So – Has the West Lost It?

The crux of the problem facing the West is that neither the conservatives nor the liberals, neither the right wing nor the left wing, understand that history changed direction at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The era of Western domination is coming to an end. They should lift their sights from their domestic civil wars and focus on the larger global challenges. Instead they are, in various ways, accelerating their irrelevance and disintegration.fn1

It is not inevitable that China will lead the world, even though it is inevitable that China will have the world’s largest economy. Nor is it inevitable that the past two centuries of Western domination of world history will be replaced by two centuries of Asian domination, even though it is inevitable that the Asian share of the global GDP will far surpass that of the West.

It is inevitable that the world will face a troubled future if the West can’t shake its interventionist impulses, refuses to recognize its new position, or decides to become isolationist and protectionist.

This is why this book is intended, ultimately, as a gift to the West. It reminds the West how much it has done to elevate the human condition higher than ever before. And it would be a great tragedy if the West were to be the world’s primary instigator of turbulence and uncertainty at the hour of humanity’s greatest promise. If this were to happen, future historians will be puzzled that the most successful civilization in human history failed to exploit the greatest opportunity ever presented to humanity. A simple dose of Machiavelli is what we need to save the West and the Rest. Otherwise, the West really has lost it.