An image composition featuring the earth and silhouettes of people. Photo: New Eastern Outlook.
By Lama El Horr – Oct 31, 2025
Behind every political action and every failure to act lies a worldview.
From the burning words of Palestine, Haiti, Congo, Sudan, Western Sahara, Somalia, and Yemen, to the bloody containment of Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Havana, Managua, and Caracas, who can look at the world today without being struck by its chronic, organic dysfunctions?
Faced with the intensity of the evil that plagues us, it is incumbent upon all of us—world leaders, academics, corporations, media, artists, ordinary citizens—to act and push for action to counteract these calamities, even if it means taking the detour of parables, legends, and fictional heroes.
Neutralism or the sphere of certainties
“Choosing between the plague and cholera” is a common expression used to describe the impossibility of choosing between two equally unsatisfactory options. This is how some people view the Atlantic Bloc/multipolar world alternative: after all, these neutralists believe that politics is violent, regardless of who the players are, and that newcomers to the arena of power will inevitably display the same cynicism as those they have criticized. In other words, for these advocates of “everything is equal,” China and its partners in the SCO, BRICS, and Global South are doomed to reproduce the colonialist model of the Western imperialist powers, whether they like it or not.
One can immediately denounce the hypocrisy contained in this statement. By peddling the defeatist idea that it is futile to try to change the international order because we are all created in the image of Western imperialism, the proponents of this neutralism are in fact serving the hegemonic interests of the Atlantic bloc, dismissing any prospect of a more equitable world order, and even diminishing the importance of accountability for the countless crimes committed. Let us also remind these “neutralists” that, unlike during the Cold War, when the Non-Aligned Movement was established to ward off war, today, on the contrary, so-called “neutral” Western countries such as Switzerland, Sweden, and Finland have seen their “neutrality” melt like snow in the sun at Washington’s first whistle.
But when it comes to Russia and China, facts and logic no longer matter. Certainties become an uncontrollable weed. You can repeat to these followers of the “six of one, half a dozen of the other” theory that China suffered devastating invasions by Western powers and Japan, which kept it technologically backward and underdeveloped throughout the “Century of Humiliation”; that it then worked to develop its population through labor, not through wars of aggression and plunder; that it achieved the feat of lifting 800 million people out of poverty, while Western empires threw hundreds of millions into misery and the hell of war; that it has reiterated in all its political plans since independence that the country rejects any hegemonic domination of the world; well, despite this, they will retort without batting an eyelid that the hegemony that China was unable to establish in the past, it will seek to establish in the future. In short, let us be careful not to disturb the tranquility of the sphere of certainties.
Paralyzing neutrality vs. Methodical doubt
By reverse analogy, we find the same paralysis in Buridan’s ass, whose inability to choose between hunger and thirst ultimately condemns him to die of both at once. This fate is reminiscent of the procrastination of Old Europe, paralyzed between its vital need for independence from Washington and its addiction to the American security umbrella. By dithering, European countries have seen American tutelage tighten, as was to be expected.
This situation illustrates the structural and multidimensional crisis facing the European bloc, which sorely lacks the imagination to overcome its systemic weaknesses—no strategic resources, no independent security, a unity that is falling apart, a diplomacy reduced to protecting crimes of genocide, rampant deindustrialization, a debt that is growing at the pace of the drums of war, and an unabashed trampling of democratic values in the name of democracy. If the European elite, remotely controlled from Washington, now sees only the prospect of war with Russia, it is because it admits, deep down, that it has burned its other cards for survival.
But above all, this situation illustrates that constantly postponing taking control of one’s destiny ultimately deprives one of the ability to protect one’s interests. Assailed by NATO’s expansionism at its borders, Russia in the winter of 2022 realized in time that its wait-and-see attitude, if it continued, would cause it to lose its territorial integrity, its sovereignty, and even its identity. Other emerging powers, knowing that they are in the crosshairs of the Axis of the Fallen Hegemon, may be led to follow Moscow’s example.
Ultimately, it is important to keep in mind that methodical doubt, however indispensable it may be, becomes paralyzing neutrality if it does not lead to a clear decision followed by concrete action. If European leaders, through lack of initiative, have given free rein to Washington’s hegemonic instincts, they must face the consequences before their populations in order to put an end to the cacophonous refrain of a Europe that is half-free, half-vassal.
Global South Cooperation Needed to Counter Hegemonic Disinformation
Hamlet’s dilemma and our times
More courageous, Hamlet manages to make a choice by process of elimination: “Who would bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, if not for the fear of death, from whose bourn no traveler returns?” At the end of this universal reflection—To be or not to be—Shakespeare’s hero decides to resign himself to the miseries he knows, for fear of having to suffer others that are even more unbearable. Hamlet’s monologue draws its strength from the simplification of the enigma, where To be becomes synonymous with “known land,” and Not to be with “unexplored land.” Thus, Hamlet’s dilemma came to symbolize the necessity for man to resign himself to present misfortunes, however cruel they may be.
We had been there, so to speak, since the meditations of the Prince of Denmark, until our era—a first since modern times—set about reexamining the Shakespearean dilemma. Imperceptibly, over the last twenty years, a new reality has emerged: the turpitudes of life under the Atlanticist yoke have become so unbearable, so contrary to the very survival of humanity, that the majority of the world’s countries have, in a sense, “revolutionized” themselves, opting for the adventure of the unknown—relegating Hamlet’s courage to the sedentary section of history.
It is true that these new realities are difficult for Western populations to perceive, indoctrinated as they are by relentless media terrorism, whose purpose is to distort reality by making people believe that their interests are the same as those of the military-industrial complex of the Atlanticist oligarchy. There is no doubt that the Palestinian people, from the youngest child amputated without anesthesia, to the elderly wandering without food under Western bombs, to the men savagely tortured, raped, and electrocuted for daring to demand their freedom, have a far more sophisticated understanding of the world than these defenders of supremacist human rights who seek to enslave, through ethnic cleansing and extermination if necessary, peoples who aspire to freedom.
Ultimately, in his meditation—which is beautiful, but that is not the point—Hamlet did not think of us: the undeniable and irreversible reality of our time is that most countries in the world, from Africa to Eurasia to Latin America, have decided to abandon the ship of unipolarity for the unknown—whatever name that unknown may have: SCO, BRICS, BRI, Global South, Multipolar World, Community of Destiny for Humanity…
Lama El Horr
Lama El Horr is the Founding Editor of China Beyond the Wall. She is a geopolitical consultant and analyst specializing in Chinese foreign policy, geopolitics and geoeconomics. She holds a PhD from Paris-Sorbonne University and has also studied at the LSE. Lama El Horr has worked in the government, academic and media sectors in Europe, China, Latin America, and the Middle East, and is fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic.
