Auguste Maxime: The West is Disintegrating — Just Listen to Its Leaders

The post-1945 world order is crumbling, and nowhere is this breakdown more apparent than in the words of Western leaders themselves.

Auguste Maxime

What the Russians call the “Collective West” is disintegrating before our eyes. This military-economic bloc — anchored in the United States and extending to its European vassals, along with Canada, Japan, South Korea, and Australia — is losing coherence and direction.

Since 1945, and even more so after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the American hegemon has shaped the international order through its military dominance (NATO) and monetary supremacy (the dollar). Today, these two pillars are cracking.

The military defeat against Russia in Ukraine has undermined NATO’s credibility, while the expansion of US debt and the weaponization of the dollar are compromising its role as the world reserve currency.

Western leaders are destabilized by the emergence of a multipolar world whose rules they no longer dictate. Their rhetoric — delusional and detached from reality — reveals more about their own state of mind than about the world they claim to describe. This is no time to try and rationalize their choices. Their world is collapsing and they can feel it.

Just Listen to What They Say

Here are ten striking statements made by Western political figures over the past three years:

President Trump

“I think Greenland will be worked out with us. I think we’re going to have it. And I think the people want to be with us.”—

Donald Trump speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, January 2025.

Denmark must be amazed at the violence with which the Americans treat them when it comes to Greenland. Copenhagen has long been one of Washington’s loyal allies, even offering its undersea internet cable infrastructure to serve the interests of US intelligence services. It was through this cooperation that Denmark enabled the NSA to spy on several European leaders, as revealed by “Operation Dunhammer”, which took place between 2012 and 2014 and was brought to public attention in 2021.

Ursula von der Leyen

“The Russian military is taking chips from dishwashers and refrigerators to fix their military hardware, because there are no semiconductors anymore.”

Ursula von der Leyen, September 2022.

This comment on Russia’s military-industrial complex has aged poorly. Moscow produces nearly 3 million artillery shells per year, compared to 1.2 million for the US and Europe combined. Since November 2024, Russia has also deployed the Oreshnik ballistic missile — a hypersonic weapon reaching Mach 10 (around 12,350 km/h), striking targets up to 5000 km and with precision — a development that has raised concerns within NATO.

Scott Bessent

Bessent: “You’re insane for building Nord Stream II. What are you doing?… Tucker Carlson: “So we blew it up.”  Bessent: “Somebody did – [laughing]“

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Tucker Carlson, April 2025

It’s one thing for the U.S. to sabotage Germany’s energy infrastructure — the very ally it claims to protect. It’s another to joke about it during a filmed interview. The destruction of the pipelines was an act of war. Today, it is a “family secret” — known by all, mentioned by none. Talking about it means destroying what little unity remains in the “Collective West”. Against this backdrop, it was surreal to hear J.D. Vance lecturing Europeans in Munich last February on the need to reindustrialize —  after German energy prices had soared. How much longer before the Bundesbank repatriates the €100 billion in gold still sitting in New York?

Donald Trump

“You don’t have the cards.”

Trump to Zelensky, during the meeting at the White House, February 2025.

In 2019, the US think tank RAND Corporation published a report entitled Overextending and Unbalancing Russia. The paper described how the US could weaken Russia by arming Kiev, forcing Moscow to increase its economic and military resources, in the war in Dombass that began in 2014. But by 2025, the opposite scenario had played out. The US and the EU are bogged down in this proxy war of attrition that Donald Trump wants to put an end to. The much-vaunted “Western solidarity” found its true expression in the Oval Office, when Trump told Zelensky: “You’re gambling with World War III”.

“I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass.”

Donald Trump, April 2025

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu states that the best strategy is to subdue the enemy without fighting. One might ask whether China has already won its economic war with the US — without firing a shot. After unleashing a wave of tariffs on almost every country in the world, Donald Trump backtracked, focusing on China, before suspending his decisions under pressure from financial markets. His policies triggered a plunge in equities, with the S&P 500 losing 10%, and bonds, with yields on 10-year Treasuries reaching 4.5%. In this context, his arrogance and vulgarity project neither control nor confidence.  

Benjamin Natanyahu

“You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible”

Benjamin Netanyahu, September 2024

At a press conference, Prime Minister Netanyahu compared the Palestinians to the Amalekites, a biblical tribe whom God commanded the Israelites to exterminate without distinction, including women, children, the elderly, and even livestock. Numerous credible sources claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The unconditional support of the US encourages Israel to address its regional conflicts only by force, transforming it into a pariah state.

J.D. Vance

“We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.”

JD Vance, Vice President of the US, April 2025

If the Chinese have retained anything of the peasantry, it’s their discipline, thrift and resilience — qualities that enabled them to multiply their GDP by 60 in 45 years. It’s true that China has become the world’s leading producer and lender, creating unhealthy dependencies with foreign markets such as the USA. But what’s the point of having such contempt for Beijing? More humility from a representative of a country facing declining life expectancy, where more than half the population has the reading level of an 11-year-old and more than 40% of the population is obese would have been wiser.

Benjamin Haddad

“We can hit the American economy in depth.”

Benjamin Haddad, French Minister for Europe, April 2025

In March 2022, then-French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire boldly declared that Western sanctions would bring about the “collapse of the Russian economy”, with the results that we know. Three years later, the target is no longer Russia or China but the US. This marks a dramatic break with the traditional rhetoric of transatlantic solidarity, and underlines the deepening tensions within the Western alliance.

Josep Borell

“Europe is a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle.”

Josep Borrell, EU Foreign Affairs Chief, October 2022

The “Valeriepieris Circle”, popularized by Ken Myers, highlights the fact that over 50% of the world’s population lives within a radius of 4,000-kilometer centered on Southeast Asia.

This is where the future of economic growth and, more generally, the world’s center of gravity is moving. Rising energy prices in Europe following the war in Ukraine are accelerating the de-industrialization of the Old Continent. Haphazard metaphors like Borrell’s confirm the perception that the EU is becoming the periphery of Eurasia.

Kaja Kallas

“The disintegration of Russia into small nations is not a bad thing.”

Kaja Kallas, EU Foreign Affairs Chief, 2023

Diplomacy is the art by which states peacefully manage their relations through rules, institutions and negotiations. On a day-to-day basis, it is the ability to manage human interactions with tact and discretion. Yet the EU has entrusted this task to someone who openly wishes to balkanize a nuclear superpower. One might think that if NATO disappeared, this kind of rhetoric would disappear overnight.

The Logic of History

The “Collective West” is disintegrating, accelerating the shift of the world’s center of gravity toward the East. Just as the Earth’s crust must tremble to accommodate the slow grind of tectonic plates, so too must the global order periodically adjust to the decline of one empire and the emergence of another. There is nothing extraordinary about this — it is the logic of History.

However, since 1492 and the discovery of the Americas, imperial power has been monopolized by European and Christian nations. This time is different. What we are witnessing is not merely a geopolitical transition — it is a civilizational shift: deeper, broader, and far more disorienting. And that makes the future harder to imagine.

Every great power eventually reaches a moment when it lives better without its empire — once a symbol of pride, now a burden of memory. A relic too heavy to carry, and too painful to confront.