> That is because the major threat to the security and prosperity of the West today emanates from its own dire social instability, structural and economic decline, cultural desiccation and, in my view, elite pusillanimity.

The writer is insightful, but the write-up is falling to the same ideological traps it’s admonishing. The problem is no society is safe from factionalism as intergroup competitions will always lead to groups which are lower in the socioeconomic hierarchy. The grievances of lower status groups will always be open to exploit from external destabilizing forces.

What’s missing from a globalism-oriented discourse is a focus on national cultural identity, but it’s a mistake to believe that commonalities in race or religion will lead to some kind of stabler societies. In case the writer is forgetting, freedom from persecution by a different group of white Christians is the origin story of the United States. Therefore, returning to that state of nationalism, one focused on race and religion, will not result in anything different from the current state of fragile democracies.

The problem now is two-fold: 1) Many in society get left behind because they simply cannot compete, and those who get left behind most often didn’t have intergenerational wealth or stability to rely upon for continued success, so their race or ethnicity or culture is immaterial. 2) Competitions between different nations will always exist, and they will always conduct destabilizing activities against each other.

What’s needed, I think, are more welfare-oriented capitalist nations, but the tribal nature of cultures needs to be diminished by focusing “tribe” tendencies into national tendencies, where the nation may consist of any number of subgroups. Actors who want to rile up subgroup divisions will have a harder time doing so when people have something to protect, usually their own stuff, family, or sense of well-being.

The “jungle” Borrell mentions in the introduction is everywhere because most people are brutish, but you’ll never find out because they’re too busy with work or raising kids. In fact, it was really the spark of civilization in ancient Sumeria, and then the Middle East, which made “the West” into anything it is today—the cultural and scholarly exchange, and ensuing tensions, between the different cultures in the densely populated region of Europe and Middle East resulted in different thrusts of technological and societal advancements. Whereas populations on different continents had the luxury to spread out, and thus found themselves comfortable societal development minimas. So I remain unconvinced that one can be safe from the “jungle” out there, when the jungle exists inside you.

There’s a lot of malfeasance in many countries which squanders their natural resources and treasuries, but faux-democratic traditions trap the populous into believing that their nations are functioning, but it’s really the outsiders or Capitalism which is to blame. If instead the United Nations made a goal of enforcing welfare programs in each nation state, it will both address the inherent corruption in various nations, and also force people in those nations to find the real cause of their strife and suffering.