The End of the West

A New World "Order" Emerges

“There is now total clarity, no matter how unimaginable things might seem. And they amount to this: The U.S. government has been taken over by a clique of extremists who have embarked on a process of regime change in the world’s oldest democracy…. The arrogance on display is staggering. They think their actions will increase U.S. power, but they are in fact wrecking their own country and, in the process everyone else.” (Stathis Kalyvas Oxford University political scientist.)

This quote, posted by Heather Cox Richardson two days ago, doesn’t begin to sum up the global upheaval happening today. We are seeing nothing less than a deliberate upending of the domestic and international architecture of the last 80 years.

I grew up with the words “the West” inscribed in my brain. The “West” became a global meme, a code word, a shibboleth, even.

First, “the West” was code for the global confrontation between the United States and its allies (good) and the Soviet Union (bad). With the disintegration of the latter, “the West” became a code word for the “rules-based international order,” which “rogue states” refused to accept and sought to overthrow.

I never liked the term. West and East depend on where you are; Japan was seen as part of the East, but included in this West of the good guys.

The United States, the most powerful country in “the West,” was the natural leader of the forces of good. (I will set aside for the moment the reality that in far too many instances the “forces of good” were words cloaking the use of naked power pursuing self-interest, to the detriment of democracy in such countries as Chile, Guatemala, and Iran.)

Second, the roots of this confrontation were the conflict between two organizing concepts for the state: democracy versus, first, communism, and then arbitrary authoritarianism.

The most recently concluded Munch Security Conference put a silver stake through the heart of the first idea. The speeches of Vice-President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reflected a fundamental realignment of the global system. This realignment has been underway, quietly for some time, as Russia, China, and Iran disputed the “rules” of the system and have begun to establish their own rules and practices.

It is now clear that the global architecture is undergoing revolutionary change to a new system with fewer rules and the naked assertion of power and self-interest. Where this was once a goal of Russian and Chinese statecraft, the United States is simply in the process of changing sides, upending the entire previous system.

For the first time in recent history, the three most powerful countries are aligned. Donald Trump has simply broken all the rules himself and begun to act in virtual concert with Vladimir Putin.

At Munich it became clear that this administration has decided to scorn its once-closest allies and dedicate itself to an imperium of the autocrats, aligned with Putin.

This is the most profound alteration of the international system since 1945.

Despite some in the administration who want to turn now to a confrontation with China, it seems entirely plausible that the three major powers are moving toward a division of spheres of influence, a reinforcement of each other’s power, and a decision-making process that simply excludes any country that does not agree with this division or is not powerful enough to assert disagreement..

In this emerging New World Order (turn in your grave, George H.W. Bush) naked imperial power is unclothed. Trump, with Netanyahu in his wake, intends to settle the Palestinians’ hash without the Palestinians. The fate of Ukraine will be determined by Trump and Putin, acting in concert, with neither Europe nor Ukraine having much of a say.

The assurances NATO gave the former Warsaw Pact countries are becoming dead letters; beware Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia. The remaining periphery of the former Soviet Union may begin to tremble now. Look to your own resources, Baltics; can Poland be far behind. The US is no longer the best guarantor of your security. Putin and his mini-me’s – Alexandr Lukashenko’s Belarus and Victor Orban’s Hungary are about to become America’s best friends.

This end of the post-World War II order is tightly linked to the theme that unites these major powers: the abandonment of democratic self-governance as an organizing principle for the state. As the last month has shown, Donald Trump has no interest in the US Constitution or its tripartite structure. He is a dedicated autocrat, executing an internal coup d’état against democratic governance in America.

This commitment to authoritarian governance flouts the core document and any statute or norm that would provide political order or democratic control. The very word “democracy” has left the lexicon of the executive branch and its supporters. Instead, here, too, naked power breaks all china – illegal firings of personnel, arbitrary language changes, the termination of funding for programs the autocrats and oligarchs do not like, strikes on marginal communities – refugees, undocumented immigrants, trans children and adults.

As part of this program, the foreign policy institutions are being ransacked, expelling any civil servants, foreign service officers, or institutions (USAID) that might resist this global changing of sides, might defend the “rules” that used to exist.

There another theme that unites these powers in their approach to governance: white, male, Christian nationalism. This political revolution has been underway for some time; it now lives at the very heart of what the White House is doing. It also links this assertion of white, male, Christian domination with the same themes in the new friends and allies of the administration: Orban’s Hungary, Putin’s Russia, the AfD party in Germany, the National Rally in France, a good portion of the Tory Party in the UK, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and more.

This is a global, white ethnic-based, religious movement alive and well in politics. It aligns with the new international power arrangement.

What will this double revolution bring? How will it evolve? It will bring great turbulence and unpredictability to world affairs. It will cause arbitrary, possibly cataclysmic changes in regional orders, like the Middle East. It may rearrange power relationships in Asia.

Small countries beware, the elephants are on the run and the mice will pay the price.

The Munich conference suggests that the Europeans, those that are left with democratic regimes, need to tend to their own regional power in ways they have avoided while the US “guaranteed” their security. Even such an effort may fall short of what is needed.

Is a reversal of course likely? The crystal ball is murky here. Internal upheavals could change this trajectory. The most possible might be at home in America, as arbitrary and capricious governance begins to bite, even into the electorate that voted for Trump. I would not count on that happening soon; the Democratic Party has been reduced to a pitiful money-raising machine with little consensus on how to move forward. In Europe, politics are turning to the right, which suggests more authoritarian governance, not less.

Whatever the reaction, it is unlikely to return us to the post-World War II consensus or to the democracy we once knew.

The flux here is great, turbulence at home linked to turbulence around the globe. The old international order is in virtual corpse. Democracy in America is close behind.
I continue to believe things will turn, after tremendous damage.

But it is time for open eyes and the recognition that some of the most profound changes we have experience are now under way.