as the Western-led era ends, the U.S. and Europe cling to power, reacting with a hostility

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Jeffrey Sachs argues that Western dominance fostered a myth of superiority—rooted in white supremacy, religious supremacy, and flawed ideas like Max Weber’s Protestant work ethic.

Now, as the Western-led era ends, the U.S. and Europe cling to power, reacting with a hostility shaped by racial and ideological resentment toward China’s rise in innovation and industry.

Their outrage reveals not just geopolitical anxiety, but a deep refusal to cede control in a post-Western world.

Jeffrey Sachs partial transcript lightly edited:

The Western world came to believe in its superiority over several centuries. Because when you’re ahead, you say, “I’m ahead because I’m better. I’m ahead because of the God I believe in. I’m ahead because of some kind of intrinsic superiority.” A lot of white supremacy, a lot of religious supremacy—all sorts of reasons have been given in the last 250 years by Europeans and Americans about why they naturally run the world.

So we’re at the end of that Western-led world. And truth be told, it’s not only the United States that’s crazy—it’s also Europe. They don’t want to give up these advantages because they came to believe, again for a lot of reasons—some absolutely vulgar, some mistaken ideas, some sophisticated fallacies—the belief, for example, that Max Weber proposed: that it’s Protestantism that would be the key for economic success. So even the Catholic regions of southern Europe would not be able to catch up.

All of these reasons led to a mindset that I think is still very much alive in Europe and the U.S.—an air of superiority, a belief that: How dare the Russians threaten us? They’re not quite us. They’re not quite Europe. And China? My God. You know, the deep antipathy to China is shocking to me.

I believe basically it’s racism in the end, because it’s widely held—it is taken for granted in the United States, especially in the political class, of course—but it’s a part of our deep-seated history. Already by the 1880s, there were anti-China laws on Chinese migration. The racism and antipathy have been there for a long time.

And now that China really is a rival—as an innovator in the world, definitely has surpassed the United States in industrial output by quite a large margin, is the low-cost producer of much of what the world really needs, whether it’s zero-carbon energy, the new electric vehicles, 5G digital technologies—China’s just wonderfully adept, competitive, and innovative. And this is really driving the political class crazy in the United States. How dare they? The insult to Western dominance.