The End of Humanity, Not History: The Great Demographic and Ethical Crisis of the 21st Century

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the liberal West claimed ideological victory. This triumph is often narrated through a Eurocentric lens of historical continuity. But it is important to recall that Soviet Union considered itself rooted in Western Marxism, albeit refracted through Leninist anti-imperialist and anti-colonial perspectives. Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 declaration of the “End of History” (1) captured the prevailing belief that liberal democracy and free-market capitalism had triumphed as the final stage of human political, economic and ethical evolution inspired from the Hegelian progressive historical approach. Within this context, scholars such as Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye Jr. envisioned a world governed by “complex interdependence,” (2) where cooperation, rule of law and liberal norms would prevent large-scale conflict and global fragmentation.

But as the 21st century unfolds, the foundational assumptions of the liberal order are crumbling—not only because of external rivals, but also due to its own internal contradictions. The West no longer occupies the central position in shaping the dominant discourse on global challenges: its moral credibility has been undermined in places such as Palestine; demographic policies have failed to reverse declining fertility, while migration policies designed to compensate for population loss have transformed Western nation-states into multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multicultural societies, fuelling the rise of far-right politics; and its retreat from the liberal promise of free trade toward protectionism has coincided with the momentum of economic development shifting toward alternative centres such as China.

Hence, far from the end of history, we may be witnessing the implosion of liberalism itself, as its core premise of individual autonomy erodes the foundations of societies, nations and civilisations, and the West loses its moral, demographic and economic centrality.

The Demographic Collapse

Nowhere are liberalism’s internal contradictions more evident than in the demographic crisis engulfing the developed world. Fertility rates in nearly every Western country have dropped far below replacement level. (3) Traditional family structures are eroding; and marriage is increasingly delayed or abandoned altogether.

Liberalism has eroded the social ties that kept society going. Rooted in industrialisation and capitalism, the liberal socio-economic order has exacerbated urbanisation and mass migration, severing extended, close-knitted family ties and placing the nuclear family and atomised society at the centre of modern life. (4) This has created the “homo economicus” (5) mindset, which determines the social status of the individual based on the signals of his material well-being. As a result, consumerism, which naturally and extensively serves the interests of corporations, became a central feature of developed nations.

As put by anthropologist Paul Hooper, “As competition becomes more focused on social climbing, as opposed to just putting food on the table, people invest more in material goods and achieving social status, and that affects how many children they have”. (6) Increasingly, this trend led to further erosion of social and family ties, even that of the nuclear family, creating the atomised individual. Today, single-person households are multiplying rapidly and almost reached the half of the population in certain places, (7) loneliness is a global health threat, (8) and in the US, more than 57% of young adults say that they are not willing to have any kids. (9)

The effects of the demographic collapse of fertility are not simply limited to population decline, but have many far-reaching implications. Aging society, without the labour of younger generations, will crumble under the “silver tsunami” of elder caretaking and social services. (10) Rural areas are de-populating and the remaining population is growing older, (11) creating unprecedented levels of rural poverty. (12)

Most Western states have started to recognise the impending crisis. Yet, even the most generous pro-natalist policies—subsidies, tax incentives, parental leave, etc.—fail to reverse these trends. This is because, by focusing on material incentives, these policies fail to recognise that what curtails fertility are the social, cultural, capitalist and liberal ideological systems themselves. This is a framework that values individual freedom and self-fulfilment above all else, ultimately uprooting traditional patterns of family life and culture.

In such a society, reproduction becomes a lifestyle choice rather than a shared societal responsibility. Parenthood is not incentivised through meaning, but through financial compensation—and meaning cannot be bought. Concordantly, traditional or value-based societies have substantially higher fertility rates than that of liberal and secular ones despite the former being economically less capable in most cases. (13)

This is not merely a social or economic issue. It is civilisational. No society in history has survived without reproducing itself. The West's refusal to confront the anti-natal logic embedded in extreme individualism reveals the existential limits of its own ideology.

Replacing People, Losing Nations? The Cost of Demographic Substitution

Faced with demographic decline, Western nations have increasingly turned to immigration to stabilise labour markets and rejuvenate aging societies. But this model is now politically and culturally strained. Across Europe, the backlash against mass migration has fuelled populist and far-right movements, underscoring deep anxieties over national identity, cultural cohesion and social trust.

From a macroeconomic perspective, immigration is undoubtedly sensical: it supplies fresh (and usually skilled) labour, contributes to economic growth and prevents the overturning of the population pyramid. (14) Japan, which has long resisted large-scale immigration in the face of an accelerating population collapse with no end in sight, is now easing immigration policies to keep vital industries from shrinking, and is expected to triple the foreign workforce in by 2040. (15) Increasingly, immigration is heralded as the best counter-mechanism to demographic decline.

However, due to the free-market aspect of liberalism, immigration incentivises corporations to aggravate competition in the job market: seeking cheap migrant labour and thus driving down wages as much as possible. By further straining the already-limited economic capabilities of the population, immigration impacts fertility, creating an unbalance in the population trajectories of the native and immigrant populations. By determining who reproduces and who populates the society, this trend will cause shifts not only on the social fabric and cultural composition of the Western societies but also on their institutional structure. (16) Hence, this dilemma reveals an impending crisis concerning the very civilisational identity and political order of the West.

This conundrum is mobilised as a discourse by far-right politicians all around the West, and is fuelling their rise to power. While governments turned to immigration to offset the economic costs of the falling fertility rates, populist and far-right politicians argue the reverse: that the increased job insecurity, rent and living costs are the main causes of the falling fertility rate. (17) Given the proportion of foreign-born citizens are in two-digit numbers everywhere in Europe and the United States for the first time, anti-immigration sentiment has been decisive in elections. (18) Now, governments are torn between the economic reality of the fertility crisis and the backlash against immigration. (19)

Countries that remain hostile to immigration while their birth rates keep falling are destined for demographic collapse. (20) Immigration may temporarily mask the symptoms, but it cannot fix the underlying disease. When combined with the loss of shared cultural narratives, it risks eroding the very concept of the nation-state, while forcing the West to rethink nationhood and adopt a worldview that engages peacefully with other cultures beyond Eurocentrism.

A Global Reversal: The African Exception

Demographic decline is no longer exclusive to the West. Countries such as China, Russia, Turkey and South Korea—once champions of modernisation— as well Iran, now face similar fertility crises. (21) Despite differing ideologies, these nations have converged on the same outcome: urbanisation, individualisation and the postponement or destruction of family life.

The United Nation’s population projections are revised every two years; and for the past decade, they have always been revised down There is no indication that this trend will change in the near future. The fertility rates that first rang the alarm for Japan were about 1.3 to 1.5, drawing a bleak picture for Colombia (1.06) and Chile (1.03). (22) Even UN policymakers, who previously focused discussions around availability of contraceptives, changed their tune to raise concerns about fertility. (23)

Nonetheless, there is a region that defies this trend: Africa. In 1970s, Europe’s population was twice that of Africa. Today, Africa’s population is more than double Europe’s and still growing despite all of the political crises, conflicts and migration. (24) It is expected to double by 2050 even in the face of declining global fertility trends. (25) This demographic dynamism is poised to reshape global politics, economics and migration patterns. Africa is emerging not only as a labour reservoir, but as a cultural and geopolitical force in its own right.

In a century increasingly defined by demographic imbalances, the youth advantage and global diaspora may be the continent’s greatest geopolitical asset. However, this 'demographic dividend' is a time-bound opportunity emerging within a broader demographic transition: although Africa’s population is projected to double by 2050 due to population momentum and improving life expectancy, birthrates themselves are steadily declining — following the same trend observed in developed nations. (26)

While in most African states population statistics still have a pyramid structure, in more developed regions, it is turning into an onion shape, with the “youth bulge” representing both a great economic and geopolitical opportunity and a repetition of the path to demographic collapse taken by the West. (27) Africa too is increasingly captivated by urbanisation and shrinking family sizes, as is symptomatic of the liberal order. (28) However, as the world’s largest source of immigrants and the only region left above the replacement fertility rate, should Africa fall below the replacement rate, it will not be able to find immigrants to offset the deficit.

Today, Africa is the only region with above replacement fertility rates. (See the graph below). It is the only region that keeps the world average from falling below the replacement line as well. If Africa, alongside the rest of the world, gets caught up in the liberal capitalist system of values and continues this downward trajectory, humanity globally may enter into a period of irreversible decline.

Palestine and the Collapse of Moral Legitimacy

The contradictions of the liberal order are not limited to internal social structures, but also manifest in foreign policy and moral authority. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The professed commitment of the liberal West, particularly the United States, (29) to human rights, international law and justice has been rendered hollow by its selective application and political expediency.

The United States’ unwavering support for Israeli actions—alongside the European Union’s muted or symbolic responses—has deeply eroded the credibility of liberal institutions. Worse still, these contradictions now echo domestically. Across Western universities and civil society, students and academics face increasing repression for expressing solidarity with Palestine. (30) Freedom of expression, once the bedrock of liberal societies, is now under assault from within.

In the Global South, this hypocrisy has not gone unnoticed. Liberalism is no longer seen as a universal moral compass, but as a system of selective enforcement, often aligned with the interests of the powerful. The erosion of legitimacy on this front is accelerating the global search for alternative political and moral frameworks, with such efforts taking an increasingly institutional character, exemplified by the Active Non-Alignment approach in foreign policy and the New Development Bank in international trade and finance. (31)

A System at War with Itself: Economic Liberalism’s Collapse

The liberal international order was empowered by globalisation and free markets. But today, its own leading power—the United States—has turned inward. Under the Trump administration, Washington initiated trade wars and imposed tariffs, challenging decades of economic orthodoxy. That trend has continued, reflecting bipartisan disillusionment with global interdependence. (32) What prevailed in American eyes is not the liberal international order but rather American exceptionalism, sacrificing the present system to hold onto power and influence in the international sphere. (33)

Ironically, the country that most benefited from liberal globalisation is now its principal challenger. China used access to global markets to build a vast industrial and technological base. Rather than transitioning into a liberal democracy, which was the expectation of the patrons of the liberal order, it has evolved into a formidable economic competitor. (34) Its tech giants now rival or surpass their Western counterparts, and its political model—state capitalism without liberal democracy—is increasingly attractive to developing nations.

The liberal economic model, once expected to democratise the world, has instead enabled the rise of its ideological rival. Worse, the backlash in the United States itself—against offshoring, inequality and international trade—now threatens to dismantle the system from within.

Time for a New System

If the post-Cold War order is collapsing, what comes next? That question remains unanswered, but it is becoming more and more urgent. Moreover, the post–World War II multilateral system—anchored by institutions such as the United Nations and the UN Security Council—represented progress in the aftermath of global conflict and widespread human rights abuses, but has consistently failed to uphold its own principles. The situation in Palestine remains perhaps the most glaring example of this failure.

The Washington Consensus has collapsed as illiberal economic systems lead economic growth internationally. (35) The Beijing Consensus, on the other hand, is now unravelling with rising protectionism starting to disintegrate global supply chains. (36) In stark opposition to the liberal international economics, trade policy is now a tool of power projection and zero-sum competition, rather than cooperation and development.

The end of history was never inevitable; the end of humanity, however, may come if the world fails to embrace new perspectives for the 21st century.