Is the West Marching Toward World War?

Mazen Al Najjar

The greatest challenge facing the West is adapting to a new distribution of global power: how can peace and order be achieved in a world after Western hegemony?

One of the most fundamental questions in any social system is how order can be established by managing competing interests. In international security, that question becomes: how do we manage the competing security interests of states?

Glenn Diesen, a professor of political science at the University of South-Eastern Norway, observes that this question has not been seriously asked for a very long time. The post-Cold War order rested on the collective hegemony of the West — and hegemony, by its very nature, does not manage the competing security interests of states. It seeks to impose stability, order, and peace through domination itself. But that domination has had its day. The competing security interests of states must now be addressed once again.

Hegemony Dressed as Universal Values

For a state accustomed to dominance, discussing the security concerns of others is excruciatingly difficult. To do so is treated as a betrayal of “universal values.” Hegemonic powers always seek to legitimize their dominance as a public good, which is why their particular interests and privileges are recast as “universal values.” The West no longer speaks of international security as a contest of competing or conflicting security interests — it speaks of universal values.

According to Diesen, the liberal hegemonic order of the post-Cold War era portrayed Western collective dominance as a “force for good” through the supposed promotion of liberal democratic values. The Western political class that emerged over the past three decades embraced an ideology built on Fukuyama’s “end of history” — the belief that the world would unite under liberal democracy and Western leadership. Liberal hegemony became the prevailing, indeed dominant, standard. These “universal values” could only have prevailed under Western hegemony.

The Choices of a Retreating Hegemon

Diesen predicts that a retreating hegemonic power will seek to weaken rising powers and will abandon all the “universal values” that no longer serve its dominance.

What response, then, should we expect from the current hegemon? Diesen expects economic war against China to block its technological and economic rise — and, if that fails, escalation to actual war. In Europe, hegemony can be restored through NATO expansion and proxy wars to weaken Russia as a rival power. In the Middle East, Iran will be the primary target — its regime changed or destroyed as the region’s principal competing power.

The Western Hemisphere, meanwhile, must be resubordinated to the Monroe Doctrine, which monopolizes influence there for America alone and forbids the influence of any other power — a doctrine Trump has revived under the name “Donroe Doctrine.” But practice has shown that the Donroe Doctrine in national security strategy is mere domestic political theater, not a viable grand strategy. Africa will become a battleground for influence, and the hegemon’s allies will be made to pay tribute.

In any case, hegemony has already ended. China can resist economic coercion. Russia can counter and balance NATO expansion. Iran has handed the United States a humiliating defeat. And Washington’s imperial expansion has exceeded its capacity to sustain it, according to Diesen.

Economic and Monetary Crisis

There are no solutions to the coming economic crisis that can save the situation. Martin Armstrong, the Princeton economist who accurately predicted Russia’s collapse in the 1990s, recently argued in conversation with Diesen that the West’s economic collapse has already begun — and predicted the disintegration of the European Union.

Radhika Desai, a professor of economics at the University of Manitoba and author of Geopolitical Economy, examines the monetary trap facing the U.S. Federal Reserve. In theory, persistent inflation should force interest rates higher. But raising them to an effective level would explode the asset bubbles on which the dollar system rests, as liquidity rushes into the banks. Keeping rates low erodes the dollar’s value through inflation. Both paths expose the Bretton Woods–based global economic system to grave risk.

Trump’s domestic agenda looks no better. Promises of reindustrialization have yielded little beyond symbolic tariffs and a massive bet on “generative” AI — a “fantastical” project with no tangible payoff.

Desai warns that without a coherent industrial policy capable of disciplining capital — which is unlikely — tariffs remain hollow theater, while the American capitalist class itself moves in contradictory directions: anti-China rhetoric coexists with desperate CEOs who want to preserve their businesses in China.

And as the Gulf business model — built on luxury tourism and finance under the American security umbrella — collapses, the Mecca agreement between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan stands as an early sign that old partners no longer trust that umbrella.

Peace in a Multipolar World

Diesen asks: Is peace achievable only through American economic and technological dominance over China? Is peace in Europe achievable only through continued NATO expansion and its absolute ability to attack other states without restraint? Is peace in the Middle East achievable only by changing or destroying the regimes of states that rival the West? Is peace and order achievable only through Western intervention in the internal affairs of other states?

Ask the ideologically hardened fundamentalists in the West what constitutes the international order, and their answer will always point to some form of “universal values” tied to Western hegemony.

The greatest challenge facing the West is adapting to a new distribution of global power: how can peace and order be achieved in a world after Western hegemony?

Will the West Choose War?

Abandoning the ideologies of hegemony and rebuilding systems to manage competing security interests is no easy task. The current political class emerged over recent decades believing it had a unique role in history — responsible for the transition from a world dominated by chaos to one more peaceful, just, and stable. In a new, virtuous civilizing mission, the West would always dominate, and this would serve all humanity — when in reality, they are presiding over the end of 500 years of Western hegemony.

In this environment, ideologically hardened fundamentalists in the West refuse to discuss adapting to a new international distribution of power. They will certainly not discuss the security concerns of rival states, since that is a betrayal of universal values. Instead, hardline hawks rise quickly by promoting the illusion that one great war can restore the golden age.

According to Diesen, as the West prepares for permanent war while pledging permanent peace, the very rules that legitimized its hegemony are being sacrificed: freedom of expression, freedom of navigation, the rules of the international financial system, international trade, and more — all of which had guaranteed an open, interconnected world. Sacred principles are cast aside, with genocide justified and accepted. Diplomacy is rejected as appeasement and capitulation. And fear of nuclear war is dismissed as surrender to nuclear blackmail.

On the Brink of Nuclear War

Peter Kuznick, a nuclear war expert at American University in Washington, argues that the world has entered an extremely dangerous phase, in which the possibility of nuclear war should be a central political concern. The danger has grown because political and military leaders increasingly discuss nuclear war as a war that can be fought and won. A new generation of nuclear planners believes advances in AI, surveillance, sonar, and missile technology may enable the destruction of an adversary’s nuclear forces in a preemptive “first strike.” This is deeply dangerous, because the mere belief that nuclear war can be won pushes leaders to take greater risks.

The erosion of arms control agreements is another major source of danger. Washington and Moscow once established treaties, communication mechanisms, and arrangements to reduce the risk of accidental escalation. But many of these safeguards have disappeared, leaving the two countries without a strategic stability framework to prevent catastrophe.

Military solutions continue to fail consistently in resolving major international conflicts. America’s difficulties in Iran and Russia’s in Ukraine demonstrate the inability of powerful states to impose political outcomes by force — offering an opportunity to reconsider the assumption that military pressure is a primary means of resolving disputes.

The Illusions of Tactical Nuclear Weapons

John Mearsheimer, a professor of international relations at the University of Chicago, believes the recent surge in talk about the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons to decide the wars in Ukraine and Iran reflects dangerous illusions that undermine stability and do not enhance military viability.

Among them is the false promise of easy use. Low-yield tactical nuclear weapons create the myth that a nuclear war can be fought, controlled, or won on a conventional battlefield. Because of their small size, politicians and military officials imagine they are “usable” — dangerously lowering the threshold for involvement in nuclear hell.

Then there is escalation and the failure of deterrence — an escalation that cannot be controlled. Introducing tactical nuclear weapons into any conflict leads to rapid escalation toward all-out strategic annihilation.

According to Mearsheimer, tactical nuclear war generates destabilizing dynamics. Rather than strengthening deterrence, the presence of nuclear weapons on the battlefield creates extreme uncertainty and encourages preemptive strikes during crises.

From a realist perspective, mutual destruction is certain. Under Mearsheimer’s realist framework, massive strategic arsenals entrench a stable stalemate through absolute fear of total annihilation. Tactical weapons disrupt this clear deterrent logic when conventional war and nuclear weapons are merged, ultimately exacerbating the likelihood of catastrophic errors.

Where Is the World Heading?

By rejecting a rules-based international order and turning away from peace through the management of competing security interests, the West has chosen war to restore the “peace” of its impossible hegemony.

But this, according to Desai, will not be a repeat of great-power hostilities like 1914. A declining capitalist power now faces a major socialist state — China — achieving growth, innovation, and living standards the West can no longer match.

Sanctions, once considered an elegant alternative to war, have also lost their effectiveness because the West’s economic appeal itself has faded. Russia’s adaptation since 2014 is the clearest proof.

Ian Proud, a British writer and former diplomat, concludes that the Global North continues to export chaos while its internal contradictions deepen — while the “Global Majority” has already begun reconsidering its trade, investment, and security options, distancing itself from the West.

Mazen Al-Najjar is a writer and analyst covering international security and political economy.