The West needs to take a fresh look at itself and the world. Here’s why

Amidst talk of ‘Western decline’, ‘retreat of the West’, the ‘resurgence of China’ and so on, a fine but important point is lost: the West — pared to the essence — is an idea. That this idea took hold in certain geographies is a paradox: it may be both self-explanatory and a mystery at the same time. Disaggregated, the ideational premises that undergird the West are a certain notion about humans, the rights that inhere in these, rule of law, and an idea how humans can organise themselves in political communities. (These are, to employ academic jargon, ideal types- that is, no Western society perfectly corresponds to these but there are variations that hark back to the foundational idea(s) of the West). Obviously, this a reductive delineation of the ‘idea of the West’ but, in the main it constitutes the broad thrust of the idea. Can this idea ‘decline’? Is it declining? If it is, what are the countervailing ideas that challenge it? Do these ideas have traction? Is there a correlation between the idea of the West and the actual West? Does this actual west live up to the idea(s) of the West?

I may, as a starting point, make my stance and vantage point clear: my cognitive and intellectual development and quasi-healing of a fractured personality took place in the West. The former – I do not owe the West – but I attribute it to an intense quest for knowledge and understanding and then immersing myself in the highest intellectual and philosophical traditions of the West. The latter can be attributed to the positive emotional stimulus that I received from a couple of bold and beautiful people in and of the West. But to qualify this assertion, these people were not and are not ‘mainstream’ Westerners. They were unconventional. This is insofar as my intellectual, cognitive and quasi-emotional development is concerned. Structurally, the West has not been kind to me (actually, by and large the converse). The point of delineating this is to make my position clear: I do not have an axe to grind, nor do I have an agenda, neither am I reflexively ‘anti-Western’ nor am I a ‘drooling lick spittle’ of the West.

To hark back to the questions posed in this essay and attempt a response, the idea(s) of the West are powerful and potent. Who can quibble with the assertion that rights inhere in humans or that rule of law should govern society and that contingent on a normative consensus in and among society it should organize itself into a political community that reflects these principles or even ideas? But there are countervailing forces to these broad ideas. An example might suffice to illustrate this: China, in the nature of a contemporary ‘other’ to the West, offers another model to the world as the one to emulate. The features of this model are (roughly) the primacy of the party-state sitting atop a society that privileges ‘order’ over ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’, a partriarchical form of governance that is contra the normative principles of democracy overlaid by a nationalism correlating to a political economy paradigm that expects fidelity to these organising principles. While the West in terms of international relations wants its principles and ideas to be reflected in ‘world order’ and regimes that buttress it, China desires the converse. This battle lies at the heart of what has come to be known as ‘Cold War 2.0’.

The West and China then stand in contradistinction to and with each other. Who or what is the audience of this battle? The rest (or the non-West) is the answer. The timing of this battle is delicate: it comes at a time when the post-Cold War 1.0 order is emerging and shaping, where the colonial hangover of other states is dissipating or becoming poignant, and where importantly technology is shaping not only discourse and narrative but is gradually and inexorably becoming the arbiter of power and the power game in this century and beyond. Against this backdrop, the battle is morphing into a geopolitical context of will reflected in the building of hard power capabilities of the West, rest and China.

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In the interstices of these lies the fatal danger: in a turbo-charged contest of wills, geopolitical considerations and the privileging of the security problematique over ideas, principles and values, state interest(s) become determinative of states’ foreign, defence and security policies. This is a special danger for the West. The entity risks becoming a hollow husk if not a contra hologram of itself - its ideas, principles and ideals. If this scenario becomes real (trend analysis shows it is becoming so), then the whole world becomes an arena, a battlefield of realpolitik-informed premises. 

In this schemata, power becomes the ultimate quest of states (with all its negative corollaries). Principles and ideals cede space to naked power defined as interest. While admittedly dangerous for the world (and even global security), the arena of politics - global and local - morphs into a prosaic, unromantic quest. This probable scenario cuts and eats into the very idea(s) of the West. In this prosaic power, whosoever has maximum power wins. But power neither happens nor occurs in a vacuum: it gets diffused. Whether it is China or the West that wins in the power game, the hold of either on the world will be tenuous and fraught. In the ultimate analysis, it is principle, ideas and ideals wedded to power - that is wielded in and informed by sagacity, farsightedness and long term vision - that wins the day. It is here that the West must take recourse to principle and prudence over narrow interest(s). The question is how.

For far too long, the West has either become too self-absorbed — an obsessive focus on identity politics, for example — introverted and short-sighted. All this is reflected in varying permutations and combinations in its domestic, foreign and security policies and of course political debates within. In the process, it has lost sight of itself. A corollary of this has been losing touch with the world beyond. 

A paragraph from the famed novel, ‘The Ugly American’, might illustrate this point to some extent. In one of the scenes in the novel, a Burmese journalist, out of frustration observes that, ‘the American people that I meet in my country are not the same that I knew in the United States. A mysterious change seems to come over Americans when they go to a foreign land. They isolate themselves socially. They live pretentiously, They are loud and ostentatious'.  Of course, this vignette is not an accurate description and thereby reflection of what is sought to be highlighted in this essay. But it captures to a large extent its thrust. 

In other words, what is sought to be conveyed in the vignette is engagement, understanding, defined by curiosity, humility and keenness to learn about others. The West has retreated into itself engaging with the world only in the idiom of geopolitics, security and interests. This does not even caricature the West. To be true to itself, and to be truly representative of itself, it needs to come out of the self imposed shell, and not see the world as a mere grand chessboard of politics informed by moves and counter moves. Let the West do this and engage the rest in terms of its ideas and ideals. If these are inherently and intrinsically potent, let the world decide and let the defining conflict of the 21st century be fought on the terrain of ideals, ideas and principles. 

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)

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