Emotions are difficult to measure and predict. This may be one of the reasons why they are not prominent in the discipline of international relations, which, when it comes to drawing big-picture analyses of the rise and decline of nation states, relies on harder and more easily quantifiable indicators.
In a 2009 essay, Dominique Moïsi argued for the importance of emotions in understanding a globalized world. Back then, he wrote about a fearful West, a hopeful Asia, and a humiliated majority. Now, Moïsi looks back and takes stock. The Triumph of Emotions: Geopolitics in an Age of Resentment, Anger and Fear is in parts an analysis of a shifting world order and a defence of the liberal project currently threatened from within and challenged from without.
The book is divided into four chapters. In the first chapter, Moïsi reflects on the “emotional divorce of the world” over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Although liberal Westerners have been galvanized by the war, most of the world has not. The response of the majority is instead informed by anger at Western hypocrisies as well as by self-interest.
The subsequent chapters analyse the world according to how Moïsi divides it. In the second chapter, Moïsi paints a broad picture of the emotions, perspectives, and orientations of the main Global South players and regions. Much of his hope is invested in India, which, in a parallel to French thinking on European “strategic autonomy,” he paints as the potential balancer between Asia and the West.
In the third chapter, the picture gets darker. He groups Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea into what he calls the “Global East.” This assembly of states, he writes, is marked by “anger toward the Global West,” growing “asymmetry between its members” and sees itself in a “civilizational contest” with the West (p. 81).
On Russia, Moïsi’s writing is informed by political hostility. Russia is a place of “inescapable cruelty” and marked by the despotism and cynicism of its rulers (p. 97 f.). China and Iran receive more muted, if similar and rather superficial treatments. Chinese scholars and those attuned to Chinese foreign policy in the Global South will find much to disagree with here.
The last chapter is about a pressured and polarized “Global West.” According to Moïsi, “Europe’s message is losing on two crucial counts: it remains too paternalistic and arrogant toward the Global South and too uncertain and hesitant toward its own past and its future identity.” However, circling back to the first chapter, he adds that “[t]he war in Ukraine has, at least initially, had one positive effect on Europeans, who have discovered their anti-Russian resilience.” (p. 132). In his conclusion, Moïsi argues that as the U.S. turns Trumpian and the Global East hardens its authoritarianism, Europe may just be the place of the future. However, current events do not seem to bear him out.
The three-world-theory as presented in this book is less novel than Moïsi suggests. The liberal-realist scholar John G. Ikenberry has drawn up a virtually identical division of the world in a paper published in International Affairs in January 2024. Moreover, Moïsi’s exercise in world-ordering is informed less by geography than politics. For example, he writes that Nicaragua or Venezuela, which would typically be counted as states belonging to the Global South, belong, in fact, to the “Global East,” given the anti-Western orientations of their current governments (p. 81). As for the “Global West,” the criteria for inclusion are also based on their existing political alignments. Japan or South Korea are seen as Asian members of the West. A problematic past also does not seem to matter: post-fascist Italian leader Giorgia Meloni gets a clap on the back as an exemplary member of the West due to her “pro-Ukraine, pro-NATO, and pro-Europe” stance (p. 17).
At this point, readers may be tempted to think that Moïsi simply provides another West is best narrative. However, this is not quite the case. For example, Moïsi is decidedly critical of scholarly or other attempts to whitewash European imperialism or the “absolute evil” of slavery (p. 65).
Moïsi is thus certainly not deaf to the argument of postcolonial writers such as Pankaj Mishra that feelings of humiliation, defeat and existential threat need to inform our analysis of various counter-movements to globalization and Westernisation. One reason for the writer’s empathy toward the Global South is that, similar to the aforementioned Ikenberry, he believes that the “West” and the “East” are in a competition over the “South.” If one had to sum up the political message of the book in a slogan, it would be this: Win the South, Fight the East, Defend the liberal West.
The term “geopolitics,” currently en vogue but conceptually unclear and historically problematic, informs the title but is not defined in the book. The marriage of geopolitics with emotions embodied by states as singular actors leads to an analysis of international relations akin to a novel – with good characters, bad ones, and all those in-between. It is perhaps an intuitive way of looking at international relations. Yet, it is also easy to find fault with it.
For example, Moïsi’s account neglects important differentiators such as class or regional variation (a member of the ruling family in the United Arab Emirates will have different emotions on the topic of globalization than a slum dweller in Cairo, yet both belong to states of the “South”). Also missing from the book is a demonstration of how emotions translate into foreign policy making and how they do not. China may serve as an example here. It is true that the “century of humiliation” informs the way the Chinese leadership thinks about international relations. However, this does not mean that Chinese foreign policy, depending on the issue, is necessarily based primarily on emotions.
To close, Moïsi’s book is powerfully and often elegantly written. It is saturated with a long life experience as an international relations scholar. However, it is not a very “academic” book. It cites only a few other works and the evidence presented is mostly anecdotal. While this makes for easy reading, it also means that those who agree with Moïsi’s perspective will nod along, while those who do not, will not.
