So What is the West Anyway?

Jeff Pudlo
Jul 20, 2017 · 4 min read

While you may have missed it in the recent maelstrom of news, Donald Trump recently gave a speech in Poland where he questioned whether the West that the will to defend itself, with the West being defined as fundamentally an outgrowth of ethnic, religious, and historic ties. In Trump’s view, we are in a clash of civilizations, but not an ideological one. In his (and Steve Bannon’s) mind, the West is defined as white and Christian. Intuitively, I think most of us find that troubling. But what are we talking about when we refer to “The West”, and why does the West matter?

First, we should start with some basics. “The West” is a shorthand term for the Western liberal order, and that word “liberal” is important. The Western liberal order is an alliance of nations and international institutions created by those nations that are built on a certain shared set of values outside of race or religion — that nations have the right to govern themselves, that the people of those nations deserve to have democratic control of how their governments are run, and that there are certain fundamental human rights that no government has the right to destroy — and further, that nations should put those values at the center of how the interact with other nations.

For many of us, that set of values and orientation towards the world seems self-evident. But this system of values in international relations is very new in world history. Traditional foreign relations are about power and spheres of influence — a nation uses its military and economic force exclusively for its own, direct interests, and larger countries, due to the military threat they pose and their economic might as a trading partner, control the actions of their smaller neighbors to varying degrees. And some, of course, want to return to this system, most notably Vladimir Putin and Russia. As demonstrated mostly clearly in Ukraine, when Russia invaded following the revolutionary ouster of a Kremlin backed President, Russia wishes to control all the nations on its border, returning to a world where other smaller nations have to pay tribute due to Russia’s might. We know from the past that is exceedingly dangerous. For centuries, the great powers in Europe fought near constant wars over the boundaries of their various spheres of influence, culminating, of course, in the two world wars.

After the Second World War, the Western democracies created what we now know as the Western liberal order, which has, thus far, been successful at preventing full scale global wars. More important than the history of this system though, is how it works and what its benefits are. There are two main elements to how the system works: Institutions and norms. The role of institutions is fairly simple to grasp. The UN, for example, beyond providing a forum for nations to negotiate with each other, coordinates and funds programs that help countries develop their economics and political systems, and periodically performs peacekeeping missions to help protect human rights and to avert genocide and other mass atrocities. An institution like NATO is set up to ensure that the autonomy of small, weaker countries is respected in the same way that the autonomy of the great powers is.

More difficult to understand, however, is the concept of norms, and how those norms are maintained. Norms are standards of behavior, some formalized by treaties, some not — that govern what is and is not considered acceptable behavior for a nation. The idea that you cannot murder your political opponents, the idea that militaries cannot overthrow elected governments, the idea that you cannot raid your country’s treasury for your own personal gain, even basic rules of free speech and free association. These are can be inconvenient or downright destructive to many governments and leaders in the world, who would like nothing more than to consolidate their own power at the expense of their people. But how can you get governments to adhere to those practices when they would like to do anything but adhere to them? There has to be some mechanism for enforcing norms, and the idea behind that mechanism is pretty simple — the carrot and the stick. When nations obey norms, you reward them — give their governments financial assistance, lower trade barriers to help their economy, provide military and intelligence coordination, or any number of different benefits. When nations violate norms, you end those benefits, or switch to the stick — sanctions, or, in extreme cases, military force. When done in a coordinated effort with the world community, that set of tools can be incredibly effective at resolving even the most difficult situations without war, as we saw recently with the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program.

But what happens when you don’t enforce norms? The answer is simple — more and more governments will choose to violate those norms, and violate them more boldly. Which, of course, brings us back to Donald Trump and Russia. Russia has been brazenly violating any number of international norms — Vladimir Putin has murdered political opponents, destroyed any semblance of a free press, and has stolen the land of other nations. The Obama Administration and most of the world community attempted to punish Russia, and Putin specifically, for those actions, but Donald Trump has been openly considering rolling some or most of those sanctions back, which would enable Russia to destroy many norms key to maintaining peace in Europe and the broader world. The Western liberal order exists to promote human freedom and dignity, and has made the world a much safer place by limiting the ability of large nations to conquer smaller ones. The US is the world’s only remaining superpower, and has thus far been central to the maintenance of the liberal order. It benefits us, it benefits the world. If the US stops trying to maintain the liberal order and joins Russia in trying to destroy it, it will almost certainly fall. Let’s hope the Trump Administration wakes up to the consequences of that before it’s too late.

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Jeff Pudlo

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Jeff Pudlo was formerly the Legislative Director for the Peace Alliance, an advocacy group devoted to reducing violent conflict in the US and around the world.

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