for the last 1800 years China and India both were the largest Economies and until 1820 did Europe unseat them and it seems nowadays that that seat is returning to them
the recent period of Western relative over-performance against other civilizations is a major historical aberration. All such aberrations come to a natural end, and that is happening now.
the main thesis of this book is the era of Western Domination is coming to end and the rising of populist and extreme right wing in the West can be the first signs of it, unlike the coastal elites many rural Americans and Europeans are feeling the coming change especially as they saw the recent stagnation of their income and the increase of their job losses usually to Chinese and Indian workers and this what fueled Trump rise and Brexit.
what is trues that middle income American incomes has stagnated and most of the job lost are irrevocably lost but does that also mean that American living standard will deteriorate for me i don’t believe so and one example for that is Japan,
the era of Western dominance and imposing their ideals and customs on others is coming to end and that the last two examples of western intervention on Muslim countries didn’t fare very good in Iraq and Afghanistan
the important gift of the West
no one can deny that West world had given Humanity many gifts and improvement and one of the best things the Rest learned from the West is Reasoning which according to The Oxford English Dictionary is
‘To think (something) through, work out in a logical manner’
many non Western nations especially learned from the Western nations by adopting their Technology and Science and due to this adoption many nations has passed through silent revolutions which were political,psychological and the third was in the field of governance and through this Silent revolution that many Asian nations passed through and was able to catch up to the West.
Western catastrophic wars
if there is one thing am sure is that because ww1 and ww2 happened that many non Western nations gained their freedom from Western imperialism and there were no nation in these planet that didn’t face the wrath superior Western nation due to their superior technology and weaponry and this what made Western nation so superior relative to others not because they were Liberal or humanitarian.
inability Western elites to see the new changes around the world
one of the hardest thing many people and nations can do is to self reflect and Hubris and Haughtiness an blind many people from seeing reality and that is easy to be entrapped in self deception and to be unable to see the ugly and painful truth and one of the ugly truths that many Westerns are unable to accept is that their ideals and customs and political views are not universal as they used to believe and i still cant believe how Western students,politicians and business men still believe the idea that Democracy is universal and that many societies will eventually embrace Democracy
How Hubris lead Western politicians to confrontation with Islamic world and Russia
i believe there is correlation between the increase terror attacks perpetuated by militant Muslims and the increase of Western intervention in Muslims world, i really found it hard to understand why America and Europe is the only nations that are still bombing Muslim nations and the only solution these nations see as response to any Muslim problems always contains security approaches usually bombing them from Mali to my nation Somalia to Iraq Afghanistan to Philippines all the time i see Western nations sending drones and bombing them but what is more strange is that why not man Western nations doesn’t prepare or expect a backlash against their intervention, when 9/11 happened most American magazines aw them as innocent victims which is true but also they also forgot what their government does to these Muslim Militants in nineteenth as they tortured them usually in secret jails, here is a quote written by the greatest writer in Latin America
, Gabriel García Márquez, asked Americans:
How does it feel now that horror is erupting in your own yard and not in your neighbor’s living room? … Do you know that between 1824 and 1994 your country carried out 73 invasions in countries of Latin America? … For almost a century, your country has been at war with the entire world … How does it feel, Yank, knowing that on September 11th the long war finally reached your home
the West must recognize these Militants are not fighting because they hate Western values as their politicians tell them but because they are angry of Western intervention and aiding dictators around the Muslim world, and that by less Messianic Western intervention i believe that the peace between these two world could return
and about the Russia which is a former shell of the soviet union and which were weak in the nineteenth the Western forgot Churchil quote ‘In victory, magnanimity.
they broke their promises to Gorbachev and expanded NATO instead of their implicit assurance given to Gorbachev that they will not expand into former Soviet union satellites but they expanded until they reached to Ukraine and even with Russian warning American still supported Ukraine demonstrations against President Viktor Yanukovyc and Putin ultimately know the next nation will be pro West and this eventfully forced him to intervene and take Crimea, the last thing any Russian officials want is American or European base in Crimea.
at last what the author advised to any Western politicians who like to hear
A. Minimalist: The West need to recognize that its once dominant position has passed and along with it, the belief that it is and always has been a benign force in the world. Interventions in Iraq, Libya and Syria show the contradictions in this belief. The West is widely seen by the Rest today as destructive and ineffective.
B. Multilateral: The West needs to listen more to the ‘Rest’ in the United Nations and elsewhere. He approvingly quotes Mrs. Thatcher: “The United Nations is only a mirror held up to our own uneven, untidy and divided world. If we don’t like what we see, there is no point in cursing the mirror; we had better start by reforming ourselves.” This leads him to call for the re-legitimisation of the UN.
C. Machiavellian: Take more account of new and changing Western interests in the 21st century, where the US, UK, and Europe increasingly have diverging interests. Europe’s interests are not the same as America’s, not merely now in the age of Trump but in future areas of long-run strategic interest – in the Middle East, towards Russia, in coping with Islam and not joining with NATO.
The West can accelerate a two-way street of learning between Western and Eastern Muslims by quietly terminating its two-century-long policy of interfering in Islamic societies. A good start, as indicated earlier, will be to stop all bombing of Islamic countries.
- Allen Lane
- Published 5th April 2018
- 112 Pages
Has the West Lost It?
