When The Spectator asked me whether I would write an essay on “Why we need to strengthen the West,” I was delighted – and bemused. Why is this even up for debate? That we must explain and justify “the West” at all indicates just how weak it has become. It would be better if it did not need strengthening but were simply strong. It is not. The West has become an invalid.
What exactly, though, are we trying to strengthen? The West is an idea, not a location. It rests on four pillars: Athens – where democracy was born. Rome – the cradle of the rule of law. Jerusalem – where Judeo-Christian values placed the inviolable dignity of the individual at the center. And finally, the Enlightenment – whose great thinkers in London, Paris and Königsberg anchored humanism, individual civil liberties, the separation of powers and the division of church and state.
Herodotus observed a phenomenon shortly after the fall of the Peisistratid tyranny, which remains the most vital lesson in political philosophy to this day. The Athenians, he noted, had fought no better than their neighbors as long as they were ruled by tyrants. Yet the moment they threw off the yoke of tyranny, every individual was motivated to give his utmost, proving decisively stronger and more successful in battle. Why? Because he was now working for himself, not for a master. In that single observation Herodotus formulated the timeless plea for self-determination and liberty – the core idea of the West.
Freedom’s most important word is ‘no.’ Dissent is self-determination
This idea also shapes a view of humanity articulated by Immanuel Kant. Man is not perfect. Kant wrote that “out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” In the western view of mankind, this implies: nor should it ever be.
Freedom’s most important word is “no.” Dissent is self-determination. It is liberating to say: “No, I see it differently.” With “no,” the freedom to think and act begins. The freedom to say no stands in stark contrast to the unfreedom of having to say yes. Democracies are no-saying societies. Dictatorships are yes-saying societies. Liberty is inherently critical of authority; it permits and encourages contradiction – precisely what autocrats cannot abide. That is why dictators wish to weaken the West.
That the West – the open society based on liberty, the rule of law and human rights – is on the defensive is an empirical fact. According to data gathered over decades by the think tank Freedom House, global freedom declined in 2025 for the 20th consecutive year – deteriorating in 54 countries while improving in only 35. The most damning figure: a mere 21 percent of the world’s population lives in countries classified as “free,” compared with 46 percent two decades ago. Autocracies have grown more numerous, more domestically repressive and more externally aggressive. The West is currently threatened and weakened from within and without. Its three great external adversaries are China, Russia and Islamism – particularly Iran and its terrorist networks.
China’s goal is to become the leading global economy by 2049 at the latest – the centenary of the People’s Republic. The combination of communist autocracy and turbocharged state capitalism has proven remarkably efficient, not least because the West made itself a useful idiot in this impressive growth story. In hindsight, admitting China as a full member of the World Trade Organization in 2001 was the single greatest blunder of western trade policy. The naivety or shortsightedness lay in granting membership to a major nondemocratic state that was neither able nor willing to abide by the rules of free trade, while simultaneously blessing it with developing-nation status, conferring all manner of exemptions and preferences. It was akin to giving the most ruthless bully on the playground special rights to beat up his playmates.
In the short term, China brought growth and prosperity to all parties; in the long term, it shifted the global balance of power, creating perilous dependencies. The most tragic example is the German automotive industry. For decades Germany’s industrial giants banked on cheap manufacturing and lucrative consumer markets in China. In doing so, they failed to grasp the difference between good business relations and strategic dependence. The friendly cooperation ended the moment China acquired the requisite know-how to launch a heavily subsidized assault on the German car industry, even as Chinese domestic markets were quietly closed off. It was a Chinese masterclass in expansive geopolitics carried out by capitalist means. Wandel durch Handel (“change through trade”) – the naive hope of the 1990s – inverted into its opposite. Change occurred, but not toward greater freedom, rather toward greater unfreedom.
This trajectory is accelerated by the AI arms race between America and China. The US still holds the upper hand. Yet China, through the total surveillance of its population, enjoys vastly greater access to data, unencumbered by regulatory or ethical constraints. Moreover, there are growing indications that China is actively fueling AI-skeptical sentiment across western social media. Propaganda aimed at inducing anxiety and slowing down rivals is taking its toll. America appears more tech-skeptic than ever. It is not unlikely that the next presidential campaign will hinge partly on which party promises to better protect voters from AI. China understands that whoever dominates AI will dominate economically and politically. It seems only a matter of time before it leads in this arena too.
While America has at least recognized this bitter reality and reacts with varying degrees of success, Europe lives in denial. Beneath the soothing bromides of the EU, the continent is gradually drifting toward becoming an amusement park for Asian tourists: high quality of life paired with diminishing productivity and value creation.
The woke movement has become the Trojan horse of the anti-westernism loved by dictators and autocrats
The global trend is clear. Democratic economies are weakening, nondemocratic ones are strengthening. In this tectonic shift, the implications for military power are routinely underestimated. China is still viewed by many as a militarily passive, purely economic power. That picture is false.
The Chinese military budget nearly doubled from $145 billion in 2015 to $281 billion this year. The ultimate test case is Taiwan. Annexing the democratic, western-leaning island nation and integrating it into a monolithic communist republic is one of Xi Jinping’s main missions. China will strike as soon as the odds are high enough that America lacks the strength to intervene – perhaps because western resources have been depleted across other theaters of conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East. Should China achieve its objective without effective western resistance, the global order will be fundamentally altered.
Vladimir Putin’s war of conquest in Ukraine plays a remarkably helpful role in this strategy. Even if the war is far from a military success for Putin, he achieves two vital objectives: dividing the West by driving the US and the EU further apart, and exhausting American and European military stockpiles. Putin – ever the student of western weakness – tested how far he could go, and went remarkably far. Now that Ukraine has evolved into a formidable asset in modern AI warfare, he is turning to a weaker target: hybrid warfare against Germany and other EU nations promises less resistance and greater prestige at home.
Putin finds ready allies in Iran and other Islamist-dominated regimes. Islamism hijacks religion for terrorist ends. The primary enemy of fanatical Islam, as the founding Hamas Charter of 1988 explicitly states, is the world of those they deem godless – the Judeo-Christian West. The destruction of Israel and all Jews is merely the first step. The next is the weakening, infiltration and violent reeducation of Europe and ultimately America.
It remains difficult to fathom that the genocidal attack on Israel by Hamas led not to a global wave of solidarity with Israel, but to a massive surge in anti-Semitism. The weakest justification is the claim that Israel’s retaliatory measures in Gaza after 7 October exceeded all bounds, or that its domestic and foreign policy are deeply questionable. Has the Israeli government made mistakes? Undoubtedly. Is that a reason to be anti-Semitic, transferring criticism of Israel onto all Jews? Absolutely not.
Yet the trend persists. Anti-Semitism has become a pop-cultural zeitgeist, particularly among the young. Germany, of all nations, recorded 8,725 anti-Semitic incidents last year – the highest figure among the seven countries examined by the 2026 Annual Report on Antisemitism, ahead of the US (6,274) and the UK (3,700). The trajectory is the key: from 2021 to 2025, incidents rose by 124 percent in France, 131 percent in the US and 215 percent in Germany.
The primary cause of this development is a reckless, runaway migration policy. Islamist milieus – including strategically placed jihadists – have spent years undermining western societies and their foundational values. Pointing this out is not Islamophobic. True Islamophobia lies in failing to distinguish between those who wish to integrate peacefully into the West and those who enter to abuse its systems and destroy its values. Under the guise of compassion, uncontrolled and frequently illegal immigration contributes not only to the West’s cultural self-abandonment, but fuels – by way of reaction – the rise of right- and left-wing populists and extremists.
Michel Houellebecq provided the dystopian vision for this in his 2015 novel Submission. He describes a France where the Muslim Brotherhood has taken power: a frightened country where women wear progressively longer dresses until skirts disappear entirely; where unsuccessful white men rejoice at enjoying multiple marriages with underage wives; and where news of Islamist terror attacks is eventually suppressed so as not to alarm the populace. The book depicts the exhaustion of western society. Reality appears to be mimicking fiction in the most gruesome fashion.
Is its current crisis the very medicine required for the West’s renewal? That is the best-case scenario
The woke movement has become the Trojan horse of the anti-westernism loved by dictators and autocrats. It is the epitome of the anti-freedom triangle, seamlessly intertwining anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism. The word “West” has long been suspect in politically correct circles. The mandated terms in geopolitical discourse are now the “Global South” and the “Global North.” For those using the phrase “Global South,” linking the West to colonial guilt is no accident – it is the very purpose of the narrative.
Woke ideology often bears the hallmark of good intentions: fighting racism, protecting minorities, questioning privilege and confronting colonial history. In reality, however, it is the inversion of almost every value and objective of civilization.
In the competition for victimhood status, the concepts of progress, competition, growth and prosperity erode. In the West, being successful was once better than being unsuccessful. Wealth was better than poverty. Beauty was better than ugliness. Under woke ideology, all this is reversed. It resembles a manual for western self-abolition, born out of self-hatred.
Is the West ultimately weakening itself out of a bad conscience? Will we only realize what we stand to lose when it is too late? Or is its current crisis the very medicine required for the West’s renewal? That would be the best-case scenario: a catharsis on the precipice of failure, because we finally grasp what is at stake and realize that the alternatives are far worse.
Why do we need to strengthen the West? Because otherwise the tyrants win.
Comments