Yes, Europe and the UK Are All But Dead, But We Can Still Save Western Civilization!

Doug Sheridan, who publishes on LinkedIn, has authored one of his best articles yet. It’s about one of my favorite, but admittedly morose, subjects, namely the seemingly inexorable decline of Western Civilization. It is on full display in Europe, with the Bidenestas doing their best to bring it to America over the last four years.

Sheridan concisely captures the problem:

Walter Russell Mead writes in the WSJ, as Trump prepares to return to the White House, with the exception of the US, much of the West is sunk in decline. A generation of poor performance in the European Union and Japan means America's traditional partners bring less and less to the table each year. Japan seems to be undergoing an awakening. But many EU allies are contending with three decades of economic, political and strategic failure.

Economically, the EU fails the test of the digital age, generating neither the new technologies nor companies that the 21st-century demands. Their embrace of ruinous climate policies reduces their competitiveness. Their NIMBYism throttles growth, and their unsustainable welfare states further diminish their prospects.

Politically, Europe's leaders haven't succeeded in making the EU great. Individual European states are too small to have much effect on global events, and when they try to act together, they punch below their weight. The European Commission bureaucracy moves too slow and with too many reservations and compromises to maintain Europe's place among leading global actors. Meanwhile, the political establishment in country after country loses ground to radical movements.

Strategically, the failure is even more dramatic. Europe is more vulnerable to Middle East disorder, Russian aggression and predatory Chinese policies than the US, but its responses are as inept as they are insufficient. Europe’s been passive in the face of Houthi interference with Red Sea commerce. Russia has kicked France out of Africa. Almost 3 years into Russia's war in Ukraine, Europe still feeds Putin's war machine by buying Russian energy. Europe's green policies have positioned China to destroy its auto industry, a pillar of Europe's economy and social stability.

As a result, Europe needs the US more than ever but is less well situated to influence US policy—or to help the US meet the globe’s challenges—than at any time in decades. Thus, EU nations now tremble at every Trump tweet.

It's easy to understand the schadenfreude with which much of MAGA regards a weakened and demoralized Europe. The contempt with which Germany and the EU establishment generally rejected Trump's correct and important criticisms of misguided European foreign and domestic policies still rankles.

Europe has abdicated its role in history. America must, therefore, work with partners like Japan that have the strategic clarity that so many Europeans lack. Countries like Israel, India, the UAU and Saudi Arabia have read the signs of the times more accurately than Europeans. Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand matter more than most European states to the future of US foreign policy.

Europe is no longer the center of US foreign-policy universe, and barring a near-miraculous European recovery, future presidents will likely follow Trump’s lead in shaping US policies for a post-Western world.

Nothing in this world is forever, of course, and events can change things overnight. The UK went from ruling the waves of an empire to becoming a backwater failure in a few generations. It’s now not much more than a corpse. Its two major parties joined hands after Maggie Thatcher saved the nation. Like George H.W. Bush after Reagan, they both wanted a ‘kinder, gentler’ politics of me and ‘me too’ where elites decided everything in the back room and only pretended to disagree in front of the public.

It was a game of stifling any meaningful action desired by the common man while ‘letting him eat cake.’ Nothing is to be done about anything, in fact, if it can be construed as caving into demands of the general public. Political correctness among elites is all that matters, and the nation has sold its soul to the causes of unfettered illegal immigration, Orwellian speech control, and a ‘climate crisis’ that's no more than a ‘Big Green Grift.’

America has been on the same sort of path since the elder Bush was elected, with but one Trumpian interlude. Now, Trump is returning, and he's talking forcefully in the same way Reagan and Thatcher did. The elite establishment hates him with every fiber of their being and they're determined to frustrate him, but three things have changed to give him a chance of beating them before they destroy us as they've destroyed the UK. One is that he now knows the ropes. Secondly, his election is part of a worldwide pushback against globalist elites. And, finally, we are seeing many elites abandoning their ship. You know who they are, and their motives are irrelevant for the moment.

That's why I am somewhat optimistic. Add that to the fact dumb ideas such as green energy are clearly on the wane. The public will only stand for so much incompetence from its leaders. And, the costs of it are becoming more apparent by the hour. I believe there is an opportunity, at least, to save Western Civilization. Trump isn’t the reason. He's just an instrument being used by the common man to restore civil society from the ground up. And, there are now many others. Even the election of Two-Tier Kier Starmer in the UK is a positive sign because it rejected phony conservatism as the party of opposition and Starmer will soon be replaced by someone better.

So, let's cheer up. We can still save Western Civilization!

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