By Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr.

We are going through the most dangerous geopolitical situation since World War II. What are the striking characteristics of this phase, which began in the first or second decade of the 21st century? I believe we can highlight four points:

1. The rise and consolidation of a multipolar world, the outstanding aspect of which is the rapid progress of China and other East Asian nations.

2. The relative decline of the West, accelerated by highly problematic strategic choices of the United States – the opening of a three-front war against Russia, China, and Iran and, since 2025, an unprecedented fragmentation of the West.

3. The West’s outright refusal to accept its relative decline – to the point of being willing to violate all principles, contracts and rules, and to openly practice all kinds of violence and piracy. The United States and allies are ready, as we are seeing, to carry out military operations and even go to war in an attempt to preserve and perhaps reverse their declining dominance.

4. Despite the decline, the West, especially the United States as a superpower, should not be underestimated, since it can – and does – do great damage urbi et orbi.

An important facet of the decline of the West is the intellectual and moral degradation of its elites. We need only remember the low quality of the current European leaders, with few exceptions, and of the presidents of the United States. The Americans accomplished the feat of electing George W. Bush not once, but twice to the presidency of the Republic. They then elected Donald J. Trump not once, but twice.

What has come to light about the powerful Jeffrey Epstein scheme, with its penetration among renowned leaders, including politicians, businessmen and intellectuals, has uncovered a network of corruption, debauchery and pedophilia, whose existence and scope few could have imagined.

The intensification of racism in the West and its geopolitical implications

All this is (or should be) well known in its general outlines. Less recognized are the racial connotations present in this tense geopolitical situation. One does not always take into due account the existence of a widespread, ingrained racism of a structural nature, which adds a particularly perverse connotation to the geopolitical picture.

The world can be divided for certain purposes into two parts – the Collective West and the Global South. The Collective West is normally defined as the high-income countries led by the United States; it includes Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Israel, Japan, South Korea, and some other high-income countries. Excluding the high-income Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, and Singapore), the population of the West represents something like 12% of the world’s population, with a tendency to lose relative weight. The Global South is usually understood to correspond to the rest of the world, i.e. the emerging or reemerging and developing countries of Eurasia, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. What we have is The West and the Rest, to recall the pertinent title of a book by Niall Ferguson. The West is under pressure from the rise of the “Rest”, where no less than 86% of humanity lives.

A central point: approximately 3/4 of the population residing in the West are white – with non-white minorities functioning mainly as low-skilled workers in jobs that whites are no longer willing to occupy. The population of the Global South is totally different in terms of racial composition. The vast majority is represented by blacks, browns, yellows, mestizos, etc. Whites have been a minority in Africa, Asia and even Latin America, where European colonization had more weight.

In the white West a structural racism has taken root, anchored in the conviction that Western civilization, more developed and sophisticated, is the product of superior peoples. Much older civilizations, such as the Chinese, the Indian and the Iranian, smile ironically at this pretension. Mahatma Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western civilization. He replied: “It would be a good idea”.

Western racism is an old phenomenon. In the second half of the 20th century, this racism was still partially disguised by varying layers of hypocrisy. This didn’t last long. Today, the feeling of superiority over non-whites has become more transparent.

On the other hand, the peoples who were previously colonized or semi-colonized no longer recognize the superiority of whites. They no longer accept the colonial or neocolonial schemes of exploitation imposed by the Europeans and the Americans. They want to have their rights accepted, in practice and not just in theory. As Vladimir Putin declared, “Westerners need to recognize that the vampire ball is coming to an end.”

But the West adamantly refuses to accept that this ball is ending. The world’s white minority has entered a state of denial. It intensely resents the progressive loss of world hegemony and the privileges associated with it. Human, all too human, Nietzsche would say. Centuries of world domination are not easily forgotten and abandoned.

Growing resistance to immigration and civilizational regression

In this charged environment, another phenomenon of crucial importance comes into play – the large-scale migration to the United States or Europe of people from Latin America, Africa and West Asia in search of better living conditions or fleeing wars (many of them unleashed by the West). As this migration grows, so does the revulsion in the West towards immigrants, especially Muslims. Restrictions on immigration have gained widespread support among Europeans and Americans. These barriers and the often inhumane ways in which border control and the fight against resident immigrants, even legal ones, have been taking place, contribute to a process that can be designated, without exaggeration, as a civilizational regression in the United States and Europe.

The popularity of the fight against immigration, on both sides of the North Atlantic, reflects the desire, to some extent understandable, to protect Western culture against the growing presence of people belonging to other cultures and other religions. However, this legitimate desire is mixed with the deep-rooted racism mentioned above and the belief in the superiority and supremacy of the white race. Indicative of this is the fact that white migrants from Ukraine, for example, face far fewer obstacles in the rest of Europe than Arabs or black Africans. A Ukrainian immigrant or refugee is basically seen as “one of us”.

What we have, in fact, is a new form of xenophobic fascism. On the political party level, a “new right” is growing, often referred to as “populist”, which has at the heart of its discourse the radical rejection of immigrants. The new right is growing largely because of the resonance of its anti-immigration discourse among the masses in the United States and Europe, and also because of a certain difficulty for the traditional parties to embrace it without violating their basic principles.

Like Jews in Nazi Germany and other European countries, Muslims and other non-whites became a convenient scapegoat for the adverse social consequences of the West’s decline and the practical impossibility of continuing to exploit the rest of the world for their own gain. Non-white migrants are held responsible for all sorts of crimes and violence. They are also accused of replacing white workers and generating unemployment among them – when, in fact, they almost always perform those lower-paying jobs that the white population rejects or that cannot be easily automated.

The American and European “new right” is not exactly new, therefore, but rather a regression to pre-Enlightenment conceptions and feelings. It can be called fascist or Nazi, as it contains elements of this worldview, with Muslims occupying the place previously reserved for Jews. Civilizational regression has acquired such a dimension that it is appropriate to speak of an “Age of Obscurantism or Endarkenment”. In what other era could an absolutely crude figure like Donald Trump be at the center of the world stage? Trump is an extreme case, but the truth is that, to say the least, few Western leaders measure up to the jobs they hold.

In short, Europe and the United States, previously at the forefront of the Enlightenment, are vigorously sponsoring a movement in the opposite direction. The 18th century became known as the “Century of Enlightenment”; the 21st century, judging by its initial decades, will go down in history as the “Century of Endarkenment”.

The genocide in Palestine

Israel is perhaps the clearest symptom of the shipwreck of Western civilization. The greatest humanitarian crisis of the 21st century – the genocide perpetrated by Israeli Jews against Palestinians – is a central ingredient of this “Age of Endarkenment”. The support for Israel by Europe and, above all, by the United States compromises, perhaps irreversibly, the West’s adherence to the moral values it used to preach.

It is worth highlighting that Israel is far from an isolated case. Indeed, Israel’s settler colonialism and genocide in Palestine have many precedents. In fact, Israel’s criminal behavior is part of a centuries-old European tradition.

What is happening in Palestine is the latest colonial genocide practiced by white Europeans against non-whites. Beginning in the 16th century, Europeans and their descendants destroyed peoples in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania to occupy their lands with immigrants from the metropolis. In Europe itself, there was the Holocaust, a genocide that would not have had the prominence it has if it had not victimized whites. The various genocides practiced by Europeans in what we now call the Global South victimized other races, to the point of exterminating them totally or almost totally, as in Australia and North and South America.

A crucial and much commented difference between the genocide in Palestine and the previous ones lies in the fact that it has wide and instantaneous media coverage, with a planetary impact. The Germans could, with some credibility, claim that they were unaware of the extent of what was happening in the Nazi concentration camps. The Israelis are not in a position to claim the same, and they do not really try. Zionist extremists, inside and outside the Netanyahu government, even take pride in the killing, justifying it as a fight against “terrorism”. And even the murder of thousands of children is presented as the elimination of “future terrorists”.

One could go further. Gaza is sometimes interpreted as an experiment of the decaying Western Empire – a genocide broadcast globally in real time as a warning to all. The message goes something like this: look what can happen to non-white peoples who resist the imperial pretensions of the West.

Inevitably, political, economic, and military support for Israel by the United States and most of Europe exacts an immense political price. No one believes anymore in the existence of a West of principles and values. This image, once so strong, was destroyed in the name of a stalwart defense of Israel’s policies and priorities.

Challenges for Brazil

To conclude, a few words about Brazil that may be partly relevant to other nations of the Global South. How can we prepare Brazil for a new international era, very different from the one we were used to?

The first challenge: Brazilians must abandon, as soon as possible, their belief that international differences can be resolved with goodwill, diplomacy and soft power. Careful psychological, economic and military preparation is imperative to face the storms ahead. It is not a choice or something that can be postponed. This is the most urgent issue facing the country.

In the psychological field, we need to definitively overcome the inferiority complexes that downgrade the country and make our international relations so difficult. In other words, we have to throw overboard all the remnants of centuries of cultural colonization. We also need to abandon our traditional pacifism – not to attack anyone, mind you, but in recognition of the time-worn fact that to live in peace one needs to prepare for war. Si vis pacem, para bellum, as the Romans said.

On the economic level, Brazil will have to seek self-sufficiency in essential areas, avoiding dependence on foreign suppliers whenever feasible, especially those located in countries that appear as potential aggressors. Strategic production chains must be mostly within the national territory or in reliable countries. Self-sufficiency generates, of course, losses in economic efficiency. But the time is gone when one could rely with some plausibility on trade and financial openness as levers for development.

A second challenge, this one more positive: Brazil, due to its characteristics, is able, perhaps like no other country, to offer a new word to the world, a message of reconciliation and unity. I will go further: our historical destiny may be to start, together with other nations, a kind of Second Renaissance, capable of freeing us from the threats and catastrophes of the “Age of Endarkenment” into which we have entered.

Because of its dimensions, because it results from the mixture of peoples from all parts of the planet, because of its tradition of openness to the world, including its pacifism, Brazilians can play a role in world salvation. The very feeling of inferiority and the tendency to pacifism, duly reconfigured, prepare us to play such a role.

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The author is a Brazilian economist. He was vice president and founder of the New Development Bank, established by the BRICS in Shanghai, from 2015 to 2017, and executive director at the IMF for Brazil and 10 other countries in Washington, from 2007 to 2015.

E-mail: paulonbjr@hotmail.com

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