Is a new Crusades in the offing?

I will start this with three astrological predictions, which I may have mentioned earlier, too, on my social media, but the rest of this is not based on astrology but rather on my understanding of politics and human society: so even if you do not believe in astrology, it should not matter that much, you can skip to the part following these predictions.

The three predictions are as follows:

(1) The world is highly likely to see an extremely conflict-ridden time, maybe even a Great War, during the 2028-31 period.

(2) A major pivot, probably as a result of Vladimir Putin’s fall or death, is likely to come in the history of Russia around the year 2026. (It can happen a year earlier or later, too.)

(3) The world will see an intense scale of precipitation and storms during the 2026-2084 period. The MENA region itself will be strongly affected, and it would not surprise me if by the end of it Saharan Africa has become quite green and climate models turned topsy-turvy. I foresee, in fact, a trend of cooling of average global temperatures during the 2026-2084 period, what I call as a “global cooling cycle.”

The first two, astrologically, are near-certain predictions, and I am also quite confident about the third one. I would be extremely surprised if any of the first two does not happen and fairly surprised if the third one doesn’t.

With astrology out of the way, let us talk about what’s going on in the world, and why I believe another clash of the civilisations, a Muslim-Christian civilisational clash in broad terms, could be on the way. I will list them pointwise, so things are more clear, less rhetorical.

Before that, I must remind my readers that I start with two postulates. One, that most low-skilled migrants are economic migrants. They migrate in search of a better pay or income. Two, that Europe is the bedrock of Western civilisation, and many of the modern Western civilisation’s values, especially the liberal values, stem from Christianity. Even if the U.S. is the most powerful country today in the Western world, the relevance of Europe continues for the Western civilisation. Even for the U.S. hegemony to continue, Europe must remain safe, off from the hands of the Eastern powers (Russia, Turkey, China, Japan, etc.—I am classifying Russia as an Eastern or Arctic power here, given that the majority of Russian landmass and geography, the source of Russian power, is based in the East and not the West, even if Russia is culturally to the West).

Now let us start in earnest.

The identity crisis facing the world today

I argue that there is currently a identity crisis that is ongoing in Western and Muslim countries and peoples, experienced in particular by the middle-class white families in the Western countries and almost all Muslims, regardless of their class. The Muslim identity crisis has been there for quite some time now, but with the Hamas-Israeli conflict, it has come more to the forefront. I will first look at some of the chief reasons behind these crises, and thereafter look at the geopolitical context as it is today.

(1) Heavy immigration:

The financial crisis of 2008 brought an economic stagnation or even the beginning of a downturn in Western (white and traditionally Christian) economies, especially at the middle-class household level. Coupled to it were the waves of immigration from non-white countries that had already happened before this point of time in the preceding few decades (e.g., the Turkish migrants to Germany or the North African migrants to France, mostly Muslims), or that was yet to happen (e.g., the mostly Muslim refugees from Syria and Afghanistan to many European countries). Many to most of these migrants were and continue to be low-skilled (e.g., France needed loads of people to construct its nuclear power plants, not run them). European social-liberal values ensure that they can bring their families sooner or later (unlike the petro-states of the Gulf, like the UAE or Qatar, which run on essentially slavery models): not only that, many European countries also provide generous social security benefits, which further incentivise migrants to see Europe as a manna, as a haven or harbour or simply as something to take advantage of. All kinds of migrants, after all, exist. (I, too, am one, though belonging to the curious category, not mentioned here.)

These low-skilled workers, often of a different religion and/or skin colour and appearance, often suffer a bruising or at least lonely experience in their host lands. They are expected to leave their cultural and religious baggage behind, particularly so in secular countries like France, which actively prosecutes the demonstration of faith in any public space, especially non-Christian faith. They are poor, looked down upon, marginalised, and in Europe simply for the economic benefit. They live like small islands with different values, and, often, subsequent generations imbibe the same or, even more often, some kind of a strange inferiority complex or schizophrenia, not being able to place themselves where they belong to. The rich have their wealth, the powerful have their status, but what will a poor cling to? Every person needs some self-dignity. Often, the poor end up clinging to their tribal identities: their community, ethnicity, traditions, religion. That is why mad preachers often find a hoard of radicalisable youth in ghettos of the poor and lower middle class. Thus, they, too, suffer from an identity crisis: the Arab-French boy living in a ghettoised suburb of Paris, is he a French or an Arab or a Muslim? Can he be all three and still be a good Muslim? How does he reconcile these identities, some of which can even be contradictory to each other?

When there are too many of such people in a society that has different values at its foundation than these people, there is bound to be a schizophrenia at the societal level: a conflict is inevitable. A society may start going into its roots, trying to make meaning. Without meaning making, no man can remain sane. This has not to do with Europe only: this has to do with two very different cultures anywhere in the world. Recently, in the south Indian tech hub of Bangalore, there has been a lot of talk of Kannadiga identity and language: once too many outsiders (north Indians) moved in, this is happening in as cosmopolitan a city as Bangalore (or, Bengaluru, a name taken up several years ago precisely as a reaction to this discomfort).

Just like the Kannadigas have started to feel a bit insecure about their Kannadiga identity in India, so has the white person in Western countries, notably Europe. As the number of immigrants and refugees has increased, politicians have found it useful for their power to include and even force diversity and the so-called social equity policies and targets onto every sphere of the society, including businesses. They have the support of a largely liberal academia and media. Many in the academia are truly intellectuals, and a true intellectual is a curious being, a bee in search of nectar, and different flowers can yield different tastes and varieties of nectar: the true intellectual, thus, is horrified by any kind of policy that enforces borders, that asks a person to not step somewhere simply because they are not born there or in the ethnicity dominant in that place. But many in the academia and the elite classes see this also as a way of purging the guilt of colonialism, the sin that their studies have taught them that their cultures did in the past. Thus, consciously or subconsciously, they want to project themselves in their own eyes, as an expiation of this guilt bequeathed to them by their ancestors, as great welcomers and tolerators of the Other. Thus, in the same breath, they will demand for DEI policies that ask for two women to sit in the board because they are women, regardless of merit, but they will also fight for rights of settling in for the Muslims whose men want to keep their women under their control through various means. This is an analysis of majoritarian tendencies in any culture: I am not saying that every Muslim man is like this. So do not get me wrong. But a Muslim, or Hindu, for that matter (given that Hindu migrants are often high-skilled in Western societies, we are not talking of them), society is conservative in the practical outlooks of life, and modern Western societies are liberal in these outlooks of life; it may very well be that in many spiritual outlooks of life, the Muslim or especially the Hindu society is highly adventurous and much less conservative whereas the Western societies are much more conservative, but when we talk of a society, we talk about what manifests at the practical, physical level, not the spiritual, psychic level. Thus, I am not claiming any society or culture to be better or worse, superior or inferior: it is just that they are different, sometimes as different as oil and water, and oil and water don’t mix well, certainly not under pressure.

And post 2008, the financial pressure has been increasing on the middle-class households of the West. Given the above, it is natural that a middle-class person starts feeling insecure or angry or being hard done by, not understanding that why when things are not going well, we need even more mouths to feed (because with the social security policies, it does feel to people as if it is they or their state who is feeding these “outsiders”). The same also goes for the would-be immigrant, who looks more and more to find a good place for their family and thus looks to migration. But why is the West not doing well? For example, why is Germany going rapidly downhill? Two major reasons: China’s rise, and the rhetoric and business of climate change. We take the latter first, as the latter has further aided the former.

(2) Climate change rhetoric

There has been a lot of rhetoric of climate change and “global warming,” and an assumption that human activities are causing this, even if climate on Earth has always kept changing significantly every few hundred years. Only those studies that point to some kind of global warming are aired in the media; studies that show otherwise are not. I am not referring to spurious studies: I am referring to peer-reviewed studies in prestigious journals. The whole world of academia, anyway, has become too politicised to dare to produce anything that goes against political correctness: science has to be vetted by politics first these days. Imagine if someone were to write a scientifically researched paper proving that some particular gender’s or ethnicity’s IQ is on the average lower than some other’s: what a hue and cry it would raise, and that researcher blacklisted and called as racist or eugenicist and so on, especially if the race with the claimed lower IQ were to be some non-white race. The cancel culture, the wokes would be out in full force. Thus, science has shut the doors on itself these days. There is no debate possible anymore, certainly not civilised debate. People are afraid to be shamed, discarded, cancelled. (As an astrologer, I know this very well, as many strangers on the Internet demean and insult me or astrology, all the time knowing themselves nothing of astrology! Isn’t this always the mark of ignorance? You profess or dismiss something or someone without even knowing it or them.)

What this rhetoric has done is to hamper the economic growth of several countries. Not just of Western countries, but also of several developing countries, too, such as India itself, which has pitched for a significant share of solar projects. People even ignore that several of these solar energy projects are installed on lands that were being used for agriculture or forestry and also that these projects increase further the temperature of the area they are located in. They ignore also how solar panels were produced and transported. They ignore also the electrical inefficiency of these projects. The result of these renewable energy projects, in the name of green practices, is direct on the consumer, business and the country: the consumer spends much more on the electricity, operational costs for businesses increase and the country’s economic competitiveness decreases. On top of that, as the reliability of such electricity is not much, unless even more capital is sunk in several battery storage systems, the risk of power outages and blackouts increases, further affecting the consumer, business and country. I am not saying not to use solar energy or wind energy at all, but use them with prudence and where there is an overwhelming case to do so. When solar power plants are announced in Germany, for example, not the sunniest of countries, it seems the case of a country bent on ruining itself sooner or later.

What this has done is that it has made the Western industry, already spoilt with low productivity stemming from a lazy work culture based on social security benefits and low innovativeness stemming from high taxes (in order to fund that social security again) and high bureaucracy (yeah, again that social security!), even more uncompetitive, especially in comparison with China, the “factory of the world.” The U.S., in this respect, is doing better than Europe, given the lesser social security largesse, though renewable energy plants have taken an upswing there, too, in recent years. China, too, is rapidly deploying renewable energy projects, but at the same time it is investing heavily in new nuclear power projects and continuing to invest in gas and coal.

(3) Successful examples of authoritarianism

As long as the going is good, most people do not pause to think. Stagnation is often not seen immediately and even perceived as growth, because stagnation is relative, not absolute, yet those who are stagnating might see themselves as growing, seeing it in absolute terms, not relative terms. But once harsh reality hits you, there is some chaos, then a reaction.

Now that many of the Western economies are not doing well, there is a reaction. Most peoples will turn to anti-establishment figures, whether they are on the left or right. That was the main reason Trump won the first time. That is why the Democrats keep doing badly: given that much of their electorate is elites, who cling on to the status quo rather than challenge what was going well for them, they also are forced to choose their candidates who are very establishment such as Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. But the Democrats belabour under some delusion that people are getting full of hatred. Meloni in Italy, Zelenskiy in Ukraine, Macron himself in France (but by now establishment) and even in the developing world, Milei in Argentina, Modi in India. Very anti-establishment or complete outsiders. (I would have expected Nigel Farage to do well in the UK, too, but now that Kemi Badenoch is there, maybe less of a chance, as Badenoch, even though representing the Conservative Party, is also an outsider, so many of the anti-establishment people can gravitate towards her rather than having to cross all the way to Farage. In fact, some of Farage’s current voters could be on the way back to Badenoch.) There are some countries that are still bucking this trend, like France or Norway, where most people are still not in the anti-establishment mood, though it is increasing slowly. (Germany’s case is different: because of the heavy Nazi guilt complex that people are raised up there, it is a mix of both the anti-establishment urge as well as some real hatred (a vent for the guilt they were raised up with) that is driving people towards AfD.)

And when people look to rebel, they also see the state of democracies, or democracy as a concept. It seems, quite justifiably, that many democracies have served the elites very well but not everyone. They look at the prosperous middle class of China, and they wonder, how can they do it? A few decades earlier, they would have been expecting a North Korea-like or Cuba-like fate of China, but look at it now! Soviet Union’s implosion had taught them the lesson that only democracy can work, but one-party China’s rise confused them. Russia, too, has put its Chechen troubles past and looks stronger under Putin than it looked in the Yeltsin era. And the recent examples? Look how Argentina is doing well since Milei. El Salvador’s progress under Nayib Bukele: is a law that can punish someone based on mere affiliation and thus cross human rights boundaries good if it manages to stamp out crime and drugs in a society? (In India, the same dilemma had come when KPS Gill rooted out terrorism from Punjab at the cost of the death of several who were innocents or mere sympathisers. Were Gill’s methods right or wrong?) Even Zelenskiy can now be considered a non-democratic leader of Ukraine, and he is leading the fight tolerably well. On the other hand, when it comes to democracies, what you have is Nancy Pelosi trackers: funds that track in trades of politicians like Nancy Pelosi, because they know these politicians are going to do things to benefit themselves. What you have is the behemoth, completely disconnected, corrupt EU, a way for the politicians to enrich themselves and their favourites with astronomically fat salaries and perks, all from the European taxpayers’ money. What you have is people giving fictitious jobs to their wives and other favourites from state coffers. (In India, all that is so common and the political morality has reached such a nadir that most Indians have even become immune to such deeds and see not even any wrong if a party manages elections and their results using money and perks. Their argument has become “everyone does so.” They have no optimism left. A country ripe for yet another anti-establishment figure to emerge.)

Why I mention this disillusion with the elites and this penchant for the anti-establishment figures in a discussion regarding the causes of identity crisis for the whites, especially the white middle class, is that once you are uncertain, you look up to your leader or country to help you, support you, bail you out, do the good thing by you. But given the mistrust in politicians and political systems, in fact in the elites, who only ended up increasing taxes, raising prices on daily needs things (by printing more and more money, for example, as Biden did in the U.S.), bringing in more and more immigrants, that too of another values system, and who still kept on clinging onto their fat perks and salaries and helped their crony capitalists keep on earning more and more, with the billionaires becoming mega-billionaires … given all this, they don’t know where to look, whom to believe in. A huge identity crisis, indeed.

The disillusion is also very strong in Muslim countries, and this is the case whether it is an authoritarian or democratic nation-state, because here the disillusion is not about the elites leeching off the people but with the elites prioritising their moneyed interests over the values of Islam and the laws of sharia. The changes in the past few years in Saudi Arabia are a prime example of that: while progressives laud them, many religious people are shocked by them. Maybe, in a few years, women would even be able to swim in public pools in bikinis!

(4) The lack of geopolitical power

The Muslim world, which held much of the power in the world until the British Empire put a finish to it, is particularly sensible to this lack. Today, the Muslims are seen as terrorists and jihadis. Some hate or vilify them, while even the liberals, who are supposedly with them, sympathise with them. Their own lands are broken up, divided by the whims of others into strange, made-up countries (take Jordan as an example), they have neither an empire nor a Caliph to look up to and in several states, they are even demonised by politicians and media. They once had the states where knowledge, philosophy and science flourished and bloomed, and now they are identified with ignorance and dogma. They have not had a great leader for a long time now from their ranks. On top of it, they are riven by petty internal divisions. The Muslim world today feels keenly its humiliation and the shame over its divided leaders when Israel kills with impunity people in Muslim countries, with other Muslim countries not able to do much about it.

A lack of power on the world stage is also keenly felt in Britain and mainland Europe. Brexit was a vent for Britain, but it is not that that got Britain any extra power as a result of that on the world stage. Britain and Europe once colonised the world and lorded it over. Now Europe doesn’t even have its own army. They have to depend on the U.S. for their own protection, forget colonising others. The French still continue some direct and indirect colonisation on a small scale with some central African countries and some Pacific colonies, but that’s all there is to it. The French continue to rue their loss of North African colonies. The lack of power has started to be felt by the U.S., too: the Vietnam war was probably seen as an unexplainable, but when the Americans felt that the U.S. could not have any decisive wins, except taking out bin Laden, in the Middle East and Afghanistan, wherever they may be, it seemed the norm rather than an aberration. Then, China’s rise happened: its industrial giants are giving jitters to not just European companies but even to some American companies. Just like Britain in the 1950s, reeling from economic pressure, drew back into itself, so is both Biden and Trump’s America, feeling the same pressure, doing these days. But people, when they are not doing that well, hanker after some kind of reflected glory to give greater meaning to their identity. The British disposition is of being extremely self-critical, so the British conceded to the new realities far more easily than another country in their place would have. The U.S., with a colossal hubris, will its people concede as well so easily? I doubt it.

The world is thus going through an immense churn today, and geopolitical events are acting as the catalyst this churn needed. Here’s a look at it, finally.

The geopolitical stage today

Let us understand the backdrop first before looking at recent events and what could happen.

The U.S. can be argued to be at the beginning of a stage of decline. With the rise of China, it does not have the same hegemony over the world as it did in the post-Cold War era until 2008. The Americans are increasingly polarised between two camps, thus showing an internal weakness. Critically, the U.S. is also getting behind China or is at par with China in two critical technologies of the future: artificial intelligence (AI) and biology/bioengineering. A big advantage that the U.S. is supposed to hold is that it still has a big conventional military advantage over any of its peers. However, in the technological race, if one nation suddenly develops something that the other hasn’t still, this advantage can become obliterated in no time. Technological advancement is the only true advantage.

If, however, the conventional setups still apply and no country has made a leap of technology over others, then, instead of saying the likes of China or Russia, repeated ad nauseam by commentators, I would say the main thorn in the flesh to the U.S. hegemony is likely to be Turkey. A once-again powerful Turkey would mean much of the Muslim world eventually, especially the Muslim civilian population living worldwide under the humiliation I talked about earlier, gathering around Turkey. If Turkey becomes or is allowed to be powerful again, Eastern Europe would again be either wanting to please Turkey and negotiate with it or be swallowed up by it: this would limit Western Europe’s already dwindling strength even more and dent the hegemony of the U.S. and the aspirations of Russia. On the other hand, in my estimation, China may not mind, as long as the Turkic people of China (i.e., the Xinjiang region) does not become restive as well, because it would be to the detriment of China to see a more powerful Russia.

Now why do I talk of Turkey in the first place? Israel’s recent successes against Iran’s proxies have made Iran quite weak and may engender even a political crisis or even a regime change within Iran, as Iranians must be feeling humiliated. I expect Israel’s successes to continue. An incoming Republican administration would give even more of a free hand to Israel. At the same time, in Syria, the forces of Bashar al-Assad, who has been backed by Iran and Russia till now, are suddenly being cornered by Syrian rebel forces, backed by Turkey. As of the time of writing this, the rebels are the doorstep of Damascus itself. If rebels manage to take Syria outright, or stay put in a negotiated settlement between Russia and Turkey, that would not only increase Turkey’s geopolitical power considerably, but it would also limit Iran considerably. It would prove to be a boost for Israel in the short term, so the U.S. may let it happen: Donald Trump yesterday (on Dec. 7, 2024) said (tweeted) that he will let it play out, without letting the U.S. intervene any which way. Maybe that’s the negotiated settlement? Let Russia have (much of) Ukraine and let Turkey have Syria, all with President Trump’s blessings. If Syria plays out in Turkey’s favour, expect increased instability in Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan. The Arab states, neither a friend of Turkey nor Iran, would have to choose between the two and may want to bolster Iran in order to let Turkey not become too powerful: much depends on who Khamenei’s successors are in Iran, or if there will be a regime change altogether there. However, unless Turkey and Russia were to pit themselves against each other rather than progress in cat-and-mouse moves of collaborative adversialism, Turkey may become too strong, making the Arab states rethink their alliance and Israel realise its folly and want to draw the U.S. back in the Middle Eastern theatre. And what if Putin goes, in a coup or health crisis? Who will hold Russia unified and together then, and even if it does, what will be Russia’s foreign policy then?

And what of the mood in Muslim populations in Arab countries and around the world? Germany hosts an immense number of Turkish Muslims. France holds a significant number of Muslims, both Arab Muslims and black African Muslims. What about India and Indonesia, two countries with huge Muslim populations, even if they are local ethnicities, not Arabs, Turks or Persians? India, after all, even had a huge Khilafat movement a hundred years back against the British over events in Turkey!

Given this geopolitical juncture, and the identity crisis brewing in both the Muslim and white worlds, there seems to be a clash of civilisations on the cards, with a Turkey-led Muslim civilisation, maybe backed by China and Russia, on one side, and the Christian-led U.S. and Europe on the other side, with allies Japan and South Korea. India, I feel, could go either camp’s way, even though it is currently a U.S. ally, or remain neutral officially. It would be very difficult for India to take a side against a Turkey-led combine if all Muslim states are with Turkey because of India’s own sizeable Muslim population and the restiveness it would generate in India if it were to take a side against the Muslims. This clash of civilisations, anyway, would fit my 2028-31 predictions very well, as I foresee extreme conflict in the world during that time.