Winning the Cold War left the West exhausted rather than triumphant

Evidence

The second picture of the West is very different. It is of a civilization in decline, its share of world political, economic, and military power going down relative to that of other civilizations. The West’s victory in the Cold War has produced not triumph but exhaustion. The West is increasingly concerned with its internal problems and needs, as it confronts slow economic growth, stagnating populations, unemployment, huge government deficits, a declining work ethic, low savings rates, and in many countries including the United States social disintegration, drugs, and crime. Economic power is rapidly shifting to East Asia, and military power and political influence are starting to follow. India is on the verge of economic takeoff and the Islamic world is increasingly hostile toward the West. The willingness of other societies to accept the West’s dictates or abide its sermons is rapidly evaporating, and so are the West’s self-confidence and will to dominate. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 221

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to broader declinist debates and to the theme of imperial overstretch in works like Paul Kennedy’s Rise and Fall of Great Powers. — connects to: The “end of history” moment produced civilizational despair rather than triumph. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 435; Post-Cold War conventional wisdom held history had ended in Western victory — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 156; Liberal democracy’s post-Cold War triumph masks deep popular disaffection — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 372