and then again to take a few steps back to see the bigger picture, to gaze through one perspective and then to take another viewpoint. It is a more demanding approach, less straightforward perhaps, but an approach that encourages the reader to master the complexity that is inherent to world politics. It will not be easy to read this work leisurely. Pages are rather packed with information and sometimes one will have to turn back to keep seeing the plot. While this book certainly has flaws, it needs to be read with this purpose in mind.
Outline
The book consists of 12 chapters. A very short first chapter documents the move of the pendulum with data. It became fashionable for optimistic intellectuals to display charts that had only one destination: up. Optimism is a moral duty, it was said. There was indeed reason to be optimistic. The chapter shows growth in production and trade, a decrease also of extreme poverty. Yet, it recommends prudence and seeing these positive trends next to more worrying developments.
How was the transition from the Cold War to a new age perceived? What was the mood in the world at this dramatic moment of change around 1990? These are the central questions in chapters 2 and 3. The second chapter explains that the fall of the Soviet Union was not a victory of the West. Yes, the West became uncontested in terms of power. And, yes, one famous essay proclaimed the end of history. Yet, that same essay also warned that the end of history would be an unhappy time and make many in the West long for identity. The end of the Cold War triggered a moment of introspection.
The third chapter takes an alternative viewpoint. It looks at the world from the perspective of other societies. Russia, for instance, was still tottering between the old certainty of Soviet nationalism and the new uncertainty of democracy. In China, reformism was balanced by a commitment to fight Westernization, to keep control over the economy, and to contest American dominance. In the Middle East, the main experiment of democracy, Turkey, struggled, while the authoritarian countries showed no interest in liberalization. In the Global South, prominent thinkers were critical of Western liberalism. Hence, the turning point around 1990 was a defeat of Soviet communism, but certainly not yet a victory of Western liberalism. Chapters 2 and 3 form the overture and set the scene.
The next three chapters survey world politics between the end of the Cold War and the turn of the century. This is, so to say, the first act. Chapter 4 explains how the liberalism advocated by the West became a façade. It became a façade because the pledges of Western leaders to strike a balance between openness and protection, the Third Way, as it was called, were not matched by their deeds. In the United States, President Bill Clinton promised to create a more humane economy, but inequality exploded. While American society became more dependent on imported goods, distributed by megamalls like Walmart, the government started to sell massive amounts of debt overseas. In the European Union, integration advanced, but citizens were hesitant. While rightist nationalism was quarantined, the gains of the open market were not clear to all citizens. Similar contradictions, chapter 5 explains, were visible in security policy. While the West pretended to stand for the promotion of democracy, it opted for remote-control bombings with limited ambition to help create the conditions for lasting democracy on the ground.
If the West expected its partners to adjust to Western values, China made it clear that the West had better mind its own business. Beijing played Western companies against one another. The American president stated that he hated his China policy, yet insisted that his country had to continue to try to “improve” China. At the same time, Western investors turned their back on India. Russia emerged from the 1990s disillusioned. Less than a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, longing for strong central power returned and the fight against NATO rekindled. In the Middle East, a dramatic intervention was launched against Iraq. Afterwards, the West found itself actively protecting authoritarian regimes. Hence, chapter 6 concludes, the West failed to lead and started making its rivals rich. The 1990s were a period of fast growth and confidence, epitomized by television series like Friends and Sex and the City, but the pillars of that prosperity were starting to corrode.
The following three chapters discuss the period between the bursting of the Dotcom bubble around the year 2000 and the terrorist attacks around the turn of the century and the height of a new financial crisis in 2009. This forms the second act. Chapter 7 concentrates on the ongoing failure to strengthen Western society from inside. Economically, the West literally moved from one crisis to another without learning its lesson. It was awash with capital, but hardly used it to invest in the vital tissue of its society. It created new bubbles that caused the so-called subprime crisis in the United States and the Eurozone crisis. In the wake of the dramatic terrorist attacks in 2001, American patriotism was promoted, but it became flimsy. Companies claimed to be more ethical, yet sourced more and more from countries with lax environmental and social standards.
Chapter 8 takes stock of Western foreign policy. American foreign policy became a combination of a dysfunctional crusade against terrorism and an ineffective campaign to advance globalization. The global war on terror, with interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, was badly planned, came at a staggering financial cost, and destroyed what was left of international legitimacy. While soldiers were being killed on the frontline, governments kept befriending the very states that sponsored radical Islam. Europe tried to profile itself more as a soft power, but also undermined its principles with an opportunistic stance toward various authoritarian regimes. The West failed to reform international economic governance, so that competitors like China asserted themselves as alternative partners. The leadership of the West was challenged primarily by its own inconsistent policies.
The next chapter clarifies how this high age of globalization coincided with a growing contestation of Western influence. China and the Gulf States banked on Western consumerism; other developing countries banked on Chinese growth. China emerged as Asia’s most powerful country. India and Japan were left behind; other Asian countries were pitted against one another. Russia, too, aimed at a sphere of influence. Countries in the Middle East consolidated autocracy and armed themselves to the teeth. In the Global South, a large part of the revenues from the commodity boom disappeared. Extreme poverty, slums, and precarious employment remained widespread. The situation proved an incubator of war, terrorism, and new great power rivalry.
The final act, also consisting of three chapters, examines the period between 2010 and 2019. This period gave the Western world more relief. Politicians could pride themselves that the financial crisis had not turned into an economic Armageddon and that there was recovery. Still, large parts of society remained unconvinced. The social fabric of the United States and Europe continued to corrode. In Europe, the common currency was saved, but citizens remained skeptical and entrepreneurs reluctant to invest. The response to migration also undermined the credibility of pragmatic politicians. The mood of confidence of the 1990s gave way to uncertainty. As rightist demagogues were on the march, pragmatic politicians were seen mourning the death of the ideals they themselves had buried. But now, at least, they could blame nationalists for that malfeasance.
Chapter 11 shows that the West could still not rebalance its ties with China, despite more assertive nationalism and the corona pandemic revealing the downside of long supply chains. It also betrayed the call for democracy of the Arab Spring and fell back into its habit of sponsoring dictators as a quick fix for instability. The rise of the Islamic State led to an inconsistent military response that mainly repressed
