Peter Slezkine Tries ...

 ... to look beyond the fait accompli of West's defeat in his interesting piece in The American Conservative. 

According to the “global majority” (as the Russians call it), the sun is finally setting on the West. After 500 years of dominance, the West is showing signs of relative decline across almost every dimension. A protracted period of historical anomaly is passing, and the world is entering an age defined by a reassertion of sovereign interests and a resurgence of ancient civilizations. At a certain remove, this image seems a reasonable enough representation of new realities. But as a roadmap for navigating international politics, it is far too rough a sketch. First, “decline” does not mean “displacement.” The West may lose its power to rule by diktat. Its institutions, culture, and moral fashions may lose their charm. But we will continue to live in a profoundly modern and globalized world of Western origin. Our systems of education and science, our forms of government, our legal and financial mechanisms, and our built environment will continue to rest on a Western foundation. A weakening West is unlikely to find itself in a post-Western world. 

He is absolutely correct, an undeniable fact of all of us living in the world which was shaped by the West. And the defeat and its euphemism--the decline--does not mean that West as a civilization will disappear. 

Slezkine identifies three paths for the West: 

I see three paths forward. The first is a limited liberal restoration. ... Another possibility is a radical retrenchment, understood as an abandonment of empire in favor of the nation. Politically, such a move would be broadly popular. ... The third and final option, then, is a new transatlantic consolidation that replaces a liberal universalist logic with a self-consciously civilizational frame, with the United States as the acknowledged metropole and Europe as a privileged periphery.

I agree with Slezkine, the likely outcome will be some sort of combination of the three ... for now. A lot depends on the dynamics of Europe's decline and this one is difficult to predict in detail. But Slezkine, not without justification, states in conclusion:

In any event, the United States is poised to maintain a favorable position in a multipolar world. The legacy institutions of international liberalism have largely lost their purpose, but retain residual power (which, ironically, the U.S. can leverage most effectively against other members of the “liberal order”). Going forward, the Trump administration should continue to push for a reconfiguration of the transatlantic relationship as a self-consciously Western coalition united by a common approach to trade, technology, and resource management. And if Europe fails to accept its new role, or play it well, then Washington can cut bait and retrench to prepared positions in the Western Hemisphere.

Yes, this is the luxury the US has, again--for now only, which Europe does not.