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One of the more common excuses against escaping the Collapsing West and/or internationalizing your lifestyle, and one I’ve already refuted many times, is the right-wing excuse of “There’s nowhere to run!!!! If America collapses, every country in the ENTIRE WORLD will INSTANTLY collapse too!!!”

Right. So when the USA goes under (which will happen in your lifetime) all the other 195 countries on planet Earth instantly turn into shitholes.

Uh, no.

I’ve already shown many countries that would still be fine. I’ve even talked about how Paraguay wouldn’t even notice a difference if the USA collapsed tomorrow. Dubai would have some problems for a few years, but it would recover and also be okay. Many countries would be okay.

The countries that will be in huge trouble when America goes down, like most of Western Europe, Taiwan, Israel, Canada, and so on are ones I don’t recommend as living flags anyway. I’ve said many times that doing something like moving from the USA to Canada or the UK is just flat-out stupid; you’re just hopping from one sinking ship to another.

That all being said, one factor that you should keep in mind in the era of Western Collapse is how exposed your new flag country is and/or will be when the West finally goes under.

You can view this as a 1 to 10 scale. We’ll call it the Western Exposure Scale, or WES. Countries that have a high WES ranking are more dependent on the West economically, militarily, or both. Countries with a low WES ranking are less reliant on the West for these things and will be less affected when the West collapses. Countries that rank as a “1” aren’t reliant at all and countries that rank as a “10” are so reliant they are linked at the hip with the West and will drop like files as soon as the West goes down. Most countries are going to be between 9 and 3 or so, with a few outliers.

Any country you choose as a living flag or economic flag should be as low on this scale as you can comfortably get. They don’t have to be a 1, but you sure as hell don’t want them to be a 7 or an 8 either.

Here’s my example. My two homes are Dubai in the UAE and Asunción in Paraguay. Paraguay’s WES ranking is literally a 1. I’ve talked about many times how the USA could collapse tomorrow and the vast majority of people in Paraguay wouldn’t even notice a difference in their lives. They’d hear about it on the news and talk about it a little, then just go on with their day.

The first reason for this is that Paraguay is very low on the economic scale, and when you’re already low you’re oddly protected from big economic changes like this because you don’t have far to drop. That’s why it can often be advantageous to live in a lower-economy country as long as the crime rates are low (like Paraguay).

The second reason is that most of Paraguay’s big trading partners aren’t Western countries. Paraguay’s top export destinations are Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, all localized to Southern South America, not the USA. Its next largest is Russia, a non-Western country. Its next largest is the Netherlands, finally a Western country, but it’s number six on that list. The USA is number nine on that list.

Thus, Paraguay is a 1. Nice and safe.

What about Dubai? Is Dubai a 1 also? No. Its WES ranking is around 4.5. (And yes, all of these rankings are estimates; that’s okay for our purposes here.)

Dubai would certainly be affected negatively if the USA collapsed tomorrow morning, but the question is how negative would it be for the UAE? Again, this is not a black-and-white thing; it’s a scale.

It’s certainly a first-world booming economy that is reliant directly or indirectly on American/Western economic activity, no question about that. However, most of its biggest trading partners are not Western at all and many of them don’t do any (or very little) business with the West because of Western sanctions and boycotts. These are countries like Iran, Iraq, Russia, India, and Saudi Arabia. This makes the UAE very strong as compared to most other nations in terms of a Western collapse.

On top of all that, Dubai has zero crime, zero wokeism, zero homeless people, zero social unrest, and damn near everyone in the region, including Europe and Russia wants to move here. Its debt is very low and its assets are measured in the trillions of dollars. And, like Paraguay, it’s an extremely tiny country which makes it easy to manage and pivot in times of trouble (they handled the pandemic like a boss). Is the UAE perfect? No. But it’s extremely strong and safe from Western collapse as compared to many other countries.

So if the West collapsed, Dubai would indeed have some problems. Dubai would go through a few years of adjustment and there would be some temporary pain, and then it would be fine. It could actually benefit from such a collapse in the long run.

Let’s compare some other countries.

Taiwan’s WES ranking is 10. The USA is Taiwan’s number two export destination, so it’s ridiculously reliant on America economically. Worse, as soon as America collapses and it can’t function militarily anymore, in about ten seconds China will swoop in and easily conquer Taiwan in a matter of weeks. You could argue that China will also be having some major problems if America goes down, and that’s true, but it won’t care and will take Taiwan anyway. (Westerners don’t understand how badly China wants Taiwan.)

Panama’s WES ranking is somewhere around 7. It’s highly reliant on America’s economy, government, and currency. It’s almost a vassal state of the USA. It even uses US Dollars as its own currency.

Saudi Arabia’s WES ranking is about 6.5, so it’s a mixed bag. Its biggest buyers of oil are not Western but rely a lot on the West, like China and Japan, and the USA is the fifth biggest purchaser. That being said, it wouldn’t outright collapse when the West goes down and instead would just suffer a bit before righting itself, similar to (though worse than) Dubai. Saudi Arabia is on the right path though, and in ten years its WES ranking could easily drop to 4 or even 3.

Colombia’s is also around 6.5, since the USA is its biggest export destination country, with China as number two, Panama as number three, and the Netherlands as number four. Thailand is similar. But again, it’s on the right path of moving slowly away from Western reliance.

Russia’s WES ranking, at the moment, is 1. Putin, for all of his faults, has impressively survived the economic blockade from the USA and Europe and has shown the world that the USA isn’t the big dog on the block that it used to be.

Other “1” countries, besides Paraguay, would be places like Cuba, Laos, Bolivia, Uzbekistan, and Iran. These places won’t be affected at all when the West goes down. They might even benefit from this happening.

India’s and China’s WES rankings are complicated. Arguments could be made that their WES rankings are 2 or 3 but other arguments could be made they’re more like 6. It’s a complex issue outside the scope of this article (nor do I recommend China or India as living flags for Westerners anyway).

The bottom line is here to do a little research (Google, ChatGPT, Perpexlity.ai, Wikipedia, etc) on any country you’re planning on moving to or using as an international backup plan and estimate its WES ranking based on the above factors. Yes, again, it will only be an estimate, but that’s okay. Don’t be anal about this.

In my strong opinion, any country on your radar for these purposes should have a WES ranking well below 6, and the lower the better. A WES ranking of 6 would give me pause, and a ranking of 7 or higher would be a big no for me.

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