Dominique Moïsi is an eminent French international relations expert, a scholar trained in Paris now teaching at Kings College in London and Harvard. In The Triumph of Emotions — in one of several personal asides through the book — he describes himself as a realist capable of idealism. We also learn he is the son of a concentration camp survivor, a boomer born in 1946, steeped in Russian culture but nostalgic for the Capra films of FDR’s America, committed to the European ideal. He has advised ministers and engaged with global organisations. He believes emotions shape national calculations but careful analysis can decipher, perhaps influence, global events.
Yet if this is a realist account of our world we are in deep trouble. For Dominique Moïsi sees a planet on fire.
The Triumph of Emotions begins in Ukraine and often cycles back to the implications of that deadly conflict. Moïsi sees little hope for peace. In his assessment, Vladimir Putin is waging a war to avenge resentments against the West and recapture Russia’s standing in the world. There are few reasons for him to retreat — and little reason nearby nations will be spared should Ukraine fall. Putin’s only constraint is internal: greater mobilisation is dangerous for Moscow, which relies on waging war without too much disruption to Russian life.
For Europe, the invasion of Ukraine marks an end to comfortable security. The European Union finds itself with few allies. For too long, argues Moïsi, the West ignored the global South and East; now it sees a growing group of nations with little equity in the UN Security Council or other bodies claiming to speak for universal values. As the recent gathering for China’s Victory Day military parade made clear, Putin can stand alongside the leaders of many nations, from North Korea to Iran. Russian has a “no limits” friendship with Beijing. The Russian president has framed the Ukrainian invasion as a battle against the arrogance of the West, a message that resonates in much of Africa and Southeast Asia. In Moïsi’s memorable phrase, this is an “empire of lies.”
Moïsi sees a key sign of global change in India. He worries a strong nationalism tied to religious identification under prime minister Narendra Modi will threaten India’s non-aligned status as the balancing power in Asia. He was writing before Donald Trump imposed tariffs on India and a testy phone call between the leaders cast doubt on the future of the Quad agreement. Since then Modi has travelled to Beijing to meet with leaders including Putin and China’s Xi Jinping. The Indian prime minister skipped the subsequent military parade because India has “no intention of harming Japan.”
Which points Moïsi’s tour d’horizon towards other significant players as a multipolar world emerges — to a Turkey caught between NATO and the politics of the Middle East, Africa as the forgotten continent, a still-struggling Latin America, a repressive regime holding on in Iran. Above all there is China, with an economy and military now challenging the United States, shaped by its past as a world centre and continued resentment at previous humiliation.
(Australia finds no place in this high-level discussion of global politics. Our nation doesn’t make the index, and appears only once in the text, amid a list of “Asian west” nations. Former prime minister Kevin Rudd does earn a paragraph, though it’s focused on his writing about the ideology of President Xi.)
Which brings Moïsi to the global West and, in particular, America. His text appears to have been completed very early in the Trump presidency, but he already perceives a deeply divided America filled with anger — if not rage — at perceived internal enemies.
At this moment of major global shift, argues Moïsi, Europe can no longer rely on the single most powerful global player. In a short passage that captures his overall assessment, Moïsi concludes:
America’s domestic weaknesses only serve to convince China, America’s main rival, that the age of democracy is on the wane. Trump’s re-election in November 2024 constitutes a confirmation, if not an ultimate encouragement, for Beijing and Moscow.
In a text generally light on specifics, Moïsi takes time to outline his concerns about the MAGA movement and the implications for American democracy. In a book framed as a discussion of emotions in global politics Donald Trump triggers a very strong response in the author.
Overall, suggests Moïsi, the West has “clearly lost the centrality and primary it enjoyed for centuries.” He finds both France and Germany unnerved by the war in Ukraine, by tensions between Europe and former colonies, by the European Union’s loss of Britain.
Moïsi’s final pages focus on Israel, which he characterises as drifting toward illiberal democracy, portraying prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a prefiguration of President Trump. As a result, Israelis have never been “so divided on the essentials.” Moïsi records his involvement in earlier peace talks in the Middle East, including the Oslo Peace Process. Now his mood is one of despair. Only a miracle, he concludes, could overcome the animosity between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.
Gone is the world that emerged in 1945 as Moïsi’s father was liberated from a camp near Mauthausen by black American troops. The global alliance to defeat fascism soon fragmented, though not before creating the key institutions of the postwar era. The Triumph of Emotions sketches a new reality of rising powers and a West that failed to act on its principles. A global realignment was inevitable as economies grew around the world, but few predicted a ferocious war just two hours’ flight from Paris.
And all this before any discussion of climate change, movements of displaced people or the challenges of AI. There is, concludes Moïsi, “nowhere else to escape (with the possible exception of Switzerland.)” It must have been a relief to stop writing.
The Triumph of Emotions is a bracing read. It offers an explicitly European take on the world, describing a globe in which fear prevails over hope. The framing of the book is drawn from Moïsi’s 2009 analysis, The Geopolitics of Emotions, though theory rests very lightly on the latest volume. The earlier book closed with a scenario speculating about the future. The reality, sixteen years on, approaches his worse-case scenario. So no predictions this time, just a hope the democratic West will realise the threat in time amid melancholy at opportunities lost. Look on our works, ye mighty, and despair. •
The Triumph of Emotions: Geopolitics in an Age of Resentment, Anger and Fear
By Dominique Moïsi | Polity Press | $41.95 | 160 pages
