Emmanuel Todd: The Disasters of the West

instytutsprawobywatelskich.pl 1 month ago

"The tenth and last surprise of this war is about to come true. It is the defeat of the West. This may be surprising, considering the war is not over. However, the defeat is certain due to the fact that the West destroys itself more than it is attacked by Russia" –Emmanuel Todd.

Universitas publications thank you for sharing a passage for publication. We encourage you to read the full book.

Instead of entering the Polish edition

"The hammer's impact into glass" – Stanisław Mackiewicz erstwhile titled his review of Adolf Bocheński's book. A akin effect can be, yes! – it should trigger Emmanuel Todd's book. With his considerations, hypotheses, predictions, the French break up the worldview and communicative bubble in which we live; he points to phenomena, processes, threats that are not so much spoken of, which is frequently not noticed at all. The categories and concepts it introduces, the analytical framework it proposes, inspire reflections that go far beyond the reading time itself.

Todd is asking serious questions not only about the condition of the world, which – as part of the widely understood Western – we defend, but above all whether our actions are speeding up its collapse.

Today in Poland the view that in global relations our most urgent task is to convince others to our point of view is very popular, even dominant.

To those who operate in this field with genuine passion, I do not deny any noble intentions, but I stay skeptical of the actual benefits that this kind of persuasion over analysis can bring to us. A much more crucial task seems to me to know what others think. And this is not to make it easier for us to drag them on our side, but due to the fact that we can learn from them, learn something, verify – possibly – the convictions that we believe to be indisputable.

To improve the quality of my own reasoning is, in my opinion, in these turbulent times and in our position a road much more safe than a futile – especially in the long run – attempts to make others think like us.

In Poland, it is rather regular to discover that “Western Europeans do not see the planet as we do” and, in particular, the French are being branded. The author of this book is, of course, French, but that is not what makes its external view so worthy of knowing. Emmanuel Todd present stands out from across the planet with Western intellectual independence. His book not only provokes but forces him to think; it is impossible to ignore it present if 1 wants to realize the planet around us and seriously wonder where it is going.

"What do we want from intellectuals – wrote Bronisław Łagowski in 2008 – to put us to sleep by repeating the cleft and boring correct views, or to make us curious, what does the moon look like on the another side? I think Emmanuel Todd is 1 of the most stimulating researchers in modern politics." These words are possibly more applicable present than 17 years ago.

Jan Sadkiewicz
Kraków, November 25, 2025

Certain to know in advance the secret of the unfinished adventure of the human species, they look at the confusion of yesterday's and today's events with the seriousness of the judge, who greatly separates praise and reproach. Historical existence, as we truly experience it, is full of clashes between individuals, groups and nations, clashes in defence of incompatible interests and ideas. Neither the modern man nor the historian is able to admit without reservation 1 or the other. Not due to the fact that we don't know what's right or wrong. However, we do not know the future, and no historical substance is free of flaws.

Raymond Aron
Opium of Intellectuals, Chapter V: The Sense of History,
tr. Czesław Miłosz

Hier stehe them, their kann nicht anders.
(Behold, I stand here and I cannot do otherwise.)

Marcin Luther at the parliament in Worma (April 1521)

Preface, September 2025
From Disaster to Breakdown

Less than 2 years after the French issue of the Western Disaster, in January 2024, the main predictions contained in the book proved true. Russia has sustained the clash both militarily and economically. The American arms manufacture is barely breathing. European economies and societies are at the brink of implosion. Even before the final collapse of the Ukrainian army, a further phase of Western decay was reached.

I have always been against the Russian-phobic politics of the United States and Europe, but as a Western citizen attached to liberal democracy, A Frenchman educated in England, a mother's kid who, during planet War II, found refuge in the United States, I am horrified by the consequences that this foolishly waged war will bring to us people of the West.

And we're only at the brink of disaster. A breakthrough is approaching, after which the final consequences of the disaster will be revealed.

"The remainder of the world" (Global South or Global Majority), which has so far been limited to supporting Russia by refusing to boycott its economy, openly declares its support for
Vladimir Putin. BRICS expands by accepting fresh members and bonding. The pressures of the United States to take a clear stand on either side have led India to choose independence: pictures showing Putin, Xi and Modi at the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in August 2025 will stay a symbol of this landmark moment. But the Western media continues to represent Putin as a monster, and the Russians as slaves. The same media were incapable to admit that the remainder of the planet saw him as leader, and in the Russians average people, bearers of circumstantial Russian culture and the will of sovereignty. I fear that our media will only deepen our blindness, incapable to see the revival of Russia's prestige in the eyes of the remainder of the world, which has been exploited economically and treated with arrogance by the West for centuries. The Russians dared. They challenged the Empire – and won.

Week of civilian Affairs

Since 2020 we have been discovering uncomfortable truths and announcing stories that have the power to change Poland.

Donate and become our contributor

The irony of past is that the Russians – a European nation, a white nation, utilizing Slavic language – became a military shield for the remainder of the planet due to the fact that the West denied them a place in their own midst after the fall of communism.

I can draw here a model of Western decay, despite Donald Trump's inconsistent policy, the American president of defeat. This inconsistency is not due, I believe, to his unstable and possibly perverse personality, but to a dilemma which the United States is incapable to resolve. On the 1 hand, their leaders – both at the Pentagon and at the White home – know that the war is lost and that Ukraine will should be abandoned. Therefore, reason suggests giving up the war. On the another hand, the same sense makes them feel that withdrawal
Ukraine will have dramatic consequences for the Empire, much more serious than those after the Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan wars. We are dealing here with the first strategical defeat of America with a global dimension, in the context of the mass deindustrialisation of the United States and the difficult, just begun reindustrialisation. China has become the mill of the planet – their very low fertility will prevent them from replacing the United States, but industrial competition is besides late.

The dedollarisation of the planet economy has already begun.

Trump and his advisors can't accept this due to the fact that it would mean the end of the Empire. And yet the post-imperial era should be the goal of the MAGA task – Make America large Again – which assumes the reconstruction of the American national state. But for America, whose ability to produce real goods is very weak present (see chapter 9 on the actual nature of the American economy), it is impossible to quit surviving on the credit that is allowed to produce dollars. specified imperial-monetary retreat would consequence in a sharp fall in the standard of living, including among voters
Trump of the folk class. The first budget of his second presidency – 1 large Beautiful Bill Act – so remains an imperial project, despite the protectionist tariff provisions that represent a dream alternatively than a real program. OBBBA increases arms spending and deficit. And in the United States, the budget deficit is inevitably the production of dollars and the trade deficit.

Imperial dynamics, or alternatively imperial inertia, continues to undermine dreams of the rebirth of a productive national state.

W Europe's military defeat is inactive misunderstood by leaders. They weren't the ones moving the guns. The plans of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summertime of 2023 (when I was writing the Curse of the West) were developed by the Pentagon. The U.S. military, although conducting war with Ukrainians, know that Russian defence has proved effective – not only due to the fact that the West was incapable to produce adequate weapons, but besides due to the fact that Russian military proved to be simply intelligent. European leaders
provided only weapons – and that is not the most important. While unaware of the scale of the military disaster, they already know that their own economies have been paralyzed by the policy of sanctions, in peculiar by cutting off inexpensive Russian energy. The economical division of the European continent was an act of suicide madness. The German economy is stagnant. poorness and social inequality are expanding throughout the West. Britain stands on the edge of the abyss. France is right behind it. Society and political systems are blocked.

Negative economical and social dynamics existed in the West already before the war and already generated tensions. It was visible, at various levels, throughout Western Europe. Free trade undermined the foundations of industry. Immigration has become the origin of identity syndrome, especially among the folk classes without unchangeable and decent employment.

Looking deeper, the negative dynamics of decay has a cultural character: mass access to higher education creates expanded societies, in which people with higher education – 20, 30 or even 40% of the population – begin to live in their own bubble, consider themselves superior, despise folk environments and refuse physical work or industry. Primary education for all (common alphabetization) fed democracy, creating a society uniform and of egalitarian subconscious. The universality of higher education, on the another hand, contributed to the birth of oligarchy, and sometimes of plutacracy – societies spread out, surrounded by a subconscious sense of inequality.

And the top paradox: the improvement of higher education has led to lower intellectual levels in these oligarchy and plutacracy!

I described this chain of consequences over a 4th century ago in L’illusion économique[1], released in 1997. Western manufacture moved to the remainder of the world, and, of course, to the erstwhile folk democracies of east Europe, which – freed from russian Russia – regained their centuries-old position of periphery dominated by Western Europe. In Chapter 3, I am discussing in item the phenomenon of these "internal Chinas", where industrial workers are inactive numerous. Meanwhile, in Europe, the elite of people with higher education has contributed to the improvement of "populism".

The war raised the temperature of European tensions.

It besides contributed to the impoverishment of the continent. Above all, however, what should be considered the biggest strategical failure has taken the credibility of leaders incapable to lead their countries to victory. The improvement of conservative folk movements (usually referred to by media elites as "populist", "extremely right" or "nationalist") is gaining momentum: UK reform
in the UK, AfD in Germany, National Unity in France... Oh, ironic! economical sanctions, after which NATO expected a government change in Russia, are 1 step distant from triggering the whole
cascades of government change in Western Europe. Western ruling classes are losing credibility due to disaster at the very minute erstwhile authoritarian Russian democracy regains legitimacy through victory, or alternatively it gains "superlegitization", as Russia's return to stableness under Putin has already provided him with undeniable and full public assurance at the very beginning.

This is our planet at the beginning of 2026.

The fall of the West takes the form of a “hierarchical fissure”.

The United States is giving up control of Russia and, I believe, increasingly, besides China. Subjected to Chinese blockade in the import of samare, the uncommon component essential in military aviation, they can no longer dream of military opposition to China. The remainder of the planet – India, Brazil, the arabian world, Africa – takes advantage of the chance and besides eludes their influence. The United States, therefore, turns on its European and east Asian "soyants", in its fresh effort to over-use, but also, to be fair, out of frustration. To escape humiliation, hide their own weakness from the planet and from themselves, they punish Europe. The Empire eats itself. This was the sense of customs tariffs and forced investments imposed by Trump to Europeans – alternatively colonial servants of a shrinking empire than real partners.

The times of solidarity of liberal democracy are over.

Trumpism is “white folk conservatism”. What emerges in the West is not solidarity of folk conservatisms, but the breaking of interior bonds of solidarity. The anger resulting from failure pushes all country to turn against the weaker of itself to respond to its own bitterness. The United States is so turning against Europe or Japan. France resumes its conflict with Algeria, its erstwhile colony. It cannot be doubted that Germany, from Scholz to Merz, will want to retaliate for its humiliation on weaker European partners. My country, France, seems to me the most threatened.

One of the fundamental concepts associated with the defeat of the West is nihilism. I explain how the “zero state” of Protestant religion – secularization in the final phase – explains not only the collapse of American education and industry. Zero states besides open up a metaphysical void. I am not a believer and I do not advocate the return of religion (I do not think it is possible), but as a historian, I must admit that the failure of social values of spiritual origin leads to a moral crisis, to the impulse to destruct things and people (i.e. to war) and yet to effort to abolish reality itself (the phenomenon of transsexuality in the case of American democrats and negation of warming
climate among Republicans, for example). The crisis affects all countries completely secularized, but is more severe in those whose religion was Protestantism or Judaism – absoluteist in their search for transcendence than in those where Catholicism dominated, more open to the beauty of the planet and life on Earth. It is in the United States and Israel that we observe the improvement of parody forms of conventional religions – parodys, in my opinion, nihilistic.

This irrational dimension is simply a central part of disaster. It does not just boil down to a "technical" failure of power, but besides means moral exhaustion and deficiency of a affirmative existential goal, leading to nihilism.

Nihilism stands for the will of European leaders – especially those from the Protestant Baltic coast – to extend the war with Russia through constant provocations. The American destabilization of the mediate East, a region in which the rage resulting from the American defeat against Russia, is most pronounced, besides emerges from nihilism. First of all, we should not give in to the overly easy obviousness of the alleged war autonomy of the Netanyahu government in Israel, whether it be about genocide in Gaza or the attack on Iran. The nihilistic effects of zero and zero Judaism are indeed tragically intertwined in these outbreaks of violence. But throughout the mediate East it is the United States – delivering weapons and sometimes attacking itself – that is yet liable for chaos. They are pushing Israel to act, as they had before pushed Ukraine. During president Trump's first term, a United States embassy was established in Jerusalem, and Trump himself was the first to come up with the thought of transforming Gaza into a seaside resort. I am aware that a full book should be written to prove this thesis – a book in which all interactions between players would be analysed 1 by one. But as a professional historian, who has been active in geopolitics for half a century, I feel that, like the NATO Europe, Israel has ceased to be an independent state.

The problem of the West is, in fact, the programmed death of a national state.

The Empire is vast and decomposes among sound and rage. This Empire is already polycentric, divided for its purposes, schizophrenic. However, no of it is independent of the whole. Trump is its current "centre" and at the same time its best ideological-practical expression, combining a rational will to retreat to its immediate sphere of influence (Europe and Israel) with nihilistic impulses pushing into war. These tendencies – withdrawal and force – besides uncover themselves in the heart of the American Empire, where there is simply a mechanics for dividing the hierarchy from within. Anglo-American authors increasingly mention the upcoming civilian war.

Welcome to internships, internships and volunteering!

Join us!

American Plutocracy is pluralistic. There's a plutocracy of financiers, oilers, Silicon Valley. Trumpian Plutocrats – Texas oil magnates and fresh allies from Silicon Valley – despise educated Democratic elites from the East Coast. These, in turn, despise simple white Trumpists from the American interior, and they despise black again
Democratic voters. And so on...

One of the most crucial features of today's America is that its leaders have an expanding problem with distinguishing interior from external ones – despite attempts by the MAGA movement to halt the influx of immigrants from the south by building a wall. The army shoots ships coming out of Venezuela, bombes Iran, enters the centers of American cities ruled by Democrats, and even orders Israeli aviation to attack Qatar – a state in which there is simply a immense American
military base. all reader of discipline fiction literature will admit in this disturbing series the first symptoms of dystopia – a planet in which power mixes with decay, hierarchy, violence, poorness and perversion.

So let us stay ourselves – outside America. Let us keep autonomy in the perception of what is interior and external, let us have a sense of proportion, contact with reality, our own imagination of what is just and beautiful. Let us not let our European leaders – privileged, but lost in History, despairing of defeat and terrified of the possible of future judgement by their own peoples – drive us into war madness.

Above all, let's keep looking for meaning.

Paris, September 25, 2025