“Westlessness” is the theme of this year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC), which opens Friday, February 14, in the Bavarian capital.
The event brings together world leaders and an array of defense and foreign ministers and security experts at a time when the Western transatlantic relationship, the bedrock of the post-1945 order, is under immense strain.
“The world is becoming less Western,” states the MSC’s annual report. “But more importantly, the West itself may become less Western, too. This is what we call ‘Westlessness’,” it adds.
There is little good news in this report, which highlights so many of the problems besetting the West and the rest of the world.
The Middle East remains in turmoil as civilians continue to be killed or forced to flee. The Sahel, one of France’s major strategic concerns, is fast becoming a security challenge and threat to the region and to Europe.
Countries in Latin America are drifting away from democracy. India’s huge democracy is being tested by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s controversial citizenship laws.
As for the West itself, it is no exaggeration to argue that it’s under immense stress, because what it stands for—a liberal international order based on rules—is being undermined by the American president, Donald Trump. The Europeans and the rest of the “West” seem unable to respond in a way for the West to regain its confidence.
Confidence in Europe and others across the West is in short supply. It shouldn’t be, for several reasons.
First, the West as an idea, as a way of life, as a way of ordering politics continues to be an attraction, indeed, a magnet for those living under authoritarian or semi-democratic systems. The West’s precious institutions anchored on the rule of law, on human rights, on individual freedoms are the values that continue to carry influence across the world.
Yes, they are being challenged by China, Egypt, Russia, Turkey, and fundamentalist movements. But if the West has become so weak, according to the doomsayers, why do so many individuals and activists not living in the West still want to become part of the West or want the West to help them? Remember those heady days after 1989 when Central and Eastern Europeans yearned to join the “West”?
Second, the West is not a phenomenon based on a geographical area, even though it is often perceived precisely as that. Instead, the attraction of the West is the attraction of universal human rights.
When the West’s critics accuse Western governments of interference or of imposing their values, it’s the West’s contagion that they fear and want to contain. That contagion is universal human rights and freedom. The West is synonymous with universal rights.
And about the role of the citizen. This is where the West, particularly Europe, has a crucial role to play in engaging its citizens and nurturing its values. Yet among Europe’s established political parties there is a systemic malaise. That malaise is complacency. It is a complacency that has taken democracy and values for granted. It’s as if these don’t need to be defended.
But just as those values are being challenged by China and Russia through their economic power, cybersecurity attacks, or pervasive and disruptive behavior on social media, they are also being challenged from within democracies themselves.
The complacency of Western governments to explain and protect its institutions and values and address today’s major social issues is creating a backlash—on the one hand by populists who fuel anti-establishment sentiment and argue the West’s liberal values are too intrusive, and on the other by civil society movements that want a more inclusive, direct democracy. Both phenomena are a reaction to the West’s complacency.
If the West (and Europe) wants to remain attractive, it has to adapt to the changing demands of its citizens. It didn’t have to do that after 1945 or indeed after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. The West assumed it was in the driving seat. In the winning lane. It still is, regardless of what’s taking place in China, Russia, India, and across the Atlantic.
But to maintain its attraction, Western leaders need to overcome complacency. That means acting confidently to defend their own political system and, especially, defend those in the world struggling for universal human rights.
It means not writing off the West but defending it.
Comments(3)
I agree completely with this argument. It shares its foundation with the approach in my 2018 book "Transatlantic Traumas: Has illiberalism brought the West to the brink of collapse?"in which I concluded "...ensuring the future of the Western system needs to start now, and should involve all those who believe that systems of governance based on democracy, individual liberty, human rights and the rule of law can best guarantee our future. The goal of the radical centrist in all Western countries should be: 1. to deter, where possible, and fight where required, external threats to the Western community of nations; and 2. to reinvigorate liberal democracy with centrist approaches that are sufficiently radical to bring constructive change and pragmatically responsive solutions to the needs of average citizens. This will require revitalization of the political center in the American and other Western democracies. Political extremes can fire up electorates, but the political center is where the hard work is done and results are produced. The US and European political centers must become positive forces for constructive change, and then demonstrate the will to make it happen. Atlanticists must act as “radical centrist populists of the West” – those who subscribe to Western values and cooperate to defend them. If Winston Churchill were with us today, I’m sure he would confirm that this “imperfect” Western system is nonetheless better than any of the alternatives. It should be the mission of the radical centrist populists of the West to preserve and energize it for the benefit of future generations on both sides of the Atlantic, and wherever else people choose to be governed in a Western-style liberal democratic system."
The West is in disarray because its economic and ecological systems are at near collapse. The simple truth is: Global capitalism has run amok socially, politically, financially and environmentally. The post-WWII West defeated totalitarian communism through a New Deal partnership between labor and managerial corporations. This New Deal partnership lifted US workers and allowed for the rebuilding of France, Italy, Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. But the inflation-deflation-dollar crisis of the 1970s crippled the FDR consensus and ushered in our current age of neo-liberalism and managerial class dominance. After forty years of upper class political ascendancy, global wage arbitrage, non-democratic international rule making and the loss of millions of good-paying manufacturing jobs, US workers are turning to populism. This is true on the Left and on the Right. Both US political parties are now being led by avowed populists claiming to represent the working class (Sanders) or the interest of the nation (Trump). While the Democratic Party establishment desperately seeks an alternative, pro-corporate moderate; youth within the party have begun to champion socialism as the alternative to climate change and working class descent. Nearly all Democrats support a "Green New Deal" in order to save civilization from the ravages of a carbon cycle ballooning out of control through the planetary use of methane-based energy and fuel sources. In the shadow of these decades-long processes, tens of millions of alienated citizens have begun to question elites across the entire spectrum of political, educational, cultural and scientific realms. The West is in crisis because the world is in crisis. And much of the working class seeks redress to right the wrongs. But gross inequality and ecological imbalance are not happening in a neat geopolitical and financial vacuum. On the contrary, the world appears to be entering a new era of both financial and military peril. Europe has isolated Russia through NATO expansion eastward and in response, Moscow has moved closer to an entente with China. In the face of all its other problems, the West is on the verge of a second round of Cold War. But will the populist US public continue to support vast amounts of government largess for military support of rich EU countries? And how will the monetary and fiscal crisis of 2008 impact the current decade? The working class and youth of America seek answers. How will the West respond?
You have stated the appeal of supporters of Bernie Sanders in the U.S.. These are the mostly young who are always attracted to wildly simplistic solutions to complex issues.
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