Can the West survive four years of Harris or Trump?

Great empires always fall, pushed by their own leaders. Just think of the role played in Britain’s decline by the Liberals who blundered into the First World War, permanently crippling the world’s dominant empire. Or the damage done to France by Napoleon III’s imperial blunders. Or the fumbling of autocrats in China, Russia and Germany in the last century.

The US, still the world’s only true empire, now confronts the reality of two unserious presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, each threatening its viability. Americans and the rest of what’s left of the liberal world have to hope that our intrinsic advantages in demography, finance, technology and resources will survive the presidencies of either of these awful candidates.

The personalities themselves are just a symptom of the problem. Trump and Harris – or for that matter, Starmer and Macron – are more reflections of the West’s exhaustion than its instigators. There’s not a Roosevelt, Truman, Churchill, Thatcher, Kennedy, Reagan or even a Blair or Clinton in the bunch. Do they have boldness in speech? Sometimes. But do they inspire the population and actually change things for the better? Not so much. Whether countries are governed by left or right, there are record levels of distrust of institutions all across the US and Europe. Voters are rebelling against such things as draconian climate policies or large-scale migration from developing countries – policies that are favoured by their own elites, but widely detested by ordinary people.

Of course, the fate of the world does not lie in Europe, which is a consistent economic, technological and demographic laggard. For all its problems, the US remains dominant. But, like Europe, it is plagued by self-doubts and an intellectual-policy elite that has little enthusiasm for the existing political system or the US constitution.

The future of the West may lie in the US, but the next president is likely to weaken its political influence. The blathering Trump’s vision is of a world of revanchism, a return to the glory days of the 1950s. His ideas on trade are also archaic. He fails to appreciate the benefits, as well as the failures, tied to relatively free trade. He has opposed, for example, Nippon Steel’s bid to buy US Steel, despite the huge upgrade it would represent for local communities. Trump’s persona alone is enough to send most Europeans, Canadians and even our Asian allies to look elsewhere, perhaps kowtowing to China.

Both he and Harris seem anxious to appeal to protectionism, even when it makes little sense. But Trump is likely to shake things up more than Harris. His re-election threatens Europe’s comfy deal with NATO and his willingness to strike deals with Vladimir Putin has a Chamberlain-esque dimension. Should he abandon Ukraine, it would make other countries, notably Taiwan, uncertain of American resolve. It could also persuade a new generation of GOP hawks to throw their lot in with the Democrats.

At least Trump is not utterly deluded about the Middle East. One of the major accomplishments of his administration was the Abraham Accords, which, had Biden followed through with them, would have tilted the balance of power in the Middle East towards the West. He also did what needed to be done with Iran, imposing sanctions and assassinating its most important terrorist commander. Much of the region, not just Israel, would prefer a second Trump term.

In contrast, Harris, even more than Biden, surrounds herself with people who embrace conciliatory policies to Iran, seeking what Tablet has described as a new Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, administered by Washington and Tehran. What is it about ‘Death to America’ these people don’t get? Even the Democrat-dominated media, like the Atlantic, admit that Biden’s policies on Iran have failed to achieve much. But progressives don’t have to worry – a Harris administration ensures that the delusionary approach will continue.

Harris’s chief foreign-policy adviser is, if anything, more friendly to Tehran and more hostile to Israel than Biden’s current team. As the Free Press has revealed, Philip Gordon co-authored a series of opinion pieces with Pentagon official Ariane Tabatabai, who was linked to an Iranian government-sponsored initiative to sell Tehran’s agenda in America. He is also buds with Robert Malley, the Iran negotiator whose security clearance had to be revoked after he was alleged to have mishandled classified information. Harris’s own husband, Doug Emhoff, was long associated with a firm that represented Middle Eastern interests, including the sovereign wealth fund of the Palestine Monetary Authority.

Where Harris stands on foreign policy cannot be easily found out. Try to Google it and you’re directed to sites praising her positions. Little is said about how she would accommodate the powerful interests that are bankrolling her campaign, notably in Silicon Valley and Wall Street. The Valley is basically in hock to China for production, and sometimes capital, while Wall Street remains committed to making money by financing the West’s leading competitor. Harris’s Sinophile vice-presidential candidate, Tim Walz, has clearly had close ties, financial and otherwise, with Chinese state institutions.

This pattern of foreign intervention in Western governments, not just from China, has become widespread. This is evidenced by recent events in Canada, Australia, the US (think Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine and China) and in the scandals threatening to take down New York mayor Eric Adams. The attempts of Trump’s family to insinuate themselves with Middle Eastern interests should also be some cause for concern, when it comes to possible foreign influence on US policy.

With China, the only serious challenger to the US, Harris may prove particularly, if unintentionally, dangerous. She has been an enthusiastic supporter of the forced move to electric vehicles and solar power, playing right into the Chinese strategy to dominate energy, the car industry and the future. China, a country that emits more carbon emissions than all developed countries put together, already produces nearly twice as many electric vehicles as the US and the EU combined. Its battery capacity is soon expected to be roughly four times that of the US. China also exercises effective control of the requisite rare-earth minerals and the technologies used to process them.

Harris may have backtracked on her proposal to ban fracking, as well as other green commitments, but this appears to be just a classic bait and switch. After all, her backers still include investors in green technologies. Her climate-engagement director, Camila Thorndike, comes from the hysterical wing of the climate movement. She favours such things as banning gas stoves and electrifying everything. She has also expressed hesitancy in having children due to climate change. This kind of thinking suggests the US might one day cut off its energy exports, forcing Europeans to look at terror-supporting states like Iran and Qatar for the gas that the US could otherwise supply.

So, can these two awful candidates kill the Pax Americana permanently? The good news is that China, the US’s prime adversary, is no longer the confident, rapidly expanding country of a decade ago. It suffers deep demographic decline, a property bubble of monumental proportions and rising unemployment. Its huge middle class is increasingly dispirited. Russia is an even bigger basket case, having lost many of its most talented people. Iran, too, has deep-seated economic and political conflicts. Its regime is both devious and ferocious, but also widely detested domestically and nearly broke.

The bigger problem, though, lies in Western attitudes. In a struggle for global preeminence, what people think of their own country and system is critical. There has been a deep-seated loss of faith in Western culture and values, particularly among younger Americans and Europeans. These opinions will likely be reflected most strongly in a Harris White House, as in Starmer’s No10, as progressive ideology turns on opposing the legacy of the ‘colonial past’.

To win on a global stage, people need to embrace their own culture as something that gives them pride and a sense of identity. As George Saville, Marquess of Halifax, once observed, a ruling class needs a ‘good memory’. In the past, great empires like the Romans, the British and Chinese all celebrated their ancestral heritage.

This is now out of fashion in Europe, the UK and the US. The European Council on Foreign Relations, for example, blames the continent’s failures on too much ‘whiteness’ and ‘Europeanness’. This view gained the full-throated support of the usual progressive publications like the Guardian. In the US, over 30 per cent of Democrats reject the idea that the US is the world’s greatest country, compared with less than 10 per cent of Republicans.

The cognitive elites in the UK, Europe and North America essentially seek to break down the historic connection between native-born populations and their own countries. In classrooms around the world, traditional civics is being replaced by notions that Western cultures are inherently evil.

Ironically, the ‘anti-colonialism’ embraced by media and academia undermines the West’s liberal legacy – the very thing that often lures immigrants from illiberal states. Traditionally, immigrants, whether in France, the UK, the Netherlands, Canada or the US, embraced the legal protections and openness of Western countries. My own Russian immigrant ancestors fought proudly for both Britain and America in the world wars.

Of course, households may have kept their ethnic traditions in their homes, but they also embraced national holidays, flew the flag and revered the constitution. In the US, Latinos are among the groups most committed to the American dream, boasting some of the highest rates of voluntary enlistment and military service.

Increasingly, however, today’s immigrants enter countries where the elites despise their own culture. This is in stark contrast to the political values homed in, say, Syria, Afghanistan or Turkey. The current massive wave of immigration across the West, much of it illegal, has created conditions that are more Middle Eastern than British, French or American. It is largely due to Muslim agitation in the form of ‘pro-Palestine’ protests that the Israel-Hamas conflict has become, notes Dominic Green, increasingly ‘a domestic crisis for Europe’.

In France, even before the outbreaks of recent riots and blatant anti-Semitism, Paris hosted a permanent underclass who embraced lawless nihilism, compounded by Islamist ideology. Even Sweden, long the Valhalla of progressive fantasies, has been forced to call out the army to clamp down on both gang and Islamist violence in immigrant-dominated areas. Neighbouring countries like Norway and Denmark are tightening restrictions to prevent something similar happening there.

Outside of Europe, Canada has been lax in combating terrorist-aligned organisations under the increasingly anti-Israel Trudeau administration. The usually placid country has been engulfed in sometimes violent anti-Israel demonstrations. And why should they stop, when foreign minister Mélanie Joly’s highly anti-Zionist positions are widely associated with the fact that her district has a large Muslim population?

The saddest sign of imperial decay has been the mounting attack on free speech, the cornerstone of liberal democracy. Oddly, the right now defends the very liberal values it long opposed, while the progressive establishment schemes to destroy them. ‘We live in a strange world where it’s the “fascists” who are the ones in favour of free speech’, one former US diplomat told me, referring to a recent speech in Washington by Italy’s right-wing prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. Wokeism, an American export, has alienated many around the world with its irrationality and brittleness.

The US now faces the bigger struggle to reverse this growing contempt for liberal-democratic values and constitutional norms. We may not be able to handle four more years of mediocrity. But even the most competent leader will struggle to resuscitate people’s faith in Western ideals.

Joel Kotkin is a spiked columnist, a presidential Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University in Orange, California, and a senior research fellow at the University of Texas’ Civitas Institute.