Since 1945, humanity has been living under the shadow of a third conflagration. It was feared in the confrontation between capitalism and communism, and came close to nuclear apocalypse on at least two occasions, until the implosion of the Soviet Union temporarily closed the cycle. We then dared to hope for perpetual peace, an illusion that obscured the deep tectonics of peoples’ resentments.
It is in these depths that the next cataclysm is being forged today; in the ideological, religious and nationalist underpinnings of all societies, in university lecture halls and in the remugles of social networks.
It will no longer pit Marxism-Leninism against Judeo-Christian liberalism, but the West as a whole against the multitudes who see themselves as subjects of its ruthless empire.
On the surface, however, for the moment, there’s nothing of the sort; all we see are carefully compartmentalized conflicts: the Russian-Ukrainian trench warfare, the explosions between Israel and Iran, the Afghan-Pakistani turbulence, the Sahelian insurgencies, the lethal tension around the Taiwan Strait. On the face of it, the belligerents in each of these conflicts have no operational interest in interfering in each other’s wars: Moscow and Beijing have no vocation to cross swords with Tel Aviv, Riyadh has no quarrel with Beijing, Islamabad has no ambitions in the Sahel.
The fragmentation of theaters would therefore preclude any aggregation into a systemic conflict. On the face of it, we’d be well away from the precipice.
And yet, a keen observer can see beneath this fragmented surface the merciless presence of empires, the slow convergence of hatreds in search of a common grammar. It’s as if all these hotbeds of regional insurgency were just waiting for a spark to melt into a war of civilization: the Deep South against its universally vilified adversary, right down to its very bowels: the West.
The first step towards a global conflict would be for belligerents in local hotbeds to forge alliances with each other: It is conceivable that Russia, China and Pakistan would support the Iranian theocracy (Moscow to secure a strategic industrial depth and obtain supplies and personnel for the Ukrainian front; Beijing to lock in access to hydrocarbons and protect its supply lines; and Islamabad to have credible sponsors in the face of Indian power).
The next stage would see these states project their forces in the service of their new partners: Pakistani contingents would be integrated with Russian troops in Ukraine, Russian units would be involved in the Chinese offensive on Taiwan, and Iranian forces would be deployed on both fronts simultaneously.
The whole thing would fit neatly under the banner of a grand anti-Western narrative, denouncing predatory globalization, disenchanting rationalism and colonizing modernity.
Once this dynamic had been set in motion, no arbitrator would have the instruments to stem it: no hegemony, not even that of Washington, commands peace any more; no multilateral institution is in a position to impose a ceasefire; international law lies in ruins under the blows of the most brazen revisionism.
China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and many others will unite to put an end to five centuries of Western primacy and arrogance. World War III will then have ceased to be a prospective scenario, or even a juxtaposition of bloody skirmishes.
The West still has the means to avert this outcome. First of all, it can mobilize its military superiority and deploy all the resources of its diplomacy to try and convince Moscow and Beijing that supporting Teheran will lead to their own ruin.
But that won’t be enough: history has invariably vindicated peoples against their oppressors; the West will not triumph, in the long run, on battlefields alone, nor through diplomatic encounters; but only if its civilizational proposition prevails over that of its adversaries. Now, proclaiming the virtues of liberal democracy, the regulated market and the rule of law will not suffice, nor will asserting the primacy of human law over divine law, nor swearing that Western modernity constitutes a universal horizon. In particular, these arguments ring hollow when carried by a cynical American oligarchy, trampling on its own founding values and feeding the hatred it claims to disarm.
This is where Europe is called upon to play an irreplaceable role. It remains the only political space in the world where the rule of law effectively prevails; the one where institutional violence is the most contained, freedom the most extensive, social justice the most substantial. It is also the only one that recognizes the principle of absolute equality of rights for all human beings.
The countries that make it up must unite to project this singularity into the global arena and defend an assertive universalism, taking responsibility for their historical wrongs, such as colonization, for which they were neither the first nor the only culprits.
If Europe succeeds in making this discourse heard, in this unabashed glorification of Western values that have become universal, in revitalizing moribund multilateral institutions, in forging alliances with the best of the United States, Japan, Israel and so many other nations, a way out of the crisis becomes conceivable: the collapse of Iran’s theocracy, the rout of radical Islamist discourse, the definitive stalemate of Putin’s armies and dictatorship in Ukraine, the fall of the Netanyahu government, Trump’s electoral defeat, Beijing’s renunciation of any military conquest of Taiwan. This makes it possible to patiently build a world order based on reason and freedom – in other words, on the best that the West has brought to the world, drawing on sources from elsewhere.