What is “the West”? Though ubiquitous in foreign policy discussions, the term is rarely examined or defined.
When then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the importance of supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression last year, he emphasized that “the West is there for the long haul.” More recently, in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s transactional approach toward American allies, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen lamented that “the West as we knew it no longer exists.” Even Trump has used the phrase: In a speech in Poland during his first term, he declared that “the fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.”
I myself have used “the West” as a sort of shorthand in my WPR columns. But if it is a shorthand, what exactly is it short for? That is not so easy to pin down.