The US world order is slowly unraveling before our eyes.
For years, Americans have been conditioned to believe that its prosperity and dominance of global affairs would be perpetual.
It looked that way from the end of World War II to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and even into the first decade of the 21st century.
However, the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 completely rocked many Western countries, with many of them still not fully recovering from that crisis.
Fast forward to 2020, governments in the West decided to impose the harshest of lockdown policies that wrecked millions of small businesses and economically displaced millions of people.
And the situation has only gotten worse. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted many governments to impose sanctions and oil embargoes on Russia. Such impulsive actions make for good short-term politics. After all, how can anyone in their right mind support the big, bad Vladimir Putin?
However, sanctions and other forms of economically punitive measures have nasty side effects. For example, by cutting itself off of Russian energy exports, the Collective West has now subjected its citizens to devastating energy price hikes. What originally was a military conflict between two powers on the periphery of Europe has now morphed into a full-fledged economic crisis. The West is facing an economic downturn that could have many citizens experience wholesale reductions in their living standards.
This is what happens when societies fully embrace economic interventionism and fantastical foreign policies.