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Feeling depressed about the state of the world? Worried about the future? You’re not alone. Pessimism about politics is the new normal among the peoples of the west. Major conflicts in Europe and the Middle East and the harms caused by right-left extremism, stagnating economies, inequality, corruption, terrorism, racism, big tech, mass extinctions and the climate crisis make for shared nightmares.
Growing numbers of people simply refuse to personally engage with current events via the news media, finding them too anxiety-inducing (so they probably won’t be reading this). In a Reuters Institute survey last year, 40% of respondents in about 50 countries said they sometimes or often avoid the news altogether, a rise of 29% on 2017.
Intense negativity characterises European and, to a lesser degree, North American political sentiment. In France, 90% of people questioned by Ipsos believed their country is on the wrong track. In Britain, it was 79%; in Germany, 77%; in the US, 60%. Europeans feel similarly glum about the bigger, global picture, unlike the Chinese, Saudis and Nigerians who are broadly upbeat, according to a GlobeScan survey.
Pew Research Center polling in 25 countries last year found that the US, Russia and China are seen, by most but not all, as the biggest international threats. For Turks, for example, Israel is the main menace; for Greeks, it’s the Turks. It gets more confusing still. Canada is one of several countries in which majorities regard the US as both the main threat and main ally.
Disenchantment with democracy and dissatisfaction with political leaders is a ubiquitous, polarising western phenomenon. Divisions grow entrenched. Keir Starmer, with a 27% approval rating, according to Statista, is struggling to survive. Yet Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, are even less popular, on 19% and 18% respectively.
Donald Trump is down to about 38% approval, trailing his nemesis, Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, on 54%. In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s historically inflated ratings are now badly punctured. Figures for Xi Jinping are unreliable; in China, freely expressing opinions is dangerous. India is an exception. A majority frankly adores the prime minister, Narendra Modi.
A non-apathetic alternative to tuning out is switching on to anti-status quo parties that want, in effect, to blow up the system. They include radical leftists such as La France Insoumise and hard-right nationalist-populists such as the Alternative für Deutschland, Reform UK and Maga Republicans. But mostly they offer anger, not answers. So far, so much more depressing.
How might this tsunami of gloom – this absence of hope – be reversed? Positive examples are required. And as it happens, encouraging shifts are discernible in the three countries – Russia, Israel and the US – at the centre of the major global upheavals of the past decade. Leadership changes sidelining Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump – chief riders of the storm – could go a long way towards changing the zeitgeist.
Take Russia first. Putin’s presidency has never looked so vulnerable since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago. His “special military operation”, which he imagined would bring swift victory, has dragged on longer than the Soviet Union’s great patriotic war against the Nazis, to which he likens it. At least an estimated 350,000 Russian soldiers have died.
The war is inflicting unsustainable economic costs on Russia, exacerbated by western sanctions. Prices and taxes are up while official internet curbs try to stifle criticism. It is also an inescapable national humiliation. Ukraine not only survives, using innovative drone technology, but is more than holding its own on the battlefield. Embarrassingly, the annual Victory Day parade on Red Square was reduced in size for fear of air attack.
Recent reports suggest Putin, who has restricted his public appearances and is said to face dissent among the rival clan bosses and “securocrats” who sustain him in power, fears assassination or a coup. This may be western disinformation, intended to destabilise the regime. True or not, Putin’s remark last week that the war “is coming to a close” was a response, albeit ambiguous, to mounting internal pressure.
Netanyahu, another central figure in recent geopolitical and military confrontations, is also in potentially terminal trouble. Israel’s longest-serving prime minister faces an electoral showdown as opposition parties join forces to topple his ruling hard-right coalition. A nationwide vote must be held by the end of October – and it’s set to be all about “Bibi”.
Issues include Netanyahu’s failure to prevent the 7 October 2023 terrorist massacres and subsequent refusal to hold a fully independent inquiry; his broken pledge to “destroy” Hamas in Gaza, where he stands accused of war crimes; his alleged undermining of Israel’s judiciary and democratic processes; and his oft-delayed trial for corruption.
Right now, however, Netanyahu’s decision, with Trump, to embark on the disastrous war in Iran, the joint US-Israel failure, so far, to eliminate Tehran’s nuclear programme and missiles, the global chaos resulting from closure of the strait of Hormuz, and his prosecution of another “forever war” and illegal occupation in Lebanon are shaping voters’ views. He may struggle to survive their verdict.
Trump barely needs opponents. He is his own worst enemy. By blithely ignoring the economic hardships imposed on lower-income Americans by his Iran fiasco, he betrays the very people who elected him. Trump’s rogue foreign policy – his trade wars, climate crisis denial, abuse of European and Nato allies, threats of imperial conquest and sucking up to “strongman” dictators (seen again in Beijing) – has contributed greatly to western dismay, public pessimism and feelings of hopelessness.
But such issues do not decide US elections. It’s always the economy, stupid. And because Trump is messing that up, there’s every chance Republicans will lose control in November’s midterm polls of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate, too. Democrat victories would curtail Trump’s power to do harm and may foreshadow his impeachment. Lame duckery looms.
Putin deposed, Netanyahu defeated, Trump defanged and distracted. If it came to pass the world would feel a very different place. It’s true that even in a post-Putin Kremlin, the same corrupt, repressive, disruptive regime might remain in place. But any presidential successor would probably try to end Putin’s ruinous war, for Russia’s sake if not for Ukraine’s.
In Israel, Netanyahu’s departure would not change the post-2023 obsession with security. But assuming far-right parties are excluded from the next government, today’s extreme attrition, persecution and dispossession of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank would hopefully abate. Isolated Israel, its reputation in tatters, is overdue a national reckoning about exactly what sort of country it aspires to be. And Netanyahu, like Putin, is overdue a reckoning with the international criminal court.
What does the post-midterms future hold for Trump? He could be constitutionally removed from office. He may remain, ranting, raving and increasingly irrelevant. Trump might still threaten more overseas military “excursions”. But when the caravan moves on, even Alexanders and Napoleons get left behind.
One thing is certain: an end to Trump’s reign of error would help detoxify the world. Freed from him and his two poisonous comrades-in-arms, the demoralised, suffocating peoples of the west could breathe again. Hope and confidence would renew. There would, at last, be reasons to be cheerful.
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Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
