Has Europe sleepwalked into decline? The warning signs are everywhere

The West has sleepwalked into its downfall. This is according to Kishore Mahbubani, a former Singaporean diplomat. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis, hailing the triumph of liberal democracy as the Cold War ended, was evidently also premature.

The idea that Europe “sleepwalked” into decline suggests a failure of perception and agency, a slow drift where accumulating risks were visible but not acted upon. The factors are interconnected, forming a web that sustained complacency for decades.

The fact that Europe has forgotten what it is to be innovative especially in the AI and digital era. Google, Amazon and Meta (the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) all came from Silicon Valley. TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, is not European either.

Deindustrialisation and high costs also means Europe’s share of global GDP has fallen sharply. High energy costs have crippled energy-intensive industries, accelerating deindustrialisation. Private investment has stagnated, reflecting a loss of business confidence.

The innovation gap means Europe has repeatedly been “half a beat slow” in major industrial transformations, from solar to AI. A culture of “regulating before innovating” and the fragmentation of the single market have hindered the scaling of tech companies to rival US or Chinese giants.

As for their security, this too the Europeans have left in the hands of the mighty US through Nato. What this means is that the EU countries could allocate more money towards social upliftment and welfare endeavours for their citizens.

Now Donald Trump has insisted that they spend at least 5% of their respective GDPs on national security. This “protection curse” led to a focus on prestige platforms while neglecting logistics, ammunition and readiness. Trump’s transactional turn shattered the assumption of permanent protection, exposing strategic nakedness.

To make matters worse for the EU nations, their governments entered into a proxy (Ukraine) war with Russia which has lasted for four and a half years, with no real winners on the battlefield.

One of the first incidents at the beginning of the war was the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines which were providing cheap energy to Germany and other European countries. This put enormous pressure on the EU nations who now had to buy their LNG gas from the US at largely inflated prices. The financial power house of Europe, Germany, is experiencing strange politics with the far right AFD Party gaining popularity among Germans.

Trump made matters even worse on the energy front by engaging in an aggressive and illegal war against Iran. through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally passes, has been largely blocked or disrupted since, and more pressure is brought to bear on the entire world, including the EU nations.

The economies of the EU nations are thus taking strain, with recessions looming in many instances. A further serious miscalculation on the part of the EU and its sanctions against Russia (the worst against any country) is the fact that its allies, among them China and India, continue to buy oil and gas from Russia which props up that economy.

Another key factor that suggest the West is indeed sleepwalking is its duplicity in inter-relations. In their so-called rules-based order, there are rules that apply to others but do not apply to them. The International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice must prosecute certain world leaders but not those from the West. Russia’s so-called illegal war of against Ukraine meant numerous sanction packages against Russia; but the illegal war against Iran solicits no such sanctions against the US or Israel.

I could go on about this duality that persist in global affairs. The rest of the world is tired of it and hence alternative systems are being explored which exclude the West and its arrogance.

The rise of right-wing conservative politics is a factor in why Europe is sleepwalking to its downfall. The surge of right-wing populist and nationalist parties across the continent is fracturing the traditional centre-left/centre-right consensus. This has made coalition-building and decisive EU-level action difficult.

North-South and East-West divides the Eurozone and this crisis exposed deep fiscal and ideological rifts between creditor and debtor nations. The migration crisis further split East and West, eroding the pro-European consensus.

With all these factors playing out, no wonder the European leaders think that a war with Russia is perhaps the answer out of this quagmire.

• Dr Van Heerden is a senior research fellow at the Centre for African Diplomacy and Leadership at UJ