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Without America, ‘the West’ will splinter, wither and die
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Nothing suggests that Mr Donald Trump, as leader of the most powerful nation in history, understands the value of the West to both America and the world.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Andreas Kluth
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US President Donald Trump is disrupting so many institutions and norms, it’s hard to keep track of what matters and what doesn’t. Is the chaos merely performative (befitting a celebrity who got his big break on reality television)? Or does it amount to a historic rupture? Much suggests the latter, because Mr Trump is well on the way to burying a large idea: that of “the West”.
Like the Global South, the West is not primarily a geographical notion, for its European and North American trunks have antipodean, Asian and other branches. It is instead, as the German historian Heinrich August Winkler defines it, a “normative” project – an evolving, sometimes vague but nonetheless coherent bundle of values.
