would need to surpass the Concrete West, not . The Concrete West is too big for China ever to surpass. The Concrete global leadership can avoid ever getting overturned in West’s the future. The world can henceforth be spared the global conflicts that usually occur when a rising power is replacing the old leader, or when there is “hegemonic decline”. Western decline is an optical illusion. It is also a dangerous illusion: it leads to miscalculations -- destabilizing withdrawals by the West, destabilizing adventures by emerging powers. To prevent miscalculation, what the Concrete West really needs to do is to regain reasonable confidence, reinforce its institutions, and make its existence more obvious. These inferences amount to a reversal of the conventional wisdom on the future of the world order. By making explicit the simplest facts of the Western perspective -- the Western preponderance in the world, rendered consistent by unity, amplified by concretization into expandable institutions -- and putting them together, we have ended up with a far-reaching paradigm shift. The Atlantic perspective is embedded in the Atlantic institutions, and, through them, is embedded in the world order; but most of the time is left in the back of the mind. Cutting-edge thinking has shifted to anti-Western ideologies. Awareness of the Atlantic order is strong in countries that want to join it; and among ideologists, who depict it as a global dictatorship. In the West itself, there is a lack of consciousness of the Concrete West and its perspective. This has led to major misperceptions, among them the belief in decline. It behooves us to know better the world order that we humans are operating. Any order functions more smoothly if it has consciousness of itself, and a sound perspective for itself. That is the purpose of these pages. The Atlantic Perspective
would need to surpass the Concrete West, not . The Concrete West is too big for China ever to surpass. The Concrete West’s global leadership can avoid ever getting overturned in the future. The world can henceforth be spared the global conflicts that usually occur when a rising power is replacing the old leader, or when there is “hegemonic decline”. Western decline is an optical illusion. It is also a dangerous illusion: it leads to miscalculations -- destabilizing withdrawals by the West, destabilizing adventures by emerging powers. To prevent miscalculation, what the Concrete West really needs to do is to regain reasonable confidence, reinforce its institutions, and make its existence more obvious. These inferences amount to a reversal of the conventional wisdom on the future of the world order. By making explicit the simplest facts of the Western perspective -- the Western preponderance in the world, rendered consistent by unity, amplified by concretization into expandable institutions -- and putting them together, we have ended up with a far-reaching paradigm shift. The Atlantic perspective is embedded in the Atlantic institutions, and, through them, is embedded in the world order; but most of the time is left in the back of the mind. Cutting-edge thinking has shifted to anti-Western ideologies. Awareness of the Atlantic order is strong in countries that want to join it; and among ideologists, who depict it as a global dictatorship. In the West itself, there is a lack of consciousness of the Concrete West and its perspective. This has led to major misperceptions, among them the belief in decline. It behooves us to know better the world order that we humans are operating. Any order functions more smoothly if it has consciousness of itself, and a sound perspective for itself. That is the purpose of these pages. The Atlantic Perspective