SHIFTING OF THE WORLD

SHIFTING OF THE WORLD

THE COALITION OF THE WILLING AND THE CRACKING OF THE EMPIRE

Irnerio Seminatore

The establishment of a post-Western system

It is a shift in perspective of the post-Western system that is being put in place today, through the Europeans’ loss of the ability to read the reality of the world and through the erasure of the continent from the great decisions of the future.

The end of ideological assurances and the end of the long parenthesis that had no equivalent, in duration of peace, since the end of the Western Roman Empire. Yet the clash of new Empires is here: the Empire of continent-states or civilization-states.

From Seattle to Vancouver and from Vancouver to Warsaw, then southward, from Tokyo to New Delhi, via Shanghai and Singapore, the 21st century is laying the foundations of a new order along the two axes East-West and North-South.

Will old Europe be able to adapt to these changes demanded by the new horizons of planetary society and the new global balance of power? With Europe’s slide toward a peripheral situation, the formerly colonial continents are being redrawn, and the world’s center of gravity is shifting to the Far East, toward the Asia-Pacific. Here, demography, trade, and the strategic ambitions of the planet’s greatest actors are producing an acceleration of history that few other moments have known since the discovery of America (1492). Will Europe still be able to weigh on the great decisions of foresight, and will the United States, a Pacific power, become a new Empire alongside the Russian Empire and the Middle Empire, sharing the world among themselves?

After the opening of the Ukrainian crisis, the countries of the Atlantic rim, of Central and Eastern Europe, are living through the anxieties of a survival crisis caused by the return of Russia, by its strategic depth, and by its close partnership with China.

In the dread of the fear orchestrated by the media, the leaders of France, Great Britain, and the Federal Republic of Germany created in February 2025 a “Coalition of the Willing,” at the initiative of France and the United Kingdom, with the aim of continuing their support for Ukraine financially, militarily, and in terms of security. This initiative seems to run counter to history and to the world’s shift toward the Asia-Pacific, for it claims to be defensive and deterrent vis-à-vis the hostile intention attributed to Russia. In reality it reflects a lack of vision of the world of tomorrow, which will probably be made up of groupings of homogeneous countries by history and by culture, and which results moreover from European contempt for Russia. But above all it is the translation of strategy into tactics that reverses the order of defensive paradigms, according to disorienting stereotypes. As a reminder, Russia is seen as an anti-Western model, so that Russian power would reason in Westphalian terms (sovereigntism, non-interference, spheres of influence, territorial disputes, military power, action by secret services) facing Europeans who have adopted a post-national, post-modern, and post-Westphalian model.

The Coalition of the Willing, an unacknowledged “Roll Back” and a challenge to American Leadership

Faced with a situation of danger, nothing is better than weaving the web of the great chessboard. Thus, beginning at the most abstract level and with a definition of the basic concepts, the Coalition of the Willing, which defines itself as defensive, takes concrete form in a goal: to keep what one has, but which is disputed. The aggressor (or supposed aggressor) wants to conquer what belongs to the other or to the others, and his action is defined as offensive. Can the defensive conduct of war, once the adversary’s will has been annihilated, change its goal? Or does it require going further and appropriating what belongs to the other or to the others? The figure of the aggressor here is the one who aims at the annihilation of our forces, the occupation of our territory, and the use of our resources. Or, still further, at the security balance and a radical change of political regime.

Answering these questions is essential for understanding whether the Coalition of the Willing has a war aim different from that of NATO, and which one. Relative to NATO of the first “Cold War,” the Coalition of the Willing represents a challenge to the autonomous center of decision and action that came from an extra-European political will—that of America, which defined its interests and objectives. Thus, in pure logic, the “Coalition of the Willing” today claims political independence and the autonomy of the continental forces. In this latter case, even if the actors of the coalition are homogeneous political units obeying the same conception of politics, the most important differentiation lies in the stakes of the struggle and in the scale of the interests and objectives, defined by the plurality of risks assumed by each. Moving from the analysis of material determinisms to that of intangible values, it is useful to specify that the “Coalition of the Willing”—France, Germany, and Great Britain—hardly has convergent national goals. The countries that compose it certainly have direct and abstract national objectives that distinguish them, in the pursuit of their foreign policies, from the United States, whose goal is planetary, hegemonic, and imperial. This is the essential difference, for it refers to the size of the stakes, the magnitude of the risks, and the identity of the enemies. Indeed, France, as an unsatisfied power broken in its ethnic and civilizational unity, is pursuing its last “policy of rank,” for which it no longer has the resources and which has replaced de Gaulle’s policy of greatness and prestige; Germany, which converted the 19th- and 20th-century policy of primacy, superiority, and power into a flat and democratic normativism, must now leave its condition of satisfied power and forget unacknowledged temptations for the Sonderweg of old; and Great Britain, eternally mercantilist, relayed by missionary America, seeks to forget that the Coalition of the Willing is a coalition of “values” and not of empire, and must restrain itself from challenges that consist in supporting Zelensky’s provocations toward Russia.

What, moreover, is the share of risk assumed by each, and what is the status of the military on the ground as interposition forces and the threshold of engagement in a conflict?

The Coalition, a synthesis of challenges

The Coalition of the Willing remains the synthesis of three components:

- a lack of planetary vision and a declared hostility toward Russia

 - a translation of strategy into tactics

 - a fundamental divergence between Europe and the United States and among the Europeans themselves

From a more general point of view, the options that globally specify the whole of the challenge determining the strategy of the member countries of the coalition, both regionally and worldwide, are dictated by the Clausewitzian conjunction of the Iranian combat front, which leads to the absorption of the combined Euro-Israeli-American resources (Niederwerfung). The opening of a window of opportunity for China in the Taiwan Strait or against the American bases in the Pacific would become possible. Thus Western resolve in the face of this type of conjunction would be compromised by the direct danger in Ukraine, by the effort of sharing forces and resources in the two theaters, European and Middle Eastern, and by the uncertainty of a confrontation in the Pacific. Yet the absence of affection for America, the lack of resolve and courage before the Asian challenge, and the simultaneous awakening of the bear and the dragon worry the three countries. To this is added the unforeseen: the invasion from the South.

Ceuta, the migratory assault, and the cracking of the Empire

The attack on Leadership and on the Commander-in-Chief of the armies at war against Iran had already begun with Sánchez’s refusal to allow overflight of Spain for the resupply of the conflict in the Middle East, and this crime of treason and lèse-majesté had been reiterated by Macron through the refusal to patrol the Persian Gulf and to ensure freedom of transit through the Strait of Hormuz. This weakening of Euro-Atlantic solidarity could please neither America nor Israel, for the Israeli-American conflict was perceived as America’s exclusive responsibility and as a strategic error by its President. Could it remain without consequences in a situation of tensions and crises? In the midst of the storm, the difficult navigation of this coalition could not delay the shock of a strategic surprise: the migratory assault of 30 July, a surge that included jihadists, on the enclave of Ceuta, opposite Gibraltar, striking Spain and Europe.

Means of pressure or inevitability of history?

The migratory assault on Ceuta was a test of strength by Morocco to probe Spain, but it remains the evidence of a broader migratory threat.

The pressure exerted by Morocco at Ceuta cannot be separated from the occupation of Western Sahara and from the axis constructed by Rabat with Washington and Tel Aviv to attack the pro-Palestinian policy of the Sánchez government. Western Sahara has become a geopolitical bargaining chip in the Abraham Accords: the United States and Israel legitimize Moroccan expansionism, while Rabat offers diplomatic normalization, military cooperation, and a strategic foothold in the Maghreb. The assault on the Spanish enclave also evokes the nightmare of a second “Islamic Reconquista,” after that of 1084, multiform, extended by successive waves and surges.

In terms of historical precedents, Ceuta was the base of the Islamic invasion led by Tariq ibn Ziyad, when its Gothic ruler, Julian, urged the Muslims to invade Spain. The Ceuta of that time was taken as a platform to attack Andalusia, and a historical turning point seems to be occurring at present through a swing of history. Is this invasion comparable to the invasions of the barbarians who, in the east of the continent, brought down the Empire of Rome, or to the battering blows of the steppe empire seeking to impose itself on Qin Shi Huang, the “First August Sovereign,” who unified China in 221 BC? The answer cannot underestimate the shock to public opinion in the countries of the European Union, broken by the powerlessness of policies and by their moral corruptions. These chaotic masses of young people, mobilizable at a moment’s notice and intoxicated by theft, rape, plunder, and the raids of the long Barbary tradition, need not fight to obtain Spanish citizenship, as was the case for the subjects of the Roman Empire in order to obtain the Roman citizenship decreed by Caracalla in 212. Until then, Roman citizenship (with its privileges but also its fiscal duties) was granted only to the inhabitants of Italy and, in the provinces, to the municipalities that had the status of Roman colonies. Roman citizenship was also obtained after 24 years of service in the auxiliary troops of the Roman army. In today’s Europe: neither taxation, nor military service, nor penal sanctions, but only assistance, privileges, understanding, and suicidal political supports. If the Western Roman Empire lasted four centuries and the Eastern Roman Empire ten centuries more, by the strength of intrigues and a diplomacy of compromise, how much longer will the European Union last—the “ethical Third Reich”—which has neither diplomacy nor army, but only the powerless Frontex, a porous surveillance of the Union’s external borders?