The fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 was supposed to be a triumphant moment for the West. But, as Tim Black argues in this lecture, instead of securing a lasting victory for liberal democracy, it created an existential crisis. For decades, the Cold War had given the West a clear sense of purpose—defeating communism, leading the "Free World," and shaping global history. But with the USSR gone, Western elites were left disoriented, scrambling for a new narrative. Enter Samuel Huntington.

In The Clash of Civilisations, he rejected the naïve optimism of thinkers like Francis Fukuyama, who proclaimed "the end of history." Instead, Huntington argued that the world was not moving toward a universal liberal order, but toward an era of civilizational conflict. Cultural and religious identities, not ideology or economics, would define the post-Cold War world. 

Huntington’s great mistake? He saw the West as under siege from external forces—Islam, China, and non-Western civilizations—but failed to grasp the deeper rot. The true threat to Western civilisation is not coming from Beijing or Tehran but from within—from Western elites who have spent decades dismantling their own culture, disavowing their own history, and undermining the very values that once made the West dominant.