3 November 2024

The case for geopolitical optimism

Gabriel Elefteriu

There is no question that the world is spinning out of control, hurtling towards the catastrophe of major power war – which would likely see nuclear exchanges. Of course, the future is not pre-determined. But the Ukraine situation, with North Korean troops now taking the field in Kursk, risks a critical escalation. Israel is fighting on seven fronts against an almost-nuclear Iran. The Chinese military is getting ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, as ordered by Xi Jinping. In addition, the BRICS bloc is expanding, while the Eurasian Axis centred on China, Russia and Iran is becoming more coherent and effective.

Meanwhile, the West is viciously divided politically, hollowed-out culturally, declining demographically, incompetently led, insufficiently armed, unwilling to fight, industrially decimated – and technologically-suicidal, perhaps via AI but certainly via “green tech”. The West retains its primacy in the international system, but through inertia – and courtesy of past accumulations of wealth and intellectual capital – rather than through present performance.

In these conditions it is hard to discern a near-, medium- or long-term future evolution of the global picture that would be particularly favourable to the Western Alliance. Even if major war is averted, the general degradation of our societies and economic systems, coupled with the chaos spreading across the Third World – from the terrorism of Africa and Middle East, to civil wars, unrest or mass migration – makes it difficult to see how we will climb out of the hole dug for us by Davos Man and the “elites” who’ve been running our countries since the Cold War.

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