A Tale of Two Wests

The second Trump administration’s National Security Strategy goes beyond specifying Washington’s interests. It also affirms the EU as the United States’ constitutive other and, in doing so, underscores a growing truth that there is no longer one West, assuming there ever was.

The White House increasingly frames the West as a bold and assertive civilizational project. This reflects a Huntingtonian West rooted in exceptionalism, sovereignty, and moral clarity.

But the “European West” has a different perspective. Shaped by the memory of two catastrophic world wars, it remains wary of civilizational language altogether. Its identity is inclusive, built on law, compromise, and an inherent discomfort with power.

“Washington’s West” asks, as political scientist Samuel Huntington has, “Who are we?”, but the European West often seems to pose a subtler question: “Who are we allowed to be?” Identity, in Europe’s view, is something to be managed, not proclaimed.

Author Amin Maalouf warned that identities become dangerous when reduced to a single allegiance. Europe has taken that warning to heart, perhaps a bit too much. In resisting any narrow conception of itself, Europe has preserved pluralism and inclusivity but at the cost of strategic self-confidence.

Historian Robert Kagan has asserted that Americans and Europeans understand each other less and less, but between their two “Wests” are others, countries in wider Europe and parts of Asia that are genuinely attached to a Western identity but are not fully in Europe’s or the United States’ camp. For these countries, divergence creates dilemma. Do they align with Washington’s West that offers protection and clarity, or the European West that offers liberalism and inclusivity? What if they are forced to make a choice, not only between the wider West and China, but also between the EU and the United States?

Adding to the complexity is the coexistence of the two notions of the West within the United States and the EU themselves. Neither is monochrome. In fact, the former is a textbook example of a polarized society, and the latter is headed in that direction.

The current era is not the end of the West. But it may be the end of the illusion that the West was ever a single entity. The question now is whether two Wests can coexist without forcing others, and eventually themselves, to choose between the European and American perspectives.