Are We Entering a Post-European World?

I am a proud European, but, a lot more than that, I am also a citizen of the Republic of Poland. Watching what is happening west of us is difficult to put into words. When watching nations, that were formerly the greatest empires to have ever existed in human history – The British Empire, The German Empire, The French Empire – systematically orchestrating their own annihilation, you cannot just accept that at face value. You are forced to rationalise it. You invent comforting lies to explain why your neighbors are systematically eradicating their own kind. You have to do that, since they are your neighbours, who are nice. To readily accept and dispassionately observe their downfall would be a cruel betrayal of our good and long-lasting relationships.

At the same time, we cannot let blind optimism get in the way of facts. For me at least, the denial phase is over. What the western countries of Germany, France, UK, and many others are doing is, unmistakably, suicide on a civilisational scale. I think many people throughout 2024, and particularly 2025, were holding their breath for the critical state of affairs to dissuade the political elite class from further pursuing the policies that are causing the downfall of Europe. What we are seeing instead is doubling and tripling down on policies that drive a stake through the heart of Europe. Let’s take a look at some of the things that happened over the past few years, although some of them have been in the making for decades.

The anatomy of the collapse

Germany needing to erect anti-tank barriers in order to protect its citizenry from Islamic terrorism. Most cities in 2024 and 2025 have abstained from organising Christmas markets (a long-standing German tradition), due to the enormous costs involved in paying for security.

The French economic stagnation, political instability, and growing debt is also apparent, even if slow-burning (or burning out, rather). However, it is not as bad as with our continent’s powerhouse, Germany. Everything in Europe, for the better or worse, is downstream from Germany.

Germany’s production output dropping by 4.3% in August compared to July. For comparison, the average monthly production decline during the Great Depression of 1929-1931 was 1-1.5% per month. Even those sorts of numbers were not seen during the 2008 mortgage crisis. Overall, Germany’s production output has regressed to 2004-2005 levels, effectively undoing 20 years of progress. This is because German leadership bet on two things:

• Eliminating all “unclean” sources of energy, including nuclear energy. I believe I don’t have to offer an elaborate explanation for why Germany, a nation of steel and petrochemistry, requires large amounts of energy.
• Relying on Gazprom to provide the oil and gas required to produce energy and drive the petrochemical industry. Relying on Gazprom… because, according to the German Green Party, imported gas is somehow ‘cleaner’ than domestic atoms. Just don’t think about it too much, OK? The world is ending, we don’t have time to think that hard.

But when the lights begin to flicker and the factories go quiet, the state must ensure that the citizens do not complain too loudly. The death of prosperity invariably requires the death of free speech. This is why the German political elite is continually edging towards banning the only dissenting party in Bundestag, Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD). The official reason is that they are “far-right extremists”, whatever that means, but the real reason is of course because they are the only party that represents the German people’s interests. Every other party is more interested in representing Gazprom, another government, or some other foreign interest.

Going to the other side of the pond: not even 24 hours after it was made effective in late July of 2025, UK’s Online Safety Act – officially only for protecting children from harmful online content – was used to block access to voicing political dissent of its citizenry. For instance, British citizens voicing concerns about the mass murder happening in Gaza, perpetuated by the Israeli military, or the violence happening in their own country. Even Wikipedia, broadly a Marxist-leaning source of information to begin with, is branded by its telecommunications authority as a “high-risk service”. This type of authoritarianism has not been seen in western Europe since 1945, but we are not seeing any sanctions against the UK by the continental powers. This is interesting, considering the EU applied sanctions on Belarus for only slightly more direct repression in 2020.

I could go on and on, but I think everyone gets the idea. To some extent, everyone in Europe is aware of the ponderous decline that is currently ongoing, although I think a staggering amount is still ignorant about its true scale. No matter how bad one believes it is, the reality is a lot worse.

Accidentally resurrecting the Sino-Russian alliance

Even real aggressors – not helpless citizens – like Russia, with its invasion of Ukraine, are fought incompetently. Consider the situation from a strategic perspective: The West has engaged in a war of economic attrition against a resource-rich autocracy, yet it did so after voluntarily dismantling its own industrial base and energy independence, Germany largely surrendering it to them. We are attempting to choke the Russian bear while our own hands are trembling from hunger.

The sanctions, with the intended goal of subduing Russia, have instead achieved two effects, both of them directly opposed to the interests of the West:

• Accelerated the German economic decline that was already happening as a result of the 2008 mortgage crisis and suicidal domestic energy policies. With Gazprom’s partial counter-embargo at the start of the invasion, the German economy was wrecked.
• Brought Russia closer to China. The Chinese, and also the Indians, do not care all that much for the West’s opinion on Russia. This means that, while Russian oil and gas prices have indeed declined sharply since 2022, China gets discounted oil and gas. It is not a coincidence that in 2025 a total of over 50,000 employees were fired in the automotive industry. While some very naive and delusional people might be triumphantly celebrating Russian stocks and shares taking a dip, President Xi Jinping could not possibly have hoped for a more beneficial outcome for China’s continually growing global dominance. Just check out the prices for original polyethylene or polypropylene on Alibaba, then compare them with originals from Germany. You will see what I mean.

As if that was not bad enough, the West has pretty much guaranteed Putin will rule until the day he dies. That is, the West, even with the cooperation of the ostensibly neutral Swiss authorities, have seized all assets of Russian oligarchs that allegedly were in support of Putin. I am not an expert in billionaire politics and autocratic government internals, but even I know that, if you want to have any chance of actually dethroning Putin whatsoever, you will not want to disarm the people closest to him. By seizing their assets in London, Paris, and New York, the West did not bankrupt the war machine. Instead, we burned the oligarchs’ escape boats. Before the sanctions, these men had one foot in Moscow and one foot in the West. Now, with their foreign assets frozen and their reputations destroyed, they have nowhere left to go. Their physical and financial survival now depends entirely on their loyalty to the Kremlin. We did not create a wedge between the dictator and his elite; we welded them together. We effectively purged Putin’s potential rivals for him, streamlining an autocracy that might otherwise have crumbled under its own corruption. Genius!

The US is tired, the dragon rises

While the US has massive problems on its own – heading towards a steady decline – by virtue of its natural resources and large population, it will always be an important player in global politics. For the better or worse (usually worse), their foreign policy has major impact on business in Europe.

However, I cannot bring myself to disagreement when I hear Donald Trump proclaiming that he is tired of Europe. Him calling us a “decaying” empire is the kettle calling pot black, but I think we can all agree that European leaders display extreme weakness:

• The US threatened to invade Greenland, yet we still have not jettisoned the US as an ally. What ally threatens invasion? Why even need enemies then? If we accept this, we are weak.
• All of our tech infrastructure still depends almost entirely on US American tech infrastructure. In all these years, neither Germany nor any other European country has set up their own Linux distribution. Are we really not able to replicate North Korea with its Red Star OS? This is also pathetic.
• What Prime Minister Donald Tusk said: “The paradox is that 500 million Europeans are asking 300 million Americans to defend them against 140 million Russians. We must rely on ourselves, fully aware of our potential and with confidence that we are a global power”.

As said, the US is also on its way out. At the beginning of 2025, Donald Trump tried to show muscle in front of Xi Jinping, by declaring a trade war on the entire world, especially China. Unfortunately, with China constituting 90% of global rare earths output, the US Americans found out the hard way that they will not wallop the eastern dragon any time soon. Burning your last bridges with the only other superpower in the world is not a recipe for lasting hegemony.

The sun sets in the West, but rises in the East

If the United States is pivoting to the Pacific to wrestle with the dragon, and Western Europe is committing slow-motion suicide in a fit of green hysteria and self-loathing, where does that leave us? Are we entering a post-European world?

If you define “Europe” by the sclerotic bureaucracies of Brussels, the de-industrialised husks of the Ruhr valley, or the censorship regimes of London, then the answer is an emphatic yes. That world is walking dead. It is a zombie civilisation that has not yet realised it has stopped breathing. It is a world that hates its own history, fears its own strength, and silences its own citizens.

Geography is stubborn, however. The continent does not vanish just because its traditional leaders have overdosed on champagne.

As a Pole, I look around and I do not see the end of civilisation. I see a transfer of it. The center of gravity is shifting from the Rhine to the Vistula, if I dare say something so bold. While the Bundeswehr is spending millions on pregnancy uniforms for its female soldiers, Poland is building the strongest land army on the continent. While British police arrest citizens for posts on Twitter, the nations of the Intermarium – from the Baltic to the Black Sea – retain a living memory of what totalitarianism actually looks like, and we have no desire to return to it, whether it comes wearing a Soviet red star or a corporate rainbow lanyard.

The values that made Europe the envy of the world; industry, rational faith, liberty, and the willingness to defend one’s home; have not vanished into the ether. They have simply migrated East. The old powers are obsessed with GDP, yet are hysterically unable to raise it, while making life a waking nightmare for everyone. They have forgotten that history is a meat grinder that does not care about your GDP or your European Charter of Human Rights if you lack the steel to defend them.

We are entering a post-Western-European world. The task now falls to Warsaw, Budapest, Bucharest, and the Baltic capitals to realise that no cavalry is coming from the West. We are the cavalry. Here, on the edge of the steppes, we have a duty to keep the fire burning. We must stop looking to Berlin and Paris for validation. I don’t think they have anything left to teach us but how to die. Instead, we must look to ourselves. Maybe partner up with the Chinese, who knows? They seem well-behaved.

The game is not over. The board has just changed. For the first time in three centuries, the pieces are ours to move. What a time to live in.