Is the US-led global order collapsing? The military stalemate in Ukraine, the widening war in the Middle East, and the Chinese assertiveness in Asia would suggest that the US-led West is on the back foot around the world. The intensifying political polarisation in the US and the prospect of the return of Donald Trump as the President in the 2024 elections reinforces the sense of a West in terminal decline.
There is no holding back the triumphalism among many sections of the “Eastern” political elites that see the current setbacks to the West as a seminal moment in world politics. For them, it is about the long-awaited end to four centuries of Western dominance. The endless self-flagellation in the West about its collective failures and a sense of panic about the rise of the rest reinforce the sense of a new dawn in global order. India is not immune to this infectious exuberance.
Sceptics, however, dismiss the talk of Western decline. India, in particular, whose relations with the West have never been as good as they are today, has no reason to wish for its decline. Nor would Delhi want China to replace the US as the dominant power in Asia. Delhi today sees the West as a critical partner in propelling India’s rise and securing itself against some major national security challenges. However, the question of decline must be addressed in objective terms.
The debate on the decline and fall of the West has been around for more than a century. Yet, if there is one geopolitical concept that has survived the turbulence of the last hundred years, it is the idea of the West. Many competing ideas that burst upon the world — international communism, pan-Asianism, pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism, and third-worldism — have all exhausted themselves while the notion of the West as an idea lives on.
The West has survived frequent and often intense crises of capitalism and endured the loss of colonial empires. It fought back geopolitical challenges to its hegemony from Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union. It is now locked in a new confrontation with China. And the odds are tilting in favour of the West. Until very recently, it was widely assumed that China would overtake the US as the world’s largest economy, prise Europe out of American dominance and emerge as the dominant power in Asia.
Some of those dreams have crashed against reality. Slow down in growth and demographic decline suggest China is unlikely to overtake the US economy any time soon, if ever. Yet, it is possible to argue that the Sino-Russian alliance unveiled by Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin presents a formidable challenge to Western primacy. Yet, both Russia and China are eager for an accommodation with the West. Despite his tough rhetoric against the “collective West”, Putin needs a deal with the US to secure a new European compact in which Moscow can play a major role. President Xi, whose soaring imagination about a post-Western order in Asia was making waves a few years ago, is now promising President Joe Biden that he is not seeking to overthrow the US-led order but seeking a dignified coexistence.
In both Russia and China, there is a long lineage of political forces that seek Westernisation and integration with the US-led order. They have had to battle the Russian “Slavophiles” and Chinese nationalists who seek to define their national path in non-Western if not anti-Western terms. The Westernisers in Russia and China might be on the defensive now but have not disappeared from the political scene. For both Putin and Xi, the question is not about fighting a forever war with the West, negotiating favourable terms of accommodation. Meanwhile, their aggressive actions in Europe and Asia are compelling their neighbours to move closer to the US and enhance the power of the West. For many in Europe and Asia, America, the distant power, is very welcome in the effort to limit the power of the regional hegemons.
The story is not different in the Middle East. Iran may be rocking the US-led order in the region, but it is not strong enough to promote an alternative. Many Arab regimes see Iran and its proxies like Hamas as a bigger threat to their existence than Israel. For many Arab states, the distant America remains a valuable and the only balancer against Tehran.
What about the potential role of BRICS as a bulwark against the West? Well, Argentina has just declined to join the forum — the invitation was extended at the BRICS summit in South Africa last year. Earlier, Indonesia had said it was not ready to join the forum when the expansion was being discussed. In any case, the deepening contradictions between India and China have cast a shadow over the BRICS and other non-Western institutions like the SCO, where both Delhi and Beijing are members. The contradictions within the rest are deep and must always be factored in assessing the real and serious tensions between the West and the rest.
What about the decline in the economic weight of the G7 in the global economy? To be sure, the share of G7’s GDP has been on a continuous decline in the 21st century. Much of that decline, though, has come from Europe. The US retains nearly 24 per cent of the global GDP. The relative economic decline of Europe vis-a-vis the US and China and its security vulnerability vis-a-vis Russia will only help consolidate the West under American leadership.
Although the rise of the rest is real, the West continues to lead in the production of new scientific knowledge and technological innovation. Resilient economic and political institutions cushion Western societies from internal turbulence and external challenges. Western academia, think tanks, arts and culture continue to exercise powerful influence worldwide. The broader attraction of Western societies is reflected in the fact that millions of people worldwide, including from India, are eager to find a way into Europe and North America, either legally or illegally. No amount of political posturing by their elites is going to diminish the Western pull for Indian professionals, Chinese computer geeks, Russian dissidents, and talented people from everywhere in the world.
Despite the unprecedented warmth between India and the West at the current juncture, many in the Indian political class, including those on the left and the right, are tempted to buy into the narrative of a rising East and a declining West. Resentments — old and new, major and minor against the West — rush to the surface at the smallest of real and perceived provocations.
But Delhi, which is determined to move India up the global power hierarchy, has little time for deluding itself into ideological crusades against the West. India has been there and done that (and paid a price) in the second half of the 20th century. Two decades of productive engagement in the 21st century has given India the political confidence and the negotiating skills to advance its strategic partnership with the West despite frequent disagreements.
The writer is a contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express
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