What is the West? It is a world that essentially comprises the US-led North America, Europe and Australasia, including Japan. It accounts for 63 per cent of the world economy, three-quarters of world trade, over half of global energy consumption and 18 per cent of the world population, if we use the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as a crude proxy.
The Western world sees itself as a paragon of civilisational progress and modernity, whereas the rest, namely, the East and the Global South, are much more diverse in culture, ethnicity and civilisational identity.
Only five countries voted against it, with 35 abstaining and 12 not voting at all. But in terms of population, nearly 60 per cent of people in the world lived in countries that did not vote for the resolution.
In this case, over 60 per cent of the world population support the resolution calling for a humanitarian truce and reaffirming that “a just and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be achieved through peaceful means”.
Since the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the West has been attributed to advances in science and technology. It was also made possible because the associated ideals of openness and equality were finely balanced. As former Economist editor Bill Emmott theorises in his book, The Fate of the West, “we are in our current trouble because too many of us have lost that balance”.
Has the West lost its way? Professor Michael Brenner, a historian of Jewish culture, argues that the West is going through a mass hysteria, where non-believers are to be contained or expurgated. Those with non-West views are to be rejected, and since they are evil or wrong, they are no longer seen as equals.
But, as Emmott saw it, “without openness, the West cannot thrive, but without equality, the West cannot last”.
The moral collapse of Western leaders over Palestine
The moral collapse of Western leaders over Palestine
He continued: “Western universalism – this is the Jewish–Christian inheritance – was the claim to a way of life of universal validity. This received a massive topical content when the West became the bearer of an industrial civilisation which, whether capitalist or socialist, soon comprised almost half of the planet.
“We were somehow thinking about and for the rest. It was not a conversation, rather a spirited monologue. Since no answer came, we carried on in our train of thought – unsustained, but also uncontradicted. No one was overruled, bossed around, or made to listen. It was just that we were without a partner.”
Events in Gaza and Ukraine have put the West in the dock. The rest are now thinking for themselves because the West is longer thinking for everyone. Without its moral standing, the West is no better than any other barbarian at the gate. At best, the West becomes just another barbarian claiming to be civilised; at worst, it would seek only to hold onto its golden past of colonialism and mental superiority.
Andrew Sheng is a former central banker who writes on global issues from an Asian perspective