My attempt to use emotions as a way of deciphering the world and the collective behavior of nations will make this book heretical in the eyes of most political scientists and international relations specialists. To add insult to injury, let me now go even further and engage in an exercise of historical fantasy, aimed at developing a citizen’s reflexes.
The world I have endeavored to analyze through the prism of emotions is the world we live in, a world that is both dangerous and exciting. And what of the future? The world can go either way, for if the very best is unlikely, the worst is not inevitable either. The intended message of this concluding chapter can be summarized very simply: “You have your destiny in your hands. Choose!”
With this in mind, let’s consider how our world might look if fear were to come to dominate it or, conversely, if hope were to rule. The two scenarios I am going to present are of course caricatures. The reality is likely to be somewhere in between.
Regarding the negative scenario: Cassandras are necessary because they give wakeup calls. But they may also become dangerous if they are invoked in order to foster a culture of fear. That is not my intention. I hope you will read my forecast for a world in which fear has triumphed as a cautionary story, illustrating what may happen to us if we make the mistake of allowing negative emotions to overrule our judgment.
As for the hopeful scenario, I am realistic enough to know that it is just a dream that will not materialize in exactly the form I depict. But even dreaming has its purpose. An enlightened dream indicates the direction the world could take under the guidance of the right leaders, armed with the right principles and having at their disposal the right institutional mechanisms—along with a bit of luck. Such a dream can serve as an enticement to do better, to work harder for a better world.
It is November 2025. In Tel Aviv, Israel is observing the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in an atmosphere of gloom and foreboding. Since the start of the fourth intifada in 2018, the security conditions have worsened again, not only in Israel and Palestine but throughout the Middle East. One result has been the gradual decline of both Jewish and Arab populations in Israel, as everyone with an alternative place to live has been fleeing, trying to escape not only the atmosphere of violence but the oppressive conditions imposed by life in a state of near-martial law.
Unfortunately, Israel is not the only place where an obsession with security is making life less rewarding. In fact a certain “Israelization” of life around the world has become a reality. The culture of fear is now practically universal, especially after the successful use of biological weapons by terrorist networks in San Francisco, London, Paris, Prague, Tokyo, Mumbai, and several other European and Asian cities during the infamous “White Death” attacks of 2019–2020. In the wake of those attacks, which killed some thirty thousand people, most governments have instituted harsh security measures. Borders have been shut down, national ID cards are required for virtually any economic activity, dissident groups (even nonviolent ones) have been banned and their leaders arrested, and everyday life involves a gauntlet of military checkpoints, physical searches, and other inconveniences that keep millions of people in a constant state of tension, frustration, and anxiety.
There is of course no global referee or peacekeeper to channel or coordinate the international response to the terrorist threat, the United Nations and its sister institutions having fallen into disuse after multiple failed attempts at self-reformation. Multilateralism is dead, and with it the hope of a world of unity and stability based on consensus and the rule of law.
Some had hoped that the United States would be able to fill the leadership void left by the demise of multilateral institutions. Unfortunately, despite the election of a Democratic president in 2008 and the subsequent attempt to shift the nation’s course, the United States had neither the ability nor the will to do to so. Financially, militarily, and psychologically depleted by ruinous wars in the Middle East and the devastating recession of 2008–2014, the United States retreated into a neoprotectionist shell, withdrawing most forces from foreign soil and, more damagingly, sharply reducing its involvement in international diplomacy and problem solving as well. The shift was confirmed in 2013, when the newly elected president, a far-right-wing conservative with strongly jingoist and protectionist policies, announced a dramatic reduction in U.S. armed forces, with the remaining soldiers to be deployed almost exclusively along the now heavily fortified borders with Mexico and Canada.
In retrospect, this American retreat was perhaps inevitable. Disappointed with their failures on the world stage and their economic struggles following the financial collapse of 2008, Americans began to search obsessively for an explanation of what went wrong and even to question their own national identity. Paul Kennedy’s vision of the decline of the American empire was premature when he published it in 1987. It has become a reality in 2025. As a result, a weakened America no longer has either the hard or the soft power to be the indispensable nation it has been since 1941.
The other Western powers are suffering their own psychological and emotional breakdowns. In Europe, the fears of “Balkanization” that many expressed in the 1990s during the dismantling of Yugoslavia have slowly become reality. It’s difficult to say exactly what provoked the dramatic unraveling of the European Union ideal. Perhaps it was the new explosion of violence in the Balkans in 2015 over the issue of Kosovo, which demonstrated yet again the impotence of the European Union. Perhaps it was the peaceful but stunning explosion of Belgium in 2010 or the subsequent declarations of independence by Scotland, Wales, and Catalonia. Whatever the precise causes, the result is clear. Having evoked so carelessly the emotions of nationalism and economic self-determination, the leaders of Europe found themselves incapable of controlling the forces they had unleashed. What looked initially like merely the victory of a British vision of Europe, a loose, decentralized federation rather than a unified power, ended in the final defeat and near dissolution of the European Union.
In the irresistible process of divorce between the European Union and its citizens, foreshadowed by the triple no of the French, the Dutch, and the Irish to the referendums on the constitutional treaty, Europe’s institutions, the commission in particular, played their part. They became prisoners of themselves, increasingly failing to relate to the feelings and demands of society in a world shaken by the depths of economic recession. As a result, European societies have tended increasingly to see Europe as part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
So far war has not returned to the heart of “Old Europe,” but it threatens the continent’s periphery, from the Balkans and the Caucasus to the Strait of Gibraltar. Europe has been reduced to a kind of Magna Helvetia, a giant Switzerland, still peaceful and relatively prosperous, but bereft of youthful energy (having sealed its boundaries to badly needed immigrants), militarily impotent, selfish, and largely irrelevant, a museum of its own past dominated by fear and surrounded by a sense of danger. Having given up on the idea of being a strategic and diplomatic power on the world scene, Europe is no longer a model, or if it is, it is a model of impotence.
One of Europe’s main fears comes from its highly populated and unstable neighbor, Turkey. Having realized that Europe did not want them in their “Christian club,” the Turks looked for alternatives. Torn between the idea of a return to some kind of neo-Ottoman glory and the temptation of a radicalized form of Islam, Turkey is now on the verge of implosion, a full-fledged Middle Eastern country that is infecting Europe with the ethnic and religious hatreds of that region. As for Russia, it is now perceived just as it was during the Cold War: as a threat. Ukraine and Georgia remain formally independent (unlike Belorussia, which has been reabsorbed into the Russian empire), but the orders issued by puppet governments in Kiev and Tbilisi are written in Moscow.
Yet the fate of Europe still looks enviable compared with that of other continents.
Asia was the continent of hope in the early years of the twenty-first century. Now it is returning to be what it was in the 1950s and 1960s, the continent of war.
The process began of course with the costly and irresponsible war launched by China on Taiwan in 2014. It was driven by internal factors. The brutal cessation of Chinese economic growth, combined with devastating environmental problems, led to a deep social crisis and violent political upheaval. In desperation, Beijing’s Communist leaders played the nationalist card, their weapon of last resort for retaining power. Taiwan’s careless use of independence rhetoric and symbols gave Beijing an ideal pretext for the invasion of that small island. The United States refused to intervene directly, but its military help to Taiwan made the war much longer and more difficult than the Chinese had expected.
Now the Middle Empire is finally reunited, but at what cost? China’s period of economic growth is over. Having failed to reform themselves politically, China and India have fallen back on nationalistic rhetoric to divert their citizens’ attention from the shortcomings of their governments and from the hunger riots that have regularly exploded in the two countries, making their food situation terribly similar to that of the African continent. The climate of tension that now exists between China and India as a result of their mounting internal tensions could well break into open war between two nuclear giants, without the technical and cultural restraints that the Cold War exerted on the United States and the Soviet Union. The demography of the two Asian giants is such that they both are flirting recklessly—to be fair, the undemocratic Chinese much more than the Indians— with the idea of risking the lives of “only” a few hundred million people for the sake of national glory.
In reaction, almost all Asia is in arms: Cambodians versus Thais, Vietnamese versus Cambodians…. Caught between the existence of a fundamentalist Taliban-like regime armed with nuclear weapons in Pakistan and the strongly nationalistic and aggressive behavior of China and India, the Japanese have shed their historical aversion to military might and have joined the growing club of Asian nuclear powers. The shifting balance of terror in Asia is proving to be anything but a source of stability for the region. In fact it is threatening economic growth, making the continent too risky for the tastes of international investors.
The Asian culture of hope has been further eroded by environmental degradation and the destabilizing effects of extreme religious ideology. Uncontrolled economic development and its ecological consequences have helped create a legitimate culture of fear in Asia thanks to the sharp increases in the severity and frequency of tsunamis, floods, typhoons, and landslides, along with the escalating health costs of uncontrolled pollution. At the same time, a growing “Arabization” of Asian Islam has led to a further radicalization of Hindu fundamentalists, helping spread a climate of religious intolerance all over Asia. Now even countries like Singapore have lost their magic touch, with the relationships of various communities (such as Chinese and Indians) becoming a serious source of internal tension.
With the West in disarray and Asia having exchanged hope for fear, the African continent has fallen prey to despair, depopulation, and ethnic warfare. The Chinese, the Indians, the Americans, and the Europeans, preoccupied with their own problems, have abandoned Africa. Left to their own fate, the Africans have returned to the practices and behavior that led to earlier failures. Infectious diseases are endemic, poverty rates have resumed their upward climb, and governmental corruption is as rampant as ever.
Even the experience of postapartheid South Africa has turned sour. With the uncontrollable escalation of violence, a majority of the white community has left the country, mainly for Australia and New Zealand. What is the meaning of reconciliation if it is not accompanied by peace and hope for the future?
Latin America is yet another victim of the chaotic state of the world. Brazil and Mexico, the continent’s two giants, both have suffered as a result of their respective strategies for development. Having chosen to align itself with the United States through NAFTA, Mexico has been hit hard by the American crisis of confidence and its escalating protectionist and neo-isolationist policies. As for Brazil, which chose a globalized economic strategy at least in part as an act of defiance toward the United States, it has been weakened by the partial withdrawal of China and India from world markets as a result of their internal struggles and their preoccupation with military confrontation.
The only real winner in Latin America is the spirit of populism, in its various forms from “post-Peronism” to “post-Castroism.” Military institutions have reclaimed a major political role in several Latin American countries, sometimes sharing control with drug cartels that are more powerful than ever.
Each of these disheartening regional trends has had its own causes. But is there any overarching force to which we can point as a driver of the global collapse of the last twenty years?
If there is, perhaps we can summarize it this way: The clash of civilizations has changed from a provocative intellectual construct into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When Samuel Huntington first articulated his tragic notion of an inevitable clash between Islam and the West in 1993, it seemed to many to be exaggerated and even a little hysterical. But in the years that followed, a series of almost irresistible processes turned it into reality. The terror attacks of 9/11 were not the cause, but they certainly helped accelerate a cascade of events, including misunderstandings, miscalculations, and misjudgments, that led us to the current sad state of affairs. Throughout it all, the fear that Huntington’s vision was correct has been one of the forces promoting the growth of chaos, largely outside the consciousness of the people making the decisions. “Men make history, but they do not know the history they are making,” as the German philosopher Hegel wrote.
The tipping point, perhaps, was the American and Israeli air attacks on Iran that led to the overthrow of Ahmadinejad. Technically the attacks were a success, but like the war in Iraq, they were a political catastrophe, producing an explosion of anti-Western hatred in the entire Muslim world.
The first victim of this emotional escalation was democracy in Pakistan. The democratic process Pervez Musharraf suspended so many times was too weak to prevent the rise of a jihadi regime that inherited Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. The inevitable consequence was a nuclear proliferation race in the Middle East. Confronted with the threat of nuclear fundamentalism, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey all turned nuclear.
In response, the West turned itself into a fortress, rejecting both people and ideas from the Middle East as well as manufactured goods coming from Asia. Immigrant communities throughout Europe found themselves under attack, subject both to armed violence from local natives and to harassment by government authorities. By 2018 roundups and deportations of tens of thousands of foreigners had begun all over Europe, paralleling the similar roundups of Latin Americans that had swept the United States five years earlier. Everywhere, it seems, the Other has become a source of suspicion and fear in the new antiglobalization atmosphere that prevails.
In cultural terms, we are no longer living in the hopeful world of Beethoven; we have moved to the tragic, barbaric beauty of the last works of Wagner. But if the world of 2025 sounds like Wagner, it looks like a cartoon by the Serbo-French artist Enki Bilal (creator of violent, apocalyptic fantasies), a movie like Blade Runner, or a scene from one of Shakespeare’s most violent plays (such as Titus Andronicus), depicting a world of fury and dark disorder.
The global situation now resembles that of the early Middle Ages in Europe following the collapse of the Roman Empire, when the barbarians took center stage and ushered in a period of violence, chaos, and turmoil. Those “Dark Ages” lasted almost half a millennium. How long will these new Dark Ages persist? No one can say.
It is November 2025. Here in Tel Aviv, on the square that now carries his name, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated exactly thirty years ago. Today this city is the site of a major international celebration to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Middle Eastern peace treaty that finally brought to an end more than seventy years of violence, insecurity, and injustice. Representatives of all the members of the enlarged Security Council of the United Nations are present, including the United States, China, India, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa. Of course the recently united European Union is now represented by a single envoy.
As one looks back on the successful conclusion of the Middle East talks five years earlier, it still appears a remarkable achievement. The truth is that after so many decades of conflict, no one really expected a breakthrough for peace. Perhaps the resolution, when it came, was the result of fatigue as much as any yearning for peace. Israelis and Palestinians had come to the conclusion that they needed each other to survive (in the case of Israel) or simply to exist (in the case of the Palestinians).
One by one, the necessary emotional building blocks for peace fell into place. The Muslim nations had realized that the fate of the Palestinians—in their eyes, an obscure local group toward which they had never really felt any profound loyalty—had become a dangerous fixation that was needlessly preventing progress. The Israelis had come to accept the reality that the Palestinians were a permanent part of the landscape of their homeland. “Paris is well worth a mass,” as Henri IV famously remarked; in the same vein, Israelis now declared, “Peace is well worth surrendering part of Jerusalem and the territories.” And when the Palestinians abandoned their claim that refugees must have the right of return, shifting, in effect, from a culture of absolutism to a culture of compromise, the outlines of a practical settlement were suddenly clear, and peace was, stunningly, around the corner.
Equally important, perhaps, was the transformation of the international environment into one where the forces that opposed peace were suddenly weaker than those that favored it, an environment in which the absence of peace between Israelis and Palestinians looked anachronistic. The power most responsible for this transformation of the international environment was the United States.
In truth a culture of hope has always come more naturally to the people of America than has a culture of fear. So perhaps it should not have come as a great surprise when following the watershed election of 2008, the United States began to recover confidence in itself after the moral trauma of the war in Iraq. Within a few years America had largely regained its unique soft power as the most widely respected country on earth.
In large part, this turnabout happened because the leadership of the United States decided to accept gracefully its nation’s relative decline in classical power terms. (“Relative” only, of course; the United States remained the most powerful nation on the planet.) The superpower of the Cold War and the hyperpower of the post–Cold War years resigned itself to being simply one nation among all the others, even if a slightly more powerful one. Given the painful impact of its last imperial adventure on American society and the American economy, not to mention on the image of America in the world, this “sacrifice” felt much less traumatic to Americans themselves than most commentators had expected. And in the wake of the financial trauma of 2008, many Americans were ready to accept a call to rebuild their nation’s economy and infrastructure rather than squander scarce resources in further adventures overseas.
Freed from their self-imposed mission to transform the world through the exporting of democracy, Americans turned to the cause of protecting the environment with a passion explicable only by the Puritan streak in American culture. Having ratified an amended version of the Tokyo protocol, America became the world’s leading advocate of green policies. By 2015 amended auto emissions standards, a carbon cap and trade program, new hybrid and electric cars, and strict new policies on air pollution had begun an absolute decline in the production of greenhouse gases by the United States. Not incidentally, the new industries spurred by these technological innovations created millions of new jobs for Americans and helped make the recession of 2008–2010 both less severe and less prolonged than most economists had predicted.
In a broader sense, America’s attitude toward the world had changed. There was a run on passport offices as Americans took up international travel with greater enthusiasm than ever. Encouraged by a president with multicultural roots and interests, Americans began studying the cultures and languages of other countries. Real curiosity and even empathy gradually replaced the mixture of ignorance and disdain that had once characterized Americans abroad. In return, the world began again to appreciate and value those qualities that had always made America unique: its commitment to democracy; its spirit of openness, tolerance, innovation, and freedom—in sum, a real and positive universalism.
Having survived the twin dangers of imperial hubris and neo-isolationism, the United States remained engaged in the affairs of the world, now appearing as a senior partner but no longer as the unique arbiter and policeman of the world. As a result, its international image improved considerably. The anti-American culture that had become such a popular rallying point for a Europe in search of its identity receded.
During the decades of the 2010s a series of American leaders presided over the “reconciliation” between the United States and the United Nations. Americans had come to realize the need for a strong and legitimate international referee in an age of complexity and interdependency. Only the UN could play that role, strengthened by its new, more broadly representative Security Council and a dynamic, charismatic new secretary-general. Supported by the United States, the new secretary-general had at her disposal both a streamlined UN bureaucracy and a strong military force. These “mercenaries of peace,” made up mostly of Gurkha regiments from Nepal (with their well-known reputation for toughness and discipline), were able to exert a powerful deterrent effect on would-be aggressors as well as on leaders tempted to use force against their own people. Wisely applied, the duty to interfere doctrine had survived its unfortunate misuse during the war in Iraq and became a basic foundation of the new international legal system.
As important as the renaissance of the UN were the gradual emergence and acceptance of a new multipolar order, bringing relative stability to the world scene. For Europeans, this was simply a return to normalcy, for such an equilibrium of power had been in place in Europe from the mid-seventeenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. Unlike the older European case, the new informal “council of great powers” was not united by monarchical principles, nor was it the great alliance of democracies proposed by some Americans in the early 2000s. Yet it was a homogeneous, reasonable coherent order, because the key participants were united by a single principle to which they all adhered—the rule of law as administered primarily by the shared referee of the United Nations—as well as a common concern for the ecological well-being of the planet and the absolute need to meet successfully the challenge of global warming. The International Tribunal of The Hague now plays a vital, fully recognized role as the guarantor of universal rights and legal principles.
Of course, within the broad sweep of the new council, there were genuine differences of ideology and interest. Europe and the United States shared a common culture based on democratic principles. India, as the great Asian democracy, constituted a bridge between the West and the other leading powers, China and Russia, which, while not on the path to democracy, had nonetheless come to see the value to them of supporting a system based on the rule of law, domestically as well as internationally. The slow opening of the Chinese regime to a new generation of leaders free of personal ties to the Communist past had opened the way to incremental imposition in China of the rule of law on the model of Singapore. After nearly twenty years under Putin, directly or indirectly, Russia too had moved toward accepting the rule of law, mainly in order to maintain its business credibility and competitiveness.
Eager to balance its giant Chinese neighbor, Russia had come to the conclusion that its future was with the West. Accordingly, it had formed with the European Union an informal “club,” acting in concert on most major issues and working out economic problems in a basically cooperative spirit. This Union for a Greater Europe had managed to create a new climate of confidence between Russia and its European neighbors, including those like Poland that were once controlled by it. And Ukraine, now a member of the union, acts as a perfect bridge between Russia and the rest of Europe, just as Poland did fifteen years earlier.
As for the European Union itself, it evolved according to a vision quite distinct from that of its founding fathers. By 2020 Europe had become not merely a civilian power or a purely economic force but also a limited military force to be reckoned with within the framework of a revitalized and rebalanced Atlantic Alliance. This evolution was made possible by the return of France into NATO in 2009. It was a European force within the NATO structure that guaranteed the implementation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty, a natural development, since it was only right that Europe, which had been part of the origin of the Middle Eastern problem (through colonialism and the Holocaust), should be part of its solution.
In the reawakening of the European Union, three factors were decisive. First, the union’s attractiveness as a model remained high, as evidenced by the continuing interest in joining the union by countries on its periphery. By 2016 the former Yugoslavia was a member of the union, its “exploded” multiple sovereignties and identities having been de facto reunited under the roof of the union. After Croatia in 2010, Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro had jointly entered the union, followed shortly by Macedonia and Bosnia and even Albania. Thus Europe’s peace and prosperity prevailed over the specter of the return of war to the Balkans. Justice had proved decisive in this process of further enlargement of the union, as the arrest of war criminals and the well-reasoned judgments pronounced in The Hague had paved the way to the reconciliation of the entire European continent with itself.
In a further demonstration of the ongoing allure of Europe, Turkey will join the union later in 2025. The progress of the Turkish economy and the stability of its democratic institutions have impressed otherwise reluctant Europeans, encouraged by the new climate of détente between Islam and the West, that the time has come to transcend the prejudices of the past and the diktat of geography.
The second crucial factor in the reawakening of Europe was the relaunching of the European institutional process following the signing of the revised European treaty in 2010. Europeans have a new president, a defense minister, a foreign minister, and a diplomatic service. It was only a matter of time before these developments would lead to the unenthusiastic but wise agreement by France and Great Britain to give up their individual seats in the UN Security Council in favor of a single European representative.
The third factor was of a more moral and psychological nature. At the same time that Americans were learning to be more modest in accepting the new multipolar world, Europeans were recovering the sense of energy and ambition they had lost during and after the Cold War years. The time for European (and even Western) supremacy was gone, but Europe could still play an important role on the world stage. Europeans sensed that it was time to outgrow the historical fatigue they’d suffered after the great wars of the twentieth century. Now, with their societies renewed through the arrival of new immigrants, the integration of influences from new member countries, and the growing assertiveness of women, Europeans were ready to drop their fascination with decay, their growing cynicism about themselves and the world, and their collective escapism. Today, at last, Europe is back.
Of course the current roster of five leading world powers—the United States, China, India, Russia, and the European Union—is not permanent. In the near future, other forces, including Brazil, South Africa, and the newly reunited republic of Korea, will have to be reckoned with. Japan too remains a potent economic and, more recently, political and diplomatic force.
Then there is Africa. The turning point in Africa’s transition from despair to hope was first the election of Barack Obama in the United States, followed by the success of the Soccer World Cup tournament in South Africa in 2010, the psychological equivalent for the entire African continent of the 2008 Olympics for China: the international confirmation of its new status as a place and a people that matter. Having abandoned their fascination with foreign models, their dream of finding a new life in Europe, and their longstanding tendency to blame and rely on others, a new generation of African leaders decided to take their fate into their own hands.
In this dramatic shift of attitude, the Chinese investors played a major role. Their combination of interest and greed convinced Africans that if they did not want their future to be decided by others once again, they had to plan it for themselves. With help from Chinese, Indian, and Japanese technology but guided by African leaders, the continent gradually became the planet’s greatest locus of economic growth and opportunity. When scientists achieved a series of breakthroughs in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, including the long-sought vaccine announced in 2011, health and life expectancies in Africa began to shoot upward. By 2018 malaria had joined smallpox on the list of infectious diseases found only in scientific laboratories.
As for Latin America, it is following the lead of Brazil and Argentina in creating the Southern Hemisphere’s equivalent of the European Union. Mercosur, launched in 1991 as a regional trade association, has become a full-fledged political entity. Now called the Latin American Union, its common police and common justice system are making real progress in defeating the various drug and leftist cartels that have imposed their own will on so many countries of the continent for so long.
All these positive changes in the international climate undoubtedly helped pave the way for the Palestinian-Israeli peace accord. But there were specific regional developments that played an important role as well.
One of the most symbolic shifts took place in Lebanon, where the logic of collective prosperity replaced the logic of violence and division. The reintegration of Syria in the community of nations, after Damascus, encouraged by the United States and the European Union, decided to follow the example of Tripoli, played a major role in the emergence of a new political formula for a reinvented Lebanon. Within twelve months, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Syria, and Jordan signed a customs union agreement, which many observers see as the embryo of a Middle Eastern Common Market, resembling the earlier phases of the European Union, and which is an important subcomponent of the Union for the Mediterranean launched by French president Sarkozy in 2008.
There were other hopeful developments in the region as well. After the departure of the United States and its allies from Iraq and the reinforcement of troops in Afghanistan during the years 2009–2010, the stability in the two countries grew significantly. The new and responsible diplomacy of Tehran following the electoral humiliation of Ahmadinejad of course was instrumental in these positive developments, as the self-isolation to which Ahmadinejad had condemned his own country was wisely rejected by most of the Iranian people. The remarkable Asian-like economic success of the Gulf emirates benefited the entire region. The wise investments made by those states in education, banking, and renewable energy, not to mention culture, helped transform the regional environment. By consolidating the social equilibrium of giants like Egypt, they had in fact contributed more than any other outside forces to the development of the logic of peace in the Middle East and served as living proof that Islam and modernity were compatible. They were also the best answer to al Qaeda, as they helped organize and finance the resistance of moderate Islam against fundamentalism.
Within a decade, the fundamentalists were everywhere on the defensive; their time had gone. For the vast majority of Muslims, the attractiveness of martyrdom had disappeared, much as the intense appeal of anarchism and nihilism to Europeans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ultimately vanished.
In sum, we can now see that despite—or perhaps because of—the economic crisis, which forced badly needed reforms, the period beginning around 2009 was the start of a hopeful time in human history—not the “end of history” overoptimistically announced by Francis Fukuyama in 1991, but, more modestly and realistically, the return of a cycle of enlightenment. How long will it last? Will new causes of hatred and violence find their ways to the surface of human society? If so, how will the leaders of the world respond? Questions like these are ever present. But for now we can appreciate the fact that historical circumstances have conspired to usher in an epoch of hope. While we can, let’s make the most of it.
It is likely that some of the developments fantasized in the two scenarios I just outlined will actually occur. Most won’t— fortunately in the case of the first scenario, unfortunately for the second. These largely artificial tales were written with one key question in mind. If collective entities like cultures and nations can be analyzed through the prisms of psychology and emotions, is it possible to conceive of a “prescription for the world” analogous to the medical treatment that might be prescribed for an individual? Can a collective state of melancholia, depression, hysteria, or paranoia be alleviated like similar conditions in individual patients?
In 1800 the physician Marie-François-Xavier Bichat, sometimes called the founder of descriptive anatomy, defined life as the “ensemble of functions that resist death.” Similarly, perhaps, we can define peace as the ensemble of functions, including emotions, that resist war and violence. There are concepts, ways of thinking and feeling, that can do much to make international strife less likely. Ideas like the duty to intervene, the idea of an international tribunal for crimes against humanity, the emphasis on “human security” beyond “national security”: All these developments are part of what could be described as humanitarian deterrence, a form of preventive medicine for the international system. Their message to would-be transgressors is very clear: “National sovereignty will no longer protect you. You are accountable to the world community for your crimes.”
Of course this is a generous but somewhat dangerous logic. To make it work requires conditions that are far from being met today. What would it take to create these conditions? In other words, what are the political strategies and institutional mechanisms necessary to reinforce hope and to contain or reduce fear and humiliation?
To remain faithful to themselves and the fulfillment of their ambitions, nations and peoples that hope to play a significant role on the international stage have to accept change and to recognize that the status quo is untenable.
In Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s celebrated novel The Leopard, Prince Salinas watches the arrival of new elites at the ball that concludes the book (a scene immortalized by its cinematic rendering), noting with a mixture of cynicism and nostalgia that “everything had to change so that everything could remain the same.” The warning that I am offering is just the opposite. Things have to change quite radically if we do not want to see the international order collapse into a profound and dangerous unbalance. And national leaders themselves have to be convinced that the status quo is a recipe for disaster.
This diagnosis is in some cases simply a question of self-preservation and collective survival. As noted earlier in this book, it is the same instinct that led President de Klerk of South Africa to end apartheid.
In a less dramatic but equally imperative way, most nations and cultures have to change in order to keep hope and to transcend fear and humiliation. In Asia, for example, change means a newfound respect for the rule of law and the integration of the poorest into mainstream society. To continue to incarnate the culture of hope, China and India do not want to see economic growth rocked by the inevitable social and political instability that will result from clinging hopelessly to the status quo. Even Singapore has to change and accept fresh air and a spirit of openness if it wants to continue to attract the regional and international elites it badly needs.
As for Russia, it cannot accept passively the fatality of “Oriental despotism” in one form or another. Russians deserve better, and at some point they must set for themselves as a primary task the goal of reducing the gap between the quality of their artistic and literary culture and the poverty of their political culture. For Russia too the continuation of the status quo in politics is a guarantee of decay.
Self-preservation in the case of the West means recovering the sense of universal values. We like to preach the superiority of our democratic model and the unique nature of our social system of protection as compared with China or even India. But are we truly practicing these values at home? Let’s ask the question and take the answer seriously, disturbing though it may be.
Beyond this, self-preservation means different things for America and Europe. For America, it means regaining a sense of modesty on the world stage without falling into isolationism. It means accepting that you can become merely one “indispensable nation” among others. It means realizing that in terms of both hard and soft power, America will no longer be alone.
This message has clear and direct consequences. America has to learn to deal in a balanced way with others who are or are becoming equals, just as Europe did for most of its modern history within the framework of its balance of power system. This in turn implies understanding and accepting the cultural differences of other nations. For a long time to come, nothing in the world will be possible without America, but ever more even than in the past, nothing will be possible for America alone.
To remain faithful to its democratic essence, the American Republic has to accept this change and diminution of its international status. Imperial hubris nearly destroyed the Republic. A more modest and honest America abroad and one much more ambitious at home in social and environmental terms can reconquer its international image by recognizing that less is more and that influence and power are not the same. In other words, less power may mean more influence.
For Europe, self-preservation and change mean recovering the ambition to be a global player while retaining a primary concern for norms and models. Can the European Union become an attractive reality for its citizens and not remain a purely rational and largely dehumanized bureaucratic entity? I think so. The purpose of the European project should be to reinvent the concept of sovereignty for the twenty-first century.
Europe is no longer the center of world history. Accepting change for it is to recognize this reality, not as a tragic fatality but as a simple fact of history. Energy and hope in Europe will first come from those with the greatest appetite, the new countries, the new immigrants, and, above all, the newly empowered women. Could the twenty-first century be not only “the century of Asia” and “the century of identity” but also “the century of women”?
For the United States and Europe, the “audacity of hope” (to use Barack Obama’s words) must progressively replace the “facility of fear.” To make this happen, a renewed confidence in the values and mission of the West is essential.
The rise of spring for Asia does not necessarily imply the West’s decline into a dark winter. A rich and mature fall is available to us, if three conditions are met. The first is that we recognize that the era of our supremacy has gone. The second is that we accept and learn from the success of others. The third, and perhaps the most important, is that we remain faithful to our values. Our difference lies in our unique brand of universalism, our deeply ingrained respect for the rule of law, and our concern for social and economic balances. If we combine this new modesty and this renewed confidence in our values, then everything remains possible, and the autumn of the West need not be synonymous with the decline of the West.
It is precisely confidence that the Arab-Islamic world needs most in order to transcend its culture of humiliation. For countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, any attempt to preserve the status quo would be a recipe for disaster. The remarkable success of the small Gulf emirates like Dubai and Abu Dhabi is of course based on unique conditions—huge energy wealth and small populations—but it is also proof that modernity and Islam are not incompatible and that Arabs can make it in the ferociously competitive global age if they are willing to accept change and to project themselves positively into the future instead of being obsessed by the past.
The weight of memory and resentment constitutes the most severe obstacle to change. By investing massively in education, the Gulf emirates are opening the way of change, even as their mercantilist and consumerist passion restricts the meaning of hope.
For Latin America, change means above all transcending the populist temptation and deepening the unification of the continent. It means leaving behind the negative definition of its identity. Latin America has the human and physical resources to become a continent of hope and opportunity. And the very same logic applies to Africa.
Ignorance and intolerance go hand in hand. Peace and reconciliation are possible only among peoples who know and accept one another. In spite of the fact that we live in an information age, we do not understand the Other any better than we did in the past, in fact just the opposite: We are inundated by images and data that are obscuring rather than illuminating our vision of the world. Because the world we are living in is sure to grow more complex, cultures, nations, as well as individuals, will increasingly be obsessed with their identities. This obsession can only reinforce the weight of emotions in international politics.
But the interdependent, integrated world in which we live is simply too difficult to grasp and understand. It is a question of both quantity and quality: We humans have never been simultaneously so numerous, so diverse, and so varied in our lifestyles, values, and circumstances. It’s tempting to try to escape such complexity by simply choosing to ignore it. Hence the appeal of fundamentalist religions and extreme ideologies, both of which reduce the world’s complexity to the simplicity of slogans, catchphrases, and inflexible commands.
In such a world, emotions are reassuring. “I can no longer grasp or understand, let alone control, the world in which I live. Therefore I have to emphasize my differences with others and give priority to my emotions.”
For this very reason, learning about the emotions of other cultures will become all the more crucial. The Other will increasingly become part of us in our multicultural societies. The emotional frontiers of the world have become as important as its geographic frontiers. And the two cannot be equated in a mechanical manner. With the process of time, the mapping of emotions will become as legitimate and compulsory an exercise as the mapping of geographical realities.
A cultural and historical grasp of the differences and similarities of the Other is the essential basis for a more tolerant world. For this reason, the teaching of history and culture should be made compulsory in any international relations study program. In their approach to the African continent, how many Western leaders are aware of its complex and rich precolonial history? How many are truly capable of shedding an unjustified sense of cultural superiority based on real and total ignorance? Africa has been for too long the most forgotten continent because it was and still largely is the most ignored and the least understood one. The same is true, if on a lesser scale, of our relations with Asia, Latin America, and even such “familiar” but complex foreign societies as that of Russia.
If knowledge and a minimal understanding of the Other are vital, so is self-knowledge. In fact the two are deeply intertwined, for only societies that are at ease with themselves can come to terms with others. Self-knowledge is particularly important in the case of Islam, where ignorance of one’s own religion and culture constitutes the fertile soil for the most extremist interpretations, radical perversions, and the teaching of hatred. In this sense, the problem of Islam is our problem, and the culture of humiliation, though real, is exploited and exacerbated precisely by states and movements that are keen to use ignorance of Islam as a dangerous weapon of hatred. A selective process that cherry-picks the most intolerant formulas from the Koran is possible only because our knowledge of the world’s sacred texts is so superficial.
My approach to history is based on a combination of deep optimism and the conviction that the world must and can be improved, if only at the margin, with a deep awareness of the tragic nature of historical processes. A realist in the world of idealists, I may also be seen as an idealist in the world of realists. How to reconcile ethics and geopolitics has been the main concern of my entire professional life.
The impulse that drove me to write about the geopolitics of emotion is at least in part based on personal history. As the son of a survivor of Auschwitz I was born with a deeply ingrained sense of tragedy. But the experience of my father, who survived the camps through a combination of luck, energy, hope, and the will to testify about what he went through, gave me something like a sense of mission. The central question my father’s life posed to me, which I have been wrestling with for decades, is: Can the world we live in achieve even in part what my father achieved, the transcendence of fear and humiliation and the rekindling of hope, even in the face of tragedy?
This is an ambitious task, but hope and confidence are above all a state of mind. When Tristan Bernard, the Jewish French playwright, was about to be arrested in Nazi-occupied Paris, he said to his wife, “We had been living in fear, now we will live in hope.”
To respond to the challenges we face, the world needs hope. This is, at bottom, the conviction and the message of this book.