The Western Schism, a Return to American Neutrality, and the New Multipolar Order
Years ago, I expected what has unfolded: a world split anew.* The Cold War’s end had led to a certain re-integration and unipolarity by dint of globalization and American hegemony. But, alas, the world again split apart between East (and South, to a certain extent) and West largely as a function of the latter’s abandonment of realism and embrace of a radical idealism driven by ideological beliefs and post-Cold War hubris.
However, less obvious was an additional schism – a schism within the schism – occurring within the West itself. The differences between residual realist elements and the rising idealist perspective, among other factors, is now sharply dividing the West into two completing blocs. To be sure, it has been clear for some time that within Western states there were increasingly polarized ‘liberal’ versus ‘conservative’, ‘globalist’ versus ‘populist’, ultimately, practical versus utopian forces.
This is because the Western project has become essentially a messianic, utopian one, which asserts that the spread of democracy across the globe is inevitable and will bring an end war, famine, hierarchy, and repression. Such a goal – indeed historically predetermined outcome, as, for example, Francis Fukuyama propounded – often leads its proponents to permit any and all means to achieve it. The communist project and its violent revolutionary modalities are a prime example. Democratic Bolshevism is heading in the same direction. If the spread of democracy (read: republicanism) will bring perpetual peace, prosperity, and freedom, why should not all obstacles and opponents be swept away? And what means do not stand worthy of this noble, historically determined end? The inferiority of the republican project’s opponents and the clear-eyed vision of its adepts and prophets calls for maximum effort, do they not?
On the background of such monumental scale, Ukraine’s people and even Ukraine statehood itself become small sacrifices on the altar of global democratisation and NATO expansion, if this promises the defeat of democracy’s enemies and guarantees humankind’s final march to utopia. Indeed, in some Western circles, the ascent to republican rule is seen as blessed by God on a par with the Second Coming and the arrival of the Heavenly Kingdom to earth. The U.S. is God’s chosen nation for delivering heavenly perpetual freedom and peace to all humankind. On this background, even Westerners, whether they be individuals, parties, electoral candidates, or states rejecting some of the methods of ‘democracy-promotion’ — NATO expansion, color revolutions, coups, economic sanctions et al — are the enemies of History, even God and can become targets of ‘true democrats’ for recrimination, retribution, and repression. Thus, Western democracy-promotion devolved to include wilful use of force to achieve its ends.
