The West in Crisis | Opinion

Few would deny that the West is in crisis. Domestic problems abound, and public opinion is increasingly polarized in many of the leading countries of Western civilization. Conservatives fault the radical Left for undermining our essential values, and progressives respond by labeling their critics "fascists," "white supremacists," or "Christian fundamentalists." Elections are fought with bitter animosity, and large segments of the electorate often call the results into question. The international security architecture is crumbling, and a bloody war fought on European soil now threatens to escalate out of control. International supply chains are disrupted and global inflation persists. De-dollarization threatens to undermine the quality of life that many have taken for granted. The global order is changing, and that change brings with it unpredictability and danger.

What went wrong?

Virtually every human being ever born at some point in his life fooled himself into believing that he was living in a unique age. Most remain committed to this misconception over the entire course of their lives. This is normal—part of human nature. But it is self-evident that every previous generation was wrong to think that, and thus the conclusion is inescapable: So are we. History never stops, and nothing changes very much when it comes to the fundamental processes that shape it. The flow of money and influence, the waxing and waning of military power, and the quest for survival and domination—all mark the constant competition, positioning, and struggle between peoples and nations. These processes are much the same today as they have always been.

While what we are witnessing today is a complex phenomenon—history is never simple—the relevant issues can be boiled down to this: The unipolar moment in geopolitics has come and gone, but the multipolar order is yet to rise. This is a period of transition, and transitions are inherently fraught with danger. International systems do not last forever, but it was not written in the Book of Life that the era of near-total Western global dominance should end after only three decades.

The ruling elites produced by what has been variously called the "liberal order", "Pax Americana," or the "rules-based international order" have squandered a rare opportunity to establish a system of global affairs and security mechanisms that could have been instituted to the benefit of virtually all centers of power. This probably stems from a fatal flaw in liberal thinking. Liberal internationalists believe two things with absolute passion: that individual freedom must always be on the march, and that this applies to every human being and every society equally. The fervor with which they believe this, and their universalism, amounts to a proselytizing religion.

And therein lies the problem. The world was ready to accept American leadership—the security provided by the largest military ever built, English as the global means of communication, and the dollar as the world's reserve currency. But it would not accept even tame cultural liberalism, let alone the pagan Church of Woke.

The result was what it always is: those who remained free to do so banded together to balance against the hegemon, and inevitably succeeded in weakening it. That's what has happened countless times throughout history. The only difference is that in the past, hegemons were local. It turns out that the global nature of American hegemony was no meaningful counter to the crushing gravity of history.

Meanwhile, radical, blind, stubborn, furious "progress" is destroying the foundations of Western power from within. When the most important, most widely-read fashion magazines—and indeed the entire mainstream media—celebrate a 10-year-old "trans" child walking the catwalk in New York, something has gone terribly wrong. It is an overt, in-your-face demonstration that a new system of ethics has replaced the old. When NGOs with obscure sources of funding openly attack duly elected governments with strong popular legitimacy, to the point of becoming the driving force behind violent mass street clashes—think Black Lives Matter or, more recently, Israel—and do so in the name of "democracy," it suggests that the very meaning of the word has been twisted hopelessly out of shape. When the monuments to the heroes who built the nations of our civilization are desecrated and torn down, we have turned against our own history.

But what happens to a civilization that replaces its founding moral code with one that is diametrically opposed to it? That dismantles its own system of government? That turns its back on the lessons of its past?

Clearly, this must stop. The ultra-progressive dogma—that is, the beating heart of Western weakness—must be abandoned and repudiated. Unfortunately, this very dogma finds living embodiment in the people who currently lead the strongest nations of the West. U.S. President Joe Biden and the vast majority of Democrats are no more capable of course correction than are lemmings heading for the cliff. And let us waste no words on the European Union.

The only hope lies with the electorate. Western democracy can still function well enough for voters to rid themselves of politicians and parties that manifestly fail time and again, with increasingly calamitous results for all. Voters need a viable alternative, to be sure. The outlines of that alternative have already emerged, shaped by the challenges we all face. Our new—conservative—leaders will need to be grounded in our classical, Judeo-Christian code of ethics. Western foreign and security policy must respect the limits that reality itself imposes; it should be grounded in common sense, it needs to define achievable goals, and we must abandon any policy that seeks to universalize and export liberal precepts to cultures that clearly reject them.

Fortunately, such leaders already exist, and they will gather in Budapest later this week for CPAC Hungary. Much to the chagrin of progressives, the new conservatism looks to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's more than a decade in power as an example of what works—how liberal-progressive hegemony can be dismantled and replaced by a new political paradigm that can turn around the West's crisis of malaise and decadence. This is the primary task that the present troubled age imposes on all men and women of goodwill. For the current crisis was caused by the hegemonizing ambitions of woke progressivism gone mad, and can only be resolved by excising it from the corridors of power.

Zoltán Koskovics is a geopolitical analyst at the Budapest-based Center for Fundamental Rights.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.