What Happened to “the West”?

Stewart Patrick

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It has become commonplace to speak of living in a “post-Western world.” Commentators typically invoke the phrase to herald the emergence of non-Western powers—most obviously China, but also Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey, and the Gulf states, among others. But alongside the “rise of the rest,” something equally profound is occurring: the demise of “the West” itself as a coherent and meaningful geopolitical entity. The West, as understood as a unified political, economic, and security community, has been on the ropes for some time. Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. president could deliver the knockout blow.

Since the end of World War II, a tight-knit club of economically advanced democracies has anchored the liberal, rules-based international system. The group’s solidarity was rooted not only in shared threat perceptions but also in a common commitment to an open world based on free societies and liberal commerce—and the collective willingness to defend that order. The core members of this cohort included the United States and Canada, the United Kingdom, the members of the European Union, and several allies in the Asia-Pacific, such as the former British dominions of Australia and New Zealand, as well as Japan and South Korea, which became integrated into the postwar U.S. alliance system and adopted the liberal principles of democratic governance and market economics. The West formed the core of the so-called free world during the Cold War. But the West outlasted that bipolar conflict and even expanded its boundaries to include a number of former Soviet bloc countries and some former Soviet republics through the expansion of NATO and the European Union.

Over the past 80 years, Western countries have created numerous institutions to advance their common purposes, most prominently NATO, the G-7, the EU, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Equally important, these countries have coordinated policy stances within more encompassing multilateral frameworks, such as the United Nations and its agencies, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization, and the G-20.