Why Western Europe needs a Russian threat

As the US steps back from Europe, the Russian threat offers Brussels a unifying cause – and Ukraine the army needed to sustain confrontation The term 'collective West', widely used in Russia, is rarely employed in the West itself, except perhaps when discussing Russian political thinking. What’s commonly heard, however, is the long-running debate over what the West actually is and that discussion has continued in philosophy and politics since at least the 18th century. The concept has never had a fixed definition, even among those who are supposedly part of it so instead, the West has usually been defined in opposition to something else. At different times, that “other” has been Byzantium and Eastern Orthodoxy, the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic world, or even Germany, which was once regarded by some as alien to the European spirit. Russia has frequently occupied the same role, albeit there have been periods when Russia was considered part of the Western community, but this generally happened when Western Europe’s great powers needed the support of a major ally against one of their own rivals, and once that purpose had been served, Russia was once again treated as an outsider. There was also a longstanding debate over the place of the New World, given North America was, geographically and culturally, the West par excellence, yet it simultaneously presented itself as both the heir to European civilization and its challenger. Whether the United States belonged to the same historical and ideological community as Europe remained an open question for generations and for much of this period, conflict within what later became known as the West was intense and almost continuous. Read more Kiev’s dirty war goes global The political West, as we understand it today, is therefore a relatively recent creation, which emerged only after the Second World War. The defeat and division of Germany removed the principal source of conflict within Europe that had dominated the previous three centuries when Germany itself was confined within strict political limits.

At the same time, Western Europe’s dramatic decline following two catastrophic world wars enabled the United States to assume leadership of the Atlantic community and finally, the Soviet Union, at the height of its military and political power, provided a common external threat around which the alliance could unite, and this was how the 'collective West' came into being. During the Cold War it was defined by opposition to Moscow and after the Soviet collapse, it transformed itself into the self-appointed manager of the international order, assuming that its dominance would continue indefinitely, but the erosion of the liberal world order, which began during the first decade of this century and accelerated dramatically by the mid-2020s, has challenged that assumption. Western Europe, as the more vulnerable half of the Atlantic partnership, has been forced to redefine both its identity and its purpose. The necessary Russian threat The reasons behind the weakening of the post-Cold War West are well known, and include the disappearance of bipolarity, the rise of new centers of power, America’s strategic shift towards the Indo-Pacific, Washington’s growing focus on competition with China, while the fragmentation produced by the end of the liberal globalization era have all undermined the foundations of the Atlantic order. An alliance designed for the realities of the mid-20th century no longer corresponds to those of the 21st and previous American presidents hinted that Western Europe could no longer expect the relationship to continue unchanged, however, Trump merely said so openly, and began reshaping it accordingly. Brussels was slow to recognize the implications, but it has now largely done so. Read more Why Western Europe needs the Ukraine conflict to continue It’s far