The January 16, 2026, GB News opinion piece by Alex Armstrong issues a stark warning: Western civilisation is in unmistakable decline — economically, demographically, culturally — and leaders appear paralysed, doing little to confront it, engaging in managed decline. He draws a chilling parallel to the fall of Rome, which plunged Europe into centuries of dark age, asking whether we stand on a similar precipice. Armstrong points to shrinking European economic share (from one-third to one-quarter of global output in two decades), stalled productivity, soaring debt, sub-replacement birthrates across major nations, rising crime and riots, eroding institutional trust, and the emergence of parallel societies in cities overwhelmed by mass immigration. China's manufacturing dominance now surpasses Europe and North America combined. The West, once an exporter of values, struggles to sustain them at home. The core question: Will leaders act before the window for reversal slams shut?
This narrative echoes longstanding conservative anxieties about civilisational exhaustion, amplified in 2025-2026 by geopolitical turbulence, economic headwinds, and cultural fragmentation. Yet Armstrong's framing, while urgent, captures only part of the story. In our hyper-interconnected global era, the decline of the West — if it proves terminal — cannot unfold in "splendid isolation." Unlike Rome's fall, which largely confined collapse to its empire while other civilisations persisted or rose elsewhere, today's world is a single, deeply entangled system. Supply chains, financial markets, technology, migration, climate, and security are so interwoven that Western implosion would drag the entire structure down — including rising powers like China.
Consider the mechanics of interdependence. China's extraordinary growth over four decades relied on Western consumption, capital, technology transfer, and access to global markets; stealing Western IP, as documented in many sources, helped too! The West's demand powered Chinese factories; Western investment and know-how built its infrastructure and innovation base. Even as China surges ahead industrially, its economy remains export-dependent and vulnerable to Western slowdowns or decoupling. Recent analyses highlight China's deepening property crisis, persistent deflation (ten straight quarters by late 2025), weak domestic demand, and fiscal strains amplifying global recession risks. A sharp Western contraction — triggered by demographic implosion, debt crises, political paralysis, or cultural disintegration — would slash demand for Chinese goods, disrupt supply chains, and trigger capital flight.
China's own demographic cliff is steeper than the West's: an ageing, shrinking population with birthrates far below replacement, exacerbated by decades of one-child policy fallout. Its property sector, a pillar of growth, teeters (e.g., major developers like Vanke facing massive bond maturities and state backstops nearing limits in early 2026). Internal challenges — deflation, youth unemployment, geopolitical isolation — mean China cannot simply "decouple" and thrive independently. It needs stable global demand and technological access that a collapsing West would withhold or fracture.
The same logic applies elsewhere. Emerging powers in the Global South (India, Brazil, Indonesia) depend on Western markets, investment, and the dollar-based financial architecture. A true Western collapse — economic depression, fractured alliances, eroded rule-of-law norms — would cascade: global trade volumes plummet, commodity prices swing wildly, migration surges uncontrollably, and security vacuums invite conflict. No single hegemon stands ready to stabilise the system as the US once did post-1945. Multipolarity sounds orderly in theory, but in practice, it risks fragmentation into competing blocs, protectionism, and instability — worsening shocks for all.
Historical analogies like Rome's fall are evocative but limited. Rome's collapse was regional; peripheral powers (Byzantium, emerging Islamic caliphates, steppe nomads) adapted or filled voids. Today's "temple" — the post-1945 liberal order of open trade, multilateral institutions, and technological diffusion — is global and brittle. If the Western foundation crumbles from within (low fertility eroding workforces and innovation, cultural self-doubt sapping resolve, political polarisation paralysing governance), the shockwaves reverberate universally. China, far from emerging unscathed as a new Rome, faces its own structural frailties amplified by the loss of its largest trading partners and technological ecosystem.
Armstrong is right to sound the alarm: the symptoms are real, and inertia accelerates decline. But the stakes are planetary. Reversal demands not just Western renewal — higher birth-rates through family-friendly policies, restored cultural confidence, decisive border and productivity reforms — but recognition that salvation is mutual. A managed transition to multipolarity, preserving interdependence's benefits while addressing asymmetries, might avert total collapse. Absent that, the final fall isn't Western alone; it's civilisational, with the whole interconnected edifice tumbling into a new, darker age of fragmentation and scarcity. And that makes the BIG assumption that global nuclear war does not occur.
The window Armstrong invokes may already be narrowing. Whether leaders summon the will to act — or whether hubris and denial prevail — will determine if this is a recoverable downturn or the prelude to something far more cataclysmic for everyone. At the moment it seems political leaders are working tirelessly for civilisation to self-destruction. To counter this will involve a social movement which will dwarf previous adventures by the ruling elites, and the hour is getting late.
https://www.gbnews.com/opinion/alex-armstrong-opinion-western-civilisation-decline
https://www.infowars.com/posts/special-reportwe-are-funding-our-own-demise