The following is an essay I have written for an essay contest, the prompt is above. I welcome thoughts and criticism, especially because I feel that I've actually done a really bad job. Lol. Much appreciated, everyone who reads.

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The Decline of the West and the Rise of Davos Man

A brief perusal of historical trends reveals one overarching theme – what goes up, must come down. Every rise is accompanied by a later fall. So since the West, as a whole, has risen to great heights in the past few centuries, must it also fall? Of course the answer is yes, unless an irrational exceptionalism is to be employed. But this type of “we are immune” exceptionalism usually only thrives at the peak of a group’s power. American exceptionalism, for instance, was par for the course in the mid 1990s, at the peak of American power after the end of the Cold War. These days such an attitude seems foolishly optimistic and passé in most circles.

Some might object that a decline of American power is not the same as the decline of the West. They would surely be right to say so. However, if “the West” is broadly defined as the countries of Europe plus the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, then it is clear that the decline is not only inevitable, but has already begun. It is at present fashionable to be skeptical of the Western model of the liberal democracy and the free market system after the global financial crisis and unparalleled economic success of authoritarian China. But these events may have only served to open the eyes of the world to the reality: Western power has already peaked. The reasons are manifold, and are not the issue at hand. All that need be done is demonstrate that Western power is waning, and is not likely to rebound. And this task is relatively simple.

Financial instability, aging populations, uncompetitive workforces, maladapted, overextended, or irrelevant armed forces, and historical enmity with the non-Western world are all working against the West today. But perhaps more important than the decline of Western power in an absolute sense is the its decline in a relative sense, when compared to the rest of the world. The emerging markets of what was once called the Third World are fast making this nomenclature obsolete. The growth of China and India has captivated the world, and though cooler heads point out the areas where they still lag far behind the West, this misses the point. What is remarkable at a macro level about the rapid growth of non-Western economies is that for the first time since the rise of the West, people besides Westerners have been significantly empowered.

When the West had full control over the world, it mattered little what an Indian or Brazilian thought of the world order. Now, though, these countries and others like them are growing, are powerful, and are democracies. It now does matter what these kinds of people think. The West is still powerful and controls much, but it controls less and less as time passes.

The first clear evidence of this gradual decline came in the world wars of the twentieth century and the Great Depression. These calamities affected the whole world, but the West, as the controller of the world, paid the most dearly. Following this closely was a mass decolonization of former empires. Political independence for most of the world meant that the remaining modes of control the West used were less obvious and less direct. The West, in effect, went from controlling most of the world to merely influencing most of the world (mostly through economics).

But now even this influence is waning. There is surely still a great deal of influence exerted by Western multinational corporations, but these groups increasingly less represent “the West” than they represent the new masters of the world – the global elite.

This calls attention to the question that naturally follows when the question “is the decline of the West inevitable?” is answered in the affirmative: “Who will take its place?” Historically, the decline of one group led eventually to a new group taking the reins of power. My argument is that this will still occur, but in a new and unique way. Instead of the new dominant group being unified by geographical location and association with a region or group of states, the dominant group that will direct the world’s affairs is the new “global elite,” unified by status, not geography.

Hailing from no particular region of the globe, this elite will be composed of leaders from the West, from the emerging markets, and from every corner of the world. The prerequisite for entry into this group of decision-makers is being powerful. In this sense “the West” will continue to exert considerable influence on the direction of the world in that many of these powerful people will come from Western countries, but this distinction of “the West and the rest” will become ever more irrelevant.

This is because these global elites will have (and already do have) more in common with each other than they do with the ordinary people of their own countries, in what approaches an emergent “elite culture.” This phenomenon has not gone unnoticed by commentators; Samuel Huntington has gone as far as coining a term for this kind of person: “Davos Man.” Beyond cosmetic commonalities like dress, language and lifestyle, which are no doubt important, there are important similarities in the worldview of these people.

All are committed to the idea of the “global order,” and, to a large extent, free market capitalism, in the form of economic growth. There are and will always be cosmetic differences between these people, but at the end of the day they will continue to manage the entire world as a whole.

This is different from a multi-polar prediction for the world system, because the multi-polar model ignores the who and how of the world’s power structures. Though on a state-by-state level the multi-polar model will surely be most accurate, it would be an oversimplification not to acknowledge who it is that is actually running the world within the framework of the multi-polarity – the global elite.

This is not to say that there will no longer be competition between actors in the world just as there is now, and it is not to say that the old ideas of “the West” and so on will evaporate into thin air. These dividing lines will still exist, but will be in practice far less significant than the overarching concerns of globalization, growth, stability, and so on.

Therefore, to fully answer the question on the inevitability of the decline of the West, one must examine the rise of this global elite. The answer to the question is, then, yes, though the decline will be partial and give way to a new system unlike the balance of power of the past.

In some sense, the West helped to create this globalized world with its emerging elite, and the common outlook held by these powerful people has been in large part shaped by Western ways of thinking. In this sense the West will always be an important part of the global fabric, but that comes as no surprise. The impact of the British Empire is still felt today – indeed the Roman Empire’s legacy continues to be apparent in the modern world. This would not stop anyone from being confident that these powers have declined, just as the West will decline. In its place: a cosmopolitan class of the world’s rich and powerful, with a common culture of sorts, will direct the world’s affairs.