The original was published in «The Jewish World» newspaper in 2020.
• Westlessness – Sunset of the West
• “After us – even the Deluge !”
• Chances of saving the West
One of the largest and most authoritative events in the world of international relations, the Munich Security Conference is considered the central intellectual and political event of the Western world and represents the elites of Western countries.
The Munich Conference was founded in 1963 as a meeting of representatives of the defense agencies of NATO member countries. Now, it is an international discussion forum for politicians, diplomats, military, businessmen, scientists and public figures from dozens of countries, a living barometer of the state of mind of Western elites. During the Cold War, this conference was the NATO's analogue of Davos.
Now, it is considered the world's leading platform for discussing security and peace issues on the planet.
In 2019, the organizers named the Report on the most significant events in world politics “Westlessness” – the weakening of the political, economic, and cultural positions of the West on the world stage.
A few years ago, the unity of the Western world was based on liberal democracy, human rights, market economy, and international cooperation.
But today, more and more countries, although they recognize the importance of these values, no longer follow the example of the West.
The global reality is very upsetting for the Western expert community.
The world “forces out” the West from itself. Moreover, the West itself is becoming less and less “Western”. This breeds instability, unpredictability and violations of democratic values.
Westlessness has a double effect – reducing the influence of the West in the World and weakening the unity within the West and its constituent states.
Today, the significance of the West is increasingly contested. The Munich conference has declared the loss of the global leadership of the West and its decline: "We state the collapse of the West as a cohesive geopolitical configuration".
The West has lost its unity and is unable to serve as a guide for other states.
The West increasingly doubts the effectiveness of the forcible obtrusion of liberal, democratic values by military means.
The West is weakening, retreating and subjected to regular attacks. The Western military superiority in international conflicts has been lost. As a consolidated system supporting the global order normative model, the West is collapsing.
The key theses of the «Westlessness» Report are as follows:
The West is going through difficult times.
Within the community of democracies, serious contradictions are increasing.
The West is losing the ability to act in a consolidated and systematic way.
The first internal problem of the West is the discord between the supporters of the “closed” and “open” models. The former defend the traditional way of life against outsiders and emancipation. The second requires the expansion of freedom and openness.
The second problem is the discord between the US and Europe in foreign policy, especially in relations with Iran, China and Russia.
The main causes of the internal crisis are cultural and economic. The elites recklessly “driven the peoples into a brighter future, but exceeded the speed limit”. The populists took advantage of this.
External problems are caused by internal ones. The West is tired of wars and does not want to intervene in conflicts. This results into a loss of influence in the World and destabilizes the West itself with an influx of refugees.
The World has become multipolar. The hegemony of the West is over. NATO's military strength is weak. The UN Security Council is paralyzed. Unconditional leadership in defense technologies has been lost.
Previously, the West dominated international development institutions and promoted its ideals. Now, its influence is waning. China is increasingly influencing existing structures and creating parallel ones.
The world order that was established after the Second World War is gradually being destroyed.
The balance of the forces of communism and capitalism was in this world order.
This balance continued throughout the years of the Cold War and ensured the stable and predictable behavior of the states – members of main blocs. Today, that predictability has disappeared. New geopolitical players prefer to play by their own rules.
The “global leadership” concept is also gradually losing its meaning. Because the United States is less and less willing to spend resources and money on this. Under these conditions, today, the conflict potential in the World is much higher than half a century ago, and there are fewer mechanisms for its limitation.
Another consequence of globalization is that almost any conflict can quickly escalate into a full-scale and even thermonuclear war.
Contradictions tear the West apart. Faith in the idea of liberal democracy is waning. Understanding the essence of the West is irreconcilably divided in two.
For right-wing Christian populists, the West is a complex of religious, cultural, and national traditions. For liberals, the West is everything that is committed to the principles of liberal democracy.
Right-wing populists believe that foreigners, non-Christians, and carriers of other cultures destroy the West, while the liberal elite imports them and enriches itself by exploiting them.
Liberals, on the other hand, believe that right-wing populists want to turn the West into a wild, anti-liberal, xenophobic, religious, obscurantist world.
All this is combined with global problems. The most acute of them are climate change, new infections and spontaneous migrations. Disagreements hinder their resolution.
Autocracies – Russia, China, Iran use the problems of the West. They are the main provocateurs of the fragmentation and decline of the Western world. They do not recognize Western values, divide the West, fuel its contradictions, and advance their own interests.
The West, as a civilizational and political entity, is a complex of Christian national cultures that have developed their own ways of solving problems and changing the World over the centuries.
But the West is also the liberal ideology of the majority of the elites, which served these elites as a reliable tool for decades.
The West is ideologically and institutionally adapted to change like no other system in the World.
The West is better able to adapt to competition and change due to the diversity of ideas and developed institutions that can effectively implement these ideas.
The West is based on the right ideas, advanced institutions, and technologies.
Although the West is in decline, there is a way out. Liberal ideas are still popular. The economic power of the West has no equal.
The West solved global problems before and will come out of the current crisis.
Western countries must unite, resolve internal conflicts, forget about hegemony, and learn to live in a new reality, coexist and cooperate with undemocratic competitors.
The main competitors – China and Russia have many their own problems.
Therefore, the participants of the Munich Conference are confident that the West will preserve the liberal world order and resume its successful development.
These naive illusions clearly demonstrate the professional impotence of the Western expert community.
“After us – even the Deluge !”
After an iceberg hit, many «Titanic» passengers did not realize that in 1-2 hours this cozy, sparkling, and “unsinkable” ship would plunge into the abyss, and they did not want to be rescued.
Western politicians and experts have already reconciled themselves to the loss of Western leadership and believe that Western prosperity will continue under Chinese domination.
They think like those «Titanic» passengers. They ignore the depth of the decline of Western states, the factors, and trends of the ongoing processes. They “bury their heads in the sand” and are afraid to realize the criticality of the end of Western leadership and the establishment of Chinese dominance.
They believe that the decline in living standards will be negligible. Houses will have only one room less. In families, 1-2 cars will be instead of 2-3. People will travel not twice a year, but once. Children will not study in commercial schools, but in public ones. Governments will continue to support amenities, safety, and social welfare. Liberal democracy will continue to operate.
But the reality is quite different and much sadder.
The debts of Western states, their regions, and municipalities significantly exceed their GDPs. All of them are on the verge of bankruptcy. Their defaults will occur in the next 10-15 years.
The efficiency of their economies is significantly lower than that of China, and they lose the competition to it.
Their economies are stagnating and will shrink. The share of Western production in World production is much less than BRICS and the rest of the World and continues to fall at an increasing rate. Buildings, structures, industries, infrastructures, transport are dilapidated, destroyed, and not restored.
The standard of living in the West has been declining for several decades.
The worsening of the population life will radicalize and totalitarianize social liberalism – world.kamerton.global/en/node/324
The strengthening and radicalization of social liberalism exacerbate the destruction of the economy and society.
The Western population is aging. Its gene pool is deteriorating. Fertility and fertility are falling.
The West is dying out by a quarter in every generation.
Immigrants carrying other cultures occupy the Western living space.
The economies of China and most other countries are set to export to Western countries. The decline of the West reduces these exports. This causes crises in these countries.
Therefore, China is restructuring its economy for high-tech development of the domestic market. This process will take 5 years. After that, China will intensify aggressive expansion in international financial markets, in which the West still dominates.
These processes will accelerate the evolution of China's political system into a bourgeois republic.
The power of Big business will optimize the efficiency of China's economy.
As a result, the Yuan will be the world's main reserve currency.
In 10-15 years, China will sell off its reserves of Western currencies and bonds.
This will destroy the Western financial system and deprive it of income from monetary emissions.
China will be the World center of emissions and, like the US today, will receive the World's resources for emitted yuans, i.e. for free.
China is developing a combat-ready army that already surpasses NATO in many parameters. At some point, inevitably, “Panda will turn into a Dragon”. China will create military bases, control natural resources and trade routes, impose mass immigration of Chinese and investments of Chinese corporations worldwide.
Chinese investors will buy up most of the Western corporations and appoint their own managers.
Due to their superiority of intelligence and diligence, Asians win the competition in the labor market. The population of the West will be able to work mainly in the entertainment, cultural, and sex industries. A significant part of the workers and their families will be forced to immigrate to work to South America, Africa, and Siberia.
The standard of living of the population of the West will decrease several times and will be lower than in China.
In the 2050s, China will be a bourgeois republic and will control the whole World.
It will stop the implementation of all false, harmful doctrines – liberalism, democratism, feminism, etc.
Beijing will establish bourgeois republics in Western and most other countries – world.kamerton.global/en/node/325
The West prevents the creation of weapons of mass destruction in backward countries. In the 2030s, the West will weaken and lose this function. For several decades, until China will begin to control the World, anarchy will prevail on the planet.
Dozens of states will acquire thermonuclear missiles and new types weapons.
This will significantly increase the probability of catastrophic wars, primarily in the Middle East and Africa, and World Thermonuclear War.
For the past 20 years, all internal and international political projects and decisions in Western countries were erroneous and harmful.
The Munich conference participants have claimed that the main cause of the decline of the West is the attacks of Russia and China.
However, the harm from Russia and China is insignificant compared to the huge, multi-trillion-dollar damage from misguided political governance.
Western elites intend to reform capitalism. But they do not have a scientific basis for designing reforms. Therefore, their ideas are based on demagogy.
The demagogophrenia pandemic has hit Western civilization, especially the political elites.
All world media have broadcasted the wise remark of the Russian Foreign Ministry S.V. Lavrov, in which he succinctly and eloquently formulated the cause of this pandemic: “Morons !”
But the author of this diagnosis himself and his Kremlin colleagues are also no smarter than Western politicians and experts.
The main cause for the general “stupidity” of political elites is their neglect of the principles of scientific thinking.
This phenomenon is described in the article “The Fundamental Discovery will Teach Elite to Think !” – http://world.kamerton.global/en/node/328
Knowledge, to some extent, violates common sense. A well-known example is that common sense confirms that the Earth is flat, and the Sun revolves around the Earth. But astronomy refutes this.
The current education system does not develop scientific thinking skills.
As a result, the vast majority of university graduates have somewhat impaired common sense and weak scientific thinking.
This deprives them of the ability to effectively detect errors in scientific theories and adequately assess their truthfulness and falsehood.
Therefore, they often think according to the aphorism “If the facts contradict the theories, it is all the worse for the facts”.
“Good intentions pave the road to Hell…” The spread of false doctrines, not limited by scientific filtration, exacerbates conflictness in societies and between countries. The spread of Communism, Socialism, Chauvinism, Nazism, Islamism, etc. caused all revolutions and wars of the 20th and already 21st centuries.
Pseudo-educated liberals implant democracy in underdeveloped countries, which destroys their traditional ways of life and causes chaos and wars.
The cult and quasi-religious promotion of social liberalism in the 21st century destroys the economy and civilization of the West.
In past historical epochs, up to the 1970s, large parts of the ruling elites did not have a university education. Therefore, they were guided by common sense. In the 19th and 20th centuries, in Western countries, pseudo-democratic bourgeois republics were in effect. Business elites managed them by financing political parties, politicians, religious organizations, universities, and the press. Therefore, most political decisions were productive, and Western countries functioned and developed efficiently.
The low information efficiency of hieroglyphic languages complicates the discussion and dissemination of political theories. Therefore, the elites of China, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong are guided not by theories, but by common sense. Therefore, these countries successfully develop.
The main cause of the successful actions of President D. Trump is that he did not receive a university education, was not brainwashed by social liberal professors, and retained a healthy mind. Therefore, he ignores the social-liberal doctrines and thinks rationally. He implemented what brings investments and profits to the country, and rejected what causes losses.
After the 1980s, almost all members of the elites receive a university education, are brainwashed by socialist professors, and also become “pseudo-educated”. They are guided by the liberal doctrines instilled in them at universities and support harmful political decisions. Therefore, at the end of the 20th century, they qualitatively changed the political systems of Western countries.
They have turned the former efficient bourgeois Western republics into liberal demagogocracies ruled by clans of mass consciousness manipulators.
They have replaced the bourgeois public governance criterion – maximizing investment with the criterion of adherence to liberal doctrines – the highest values, human rights, political correctness, and therefore, they make political decisions based on demagoguery.
They increase the regulation of the economy, which worsens its efficiency and increases social stratification.
Therefore, the West is collapsing.
The chances of saving the West
The widespread dominance of pseudo-educatedness minimizes these chances, but not yet to zero. The situation has not yet escalated to “no return”. There are two alternative ways to realize these chances and save the West.
The first way is to ban the intelligentsia from making political decisions. Backward authoritarian regimes use this method. However, its application in the modern West is problematic and unnecessary because the second way is many times more effective.
This is to develop the skill of scientific thinking in the minds of the elites, first of all, the participants in the design and adoption of political decisions.
The problem with this path is the ratio of the rate of spread of this skill among the elites and the rate of destruction of Western Civilization.
The destruction of the West has already gained great speed. But this process is unnatural, caused by the implementation of false doctrines that do not correspond to the inherent properties of social systems. Therefore, the scientific refutation of these doctrines will quickly stop the destruction of the West and restore its development.
But, on the other hand, the vast majority of elites’ members still do not even know what "scientific thinking" is, and even more so, about the need for its application.
They consider rhetoric, graphomania, and demagoguery as scientific thinking.
Even when pseudo-educated people learn the principles of scientific thinking, as a rule, they are too lazy to strain their brains to apply the principles, or are unable to apply them due to a lack of organized, logical thinking.
Therefore, it is necessary to seek and attract intellectuals who are aware of the superimportance of applying scientific thinking in conditions of the current destruction of Civilization.
Each such intellectual should become a center for the dissemination of the principles of scientific methodology in his professional environment – in a corporation, university, institute.
These intellectuals should unite and coordinate their efforts.
Groups of these intellectuals will explain the problem of scientific thinking to smart businessmen.
Effective business associations – world.kamerton.global/en/node/326 will propagandize scientific thinking, the falsity of liberal doctrines, and the restoration of Western Civilization.
A broad discussion of the problem of scientific thinking in the press in 2023 will reduce funding for social-liberal organizations by several times, the Democratic electorate by 15%, and among students by 30% in the 2024 US elections.
E. Gershman
___
