Defending the West
The West is in retreat. A generation after their convincing victory in the Cold War the republics of the West are beset by fear and anger. Their peoples display a diminishing faith in civil institutions and an increasing sense of tribalism. Civil unrest, economic stagnation and deadlocked political systems feed these trends. So the Western republics which so recently stood atop the pile of history, littered with vanquished despotisms of all sorts, now veer from one crisis to the next, seemingly bereft of the strength to govern effectively. Some of our most basic institutions are unable or unwilling to conduct the public’s business; and in 2016, the public’s business is an urgent matter as the post Cold War world continues to prove itself dangerous and unpredictable. Most alarmingly, terrorist groups are proving irrepressible foes, authoritarian regimes in Russia and China are resurgent, while inside the West itself, from Germany to France to the United States, right-wing populists are rising out of this cauldron.
For all the gloom, it’s important to remember that we have been here before. Right-wing populists came to power in Italy, Spain and Germany in the 1920s and 30s, shortly after the victory of the democracies in World War 1. The Fascists seemed strong and purposeful, like the vanguard of a new order, just as the Western democracies were weak and indecisive. But we know how the story turned out. Free peoples and democratic systems have proven themselves, time and again, stronger and more resilient than their enemies had imagined — a lesson that Mussolini and Hitler, for example, learned the hard way. The struggle was not easy, and many turns of fate helped Western civilization step back from the abyss. But the challenge was turned back. The coming months and years will prove to be another challenge for the West. It will be important for us to reaffirm what our civilization stands for — in essence, why it deserves to be defended.
All this came into focus — again — last week, as the Belgian capital Brussels suffered terrorist attacks that killed dozens of people. This came just a few days after the capture, in Belgium, of Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in last year’s coordinated attacks in Paris. These strikes are just the latest chapter in a decades-long, shadowy war waged against the West — a point underscored when one considers that Brussels, in addition to being the Belgian capital, also serves as both the capital of the European Union and also the headquarters of NATO. Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL or Islamic State) claimed responsiblity, adding to its total of more than 650 people killed since 2014 in attacks targeted specifically at the West, according to an analysis by The New York Times. But these attacks, horrific as they are, also come at an especially difficult time, as the self-confidence of the West, particularly in Europe and the United States, is wilting. The threat of terrorism in combination with the internal crisis haunting the West are helping to fuel, and in turn being powered by, a rising right-wing populism that threatens the soul of the West itself. Buffeted by widening economic disparities, subversion of its most basic institutions and political fecklessness — particularly in Brussels and Washington — the peoples of the West are frustrated and fearful.
The attacks by Daesh demonstrate its antagonism for the very idea of the West. The concept of “the West” began to emerge after Emperor Diocletian divided the Roman Empire into eastern and western administrative halves in the third century CE. The subsequent disintegration of the western empire, while the east continued to flourish for another thousand years, furthered the separate political and cultural identity of the West. Today, characteristics that have come to define the West include republican forms of government and political pluralism, the rule of law, a free and independent press, the separation of political and spiritual authority, a generalized belief in progress based on reason and science, the codification of political and human rights, a desire to build and support international institutions and norms, and the slow — often uneven and halting — movement toward societies that recoil from racial, ethnic or sexual bigotry. And while the West was originally only a geographic designation (Rome as opposed to Constantinople) it has become a coalition of like-minded states scattered across half the world, frequently considered to include Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Canada, as well as the US, the UK and most of Europe.
The attacks by Daesh in Europe are set against its retreat in Syria and Iraq, where Western forces and the Syrian Army (with Moscow’s help) have rolled back gains by the terrorist group. The attacks both in Paris and Brussels appear to be designed in part to weaken political resolve in the West for continuing the war on Daesh. This is a well-worn strategy of subverting public support for war without a clear finish line — and in various forms it has worked over the years. And it’s also expected; certainly the Belgian authorities expected an attack after the capture of Abdeslam. But Brussels shows that the expectation of an attack and the ability to thwart one are two different things. By all appearances, Daesh coordinates more effectively across borders in Europe than does Europol (the EU joint police agency), INTCEN (the EU joint intelligence arm) or the various national intelligence agencies.
The threat to the West as a whole is clear. Thomas de Maizière, the German Interior Minister said in Berlin that the Brussels attacks are “not aimed solely against Belgium, but against our freedom, freedom of movement, mobility and everyone in the E.U.” The strains of the attacks in Europe are a heavy burden on the EU, which has yet to recover from the Great Recession and continues to be roiled by the refugee crisis. Sixty years ago, European nations came together to build a united continent, with the hope that creating a common destiny would be their best chance of avoiding a third world war.
Those efforts are unraveling. Old alliances are reforming on the refugee issue as the crisis continues, demonstrating that hard-nosed geography remains a more powerful force than the ideal of European unity. The move toward a true European intelligence agency continues to stall because Europeans simply don’t trust their neighbors to keep their secrets.
In America, things are even worse. The Age of Reason that propelled the West forward for centuries has snagged on the arresting cable of the modern Republican Party. The party of Lincoln has become so fact-free as to defy reasonable analysis. Worse still, its presumed standard-bearer in the 2016 presidential elections is so devoid or dismissive of reality that he leaves little room for even satirists to maneuver. The GOP front runner is a combination of Harold Hill, Archie Bunker and Benito Mussolini. In truth, Hill was ultimately a pretty likable fellow and Bunker was harmless enough so the comparison is not fair to them. The better model may be Mussolini. One difference between the GOP front runner, Mussolini and his better-known counterpart in Germany is that neither Mussolini nor his German friend were ever elected to national office, so Americans could break new ground in 2016.
The demagoguery, xenophobia, racism and misogyny of the Republican primaries is truly shocking. More shocking is the fact that all these attributes come primarily from the leading candidate. The lunatic fringe now leads the GOP.
The GOP front runner says that his opponents “deserved to get roughed up.” A GOP senator says that any Supreme Court nominee who might dare to appear before them “will bear some resemblance to a piñata.” So as the white supremacy movement comes out of hiding in open support of the leading GOP candidate, while shouts of “Seig Heil!” pepper his rallies and protesters are beaten, Americans need to ask themselves — What was the point of the 20th Century?
The West spent vast amounts of blood and treasure to defeat right-wing populist states in Germany and Italy, and totalitarian Japan. For what?
It spent the balance of the century fending off Soviet Russia, where political dissent was met by violence and suppression. For what?
The peoples of the West have struggled toward greater freedom, equality and basic human dignity, at great pains and with great effort. For what?
It all must have been for something.
So in the face of all this — terrorism threatening our lives and, partly in response to it, right-wing populism threatening our civic souls — is where we will rediscover and reaffirm what the West is all about. In Europe and America both, people feel threatened. Because of terrorist threats, questions continue to be asked about the relationship between security and liberty. And again, lest we think that these, too, are uniquely modern problems for our difficult age — they aren’t.
In 63 BCE, the Romans (an open society by the standards of the day) faced a home-grown terrorist plot that threatened to burn the city and overthrow the Republic. In the face of this, the Romans not only formulated a political and military response, but also grappled with questions about the resilience of their own institutions, about how much freedom they should be willing to surrender for the sake of security and about whether terrorists deserve due process of law. Sound familiar?
Fast forward a few thousand years to the last time Americans were this dismayed by the failure of their institutions and frightened about the future, and they elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They worked through an economic calamity that few today can even imagine — which in itself is a testament to the better world they helped to build. They also stared down Fascism and totalitarianism at a time when it seemed on the verge of overwhelming the world. And, like now, they pushed civil and human rights — slowly and unevenly — forward in the face of domestic political movements and parties that loudly disdain or quietly subvert them.
Liberals, among whom I count myself, often make the mistake of assuming that progress leads in only one direction — that in effect history is on our side, that the forces of reactionary conservatism are already consigned to the dustbin of history and they just need to come to grips with their ideological obsolescence so we can all move on. But if the 20th Century shows anything, it is that progress is not an irrepressible wave. Progress has enemies who will not accept the historical futility of their cause. History is made by people and it is our generation’s turn to stand up and defend the West.
Almost 60 years ago, an American president spoke on a very cold Inauguration Day about the challenge to people of his generation. He was talking about a very different struggle in a very different time, but his words ring as true today as ever.
“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility; I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it.” — John Kennedy, January 20, 1961
In 2016, it remains to be seen whether the maximum danger facing the West is from without or within. But the West deserves our defense. The blood spilled in just the last hundred years defending it demands no less. We cannot allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by fear and bigotry or to embrace authoritarianism. To jettison the hard-earned inheritance of the 20th Century is to stare into the abyss.