Clouds Loom Over the West, and Over Us as Well

By Hicham Bou Nassif | Weinberg Associate Professor of International Relations and the Middle East and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College-California

The recent plunge in US stock markets, triggered by President Donald Trump’s unprecedented tariffs on imported goods, has turned into an economic disaster.

The worst fallout is its impact on the retirement funds of tens of millions of Americans, who have already suffered significant losses in recent days, with more likely to come.

This downturn follows Trump’s first months in office, marked by repeated confrontations with traditional Western liberal-democratic allies and overtures toward Vladimir Putin. The rhetoric from Canada, not just among political elites but ordinary citizens, suggests an unprecedented rift with the US.

Meanwhile, the strain in transatlantic relations threatens the very future of NATO.

All this turmoil unfolds within the liberal democratic camp, while the opposing axis, united under the influence of China’s Communist Party, Vladimir Putin, Iran’s clerics, and North Korea, appears stable.

Trump’s geopolitical gambit includes two key points which are clear even without deep expertise in international relations: 1) Trump rightly sees China as US’s primary rival, and 2) he aims to replicate Nixon and Kissinger’s strategy of splitting Communist China from the Soviet Union, but in reverse, by pulling Russia away from China.

Ukraine and Europe are paying the price for this risky geopolitical maneuvering. The danger is that the US could fail twice: 1) losing Europe without winning over Russia, while 2) China continues its ascent, bolstering the appeal of its one-party model as liberalism struggles.

Beyond economics and geopolitics, the West faces internal political and cultural challenges. Mass immigration, particularly from the Muslim world, has reignited identity politics around religion and sectarianism, despite Western societies having seemingly moved past such divisions.

Additionally, neoliberalism, while creating many winners, including millions who joined the middle class, has also produced losers who now form the base of right-wing populism in the West.

Populists recognize that four institutions constrain their rise: 1) constitutions, 2) the media, 3) universities, and 4) the judiciary. Unsurprisingly, these are now under attack in Trump’s America and elsewhere. This assault on democratic safeguards is perhaps the most alarming and “ugly” trend in the West today.

That said, Western democracy isn’t necessarily collapsing. It has endured before, overcoming Nazism, Communism, autocratic regimes in the developing world, and even internal reactionary movements like McCarthyism, the Ku Klux Klan, and the John Birch Society. Still, the current crisis is serious and likely to persist.

There are two reasons why should Lebanon care:

1. Values: Lebanon’s republic was built on the same liberal principles now under strain in the West. Unlike its neighbors, Lebanon has no tradition of military coups, no single-party rule, and enjoys real civil liberties.
   From a liberal perspective, countries like the US and Canada are Lebanon’s ideological siblings, while Syria is an antithesis to our values.
2. History: Lebanese victories against hostile neighbors have always relied on Western support, whether liberation from the Ottomans after Britain’s 1918 victory, the creation of modern Lebanon, with French help in 1920, resistance to Nasser’s meddling, after America’s indirect defeat of him in 1967, or ending Syrian occupation, via Franco-American backing in 2005.

Today, shifts in the regional balance of power, countering Iran’s influence, still depend on Western strength.

This isn’t to say a strong West automatically allies with Lebanon. But without Western support, Lebanon has never been able to fend off threats from the Arab and Islamic worlds. Those who see Western right-wing populists as allies are gravely mistaken: their values aren’t ours, and their weakening of the West harms Lebanon in the long run.

This article was originally published in Arabic by Nida al-Watan on 7 April  2025. The original can be found here.

The views expressed in this op-ed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of SyriacPress.