Alain Boinet:
In your book “The West, World Enemy No. 1,” you write: “We didn’t see it coming. Then we couldn’t believe our eyes. And then, it happened.” For our readers who haven’t yet read your book, what event are you referring to?
Jean-François Colosimo:
After the collapse of the totalitarian East in the face of the liberal West, we thought globalization would eventually bring about perpetual peace. The international institutions inherited from 1945 and reaffirmed after 1989 seemed destined to last forever, smoothing over—or even resolving—the conflicts and imbalances that now set North against South. But that didn’t happen. Suddenly, the axis of the world shifted, and the global order imploded. Former autocratic empires we thought were gone for good reemerged. On the ruins of their forced Westernization in the twentieth century—a Westernization that was purely revolutionary, either socialist or nationalist—they embarked on a massive identity rearmament, instrumentalizing their religious foundations. This includes Putin’s “Orthodox” Russia, Erdogan’s “Sunni” Turkey, Khamenei’s “Shia” Iran, Xi’s “Confucian” China, and Modi’s “Hindu” India. They differ on many points, but they share a common enemy they call the “West”—a power they see as domineering, selfish, hypocritical, and decadent; namely, America and Europe, from whose grip they believe they must liberate the peoples of the Earth.
The West, World Enemy No. 1, Jean-François Colosimo, Albin Michel
AB:
Does the election of Donald Trump and his MAGA project embody a sixth empire, further complicating and destabilizing the global order, even to the point of chaos?
JFC:
The transatlantic bond is an illusion. In reality, it conceals the New World’s grip over the Old Continent. It’s the same with the usual opposition between a virtuous democratic America and a reactionary religious America. In truth, the founding myth of the United States, modeled on ancient Rome, created an imperial republic that sees itself as divinely destined to rule in the name of Good. It’s the only country where religious extremism succeeded by adopting absolute political liberalism and merging various beliefs into the single cult of a civic religion. On this point, Trump is not so different from his predecessors. What marks a turning point—one that goes beyond him—is that the United States, to slow or reverse its likely decline, instinctively returns to its original mercantilism, rooted in its sense of divine election: isolationism to protect its domestic markets and interventionism to conquer foreign ones. In today’s context of global resource scarcity, this inaugurates a hypercapitalism based more than ever, in Washington, on the consolidation of the military-industrial complex, glorification of power, and the imposition of faits accomplis disguised as better deals.
AB:
Does Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine—a permanent member of the UN Security Council—represent a “change of era”? And doesn’t resorting to war to settle disputes risk inspiring other states?
JFC:
Conflicts are erupting everywhere without clear reasons or solutions, and we perceive them very selectively. Just think of the war in Yemen, which, unlike others, barely stirred our youth or wider public opinion. In Putin’s case, militarism is integral to his authoritarianism. Each time—attacking Georgia in 2008, Crimea and Donbas in 2014, Kyiv in 2023—it has been about saving his kleptocratic, oligarchic rule by mobilizing the masses around revenge. Erdogan in the Caucasus, Khamenei in the Levant, Xi and Modi in Asia all act in similar ways. The hasty U.S. withdrawal from Kabul in 2022, ordered by Joe Biden after twenty years of occupation, at the cost of $3.5 trillion and 200,000 deaths, ultimately abandoning Afghan women to the Taliban, triggered a global rush toward sacralized violence and open contempt for human rights.
AB:
Faced with the war Vladimir Putin has declared on it and Donald Trump’s criticism, is Europe in danger—and is it ready to respond?
JFC:
“The West” is a vague, multifaceted notion with no stable definition, used purely ideologically. Since 1945, this catch-all term has had concrete meaning only through NATO—the military pact that cements Europe’s complete dependence on the United States for defense. The European Union was built on the utopia of peace. Today, it finds itself defenseless just as America turns away from the Atlantic and toward the new geopolitical arena of the Pacific. Moreover, an egalitarian Union of 27 can only be divided. Only a “Carolingian Europe” could find the means to resist. Even then, the question would remain: what are we fighting for? Since the invasion of Ukraine, which brought conventional war back to the heart of Europe after the terrible tribal wars that set the former Yugoslavia ablaze from 1989 on, we keep speaking of the need for a great awakening. But it would also take the will to fight for an ideal—and to accept the possibility of dying for that ideal. Spiritual exhaustion is as dangerous as strategic inertia.
AB:
In your book, you predict the eventual self-extinction of the Russian, Chinese, Persian, Turkish, and Indian empires. But liberal democracy is under threat and weakening in Europe and beyond; the Russian threat is real; and Western and European influence is declining worldwide. How do you see this dilemma for Europe?
JFC:
From the dawn of modern times to today, these empires have constantly clashed—and they will again tomorrow. At present, the prospect of our destruction—or at least marginalization—makes them temporarily united. Likewise, the neo-colonialist carving up of weak countries in the South, starting with sub-Saharan Africa, where Chinese, Russians, and Turks rush in. Europe is out of date with the new world map. The price of its blindness will be catastrophic for itself—and also for the most vulnerable peoples, if it lets them sink into this new servitude.
AB:
What use is the UN today, and isn’t its weakening also a sign of a new international order taking shape?
JFC:
Like its counterparts—the IMF, WTO, WHO, or FAO—the UN is a drifting corpse whose resolutions echo into emptiness. The UN chamber, weighed down by conflicts of interest and hijacked legitimacy, is at best the grandest stage for insincere actors performing the death of universalist diplomacy. That’s just how it is. A pluriverse world like the one we’re entering demands more pressure than talk.
AB:
Between a fracturing globalization and the rise of empires like the BRICS, as seen at the Kazan summit in October 2024, are the rights of peoples to self-determination and human rights in danger—and what can be done to protect and promote them?
JFC:
The BRICS are a loose constellation that these neo-empires try to exploit for their own benefit. Our mistake is letting them do so instead of offering the less aggressive countries of the Global South a new justice pact—which, as a first effect, would help slow the migration crisis. The problem isn’t so much that we can’t afford to fund it, but that we refuse to even imagine it. Politically, Europe’s lack of a strong reaction to, for instance, the death of Russia’s Alexei Navalny seems to sound the death knell for dissidents who say no to tyranny in Turkey, Iran, China, and India—these concentration-camp states.
AB:
Official Development Assistance and humanitarian aid are collapsing in most OECD countries, with serious consequences. How do you see this change and its impact, and what can be done?
JFC:
This retreat is not only economically counterproductive and morally wrong but historically irresponsible. It is on the ground abandoned by the rich that the chaos of the poor’s revolt grows. We failed to see that globalization works in two ways: a centripetal unification of humanity reduced to consumption is matched by a centrifugal explosion of humanity driven by demands. These two forces will continue together, and the challenge is to regulate this infernal machine whose destructive effects appear between continents and within megacities. One partial remedy—though not a cure—could be to bring together the great faith-based organizations, working charitably and outside confessional lines in interfaith dialogue. Through their active, impartial aid, guided only by immediate human need, they could help fill the gap left by so-called “sovereign” states.
AB:
Faced with the Trump-Putin duopoly, doesn’t the need for European strategic autonomy retrospectively vindicate General de Gaulle?
JFC:
It’s really more of a tripod, because Trump and Putin don’t exist without Xi Jinping. Europe must understand this if it doesn’t want to fall from Charybdis to Scylla. Current talk of switching alliances to Beijing is sheer madness if we pause for even a second to consider the intrinsically totalitarian nature of the People’s Republic. Paris has neither friends nor enemies—only allies and adversaries, as de Gaulle reminded us when he returned in 1958. The General didn’t confuse independence with indifference. The reforms he undertook against wasteful systems remain relevant today. France has nuclear power, a battle-hardened army, a global maritime presence, and a long tradition of cultural dialogue and humanitarian action. It is up to France to awaken Europe. Once again, the real question is whether the French can still dream of themselves. But if, as so often in our history, we miss the moment, we will condemn ourselves to a nightmare.
AB:
How would you like to conclude this interview?
JFC:
By telling the readers of Défis Humanitaires—especially on the occasion of its hundredth issue—that, as they know, everything starts now, with each and every one of them. And alongside those Ukrainians, Armenians, women of Tehran, Uyghurs, and Dalits who, against the empire of lies, show us the path of courage
Jean-François Colosimo
Jean-François Colosimo
Jean-François Colosimo is currently director of Editions du Cerf, having previously served as president of the Centre national du Livre and of the Institut de théologie orthodoxe Saint-Serge. He is the author of critical essays and documentary films questioning contemporary mutations of the divine in politics, most recently “Occident ennemi mondial numéro 1” published in 2024 by Albin Michel and “Chaos planétaire” in preparation for FranceTV.
I invite you to read these interviews and articles published in the edition :