₦airaland Forum

When reading about the war in Ukraine, you’ve probably come across the term “the West” to describe the coalition of governments opposing Putin’s invasion. But what does the West actually mean?

For an answer, let’s get an assist from the brilliant Russia scholar Stephen Kotkin. In an interview with the New Yorker published this weekend, Kotkin gave his definition of the West, and it’s certainly better than anything we could come up with:

The West is a series of institutions and values. The West is not a geographical place. Russia is European, but not Western. Japan is Western, but not European. “Western” means rule of law, democracy, private property, open markets, respect for the individual, diversity, pluralism of opinion, and all the other freedoms that we enjoy, which we sometimes take for granted.

We sometimes forget where they came from. But that’s what the West is. And that West, which we expanded in the nineties, in my view properly, through the expansion of the European Union and nato, is revived now, and it has stood up to Vladimir Putin in a way that neither he nor Xi Jinping expected.

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin

makes sense a little

In political terms, the west stands for the USA first, then her allies

tonididdy:
In political terms, the west stands for the USA first, then her allies

Somehow true in one sense, because most of US aliens run a proper Democracy. But what about KSA that is still running an autocratic government