If you think that the free speech-v-cancel culture tension has already been pushed to its limits in the UK over the past year, you probably haven’t heard of 40 Days for Life.
The campaign to pray for an end to abortion throughout the period of Lent reached its peak this weekend, drawing Christians across the country together around one of the most significant and controversial issues of our time. One in four women in the UK will experience abortion in their lives. Pro-life groups have worked to make abortions unnecessary by giving women support to keep their children, even up until the last moment of their decision. With such efforts come debate. And with debate comes the difficulty of democracy.
Already, certain local councils such as in Ealing and Richmond in London have caved to activist pressure to ban “pro-lifers” from expressing their views in public, specifically in 150m zones around abortion facilities. Last month, the Northern Ireland Assembly voted to implement a similar censorship zone around all abortion facilities across their country. A similar private member’s bill is in consultation in Holyrood, with MSPs tweeting zealously this weekend about the need to censor pro-lifers.
These so-called “buffer zones” are well-intentioned. Campaigners claim that the pro-lifers “harass” women arriving for appointments. Harassing anyone, particularly vulnerable women, would be deeply wrong and hypocritical of a group claiming to offer help.
But if the volunteers were to engage in harassment, we can rest assured that it is already illegal and would be prosecuted.
In reality, a 2018 review from the UK Home Office found that any instances of harassment were rare outliers, and that the police already had sufficient powers to tackle unlawful conduct.
And so, it’s unsurprising that across the UK, we have seen ideologically-motivated attempts to end “pro-life” activities repeatedly refused by the courts. Take the 2018 court judgment against Nottingham City Council that their injunction against a pro-life campaigner ‘simply could not be justified.’ Take the overturned charges against Brighton campaigner Andrew Stephenson in 2011, and indeed the successful lawsuit brought against the police for his unlawful arrest. Take Southwark Council openly admitting they simply don’t have sufficient evidence to create a buffer zone against pro-life charities, despite the tenacious demands of the Council’s members.
In fact, various women who have received wanted help from the groups to keep their children, right before their abortion appointments, have even spoken out in support of allowing the groups to offer their services to others in need.
And why not keep all options open? New polling from the BBC shows that more than one in ten women have felt “coerced” into having an abortion. Even if not talked into it by partners or “friends”, many women feel they have no option but abortion because of social or economic pressures. Why prevent them of hearing about offers to resolve these pressures?
Where Ealing and Richmond have already implemented “buffer zones”, even silent prayer is now illegal. How they’ll ever be “caught” is anyone’s guess. But refusal to pay a fine for the thoughtcrime can lead to prosecution.
Free speech is both hardest and most important to support when you’re hearing something that you disagree with. For those that support abortion, that means allowing others to voice their concerns and offer alternative options. There’s no point supporting free speech for a popular cause, but not a minority view. And furthermore, refusing to let the vulnerable women considering abortion hear about alternative options available to them is surely detrimentally patronising – all for the sake of an ideological “win”. There is comfort in the discomfort of democracy. We all have a right to be a part of the public conversation, and might just benefit from hearing out those who see things differently.
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The Conservative Cope
According to recent polling by YouGov, a measly 1% of 18- to 24-year-olds plan to vote Conservative at the next general election. Having won roughly 20% of this demographic in the 2019, the Conservative Party has lost 95% of its support amongst Britain’s youngest voters in less than four years.
In reaction to this collapse in support, journalists and commentators have taken to rehashing the same talking-points regarding Tory ineptitude and how to resolve it – build more houses, be more liberal, have younger parliamentarians, and so on.
I don’t intend to add this ever-growing pile of such opinion pieces. Instead, I want to put Tory ineptitude into perspective, in hopes of undermining the entrenched and parochial coping of Britain’s right leaning politicians and commentariat.
Even though Churchill didn’t coin the phrase, right-leaning talking-heads maintain that “if you’re not a liberal at 20 you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at 40 you have no brain”, even if not articulated as such; the progressive and liberal tendencies of the young are annoying, but natural and inevitable.
Of course, this is simply not true. Thatcher won the most support from 18- to 24-year-olds in 1979 and 1983, something which left-wing and right-wing critics are more than happy to point out, yet such doubters of the Iron Law of Liberal Youth have managed to reinvent the law, albeit without the caveat of an inevitable turn to the right in later life.
Socialists and capitalists don’t agree on many things, but they are united by the belief that Britain’s youth is a bastion of progressive leftism, marching in lock-step with other first-time voters around the world. In the former, this inspires great confidence; in the latter, this inspires a sense of foreboding.
Other commentators have blamed Brexit, which is also wrong. Despite the widely-cited age-gap between the average Remainer and Leaver, the UK’s relationship with the EU is pretty far down the average young person’s list of political priorities, hence why almost every avid post-Brexit remainer is a terminally online geriatric. Ironically, The Data from the British Election Study predicted a gradual increase in support for the Conservatives amongst Britain’s younger voters between 2015 and 2019.
Any person that has met the new cohort of young conservatives will attest their nationalistic and socially conservative modus operandi. Having its failures on crime and immigration reduction broadcast across the nation, its unsurprising that such people would lose faith in the Conservative Party’s ability to govern as a conservative party.
Indeed, given the Conservative Party’s eagerness to hold onto the Cameronite ‘glory days’ of tinkering managerialism, interspersed with tokenistic right-wing talking-points (i.e., the things which actually matter to the conservative base) its little wonder that the Tories have failed to win the young.
The Conservative Party Conference has a less than palatable reputation, but when the bulk of events revolve around uninformed conversations about tech, financial quackery, achieving Net Zero and lukewarm criticisms of The Trans Business, it is unsurprising so many Tory activists choose to preoccupy themselves with cocaine and sodomy.
Contrast this with the European continent, where right-wing populist parties are doing remarkably well with a demographic the Tories have all but officially dismissed. In the second round of France’s 2022 presidential election, incumbent president Emmanuel Macron, a centrist liberal europhile, was re-elected for a second term, with more than 58% of the vote. Although Macron obtained the majority of 18 to 24 years old who voted, it was over 60s which provided the backbone of his re-election, acquiring roughly 70% of their votes.
Moreover, whilst she was most popular with older voters (50- to 59-year-olds), the right-wing Marine Le Pen secured a sizeable portion of voters across all age brackets, especially those aged between 25- and 59- years old, filling the chasm left-behind by Macron’s near monopolisation of France’s oldest citizens.
These patterns were generally replicated in the first round of voting, although the far-left Melenchon garnered the most support from France’s youngest voters. At first glance, most right-leaning commentators would flippantly dismiss the wholesale liberal indoctrination of the youth, overlooking the astonishing fact that roughly 25% of France’s youngest voters support right-wing nationalism, whether that be Marine Le Pen or Eric Zemmour.
Due to growing suspicion of the two main parties in Germany, the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU, otherwise known as Union) and the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), third parties have gained support from the disaffected young, such the centre-left Greens, the centre-right Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Whilst it’s not doing as well as the Greens with first-time voters on the national stage, the AfD is making strides at the federal level and is doing noticeably well with Germans in their 30s, which isn’t insignificant in a country with a median age of 45. Compare this to Britain’s Conservatives, who start to faulter with anyone below the age of 40!
Moreover, the AfD is effectively usurping the CDU as the main right-leaning political force in many parts of Germany. For example, the AfD was the most popular party with voters under 30 in the CDU stronghold of Saxony-Anhalt during the last state election, a forebodingly bittersweet centrist victory.
Similarly, Meloni’s centre-right coalition, dominated by the nationalist Brothers of Italy party, didn’t lead amongst the nation’s youngest voters (18 to 34 years old), but they came extremely close, gaining 30% of their votes compared to the centre-left coalition’s 33% – and won every other age bracket in the last general election. Again, not bad for a country with a median age just shy of 50.
Moreover, these trends transcend Western Europe, showing considerable signs of life in the East. Jobbik, the right-leaning opposition to Viktor Orban’s right-wing Fidesz party, is highly popular party with university students, and despite losing the recent election, Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party obtained roughly a third of first-time votes in the election four years prior.
Roughly a quarter of first-time voters in Slovakia opted for the People’s Party-Our Slovakia, a far-right party with neo-Nazi roots, and roughly 35% of Bulgarian voters between 18- and 30-years-old voted for the right at the last parliamentary election, centre-right and far-right included.
Evidently, the success of right-wing nationalism amongst young voters across Europe, isn’t confined to republics. In addition to its republics, European constitutional monarchies, such as Sweden, Norway, and Spain, have materialised into right-wing electoral success.
The Moderate Party, Sweden’s main centre-right political force, won the largest share of voters aged by 18- and 21-years-of-age, with the insurgent right-wing Sweden Democrats placing second amongst the same demographic, coming only a few points behind their centre-right recipients of confidence-and-supply in government.
Further broken down by sex, the Sweden Democrats were distinctly popular with young Swedish men, and tied with the Social Democrats as the most popular party with Swedish men overall. Every age-bracket below 65-year-old was a close race between the Social Democrats and the Moderates or the Sweden Democrats, whilst those aged 65 and over overwhelmingly voted for the Social Democrats.
Similar to the Netherlands, whilst the Labour Party and Socialist Left Party were popular among young voters at the last Norwegian general election, support for centre-right Conservative Party and right-wing Progress Party didn’t trail far behind, with support for centre-left and centre-right parties noticeably increasing with age.
Whilst their recent showing wasn’t the major upset pollsters had anticipated, Spain’s right-wing Vox remains a significant political force, as a national party and amongst the Spanish youth, being the third most popular party with voters aged 18- to 24-year-olds.
Erstwhile, the centre-right Peoples Party (PP) is the most popular party with voters between 18- and 34-year-old with the centre-left Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) drawing most of its support from voters aged 55 and older, especially voters over 75.
Still, it is easy to see how sceptics might blame our culture differences with the European continent on the right’s alleged inability to win over the young. After all, its clear youth politics is taken more seriously on the European continent. The JFvD, the youth wing of the right-wing Forum for Democracy (FvD) in the Netherlands, is the largest political youth movement in the Benelux. The JFvD regularly organises activities which extend beyond campaign drudgery, from philosophy seminars to beach parties. Contrast this to the UK, where youth participation begins and ends with bag-carrying and leafleting; the drudgery of campaigning is only interspersed by instances of sexual harassment and other degenerate behaviour.
However, this suspicion is just as easily put to rest when we compare Britain to the rest of the Anglosphere, especially New Zealand, Canada, and the United States of America.
In the run-up to New Zealand’s general election, polling from The Guardian indicated greater support for the centre-right National Party (40%) amongst voters aged 18- to 34-years than the centre-left Labour Party (20%), a total reversal of the previous election, defying purported trends of a global leftward shift amongst younger generations.
More to the point, support was not going further left, with the centre-left Labour-Green coalition accounting for 34% of millennial votes, compared to the centre-right coalition’s rather astounding 50%; again, a complete reversal of previous trends and more proof than any that so-called ‘youthquakes’ aren’t as decisive as commentators and activists would have us believe.
Despite Labour’s success with young voters in 2017 and 2019, when the voter turnout of younger generations is as abysmal as Britain’s, it’s not exactly a given that parties and individuals of a non-socialistic persuasion should abdicate Britain’s future to a dopey loon like Corbyn. The creed of Britain’s youth isn’t socialism, but indifference.
If anything, right-leaning parties are more than capable of producing ‘youthquakes’ of their own. In a time when the British Conservatives are polling at 1% with their native young, the Canada’s Conservative Party are the most popular party with, polling at around 40% with 18- to 29-year olds, and despite his depiction as a scourge upon America’s youth, Trump comfortably won white first-time voters in both 2016 and 2020. Perhaps age isn’t the main dividing line in the Culture War after all!
In conclusion, the success of the Conservative Party with younger voters does not hinge upon our electoral system, our constitutional order, our place in Europe or the Anglosphere. Simply put, the Tories’ inability to win over the young is not an inability at all, but the result of coping; a stubborn and ideological unwillingness motivated by geriatric hubris, disproven time and time again by the success of other right-wing parties across the Western world.
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Win Big, Win Small; Win Everywhere
“We’re going to win so much; we’re going to win at every level…You may even get tired of winning.”
Donald Trump is not an orator in the traditional sense of an eloquent speaker, but his ability to generate soundbytes that inspired confidence in the conservative movement is great. The above quote highlights a particularly American and entrepreneurial attitude towards any given task, and with the conservative pushback against modern liberalism in the Southern United States one wonders whether the confident rhetoric helps motivate people to produce results. This is especially the case when comparing the energetic American conservative political scene with the dull, soggy and wheezing conservative movement here in Britain.
The conservative right movement in Britain is tired for a number of reasons. With very few significant wins on a national level, there is little to be happy about. Contrast this with the leftist-captured Conservative Party enacting progressive left’s policies for them, such as the recent passing of a section of the Public Order Bill (already an affront to liberty) in which the majority of Conservative MPs supported a clause to establish buffer zones around abortion clinics to ban protests; even the progressive organisation Liberty expressed concerns over how heavy-handed the bill is. In addition, we recently saw Liz Truss’ attempt to have open borders with India, though her resignation may lead to this being shelved – hopefully. Hope is something we are in short supply of, and so I propose a change in strategy.
Here is some context to what I will be proposing: the Mallard’s own Chris Winter graciously drove me to our recent drinks reception in Birmingham earlier in October, joined by Xander West and the notorious Sam Martin. I am sure many of our readers will know that with such a combination of personalities the drive was a great deal of fun. Towards the end of our journey there was a shift in the conversation towards more serious topics – the relevant one being discussing how to refer to our own conservative movement. I proposed a more neutral term – dare I say a more inclusive term to reflect the conservative right’s diversity – on the grounds that especially on the topic of nationhood, many on the conservative right are taking the route of focusing on local politics. This is on the grounds that national politics could very well be too enveloped by the progressive blob to be overthrown, and that there is much that can be done from the parish, borough or even county level to preserve local communities from imposed progressive dogmas and laws, housing illegal immigrants and asylum claimants and better regulating local police forces. This view was not well received; national politics is where it’s at. I propose that we will be in a far better position if we contested for power on both the local and national level.
I may be slightly misrepresenting the views of Mr West, Mr Martin and Mr Winter – the conversation was quite brief in the end as we tried to locate where to drop ourselves off – insofar as they may actually be open to contesting local politics. Consider the above more of a device used to advance the plot; to set the stage, if you will, because the conversation needs to be had over right-wing strategy.
To begin with, we as the conservative right need a goal to work towards. This much is easy; we want to resist and overthrow the progressive blob that dominates the political discourse and once-great institutions. I, alongside some other political innovators, are already putting together a policy paper aimed at tackling the national issue. Most other Mallard writers and Mallard-adjacent activists are dead-set on identifying and finding ways to counter national issues. However, there are clear examples of effective resistance to the progressive blob from the local government.
Linton-on-Ouse became part of the vocabulary of the Twitter right-winger due to the Home Office’s attempts to pack the small town of just 1,200 with asylum claimants. There were fears that asylum claimants would outnumber the local residents, drastically changing the shape of the town’s identity permanently. Thank God that a whopping 300 jobs would have been created – totally worth it. We were rightly up in arms about the whole affair, but I have not seen equivalently intense celebrations over the fact that the local council and community’s efforts to resist the mighty state’s will actually worked. The leader of Hambleton District Council, which covers the town, stated that had the council not resisted the policy that “there would already be asylum seekers on site”.
Guys, why aren’t we motivated by this to replicate this success elsewhere when possible? Why aren’t we trying to win at every level, including the local one?
The central government does a great deal to destroy traditional communities and families, but so does local government. This is why we should devote some resources, and I deliberately do not say “divert” because too many of us aren’t utilising any of our resources frankly, towards gaining power in local councils. For example, the awful, silly, loony w-word Green council of Brighton and Hove mandated that schools should tell white students that they are inherently not “racially innocent”. On a more disturbing note, it was specifically local councils that held a great deal of the blame for not appropriately protecting children from predominantly Muslim grooming gangs, which is especially important because this abuse is still taking place. Some of these councils gave groomers positions of power, which is all the more reason to make sure that these councillors do not have power. There is a fantastic short documentary on YouTube that goes into great detail about how the hard-left utilised local councils in London to push their agenda. Gentleman, take notes- they won by doing this!
It isn’t just local councils that make a difference. Local Education Authorities, while they are under the Department of Education, hire local people like one would hire for any other job. It’s true, the best long-run solution will be to either disband these institutions or reform them from the top, but until we are in a position to do that it is arguably important to frustrate the blob in their efforts to spread progressive liberalism to our children. Going back to the United States, take inspiration from there; local school boards in North Carolina and other states have banned “Critical Race Theory”. The conservative movement in America is motivated and is doing things with tangible results.
Donald Trump’s mantra of winning at every level is alive in American conservative politics, and the extent to which their victories are due to simply being motivated to actually do something is greater than I think others realise. The only major conservative figures in the United Kingdom with a near-equivalent level of reach and charisma include Nigel Farage, Reverend Calvin Robinson and Neil O’Brien MP. Nigel, as Samuel Martin and William Yarwood correctly pointed out in a recent Twitter space, is reluctant and exhausted – evident in his recent call for others to join him in leading the next movement against the Conservative Party. Reverend Robinson, a great Anglican Christian which the Church of England bloody-well needs, seems to be making some progress in making progress in political activism, though I would like to see more specific initiatives beyond electoral pacts. Neil O’Brien, a self-professed proponent of national conservatism (mega-based!) is likely constrained by a combination of his workload, the Tory Whip, and party politics in general to coordinate local efforts – though I may be wrong; if you live in his constituency, by all means get in contact with him to get something done.
What I am getting at by bringing these people up is that there aren’t enough energetic leaders in our political movement. There are commentators, politicians and so on, but leaders give out orders and organise people under their command. They have deputies and lieutenants who manage smaller units to coordinate activism in an effective manner. The conservative right in Britain needs leaders, which is a fact not lost on many in the Mallardsphere. Daniel Evans, another writer of ours, is especially a proponent of the idea that we need to be ready to do something when a leader, a commander, appears. In the meantime, I propose that we get to work, and that means you the reader if you’re currently idle, on any of the following projects:
- Stand as a council candidate and try to win. If there’s anything the aforementioned short documentary teaches us, it’s that families from all backgrounds tend to disapprove of their children being taught perverse nonsense. Use that to your advantage, and become a moral campaigner that your community can organise around. Lead efforts to oppose the central government’s housing of illegal immigrants. My biases aside as a party member, I really would recommend standing under the Conservative ticket purely because of the resources that would be available to you.
- If you do not wish to become an elected politician (I wouldn’t blame you), apply for a job at your Local Education Authority. Infiltration has to start somewhere, and you will be remembered fondly if you are the one brave enough to actually do it. Work competently and be virtuous; oppose progressivism when possible and strategically – there are some battles that can only be won after a great deal of scheming.
- Maybe the first two options just aren’t your cup of tea. You have a job already that is too demanding, or you aren’t qualified enough. That’s no problem, go for something less demanding; plain-old, traditional activism. You could apply to be a school governor and wield influence through there; get a group of your local like-minded friends to do so and wield even more influence. Start a community newsletter for parents to inform them of what their children are actually being taught to generate awareness of leftist indoctrination, and start informal parents’ groups as a forum to discuss concerns about what their children are being taught. Become a figure for your community to organise around and go to for opposing indoctrination.
If you are already working on influencing national politics and have a clear role in doing so, by all means continue – that is more or less what I am pursuing, to make it clear. But for those who are idle, or feel that the big state is too mighty to take on, why not take on something smaller, closer to you; the borough council? Our movement can win so much, on every level if we put the work in; win big, win small, win everywhere.
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Fukuyama, Huntington and The New World Order
In the aftermath of the Cold War, a 45-year ideological struggle between the two major superpowers, the USA and USSR, several political scholars have offered forecasts concerning the future of conflict and the geopolitical climate post-1991. Two men rose to dominate the debate, one encapsulating a liberal perspective and the other a realist one – and in the decades since, their ideas have come to form the foundations of modern international relations theory.
The first was the political scientist and economist Francis Fukuyama. A Cornell and Harvard alumnus, Fukuyama proposed his thesis in an essay titled ‘The End of History’ (1989), and later expanded on it in his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992). Essentially, he posits that with the collapse of the Soviet Union came the resolution of the battle of ideas, with liberal democracy and free trade having emerged as the unchallengeable winners.
Society, according to Fukuyama, had reached the end of its ideological evolution – global politics has, since the fall of the USSR, been witnessing ‘the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’. Indeed, we’ve certainly seen a massive increase in liberal democracies over the past few decades, jumping from 35 in 1974, to 120 in 2013 (or 60% of states). Additionally, the broad adoption of free trade and capitalism can be seen as delivering benefits to the global economy, which had quadrupled since the late 1990s.
Even communist states, Fukuyama said, would adopt some elements of capitalism in order to be prosperous in a globalised world economy. For example, the late 1970s saw reformists (such as Chen Yun) dominating the Chinese Communist Party and, under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership, the socialist market economy was introduced in 1978. This opened up the country to foreign investment, allowed private individuals to establish their own businesses, and privatised agriculture – these monumental reforms have resulted in spectacular economic growth, with many forecasters predicting that China will overtake the US as the world’s largest economy by around 2028. We’ve seen further evidence of this turn away from communism in favour of capitalism and freedom: upon its founding, the Russian Federation explicitly rejected the ideology, and many former Eastern Bloc states have enthusiastically adopted liberal democracy, with many also having since joined the European Union.
Regarding the example of China, however, the suppression of freedoms and rights has also been a staple of the CCP’s rule, especially under the current leadership of Xi Jinping. This links to a broader and fairly major critique of Fukuyama’s thesis: the growth of authoritarianism across the globe. With Law and Justice in Poland, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines (not to mention various military coups, including Turkey in 2016), liberal democracy is undeniably under threat, and clearly not the globally agreed-upon best system of government (this is particularly concerning as it applies to two major powers, China and Russia). Furthermore, 9/11 and the 7/7 bombings serve as pretty hallowing examples of an ideological clash between Western liberalism and Islamic fundamentalism – more broadly radical Islamism has emerged as an ideological challenger to both the West and to secular governments in the Middle East and North Africa.
The second was the academic and former political adviser Samuel P. Huntington. A seasoned expert in foreign policy (having served as the White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council under Jimmy Carter), Huntington laid out essentially a counter-thesis to Fukuyama’s, which first took the form of a 1993 Foreign Affairs article, and then a book in 1996, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order. Conflicts in the past, Huntington argues, had been motivated by a desire primarily for territorial gain and geopolitical influence (e.g. colonial wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were attempts to expand the economic spheres of influence of Western imperialist powers).
However, in the 21st Century, the primary source of global conflict will be cultural, not political or economic (and will be primarily between Western and non-Western civilisations). Thanks to globalisation and increasing interconnectedness, people will become more aware of their civilisational roots and of their differences with others – they will aim to entrench and protect these differences, rather than seek common ground with other civilisations.
The Clash of Civilisations identified 9 civilisations specifically: Western (USA, Western Europe, Australasia), Orthodox (Russia and the former USSR), Islamic (North Africa and the Middle East), African (Sub-Saharan Africa), Latin American (Central and South America), Sinic (most of China), Hindu (most of India), Japanese (Japan), and Buddhist (Tibert, Southeast Asia and Mongolia).
Huntington also highlighted the possible revival of religion, Islam in particular, as a major potential issue: it would come to represent a challenge to Western hegemony in terms of a rejection of Western values and institutions. His Foreign Affairs article featured the line ‘Islam has bloody borders’, suggesting that the Islamic civilisation tends to become violently embroiled in conflict with periphery civilisations – Huntington cites the conflicts in Sudan and Iraq as major examples.
It is clear, although still a touchy subject for politicians and policymakers, that Radical Islam poses a serious threat to the safety and stability of the Western world. Aside from aforementioned terror attacks, the rise of extremist fundamentalist groups such as the Taliban in Afghanistan and al-Shabaab in Somalia represents a larger opposition to Western values. However, Huntington’s failure to consider the deep divisions within the Islamic world (especially between Sunnis and Shias) is a major criticism of his argument. Additionally, many of the civilisations he identified show little interest in a clash with the West, mainly as it wouldn’t be in their economic interest to do so (such as India, Japan and Latin America, who are all very interdependent on Western powers).
The Clash of Civilisations thesis does, however, offer a number of steps that the West could take to prevent a potential clash. It should pursue greater political, economic and military integration, so their differences will be more difficult to exploit. Just last year we saw a clear example of this, in the form of AUKUS, the security pact between Australia, the UK and the US.
NATO and European Union membership should be expanded, with the aim of including former Soviet satellite states, to ensure they stay out of the Orthodox sphere of influence. Fortunately for the West, 2004 alone saw NATO admit Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia and Slovenia, followed in 2009 by Albania and Croatia. The military advancement of Islamic nations should be restrained, to ensure they don’t pose a serious threat to the West’s safety – a clear example of this is the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, reducing the nation’s stockpile of uranium to ensure it couldn’t become an anti-Western nuclear power.
Finally, the West must come to recognise that intervention in the affairs of other civilisations is ‘the single most dangerous source of instability and conflict in a multi-civilisational world’. This is a message that Western politicians have certainly not heeded, especially in regards to the Islamic world – troops were sent into Darfur in 2003, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011.
In his 2014 book Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy, Fukuyama argues that his ‘End of History’ thesis remains ‘essentially correct’, despite himself recognising the current ‘decay’ of liberal democracy around the world. Both scholars’ predictions have, at periods of time in the post-Cold War era, looked very strong and, at other times, laughably incorrect and misguided. Both Fukuyama and Huntington still offer valuable insights into global dynamics between cultures, as well as the future of global tensions and conflict. However, both theses are undercut by the modern global landscape: democracy is currently on the decline, which undercuts Fukuyama, and civilisational identity remains limited, which undercuts Huntington. Regardless of who got it right, both men have undeniably pushed the debate surrounding the international order to new heights, and will no doubt be remembered as intellectual titans in decades to come.
