Is the cumulative West nearing completion of a cycle? Or are we still in mid-cycle? And could it be an epochal point of inflection?
The concern posed at this moment is: Is the cumulative West nearing completion of a cycle? Or are we still in mid-cycle? And is this a four-generational mini-cycle, or an epochal point of inflection?
Is Russo-Chinese Entente and the global tectonic discontent with the ‘Rules Order’– on the heels of a long trajectory of catastrophes from Viet Nam, through Iraq to Ukraine– adequate to move the West on to the next phase of cyclical modification from peak to disillusionment, retrenchment and eventual stabilisation? Or not?
A significant inflection point is usually a period in history when all the unfavorable parts from the outbound period ‘come into play’– all at once, and all together; and when an anxious gentility turn to prevalent repression.
Elements of such crises of inflection are today everywhere present: Deep schism in the U.S.; mass protest in France, and across Europe. A crisis in Israel. Faltering economies; and the risk of some, as yet undefined, financial crisis cooling the air.
Yet, anger appears at the very tip that the West is in difficulties; that its ‘moment in the sun’ must give location to others, and to other cultures’ ways of doing things. The repercussion to such a moment of epochal ‘in-betweeness’ has been characterised traditionally by the irruption of condition, the breakdown of ethical standards, and the loss of a grip on what is real: Black becomes white; right ends up being incorrect; up ends up being down.
That’s where we are— in the grip of western élite stress and anxiety and a desperation to keep the ‘old machinery’s’ wheels spinning; its ratchets loudly opening and closing, and its levers clanging into, and out of location– all to give the impression of forward motion when, in reality, almost all of western energy is consumed in simply keeping the mechanism noisily aloft, and not crashing to a permanent, dysfunctional stop.
So, this is the paradigm that governs western politics today: Doubling-down on the Rules Order without any tactical plan of what it is expected to accomplish– in fact no blueprint at all, except for ‘fingers crossed’ that something helpful for the West will emerge, ex machina. The numerous foreign policy ‘narratives’ (Taiwan, Ukraine, Iran, Israel) include little of compound. They are all clever linguistics; attract emotion, and with no real substance.
All this is hard to assimilate for those residing in the non-West. For they do not come face-to-face with western Europe’s repeat re-anactment of the French Revolution’s iconic secular, egalitarian reform of human society– with ‘the specific tone, flavour and ideology’ moving, according to dominating historic conditions.
Other nations unafflicted by this ideology (i.e., efficiently the non-West) discover it bewildering. The West’s culture war barely touches cultures outside its own. Yet, paradoxically, it dominates international geo-politics– for now.
Today’s ‘flavour’ is described ‘our’ liberal democracy– the ‘our’ signifying its link to a set of precepts that defies clear definition or classification; however one, that from the 1970s, has wandered into an extreme enmity towards the standard European and American cultural tradition.
What is particular about today re-enactment is that whereas the French Revolution was about accomplishing class equality; ending the division between upper class and their vassals, liberalism today represents an adjustment of ideology” that U.S. writer Christopher Rufo recommends, “states that we wish to classify people based upon group identity and then equalize outcomes throughout every axis– predominantly the financial axis, health axis, employment axis, criminal justice axis– and then formalize and impose a basic levelling”.
They want absolute democratic levelling of every societal disparity– reaching even, back into history, to historical discrimination and inequalities; and to have history re-written to highlight such ancient practice so that they can be routed out through implemented reverse discrimination.
What has this to do with diplomacy? Well, pretty well whatever (so long as ‘our’ liberalism) maintains its capture of the western institutional framework.
Bear this background in mind when thinking about the western political class’s response to events, state, in the Middle East, or in Ukraine. Although the cognitive élite competes that they are tolerant, inclusive, and pluralistic, they will not accept the ethical legitimacy of their opponents. That is why in the U.S.– where the Cultural War is most developed– the language deployed by its diplomacy practitioners is so intemperate and inflammatory towards non-compliant states.
The point here is that, as Teacher Frank Furedi has emphasised, the modern ‘timbre’ is one no longer merely adversarial, however unremittingly hegemonic. It is not a ‘turn’. It is a rupture: The determination to displace other sets of values by a western inspired ‘Rules-Based Order’.
Being a ‘liberal’ (in this strictly narrow sense) isn’t something you ‘do’; it is what you ‘are’. You believe ‘ideal thoughts’ and utter ‘right speak’. Persuasion and compromise show only moral weak point in this vision. Ask the U.S. neocons!
We are used to hearing western officials talk about the ‘Rules-Based Order’ and the Multi-Polar System as rivals in a new international framework of intense ‘competitors’. That nevertheless, would be to misinterpret the nature of the ‘liberal’ project. They are not rivals: There can not be ‘competitors’; they can just be recalcitrant other societies that have declined the analysis and the need to root out all cultural and psychological structures of inequity from their own domains. (Hence, China is hounded on its alleged shortage in respect to the Uyghurs).
The cognitive advantage of ‘awareness’ is what lies behind the western ‘doubling-down’ on imposing a global Rules-BasedOrder: No compromise. The ethical business is more intent on its elevated moral station than on coming to terms with or handling, state, a defeat in Ukraine.
Just yesterday, the Bank of America in London was required to interrupt a two-day, online conference on geopolitics; andapologised to participants following the outrage expressed at a speaker’s remarks that were considered ‘pro-Russian’ by some participants.
What was stated? Teacher Nicolai Petro’s remarks at the session where he said: “Under any circumstance, Ukraine would be the frustrating loser in the war: Its commercial capability devastated … and its population diminished as people departed to look for work abroad. If this is what is implied by eliminating Ukraine’s capacity to wage war versus Russia, then it [Russia] will have won”. Teacher Petro added that the U.S. federal government had no interest in a ceasefire, as it had the most to get from an extended conflict.
No compromise is enabled. To speak hence, to populate the western ethical high ground developing ‘villains’, clearly is more crucial than pertaining to terms with truth. Teacher Petro’s remarks were condemned as “rolling through Moscow’s talking points”.
Yet, these cultural revolutionaries deal with a pitfall, Christopher Rufo writes,
“Theirs is really, not a simple job. This is really hard, and, in truth, I think is rather difficult. If you take a look at even the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1960s … They had a program of financial and social levelling that was more totalitarian and more drastic than anything that had ever taken place in the past. [Yet] after the Revolution collapsed, after the period of retrenchment, social scientists took a look at the information and found that a generation later, those initial inequalities had stabilized … The point is that forced levelling is extremely elusive. It’s really tough to attain, even when you are doing it at the pointer of a spear or at the point of a weapon.
The levelling task being basically nihilistic becomes recorded by the damaging side of the revolution– its authors so soaked up with dismantling structures that they do not attend to the need to think policies through, before launching into them. The latter are not skilled at doing politics: at making politics ‘work’.
Hence, discontent at the welling string of western foreign policy flops grows. Crises multiply, both in number and throughout different societal measurements. Perhaps, we are closening to a point of beginning to move through the cycle– toward disillusionment, retrenchment, and stabilization; the mandatory action to catharsis and supreme renewal. Yet, it would be an error to underestimate the durability and perseverance of the western advanced impulse.
“The transformation does not run as a specific political motion. It runs laterally through the bureaucracy and it filters its innovative language through the language of the restorative, the language of the pedagogical, or the language of the business HR department”, Professor Furedi writes. “And then, it develops power anti-democratically, bypassing the democratic structure: using this manipulative and soft language– to continue the revolution from within the organizations.”