Opinion | Why the West is a Wounded Civilisation

The Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars have inflicted a fatal wound on the new Western world order.

At first glance, this seems improbable. The United States and its Western allies are dominant globally, both militarily and economically. Russia is being systematically weakened by Western sanctions and a deadlocked war in Ukraine.

Israel, the West’s blood ally in the Middle East, is pounding Hamas out of existence. Washington’s principal rival China, is in economic and demographic retreat.

The West’s hegemony, established after the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate a hundred years ago, seems unstoppable.

A closer look reveals three cracks in the evolving world order.

First, a weakened Russia has fallen into China’s geopolitical embrace. The Russia-China alliance has the military and economic heft to challenge a new US-led world order.

Second, the neutral Global South led by India and comprising nations across Asia, Africa and South America are wary of the US becoming a neo-colonial successor to the defunct British and French Empires.

Third, the Shia Muslim Gulf powers in the Middle East — Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon — remain unremittingly hostile to the West and will move closer to the China-Russia axis.

Russia already has a significant military presence in Syria. China was the first port of call for a delegation of Islamic leaders to the five permanent members of the UNSC: France, Britain, Russia, China and the US.

The Western world order being crafted in Washington needs to bring the Global South on its side or risk being seen as a neo-colonial construct.

The London-based author Pankaj Mishra warned in an article in Bloomberg: “Only a few weeks ago, the Western press was full of speculation on whether India or China would lead the Global South. US President Joe Biden made his preference clear by wooing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Biden administration drew up various schemes involving India in alliances with Israel and rich Arab countries, aimed in part at stemming Chinese influence.

“A European Council on Foreign Relations report echoed the new Western consensus: The West needed to woo friendly members of the Global South such as India and Turkey if it was to build a new world order. Now that the conflict in West Asia threatens to prematurely terminate this Western infatuation, it is worth asking what it was all about. Did the project of winning over emerging nations reflect wishful thinking and image-projection by Western elites?

“The conflict in Gaza may now have mortally damaged Western power and credibility in the Global South. While Israel seems no closer to victory in its own counteroffensive against Hamas, it looks over-committed to a long war it cannot win, either on the battlefield or in the court of global public opinion. Indeed, Israel’s failure to define a viable future for itself and the Palestinians is now hitting its closest ally, inducing bitter division in the US State Department as well as on university campuses and endangering Biden’s re-election in 2024.”

Bombing Gaza

The four-day ceasefire and prison swap in Gaza ends on Monday, November 27, unless it is extended. Israel has vowed to resume bombing Gaza after the pause. Future ceasefires and prisoner swaps will depend on how successfully the first swap goes.

Hamas used the four-day pause to regroup, re-establish lost communications with divisional leaders across Gaza and strengthen its underground bunkers which the Israeli army, after nearly two months of fighting, has not yet been able to breach.

But bigger problems for the Washington-led world order lie closer at home. The US is ideologically fractured. President Joe Biden’s Irish charm hides a cold warrior mind. He has encouraged Ukraine to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. His son Hunter Biden’s financial deals with Ukrainian company Burisma are publicly documented.

Biden has said if he was a Jew (he is Catholic) he would be a Zionist. Zionism is what drove European Jews to persuade the complicit British Empire into giving white Jews a homeland in the middle of West Asia.

A transactional ally

The West has never been a true friend of India. It supported Pakistan from 1947 right through to the early 2000s when it realised belatedly the folly of backing a state sponsor of terrorism.

Former President Richard Nixon in the 1970s did not try to hide his contempt for India and Indians. As late as 1998, former President Bill Clinton slapped harsh and sweeping sanctions on India following the Pokhran nuclear test.

The West is wary of a rising India and its sway over the Global South. Instead of prosecuting a terrorist like Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who openly incites violence against India, the Biden government protects him.

It has used Canada and the FBI to make unverified allegations against India of plotting to kill Pannun and other terrorists.

Hubris and hegemony

The century of global hegemony that the West seized since the 1920s has given it a sense of hubris and infallibility.

It bombs Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen with impunity, killing thousands of civilians, including women and children.

It assassinates terrorists on the soil of other sovereign nations. It forces regime change in the Middle East and South America. It engineered an eight-year war in 1980-88 between Shia neighbours Iraq and Iran.

For the West, a rising India is both welcome and worrisome.

Welcome because it adds to the West’s anti-China alliance. Worrisome because the West does not like any country outside its civilisational ethos posing a future challenge to its global supremacy.

When China did, America launched a trade and technology war on it. India, it believes, can be managed with periodic pinpricks from Five Eyes allies like Canada.

Endgame

The West was a supplicant to the East till 1700. British envoys like Sir Thomas Roe spent four years in India during the 1600s flattering Emperor Jehangir. They received withering contempt in return.

European traders and envoys to China were treated even more harshly.

Colonial conquest and the transatlantic slave trade transformed Europe and America from supplicants to overlords.

The unwinnable wars in Ukraine and Israel have wounded Western civilisation as fatally as colonialism and genocide of indigenous peoples by settler-colonists in America and Australia fatally wounded the British Empire.

The writer is an editor, author and publisher. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.