C Raja Mohan writes: The West vs the Rest, a fiction

Indian Express

3 days ago

Speaking at the 1957 Moscow Conference of Communist and Workers' Parties, Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong declared that the 'East wind will prevail over the West'. The occasion was the 40th anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. For Mao, the 'East wind' meant the 'socialist camp' (led by the Soviet Union and China), and the 'West wind' represented the capitalist countries (led by the US). He declared that the balance of world forces had shifted decisively in favour of the socialist camp in the middle of the 20th century.
The idea that the West is in decline and that it will soon be swamped by the rising tide of 'the rest' has been a recurrent theme since the encounter between the West and the rest began several centuries ago. Here is the problem. The West refuses to disappear, and the rest is having a difficult time taking charge.
Mao himself embarked on a fight with the Soviet Union barely two years after making the grand declaration on the rise of the East wind. He broke the socialist camp, divided the communist movement all over the world, and paved the way for an alliance between Communist China and the 'evil empire', the US. The marriage between Western capital and the Chinese market produced a breathtaking global economic expansion for nearly five decades. It also made Beijing the second most important power — economic, technological and military – in the world.
A risen China now talks again of leading the East, now rebranded as the 'Global South' or the 'Global Majority' to victory against a declining West. Declinism is also in fashion in Western academia and think tanks. Many fear the barbarians from the East are ready to show up at the gates. The fear in the West is matched by the irrational exuberance in the rest about the impending collapse of the US-led world order.
Sceptics might say, not so fast. They point to US President Donald Trump's entirely unanticipated initial successes in singlehandedly rewriting the rules of global trade. The rest did not join hands to counter Trump. Most of them have queued up to negotiate bilateral trade agreements with him. The claim that Trump is winning is vigorously contested. Is Trump accelerating the decline of the American empire and the West, or is he heralding its resurgence? While the debate on this question will continue, Amitav Acharya, one of the leading scholars of international relations, puts the debate in a deep historical perspective.
Acharya's new book, The Once and Future World Order, seeks to dismantle the conceptions of global order built around the rise of the West. He reminds us that there was a world before the West and another after it. Acharya argues that the pursuit of order — rules, norms, and institutions that enable peace and promote commerce — did not begin with the modern West. He suggests it is rooted in ancient, diverse civilisations across the world. Far from a future dominated by a new hegemon or descending into chaos, he foresees a decentralised, inclusive system drawing on both Western and non-Western traditions.
Acharya asserts that ancient Sumer, China, India, Greece, Mesoamerica, and the Islamic world all devised ways to manage interstate relations. While the post-World War II Liberal International Order led by the US shaped the modern age, Acharya sees it as just one chapter in a longer global history.
The Western-led order, forged through empire, conquest, exploitation and ruthless Cold War geopolitics, was never as universal or complete as its proponents claimed. Global norms evolved through continuous cross-civilisational borrowing. The West never monopolised the ideals of peace, law, or cooperation.
In confronting anxieties about Western decline, Acharya offers a different narrative. Rather than a harbinger of disorder, the erosion of Western primacy creates space for a more equitable global structure. He introduces the concept of a 'multiplex' order — where no single state dominates, and multiple actors, from states to international institutions and non-state players, share responsibility for shaping norms.
Rejecting both the 'clash of civilisations' thesis and the idea of an inevitable Chinese hegemony, Acharya advocates a cooperative system grounded in civilisational pluralism. He envisions a world not of imposed norms but of negotiated consensus — a 'confluence of civilisations'. This future demands learning from each other, not dominance. The Once and Future World Order is a timely corrective to the dominant narratives in the West and the East. Acharya's central message is that the rise of non-Western actors is not a crisis but a chance to build a fairer, more representative system.
Acharya's hopeful vision of a multiplex order is persuasive but incomplete. It downplays serious constraints in the East that hinder its capacity to shape a just and effective global order. These include authoritarianism, the rise of a state that is free to curb individual freedoms in the name of claimed collective interests, violent politics based on exclusive religious, caste, and linguistic identities, and the empowerment of violent vigilante groups that destroy social peace.
There is no question that China has been the most successful non-Western world state in bringing economic prosperity and in rooting out the feudal vestiges. But it is yet to redeem the Chinese national movement's promise to deliver democracy to its people. Externally, China is unable to overcome the temptations of national chauvinism and the urge to dominate its neighbourhood. That, in turn, shatters ideas of Asian unity and the Chinese ability to lead a compact of the rest against the West.
If the Western oppression is real, the Eastern ones are worse. Meanwhile, students, scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs, the rich and political dissidents from the East continue to migrate to the West, if they can. The soft power of the West remains a powerful magnet to those who see themselves as suffocating under the Eastern regimes.
Acharya's critique of Western dominance is compelling, but not all aspects of the Western legacy can or should be discarded. The Enlightenment ideals of the 17th and 18th centuries — reason, scepticism, science, individual liberty, and secularisation of society away from religious dominance — are at the very foundation of Western primacy in the last three centuries.
If the East wishes to lead in shaping the world order, it must engage these ideals critically and constructively. Any notion that the East can rise by short-circuiting these values is an illusion. It only delays and derails the effort to rise. The battles against political, religious, and other absolutisms remain to be fought and won in the East. Until then, a rising East will not present an alternative model — only a different and less attractive one. The profound internal contradictions within and across the East will continue to keep it well behind the West.
The writer is distinguished fellow at the Council for Defence and Strategic Research and contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express