The Fall of the West by Owen Jones review
A journalist charts a quarter century of geopolitical hubris and economic overreach
TL;DR
- Owen Jones's new book analyzes 25 years of Western decline, marked by economic failures and foreign policy disasters.
- The book critiques US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for their high death tolls and strategic failures, highlighting them as signs of American decline.
- It points to the undermining of the international legal system, citing NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia and the invasion of Iraq without UN authorization.
- Jones links domestic economic decline, characterized by insecurity and privatization, to the rise of the far right.
- The author argues that free-market fundamentalism has been a dominant, yet destructive, ideology, with the second Trump administration seen as its potential "logical endpoint".
- The book includes interviews with various figures, such as Yanis Varoufakis and Andrew Sullivan, who reflect on past events.
- Jones suggests that the aggressive privatization in Russia in the 1990s fueled Putin's nationalism.