As the war in Ukraine heads into its third winter, Western leaders appear to be sinking further every day into a delusional belief in the success of their hydra-headed attempts to first defenestrate Russia before moving on to do the same to China.

Reality appears to play no part at all in this collective fantasy. The strategy, if indeed it can be dignified with that description, is not only failing in its main purpose but is actively facilitating the rise of the multi-polar world that it so fears. The leader of the West, the US, describes itself as the “indispensable” civilisation. American public intellectuals such as Francis Fukayama have even floated the view that the US had so perfected their political, cultural and economic development that it constituted the “end of history”, a view of themselves common to defunct empires stretching back millennia.

That delusion appears to have convinced the West that its temporary military dominance of the world is both permanent and beneficial to humanity as a........

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