By Stephen Smoot
Mondal morning saw an oft-predicted event start to unleash serious concern in worldwide markets.
Tokyo’s Nikkei index, Japan’s benchmark version of the New York Stock Exchange, dropped 12.4 percent that day, its worst one day drop since the “Black Monday” worldwide crash in 1987. The market lost almost $800 billion off of its peak market value, according to Reuters.
It’s important to note that the crash in 1987 did not lead to similarly drastic issues in the broader economy. It’s also important to realize that it’s too early to know, at this point, what the short and long-term effects will be.
Investors feared economic numbers from the United States, including weak jobs numbers and other issues. Dow futures also dropped by 1200 points early Monday morning, showing that the market issues did not remain siloed in Asia. Other stock markets started to drop last week around the globe.
In addition to financial panic comes the potentially more devastating crash of Biden’s foreign policy in the Middle East as United States Secretary of State Tony Blinken warns of the possibility of imminent war between Israel and Iran. This comes after 10 months of mealy-mouthed support for Israel after it suffered attacks by Hamas and the Biden Administration policy of coddling the Islamic Republic.
Contrary to the belief of many who learned it wrong in school, generally the global economy and business community fear war as a destabilizing event to trade and development, as opposed to a profit opportunity. Should a general war come to the Middle East, it will bring even more problems to an already teetering worldwide economy.
The connecting theme of these world crises is a more troubling one, the crisis of the West.
Facing these challenges is a Western Civilization whose leaders have grown tired of leading. Many of these elites share an ideology that blames Western leadership for every calamity and atrocity while excusing the exact same behavior from non Westerners. Elites have endured generations of expensive schooling to hear that the West is evil, the West only oppresses, and that its downfall would be welcome to the cause of global peace and justice.
Except for one problem. To paraphrase Winston Churchill’s famous words about democracy, the West is the worst and least just civilization that has ever existed on Earth – except for all the rest.
Western Civilization draws from a Judeo-Christian background of morality, ethics, and an effective and proper blueprint for how individuals and societies can run justly. Rome gave the world the best and most powerful classical notions of the rule of law and a government-created order that worked for the people. Greece helped mankind to integrate science and philosophy into other disciplines, making them effective drivers of progress.
When critics attack the West, they use the West’s own religious and philosophical standards to illustrate where the West has fallen short. Since Western Civilization is an entirely human endeavor, it does endure the pitfalls of all such projects – falling victim from time to time to the seven deadly and other less destructive sins. When the Bible tells the story of St. Peter denying Christ three times before the cock crows, it explicitly puts human custodianship of God’s faith in that same category.
The difference is that the West has remained self-aware of its problems for much of its existence. Only recently has Western Civilization’s elites and leadership started questioning the capacity and even appropriateness of its position in the world.
Leaders in Western nations, such as the United States and Europe, as well as Western inspired nations, systems, and societies – such as China and Japan – must look to those in the past who rose to the occasion in a crisis.
But who in power in London, Tokyo, Paris, Beijing, Moscow, Rome, and especially Washington DC appear capable of pulling an Otto von Bismarck type move to bring the world together and hash out solutions based not on emotions, not on the feelings of clueless children flying flags in the streets or on social media, not on recommendations from non profit based “experts,” but on what really matters – national interest?
Figures such as Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington, Abraham Lincoln, Pope John Paul II, and others who drew from faith in Western ideals instead of shrinking in embarrassment from them show the way. Strength and wisdom must rally together to win the day and prevent cataclysms of war and economic disaster.