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Do not mourn the end of the west

By Mark Mazower, FT.com site
Published: May 27, 2003

What has happened to the idea of the west? The transatlantic community, whose rise and eventual triumph was charted by postwar historians and routinely evoked by cold war politicians, has emerged in tatters from the crisis provoked by the war on Iraq. The rift between Washington and Donald Rumsfeld's "old Europe" has not yet been bridged. But does this mean the west is dead and, if so, does it really matter?

In truth there was always something a little self-righteous about the concept. In the second half of the 20th century it evoked a community of values, a shared inheritance of Judaeo-Christian and Roman traditions that had, supposedly, bred in the peoples of the Atlantic seaboard a special attachment to liberty, democracy and parliamentary institutions. Never mind that this made for some bad history: the ideology provided a justification for American commitment to European affairs and defined the common cause against the threat of Soviet communism. And there were convergent political and strategic interests, as Nato partners concurred in seeing Europe as the chief battleground of the cold war.


Search

FT.com SearchClick here for your how-to guide to searching FT.com

Do not mourn the end of the west

By Mark Mazower, FT.com site
Published: May 27, 2003

What has happened to the idea of the west? The transatlantic community, whose rise and eventual triumph was charted by postwar historians and routinely evoked by cold war politicians, has emerged in tatters from the crisis provoked by the war on Iraq. The rift between Washington and Donald Rumsfeld's "old Europe" has not yet been bridged. But does this mean the west is dead and, if so, does it really matter?

In truth there was always something a little self-righteous about the concept. In the second half of the 20th century it evoked a community of values, a shared inheritance of Judaeo-Christian and Roman traditions that had, supposedly, bred in the peoples of the Atlantic seaboard a special attachment to liberty, democracy and parliamentary institutions. Never mind that this made for some bad history: the ideology provided a justification for American commitment to European affairs and defined the common cause against the threat of Soviet communism. And there were convergent political and strategic interests, as Nato partners concurred in seeing Europe as the chief battleground of the cold war.


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