As usual, on the last Friday of the month, the 25th of October, we met in the room on the first floor of Javea Social Center. This meeting was one of our largest gatherings this year, and quite a few new people joined us.
The subject is broad and if the decline of the West is inevitable it definitely will have a multifaceted impact on future generations, similar to climate change, AI (artificial intelligence), pandemics or significant shifts in demographics.
We started with the question of what we would call a decline and whether it is real for the West today. We came up with a short definition of decline as being a relative change in power and global influence.
So, is it real for the West today? To put things in perspective, last month in Kazane, Russia, the BRICS annual summit was held. It was attended by the heads of 36 countries, including 4 new member countries. The expansion increases BRICS’ economic and demographic weight globally, with the expanded group now accounting for about 37.3% of the World GDP. Today 9 BRICS countries represent 45% of the World population, some 4 billion people.
The West produces 37.9% of the world’s GDP and represents 8.3% of the population. Seems like challenges for Western dominance are becoming more obvious each year.
We talked about the challenges of the rising multilateral World, when at the same time many of our present and future global problems can only be solved if all countries cooperate in reducing CO2 and the impacts of climate change, controlling military power, and using globalisation to benefit the entire World population.
Coming closer to home -we had observations about specific European issues related to EU countries’ competitiveness. In the recent report “New Industrial Strategy for Europe” by Mario Draghi, the former Prime Minister of Italy, he indicated the necessity to implement serious changes and massive investment within the EU, estimating €750-800 billion per year is needed to keep pace with global competitors.
Europe Is Almost Out of Time to Defend Its Place in a
Mario Draghi’s Report: EU Needs EUR 800 Billion Annually in Investment to Stay Competitive -…
The problems and challenges for the West and the entire World are great. A comment was made about the importance of education for all children, which is extremely relevant for the future of this planet but was not necessarily acknowledged in the plans for future great reforms. So, is the West declining? Perhaps, but does it really matter who is in economic or military decline or ascendancy if we don’t deal with the major issues facing the entire planet?
