6 ideas
For most of the last two millennia, China and India were the world's largest economies, so the West's roughly two centuries of dominance since 1820 is the anomaly, not the norm. The current rise of Asia is a return to the historical mean rather than a disruption of a natural order.
Western ideas such as modern science, rational governance, free markets and the belief that individuals can shape their own destiny were exported and absorbed by the rest of the world. That diffusion is what let billions escape poverty, so the West's relative decline is the result of its gifts succeeding.
While China joined the WTO in 2001 and its economy became integrated into global markets, the West focused on 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Absorbed by wars in the Muslim world, it missed the more consequential structural shift toward Asia happening at the same time.
After the Cold War, Western elites treated 'the end of history' as proof their model had won permanently, and so stopped questioning their own assumptions. This complacency hid both the rise of other powers and growing inequality and stagnation among ordinary citizens at home, which later produced populist backlash.
Minimalist: stop intervening militarily and meddling in other countries' affairs, and instead fix domestic problems. Multilateral: strengthen global institutions like the UN and IMF, which will protect a West that has become a minority. Machiavellian: act out of cold calculation of long-term interests, such as dividing potential rivals rather than uniting them through hostile policy.
With the West comprising only about 12 percent of the world's population, rules-based global institutions that constrain great powers now serve Western interests more than unilateral power does. Weakening or bypassing these institutions while dominant is a mistake, because it destroys the protections the West will need once it is no longer on top.