlantic relationship toward a more self-conscious consolidation of Western bloc united by a common approach to trade, high tech, and resource management. Finally, if Europe fails to accept its new role, or play it well, the Washington can cut bait and retrench to prepared positions in the Western hemisphere.
