Is Western Civilization in a State of Decline?

For more than 50 years, the cold war grabbed the attention of many of the world’s nations. This happened due to the evident rising powers of the United States and the Soviet Union. Both of them wanted an upper hand on the power influence and hence half the century was spent under conflict and unsettled disputes. Later the Soviet Union broke down and divided into separate republics, giving freedom to the West. But this liberation led to uncertainties for the West’s future leadership. Many issues arose questioning whether the change will decrease the danger or will the West be able to maintain the position in world’s affairs during the millennium? Will the twenty-first century be more peaceful and have productive outcomes than the twentieth century? Or just merely, is the Western civilization in a state of decline?
Supporting this issue, Samuel P. Huntington, shows two different considerations of the western civilization in ‘The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order’. The first consideration is the western dominance on the economic, political, cultural and security situation of every other civilization and region. The second consideration depicts its slow decline with the internal problems like slow economic growth, unemployment, stagnant population, government shortfall, deteriorating work ethic, crime, and social collapse.
The decline is a slow process as it has certain variations and is highly irregular with a lot of pauses and reversals. Also, the West’s resources started declining more in the twentieth century as compared to the other civilizations. This was mainly because of World War I and World War II as they led to economic difficulties such as inflation. Studies show that by 2020 the west will control 24% of the world’s territory (down from a peak of 48%), 30% of the world’s economic product (down from a peak of 70%), 25% of the world’s manufacturing output (down from a peak of 84%) and many other estimated figures which clearly show