Giulio Meotti is an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, and writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author, in English, of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books, in addition to books in Italian. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Gatestone, Frontpage and Commentary.
Thirty years ago, in Foreign Affairs, an essay appeared that caused an uproar. Its title was “The West and the World," written by an obscure Harvard professor, and it would later become a book, “The Clash of Civilizations". Some compared it to George Kennan’s essay on the “containment" of communism. Kennan had analyzed the situation after the end of World War II. Samuel Huntington took stock after the fall of communism.
In the early 1990s, Western opinion makers competed in optimism and triumphalism. The Hegelian Francis Fukuyama declared “the end of history." The Cassandra-like Huntington explained that after the collapse of the USSR, the world would not move from a bipolar system to a unipolar one. The old ideological divisions of the Cold War would be replaced by deeper and more ancient divisions: those of civilizations. Seven of them, according to Huntington (the West, Latin America, Islam, the Hindu world, the Russian Orthodox world, China, and Japan), or even eight, if we include Africa. “The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future," Huntington explained.
“The future would be shaped in the mosques of Tehran and in the planning committees of Beijing, rather than in the cafés of Harvard Square," The Economist would write upon the professor’s death.
At the beginning of this strange century inaugurated by Huntington’s essay, outsourcing was the coolest thing to do. The “service economy," the Internet, and tourism were the future. Getting rid of basic industrial systems, such as steel mills and chemical plants, seemed in the West an ethical, correct, ecological, woke choice.
Now, however, as the clash of civilizations is in full swing, the West is facing a major crisis in military supply chains. Europe in particular is the soft belly. European defense companies are on alert about the continent’s dependence on Chinese imports. Metals, minerals, and chemicals sit at the top of every military supply chain, and most must be extracted. These raw materials are processed to produce essential base materials such as steel, aluminum, and magnets. The material passes through several stages, and if the final product is complex, like a military radar, there will be many additional nodes in the chain. Rare earth minerals are essential for F-35 fighter jets, drones, submarines, Tomahawk missiles, radar systems, and other military technologies.
“The Chinese are trying to dismantle the entire rearmament push" in Europe, said Joris Teer of the European Union Institute for Security Studies. “It’s not something that, as a defense official or industry member, you want to say out loud."
The lesson is harsh.
Europe is over, explains French philosopher Michel Onfray in Journal du dimanche:
“Europe is dying, and the Europeanists, in an atmosphere of defeat, watch American planes pass in the threatening sky and have nothing but their eyes to cry. It took the cowboy to declare he no longer supported Europe for it to collapse like a fruit-not unripe, but rotten. What does Europe do? Nothing. Ah yes: it talks".
Israel, born of ruthless realism, understood this first. And while Europe indulges in suicidal moralism, the Jewish enclave produces, fights, and innovates. From the United Arab Emirates to Romania to Finland to Germany, everyone these days wants Israeli arms. The German Bundeswehr is buying as much Israeli technology as possible.
Benjamin Netanyahu, son of the famous historian of the Spanish Inquisition Benzion, who died at 100, appeared before the Knesset after October 7 with a copy of “The Rise and Fall of Athens", Plutarch’s writings edited by Ian Scott-Kilvert.
Netanyahu outlined a vision that surprised many and comforted few:
“We will increasingly have to adapt to an economy with autarkic characteristics. We will become Athens and surpass Sparta. We have no choice."
After discovering empty stockpiles in American warehouses on October 7, 2023, due to the war between Russia and Ukraine, Israel began expanding its ammunition production lines 24/7, as in 1948 when David Ben Gurion, defying an international embargo, set up a secret underground factory in Rehovot, disguised as a kibbutz.
What is the origin of Netanyahu’s grim predictions? Threats from European nations which, as he said, “are subject to blackmail by Muslim immigrants at home."
Chinese outsourcing, Islamic blackmail, rentier pacifism: Europe is not doing well at all.
Thus speaks the major German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk:
“After World War II, there was optimism in Europe and a great project. Today, it seems we have lost all that: it is no longer the initial momentum driving us, but rather an atmosphere of anxiety and insecurity. From a psychopolitical perspective, postwar Europe is no longer what it was. The only thing that remains is that it does not want to wage war. It is as if Georges Moustaki had written a preamble to the European Constitution: ‘The good life first.’"
Sparta fell because it failed to adapt; Athens because it adapted too much. Israel will continue to build bridges, but they will be drawbridges. It is still unclear why Europe wants to become a “camp of the saints."
Europe can still wake up, but only if we Europeans abandon the illusion that history has ended and that “values" without bayonets and without steel are enough to defend us. Otherwise, the Darwinian world will judge us as it has always judged the weak: with cruel indifference.
And when Iranian drones fly over London and Paris, no one will ask “which side are you on?". They will already know the answer: Europe is on the wrong side of history.