CDR Salamander - The West’s International Order is on Borrowed Time

One of the more tiresome phrases one hears bandied about is usually a variation on one of these generally interchangeable themes:

• The International Rules Based Order

• Liberal International Order

It is all on borrowed time.

It was a vision of what was once the center-right and center-left who wanted to create a different, more humane world. Its triumph and high water mark was victory in the Cold War, but then it lost its way once the 68’ers (typified by Bill Clinton in the U.S. and Tony Blair in the UK, along with their fellow travelers in other Western nations) took power.

In a series of feel-goodism project from open-borders to unchecked social spending, they eventually degraded themselves into cronyism, sectarianism, and corruption.

Financially unsustainable and intellectually spent, its sputtering death rattles are there for all to see.

What comes next, I don’t know—but we’re not going to like it parts of it. How much of the Old Order remains will vary from country to country, but the hangover of the errors of the last six decades will not be easy to fix without some very—from a late 20th century perspective—illiberal actions.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of what was attempted after WWII, but it was only effective for a quarter century or so. It had enough momentum to coast and drift another quarter century, then it started to eat itself by those who didn’t remember why it existed and what it was supposed to do. I wish the best parts of it could last forever, but our inheritance was mortgaged and can’t be paid back. That is what will lead the reset as we move into mid-century.

It is that simple. The math is what it is.

Across the West and the non-Western developed nations there is a similar problem. The first ingredient is one they all share, but the West has a second accelerant that is especially dangerous. We’ll get to that in a second, but let’s look at the first.

All the economic models we’ve developed, in peace and war, since Adam Smith were based on a few assumptions, one of which was a proper demographic pyramid. Lots of young people coming up to take a productive role in society, advance civilization, and—in the last hundred years of the modern welfare state—help fund a growing government that cares for those who cannot care for themselves.

In the West, the U.S. has one of the healthiest demographic profiles. Not great, but in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Give the chart below a look, especially at 1926 during the Roaring Twenties, and again in 1965 with LBJ’s Great Society kickofff.

In the last couple of weeks, we’ve all been watching the cities in Europe—especially in France—burn. She’s not alone. Significant leftist riots have been seen in Italy and Belgium. In spite of their decades-old welfare states, the masses claim not to have enough.

The gravy train is over, but no one wants to admit it. The Western Welfare State is running on inertia and political cowardice at this point, right up until the bondholders close their wallets.

Yes, I include the U.S. in this, but we won’t see the collapse first. That will happen in Europe, and when the break comes, it will make the events of the last month seem like an event hosted by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

It is baked into the cake. The tens of millions of unskilled, unassimilated, and unemployable illegal migrants living off national treasuries to which they have never contributed are just another accelerant to the conflagration that is coming.

For the sake of brevity, let’s take one of our Western allies, Italy, as an example.

As we showed the relatively healthy American demographics earlier, let’s look at the Italian one, over a shorter period.

What is coming down the tracks for Italy and most of the West?

These are the good old days.

There is a good datapoint by Ani Chkhikvadze in the Washington Examiner titled Italians are taking to the streets, but are they honest about the problem?

After decades beneath the American security umbrella, many Italians came to enjoy the luxury of regarding war as somebody else’s concern. That bargain made possible generous welfare commitments. Even with war raging in Ukraine and Russia conducting terrorist attacks across Europe, many Italians still feel the threat is distant.

“I’m here because I’m anti-war,” said one protester. “The government puts a lot of money in armament and in war, but we are dying poor and nobody is doing anything.”

These claims deserve closer scrutiny.

In Italy, pensions, healthcare, and social protection absorb about 56% of all public spending, roughly 28% of GDP. It’s the third-highest allocation of any European Union nation. Pensions dominate the bill at about 16% of GDP, the second-highest share in the EU after Greece. In contrast, defense spending sits at roughly 2% of GDP, but far lower than the U.S. and other NATO allies would like to see. Moreover, Italy has only reached this level by counting security spending as part of its armed forces total.

In Italy, pensions, healthcare, and social protection absorb about 56% of all public spending, roughly 28% of GDP. It’s the third-highest allocation of any European Union nation. Pensions dominate the bill at about 16% of GDP, the second-highest share in the EU after Greece. In contrast, defense spending sits at roughly 2% of GDP, but far lower than the U.S. and other NATO allies would like to see. Moreover, Italy has only reached this level by counting security spending as part of its armed forces total.

But the basic problem is the same as that afflicting France. Namely, that with debt approaching 140% of GDP, Italy needs to cut spending, or cut spending and raise taxes. Demographics also matter here.

Young Italians have good reason to feel disadvantaged by a system that devotes far more to pensions than to education, which receives roughly 4% of GDP. These outlays will only increase as Italy’s population continues to age rapidly. Rising rents and everyday expenses make life harder, even for those with jobs. But another state subsidy won’t solve the issue. The real answer is to leave more money in people’s pockets by cutting spending and taxes, and by removing heavy barriers to building homes and creating jobs.

Italy knows where irresponsible fiscal management leads.

What are their political options?

Unlike her predecessors, Meloni has done a good job cutting back some of that expenditure and steering the budget toward balance, and ratings agencies have taken note. But rising fuel prices and protests by truck drivers, shop owners, and fishermen in the south are testing that discipline, bringing pressure from small-business owners her coalition counts among its voters.

Whether discontent ultimately costs Meloni power remains uncertain. On the Left, Elly Schlein’s Democratic Party and Giuseppe Conte’s Five-Star Movement struggle to form a coherent alternative. On Meloni’s far-right, former general Roberto Vannacci’s radical Futuro Nazionale competes for conservative voters. There is plenty of competition to channel Italy’s unhappiness.

Meloni is the moderate option. The left is small, but incredibly active and violent. The ‘normies’ just want order and, in a way, the effective welfare state they have always been promised—but will never be able to afford once the borrowing stops—an effective welfare state.

There is no rich and fat U.S.A. that will be able to come to the rescue. The PRC will have problems of its own and, if anything, will offer only temporary help in exchange for permanent vassalage.

The wheels will come off Europe first.

One of the largest barriers to stopping the inevitable is the European Union (EU) and the European Commission on Human Rights (ECHR).

Their ruling center-right and center-left nomenklatura created this crisis; they won’t be able to arrest it.

The EU and ECHR—as they exist and function today—are largely responsible for the masses of migrants who are heavy weights around the ankles of European leaders trying to navigate the coming train wreck. The money spent on the migrant masses no one invited will have to be the first thing to go once the levee breaks. There is growing talk of action, but for now it is only talk. When action does take place, how do you think these masses and their allies will react?

At the ballot box and through ‘vibrancy’ in the streets, the left relies on unassimilated migrants of the first, second, and third generations of unassimilated migrants as the shock troops of their Red-Green-Green alliance of traditional leftists, neo-pagan environmentalists, and Islamic supremacists seeking power.

They need a flag. Here, I have one for them. They’ll like the construction with the communist red, environmentalist green, and Islamic green. Must credit Salamander.

That is what you are seeing in the streets from Paris to Milan: a test drive of the RGG Alliance in case the normies decide to vote for someone else but them to address the problem.

It is good, in a way, that most of the West’s enemies—China and Russia—have worse problems from a demographic and debt perspective. But the accelerant to disorder, and the inability of the ruling powers to stop it, are Western problems that make what is to come unavoidable—and worse than anyone would have imagined at the turn of the century.

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