New Enlightenment, New Alliances

This article is based on a talk given at a Forum for a good Strategic Neighbourhood, Dakar, 23-24 April 2025

Rationalist enlightenment was supposed to guide the future of mankind. Europe and the United States prided themselves on leading the world towards progress. What is the situation now?

The answer given by the Edelman Trust Barometer, published in March 2025, is clear. The Chinese and Indian populations, as well as the Saudi Arabian population, express strong confidence in the future, at nearly 70%. They are followed by Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, and most of the BRICS countries. Only 9% of French people have confidence in the future, 14% of  Germans and Japanese, and 17% of the British. Only 20% to 30% in what is commonly referred to as « the West » express  confidence, with the United States at the higher end of the spectrum, but with only 30% of its population trusting in a bright future. If the ability to ensure a better future for all citizens is the criterium for judging a political regime, the picture is clear; countries that identify themselves as democracies, freed by the Enlightenment, advocates of liberalism, and subject to varying degrees of radical individualism, no longer offer their populations the assurance of a better life.

The Edelman Barometer also measures citizens’ trust in their political leaders, judges, and media. This second poll confirms the first; trust in leaders, judges, and media is in the minority in “Western democracies,” but is professed by the majority in China, India, Indonesia (over 70%), and also in Russia, countries often qualified as authoritarian, if not totalitarian. Can this observation, without undue bias, be translated into a political judgment? It would signal the mediocrity of an entire political philosophy endlessly promoting liberalism as the synonym of modernity, progress, and a  universal goal. It would mean that democracy, as the political expression of the Enlightenment and as interpreted by so-called “Western” countries, has failed. More precisely, individuals who find themselves stripped of citizenship in the name of globalisation are witnessing the inability of the Nation, of the government, and ultimately of politics, to ensure the improvement in living conditions that was the promise of democracy—a promise that has been disappointed (it is not insignificant that the United States under Donald Trump is the Western country that has the highest confidence in its future). The market society is helplessly witnessing its own liquidation. The individuals who believe they are independent and free from oppression find themselves alone, crushed between the State and the market.

Is the age of reason coming to an end? Should we conclude that the Enlightenment no longer lights  the human path, even in Europe that saw its birth and carried its torch everywhere?

1 – The Lost Hope of a Better Future

Generally recognised indicators of quality of life and progress provide answers.

Infant mortality is one of the key indicators of the quality of social services and public spaces, notably according to Emmanuel Todd (see “The Defeat of the West,” Gallimard, September 2024). After declining everywhere in the world, infant mortality is rising again in the United States, the United Kingdom, and even in France, while it continues to fall in China, India, and the “BRICS” countries.

I would put more importance on life expectancy trends. Life expectancy is declining in the United States and the United Kingdom. The gap in life expectancy between the richest 10% and the poorest 10% has exploded in these two countries; in privileged circles of New York or Washington, centenarians are numerous, while in the disenfranchised white America of “Deaths of Despair” (Angus Deaton), the life expectancy for men does not exceed… 60 years! Alcohol, drugs, and poor diet are expressions of collective depression and suicide. Very large sections of the American population are not physically fit to work in industry and mentally trained to carry out ‘intellectual’ activities.

The comparison of the health state of populations is just as striking. Obesity is rare in China, but it is the leading cause of mortality (direct and indirect) in the United States and the United Kingdom, with one-third of teenagers  obese before the age of 18. Visiting major global tourist sites reveals the poor physical condition and appearance of many Westerners, with Americans being particularly noticeable in that category. Fewer than 23% of Americans aged 16 to 24 are medically fit to serve in the military (slate.fr/story/255783/crisis-recruitment-american-army). This is why the call to “Make Americans healthy again!” (Robert Kennedy Jr.) resonates with so many Americans.

Education and training have been the drivers of political, social, and technical progress. Critical thinking is the essential foundation of democracy. The decline in educational levels in Western countries is almost universal, affecting language proficiency, calculation, and reasoning. Twenty-one percent of French people are illiterate. Is it a coincidence that so many leaders in the United States are Chinese or Indian, two countries that recognise merit and value education, unlike the so-called “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” or DEI policy, which prioritises identity over competence; (see “The Age of Endowments,” Christopher Caldwell, 2018)? Is it a coincidence that European “elites” are increasingly wary of voters who cannot read, count, or think? “Positive discrimination” replaces meritocracy with mediocrity. The foundation of universal suffrage, critical thinking, is compromised by the widespread stupefaction triggered by the digital screen. When the mind becomes a screenshot, democracy is reduced to a matter of clicks.

Something has gone wrong in these liberal democracies that were so self-assured that they believed to represent the inevitable culmination of human history… Universal democracy is no longer the likely future of humanity. It is not that its enemies or opponents, as in the time of Soviet communism or fascism, have hindered humanity’s march towards this achievement; it is that the marchers have lost their way, that liberal democracy is no longer the path to progress, to improving living conditions, and to hope. It has not exhausted itself fighting an enemy that no longer exists; it has been hijacked by those who claim to serve it and it is collapsing from within. The DOGE’s revelations about the fortunes amassed by the accomplices of the Democratic system, such as Nancy Pelosi, through US Aid, NGOs, and Foundations, are damning. On this point, at least, the lucidity of Vice President Vance in his Munich speech cannot be denied; the enemy is within. I will go further; the West is undergoing a process of decivilization that could soon turn into a return to underdevelopment.

This is why those who assess Donald Trump’s policies solely on economic criteria are mistaken. The deterioration of living conditions for the majority of the population and the fragmentation of the middle class in the United States pose a civilisational problem. The response is a civilisational war, a war against “woke culture,” against the leveling down of “DEI – diversity, equity, inclusion,” against “inclusive writing,” against the “privilege of Goodness” claimed by those who cannot bear the consequences of what they impose on others in the name of a “morality” disconnected from reality. In practical terms this conflict translates into a war against hyper-processed food, against the oligopolies of “Big Pharma, Big Ag, and Big Farm” that threaten food security, a war against an abstract universalism that destroys the diversity of human societies.

To be continued…