Post pandemic, the West is suffering from collective helplessness – Sydney Morning Herald

London: A new report examining global security threats says the West is suffering from helplessness because of the overwhelming variety and number of international crises that voters feel they cannot control.

The Munich Security Report 2022, released ahead of the prestigious German annual conference this week, has previously argued that the democratic world has been suffering from Westlessness whereby liberal democracies were exhibiting a widespread feeling of uneasiness and restlessness in the face of increasing uncertainty about the enduring purpose of the West.

The Munich Security Report said slogans like America First, Take back control, and strategic autonomy had become vote winners.Credit:Getty

Despite sounding the alarm in 2020, report author Tobais Bunde said the situation had worsened and morphed into a sense of collective helplessness exacerbated by the pandemic, climate change and the prospect of war in Eastern Europe and the United States chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Helplessness is a reference to a phenomenon first detected by two psychologists in the 1960s who observed that dogs trained to expect an electric shock after a tone simply laid down and endured the shock even when given the option of escaping it by jumping over a small barrier because the animals felt they could not escape their situation.

The report said this sense had crept into Western voters mind at the start of 2021 a year that began with the insurrection on the US Capitol. 2021 was clearly not a year for geopolitical optimism, the report said.

It measured sentiment in 12 countries, not including Australia, and found that the perception of feeling helpless against global challenges was the view on the rise in them all. Only in China did fewer people feel that their country had no control over global events.

Transatlantic leaders need to demonstrate that both democracy as a system and alliances based on liberal values can deliver.

The report said this was why slogans like America First, take back control and strategic autonomy had become vote winners and why authoritarian powers were capable of projecting a stronger image of governance.

Liberal democracies appear particularly overwhelmed and helpless ... while autocratic governments often project confidence and decisiveness, liberal-democratic countries sometimes appear paralysed, the report said. Turning the tide of crises looks like an ever more difficult task.

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Post pandemic, the West is suffering from collective helplessness - Sydney Morning Herald