Everywhere we see Western illusions colliding with reality, as when the reckless bid to suck Ukraine into the EU and Nato inevitably provoked a response from President Putin and a Russian sense of national interest that has left us looking pathetically impotent. Likewise, in his support for Syria’s President Assad, Putin has run rings round the West, just as the murderous regime in Iran ran rings round us in that recent “nuclear deal”, so meaningless that Iran’s “moderate” President Rouhani never even bothered to sign it, almost immediately authorising two illegal tests of nuclear-capable missiles, knowing that no action from the West would follow.
We then saw that even more meaningless “non-binding” deal in Paris, supposed to save the world from global warming. The very fact that it was the West that had dreamed up this scare in the first place was yet another symptom of how easily we fall for illusions; and again it was the outside world, led by China and India, that refused to buy such nonsense…

The reason why we do not see just how far our spoiled, emasculated, de‑spiritualised societies in the West have lost the plot is that they are the bubble we live in. But these days there is a great big world out there, much less sentimental and much tougher than what we have become used to. Over the coming years, our world is going to change more than we can imagine.