Will an age of war replace our era of booming prosperity?

This town ain’t big enough for the both of us!

And it ain’t me who’s gonna leave!   

Sparks – “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us” (1974)

Fifty years ago, the Mael brothers sang about rising tensions and clashes, but Xi Jinping argues that planet Earth is big enough for success for both China and the U.S. It is good that Beijing and Washington are at least on speaking terms now, but there is little prospect for much warmer ties.

Sino-U.S. tensions, the Ukraine war, the conflict in Gaza and concerns about Taiwan all contribute to the geopolitical cocktail that has sparked global war anxiety. At the outbreak of the Ukraine war, nearly 7 in 10 Americans feared the world was headed for World War III.

Politicians do not shy away from capitalizing on this. 

Donald Trump said: “It truly breaks my heart to see Crooked Joe … ruin our country as he pushes America to the brink of World War III.” 

When left-wing independent presidential candidate Cornel West was asked if a second Biden term would be better than a second Trump term, he replied, “Is World War III better than Civil War II?”

Not only Americans are flinging war hyperbolas around. Former Russian president and now deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, said earlier this year that humanity is probably balancing on the brink of a world war.

In all likelihood, none of the above gentlemen actually believe that we are currently heading for a planet-wide armed conflict. They proclaim this message largely for political gain.

That said, we must always be wary of complacency, selective blindness and the taking for granted of achievements accumulated over decades and centuries.

In his 1941 novel, “The World of Yesterday,” Stefan Zweig painted the picture of a (supposedly) safe, prosperous and optimistic Vienna in the late 19th/early 20th century. The combination of moral and technological progress would propel the world to unprecedented heights. Positivism was so deeply ingrained that even World War I was welcomed with a certain enthusiasm. The decadent Habsburg empire had forgotten that ongoing maintenance of the machine and continuous vigilance were required to preserve peace and prosperity.

Western societies have once again fallen into the trap of a certain complacency. Friedrich Nietzsche warned of this as early as 1883 in his book, “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” He introduced the concept of “the last man” as the dark side of a prosperous modern society, in which people shy away from great challenges and goals. They are primarily focused on avoiding pain and risks and on pursuing pleasure and comfort.

Philosopher Peter Sloterdijk translates Nietzsche to the present by arguing that modern man has swallowed all pride and rage and, under the guidance of economists, has concluded that his freedom pertains only to the choice of food bowls.

According to Sloterdijk, rage is a driving force to challenge the status quo and injustice and unleash creativity and growth. Fundamentally, the entire history of progress is characterized by channeling rage and making it productive.

This has largely been successful because of the interplay of democracy and capitalism. While this marriage produces considerable friction, it still largely has achieved the main goals of security, relative stability, prosperity and the prevention of excessive inequality.

However, it looks as though Western societies have arrived at the point where the Habsburg Empire ended up: Ever-increasing prosperity and security are taken for granted and are even considered a right for which few sacrifices need to be made.

This degree of spoiledness coincides with aging populations, incessant debt accumulation and the shadow the Chinese giant (and other emerging markets) casts over the West. The metaphoric food bowls are becoming fewer and smaller. 

As a result, discontent and insecurity have resurfaced, resulting in the successes of Donald Trump, Italy’s Georgia Meloni and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, among others who express right-wing conservative sentiments on cultural issues coupled with leftist socioeconomic policies.

Under Trump, the U.S. rule of law was subject to erosion. This had been going on much earlier and with far more impact in Hungary and Poland. Even in the Netherlands — where Wilders won the recent election — the rule of law is not sacrosanct. More than half of the election platforms of political parties were found to contain plans in conflict with the rule of law.

British journalist Janan Ganesh pointed out that Western countries were rule of law institutions before they became democracies, but “if the rule of law was earlier to arrive, it is also shaping up to be the first to go.” 

While some seem to be above the law, at the same time a growing number of offenders are under the law. This concerns offenses and crimes considered too small to fight and for which there is no capacity and/or will to deal with it. Thus, the rule of law is crumbling on two sides.

The West is at a potential tipping point: peace that does not require great effort and an ever-growing economic pie from which everyone eats are notions that no longer hold. In the 1990s and the early years of the third millennium, the West was still leading the way in the political, economic and cultural domains. It was expected that others would follow in the wake of the West. This sentiment has disappeared.

China is the largest of the challengers to the Western paradigm, but this giant may have reached a plateau. Its growth has weakened, there are concerns about a (deeper) property crisis, debt has reached astronomical levels, the transition from an export-dominated economy towards a consumption-driven economy is flailing and foreign distrust of Beijing is growing.

The world faces two giants that may have peaked. The U.S., which has dominated the world stage for many decades, is at a tipping point, and the rise of China, which many long believed would overtake the U.S., is leveling off.

Political scientist Michael Beckley concludes that “peaking powers” are the most dangerous:

“Whereas a declining power might need to retrench to stay solvent, and a rising power can afford to wait for better days ahead, a peaking power may feel it has to secure its vital interests now or miss its moment forever. Beset by slowing growth, but still armed with formidable capabilities, leaders of peaking powers may prefer to step on toes abroad rather than impose belt-tightening at home.”

Rising and declining powers are generally peaceful — the former because they can afford this stance (e.g. China in recent decades) and the latter because they have to — but it is the peaking powers in particular that cause geopolitical waves. Two such peaking giants are now facing each other, and it remains to be seen whether Sparks will be proved right or whether Xi’s words were more than just a charm offensive.

Andy Langenkamp is a senior political analyst at ECR Research and ICC Consultants.