'The West' Is Near Death. It's Also Worth Fighting For

“The West” is a club on life support, skewered on the lance of Donald Trump’s Hobbesian view of the world as a series of protection rackets carved up by countries strong enough to command a seat at the table. With America’s traditional allies now part of the buffet, this seismic development begs a question: Is the West worth saving, and can it be?

As a concept, the West has always been frustratingly vague and slippery. So much so that at various times and publications of my journalistic career, editorial fatwas were issued against its use. It can’t be determined by geography, because it also includes parts of the East. It can’t be just NATO, or a Christian club, for similar reasons. And yet, none of those editorial bans stuck. The term soon squirrelled its way back into use, because there was no substitute. It was too useful as a shorthand description of a tribe of market democracies that readers and writers alike understood to exist.

I don’t recognize the exclusively Christian, race-based Western civilization described in the new US National Security Strategy, or in the deeply disingenuous sermons of US Vice President JD Vance. Neither does Georgios Varouxakis, an historian of political thought at London’s Queen Mary University. I reached out to him because in July he published The West: The History of an Idea. It’s a book that does a valuable — meaning document-based and non-ideological — job of debunking some of the most common theories about when and how this entity arose.

So, no, the West doesn’t stretch back to ancient Greece, because the ancient Greeks never mentioned it, or conceived of it. Nor was it, as some on the left believe, conjured up in the late 19th century by imperialists as a helpful, dog-whistling tool to legitimize their colonial exploitation of other, non-white, races. The idea appeared earlier and its most vocal proponents were passionate anti-imperialists. But the West also has been subject to constant reinterpretation, and right now, it’s getting highjacked amid the culture wars.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-12-31/the-west-is-near-death-it-s-also-worth-fighting-for?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2NzIxNjE1NiwiZXhwIjoxNzY3ODIwOTU2LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUODQ4RzhLSVVQU08wMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNjgyQTUwQzJCRDM0MTFCQTgwQjEwQjZEQjczQzM1MSJ9.Z-l0L_EMpJoHTdtd3NVfkyBCI4rvt2pQ_kikmC0DI1g