Editorial: The Old Man of the West

Politician: “We are masters of our fate. We alone decide the rise or fall of our civilisation. If we wish it, we can soon regain our former glory.”
History: “Hold my beer.”

Few illusions are more tempting than the belief that natural laws can be bent by willpower. Perhaps it springs from mortality itself: that Damoclean sword which, somewhere past middle age, forces the question of life’s purpose. These days the urge is less to live fully than simply to live longer. Tech moguls and influencers pour time and money into elaborate routines to eke out a few extra years…to be shaped by these very routines.

So it is with civilisations. Oswald Spengler’s notion that high cultures follow life cycles—birth, maturity, decay—has never been disproven. Even the ancient Indian and Chinese cultures have died and been reborn multiple times, rather than existing for thousands of years uninterruptedly.

The European Retirement Home

Viewed through this lens, Europe is like an elderly relative: loved, but occasionally irritating and clearly in decline. The precise time of death is uncertain; nations can shuffle along for decades after the pulse of civilisation stops. But even a charitable reading still suggests Europe retired after the Second World War, leaving the stage to others.

Like many new retirees, it struggled to adjust, clinging to the idea it remained the patriarch of global affairs. The European Union, in hindsight, has the air of a senior citizens’ club activity—a project to keep the old fellow busy, to lend a sense of importance that the rest of the world politely humoured but never truly respected.

Former dependants—today’s “Global South” and their émigré communities—still humour the well-pensioned continent, enduring its whims. But even they sometimes imagine, in darker moments, ending the old tyrant’s reign with a pillow in the night.

It is an unkind thought, and unfair. Ageing eccentricity obscures past glories. Like the baby boomers, Europe has failed to age gracefully, clinging to self-image long after reality has shifted. The only real question is who will finally tell Europe it no longer sets the agenda. “OK, Europe.”

An Unlikely Heir?

That awkward task has fallen to Europe’s eldest child: the United States. Washington has been managing its ageing parent for decades, usually with subtlety. But with the return of Donald Trump and an ideological pivot in America, subtlety has given way to bluntness. The eldest child has its own problems and little patience left for an old man across the Atlantic.

This shift has turned the conversation to inheritance. Trump’s tariff deal with Ursula von der Leyen was a signal: no more free elder care. The threat hangs in the air—play ball, or fend for yourself—a form of leverage not lost on a senior who knows dependence is a weakness. Europe’s absence from the Putin-Trump meeting only underlined the point: the heirs now negotiate among themselves. In the run-up, European leaders tried to lobby Trump behind the scenes, a theatre of influence that exposed more their impotence than their power.

Yet retirement from world politics does not make Europe wrong on every count, any more than America is right on every one. A dose of autonomy could even slow the decline. Use it or lose it applies as much to continents as to muscles.

Who knows? Another heir might appear. Europe in its youth was a troublemaker, and somewhere out there a “Europe Jr.” could emerge to take up the mantle. For old men and old continents alike, the prospect of seeing a few descendants grow up can be enough to keep them going.
Best not to let the firstborn hear about it, though. Family squabbles rarely end well—especially when the patriarch is already frail.

Statement

Europe, likened here to an ageing patriarch, has been in civilisational “retirement” since WWII—its influence lingering more out of habit than relevance. The EU, far from a global engine, functions like a senior club, sustaining dignity while others quietly assume leadership. Former colonies and migrants humour the old continent, even as they chafe under its fading pretensions. The US, once a patient caretaker, now signals impatience, with Trump’s tariffs marking a shift from support to transactional leverage. Autonomy could slow decline, but inheritance politics loom. Europe’s only hope may be in nurturing a “Europe Jr.” before irrelevance becomes terminal.