Brive1987 wrote:The "West" is defined by the Atlantic in light of Trump's Polish speech.
The writer has missed the term "culture based on shared values" as a scaffold.
How odd.
The West is not a geographic term. Poland is further east than Morocco. France is further east than Haiti. Australia is further east than Egypt. Yet Poland, France, and Australia are all considered part of “The West.” Morocco, Haiti, and Egypt are not.
The West is not an ideological or economic term either. India is the world’s largest democracy. Japan is among its most economically advanced nations. No one considers them part of the West.
The West is a racial and religious term. To be considered Western, a country must be largely Christian (preferably Protestant or Catholic) and largely white. Where there is ambiguity about a country’s “Westernness,” it’s because there is ambiguity about, or tension between, these two characteristics. Is Latin America Western? Maybe. Most of its people are Christian, but by U.S. standards, they’re not clearly white. Are Albania and Bosnia Western? Maybe. By American standards, their people are white. But they are also mostly Muslim.
Race is often a marker for an alternative culture that would have to be displaced.
So is a non Christian religion.
But I'd much rather a culturally aligned secular Arab than a white redneck survivalist Christian fundie.
Fucking 101 stuff.
The Atlantic definition is incorrect. Russia is mostly white and mostly Christian Orthodox, yet it's never been part of the "west". And plenty of people consider Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to be part of the "West". Also for quite a long time nobody considered Eastern Europe, with the exception of Greece (or previously Poland) to be part of "the west".
The "west", without context, is a meaningless word. Many use it as the modern version of the "First World", i.e. the US allies who are liberal democracies.
The concept of "west" was first used by the Greeks against the Persian invaders, combined to the tropes of "western freedom" and "eastern tyranny", since the Greek city-states were proud of their independence vs. the perceived subjugation and servile attitudes of those under the rule of the Persians. It was then used by the conservative Romans against, ironically enough, Greece and especially the Hellenized successors of Alexander's empire, then by the Catholic church in relation to the Catholic-Orthodox schism, then by Christian countries against the expansionist aims of the Ottoman Empire, then by European colonial powers, then by Americans and their allies vs. the Soviet Union and their allies.
The tropes of the "west" as the land of freedom vs. "Eastern" servitude is the common theme, from the Greeks onward. The Greeks saw the Persians as the slaves of their emperor, the Romans saw themselves as a free aristocracy vs. the slaves of a depraved court, the Catholics as free members of the "res public Christiana" who had popes and emperors both not a figure that dominated both the civil and religious hierarchies like the Cesaro-Papist Byzantine Emperors, the Christian countries saw themselves as free (and fractured) kingdoms and nobles vs. the servile followers of the Ottoman Empire, the European colonial powers as the free people vs. the slaves who were merely exchanged domination of an "Eastern" tyrant for a "Western" master, the US and their allies as the "free world" vs. those under authoritarian Communist dictatorship.
Of course for the most part the myth of the "west" is, indeed, a myth, used to justify conservative or colonial positions or fighting together against a common enemy/rival for power. However after the rise of the Enlightenment "the west" was used more and more to refer to the countries who were gradually rebuilt according to the Enlightenment principles: the UK, the US, then France, then pretty much all liberal democracies and their colonies/satellites.
The seminal text for the modern conservative/anti-globalist right-wing populist rhetoric about "the west" is Oswald Spengler's
The Decline of the West ("Der Untergang des Abendlandes").
The book introduces itself as a "Copernican overturning" involving the rejection of the Eurocentric view of history, especially the division of history into the linear "ancient-medieval-modern" rubric.[1] According to Spengler, the meaningful units for history are not epochs but whole cultures which evolve as organisms. He recognizes at least eight high cultures: Babylonian, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Mesoamerican (Mayan/Aztec), Classical (Greek/Roman), Arabian, Western or "European-American." Cultures have a lifespan of about a thousand years. The final stage of each culture is, in his word use, a "civilization".
Spengler also presents the idea of Muslims, Jews and Christians, as well as their Persian and Semitic forebears, being 'Magian'; Mediterranean cultures of the antiquity such as Ancient Greece and Rome being 'Apollonian'; and the modern Westerners being 'Faustian'.
According to Spengler, the Western world is ending and we are witnessing the last season—"winter time"—of Faustian Civilization. In Spengler's depiction, Western Man is a proud but tragic figure because, while he strives and creates, he secretly knows the actual goal will never be reached.
Spengler's book is the basis for the NeoReaction movement, for all those who say that they reject "Whig history" (i.e. history as evolution from Antiquity to the Middle Ages to Modernity) and, most importantly, for Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of the World Order". It is Huntington who presents this map:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... mapn2.pngg
Note how Huntington's map does differentiate between "Western" and "Latin American" Civilizations, excludes Japan from the "west" and includes Poland (along with the Baltic States, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and the Czech and Slovak Republics) in the "Western" cultures, but still
doesn't follow what the Atlantic alleges to be the definition of the "west" (mostly white, mostly Christian) because Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, Georgia and Armenia are mostly Christians, and mostly "white", but are definitely not "western", they're part of the Orthodox culture instead.
Also the Philippines are apparently, according to Huntington, a crossroads between "the West", Islam and the Sinic culture.
What is Huntington's main thesis? This:
Huntington began his thinking by surveying the diverse theories about the nature of global politics in the post-Cold War period. Some theorists and writers argued that human rights, liberal democracy, and the capitalist free market economy had become the only remaining ideological alternative for nations in the post-Cold War world. Specifically, Francis Fukuyama argued that the world had reached the 'end of history' in a Hegelian sense.
Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had only reverted to a normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict. In his thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future will be along cultural lines.[6]
As an extension, he posits that the concept of different civilizations, as the highest rank of cultural identity, will become increasingly useful in analyzing the potential for conflict.
In the 1993 Foreign Affairs article, Huntington writes "The Clash of Civilizations?" At the end of the article, he writes:
This is not to advocate the desirability of conflicts between civilizations. It is to set forth descriptive hypothesis as to what the future may be like.[2]
In addition, the clash of civilizations, for Huntington, represents a development of history. In the past, world history was mainly about the struggles between monarchs, nations and ideologies, such as seen within Western civilization. But after the end of the Cold War, world politics moved into a new phase, in which non-Western civilizations are no longer the exploited recipients of Western civilization but have become additional important actors joining the West to shape and move world history.[7]
And what is Huntington's idea of the key elements of the "west"?
Western civilization, comprising the United States and Canada, Western and Central Europe, Australia and Oceania. Whether Latin America and the former member states of the Soviet Union are included, or are instead their own separate civilizations, will be an important future consideration for those regions, according to Huntington. The traditional Western viewpoint identified Western Civilization with the Western Christian (Catholic-Protestant) countries and culture.[9]
So even according to Huntington it's more complicated than just "Christian and white". It's "
Western Christian (Catholic-Protestant) and mostly European".
Also according to Huntington Latin American culture is "different" but "may be considered part of Western civilization".
Latin American. Includes Central America, South America (excluding Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana), Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico. May be considered a part of Western civilization. Many people in South America and Mexico regard themselves as full members of Western civilization.
However the "Orthodox" civilization seems to be distinct from the "West" (and poorly defined):
The Orthodox world of the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia (except Croatia and Slovenia), Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece and Romania. Countries with a non-Orthodox majority are usually excluded (Shia Muslim Azerbaijan, Sunni Muslim Albania and most of Central Asia, as well as majority Muslim regions in the Balkans, Caucasus and central Russian regions such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, Roman Catholic Slovenia and Croatia, Protestant and Catholic Baltic states). However, Armenia is included, despite its dominant faith, the Armenian Apostolic Church, being a part of Oriental Orthodoxy rather than the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Kazakhstan is also included, despite its dominant faith being Sunni Islam.
What's more, there's the Huntingtonian concept of "cleft" countries:
There are also others which are considered "cleft countries" because they contain very large groups of people identifying with separate civilizations. Examples include Ukraine ("cleft" between its Eastern Rite Catholic-dominated western section and its Orthodox-dominated east), French Guiana (cleft between Latin America, and the West), Benin, Chad, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Togo (all cleft between Islam and Sub-Saharan Africa), Guyana and Suriname (cleft between Hindu and Sub-Saharan African), Sri Lanka (cleft between Hindu and Buddhist), China (cleft between Sinic and Buddhist, in the case of Tibet; and the West, in the case of Hong Kong and Macau), and the Philippines (cleft between Islam, in the case of Mindanao; Sinic, and the West). Sudan was also included as "cleft" between Islam and Sub-Saharan Africa; this division became a formal split in July 2011 following an overwhelming vote for independence by South Sudan in a January 2011 referendum.
So apparently Hong Kong, Macau, French Guyana and the Philippines have elements of the Western Civilization even though they're definitely not "white".
Huntington's theory has gotten more and more popular after it apparently "predicted" the clashes in the Ukraine and the division of Sudan.
People like Steve Bannon are followers of Huntington (and of Spengler=
But is Huntington's theory really predictive and possible to test for accuracy, or more of simplification of much more complex dynamics? Well, for a start, it's too vaguely defined. For example there's the concept of "swing civilizations":
Russia and India are what Huntington terms 'swing civilizations' and may favor either side. Russia, for example, clashes with the many Muslim ethnic groups on its southern border (such as Chechnya) but—according to Huntington—cooperates with Iran to avoid further Muslim-Orthodox violence in Southern Russia, and to help continue the flow of oil. Huntington argues that a "Sino-Islamic connection" is emerging in which China will cooperate more closely with Iran, Pakistan, and other states to augment its international position.
Huntington leaves out that the US (a definitely "Western" country) heavily co-operated with the GCC countries, with Pakistan and other Sunni Muslim entities against Iran and Russia.
Huntington also seem to perceive "civilization" as rather monolithic and static. Differences between Catholic countries and Protestant ones are ignored, and (more significantly) conflicts
within the "Muslim culture" are ignored. Geopolitical programs of different nations and different national interests are papered over.
Moreover the inner conflict between modernization and traditionalism in many different cultures (including, but not limited to, islam) is ignored. Huntington, following Spengler's lead, doesn't believe in a concept such as "modernity".
I'm not going to argue whether Huntington's thesis is accurate or not (I think it's too poorly defined to be meaningfully discussed as scientific theory, and too generic to be discussed as a geopolitical-geostrategic theory) but it is a theory that is becoming more and more popular in conservative circles, especially in the Trump administration, mostly due to the influence of Steve Bannon.
The Trump administration in general seems torn between the NeoCon/Bush paradigm of the American Empire-Pax Americana-regime change to "export democracy" and the Huntington/Bannon paradigm of "defending Western Civilization".
Trump's speech should be analyzed on these basis, instead of trying to paint Trump as the puppet of Richard Spencer.
