Grim new details about Khasshoggi’s death emerge

WHEN George Bush met Margaret Thatcher after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 the pair resolved not to allow Iraq’s “naked aggression”, and it did not. This was how the West was supposed to work – and sometimes, it did.

Today the US and Britain scarcely govern themselves, never mind shape world order. Theresa May, who as prime minister resembles Thatcher in no respect other than gender and party, has just suffered the worst parliamentary defeat in nearly a century over her Brexit deal. Donald Trump, who as president resembles Bush in no respect other than gender and party, presides over a furiously divided and mistrusted superpower.

The West is now rudderless and at the mercy of tribalism, populism, authoritarianism and social media. We are drifting, in the absence of mind and will, toward civilisational self-negation.

When did the drift begin? Probably in 1989, when Francis Fukuyama published his landmark essay The End of History? and a decade of complacency took hold. Why worry about liberal democracy when its triumph was inevitable and irreversible? Complacency breeds heedlessness. Liberals were heedless when they wrote off moral character as an essential trait of a good presidency. Conservatives (like me) were heedless when we became more concerned about the state of democracy in Iraq than in Iowa. Liberals were heedless when they embraced identity politics without thinking it could also be used against them. Conservatives (again, like me) were heedless when we downplayed populism.

The heedlessness occurred on the other side of the Atlantic, too. European integration is a blessing; without which genuine democratic accountability isn’t possible. Similarly, immigration is a blessing; immigration without assimilation is a curse. Two generations of European leaders allowed the former without requiring the latter, and then airily dismissed public discontent as illegitimate. Now they are living with the consequences.

As for Brexit, the 2016 decision by 52% of the British electorate to leave the EU over the objections of the 48%, must surely count as one of the worst considered in its history. But not as foolish as the decision by former Prime Minister David Cameron to put a foundational question up for a popular vote without considering the consequences of things going wrong.

The problem here was a failure to understand that the purpose of representative government is to save democracy from itself. I now find myself vaguely rooting for a hard Brexit, on the theory that lasting lessons are only learnt the hard way.

Or not. Bad typically begets worse, and a hard Brexit will most likely accelerate every other dangerous trend in British politics.what about the US? Among many conservatives, the view of Trump is that ideological apostasies are irritants, not calamities, and prices worth paying for deregulation, tax cuts, and conservative courts.

Really? These same conservatives have spent the past 30 years preaching the importance of judgment, good character, and respect for institutions by the president. They were right. What will they say when they find these attributes missing in a president whose policy preferences and political affiliations they don’t share?

The West is not adrift in placid waters. With limited resources but ruthless methods, Vladimir Putin has gone about undermining democracy from Kiev to Kansas. With equally ruthless means and far greater resources, Xi Jinping has raised the banner of efficient authoritarianism as the preferred model of 21st century governance.

What does the West have to say in its defence? Who will reset the rudder in time for the next squall?