„Europa ist der Kern – Amerika hat sich als Ableger angeschlossen“: Der Historiker, der herausfordert, was „der Westen“ bedeutet

Sorry but modern Europe (post ww2) is a creation of the US.

Somehow makes sense to be honest.

The problem is many people can’t see the term independent from „technological progressive“ or anything „leader“ or something else which is heavily charged. Which is not really the case for many in Europe. Obviously, there is the feeling of some kind of superiority, which is fastly vanishing in the last years, but in Europe and the „old world“, clocks were always ticking a little more slow and change took time.

The US was and of course **is** part of the west but in many fields overtook it. The US, for many countries and especially in diplomatic circles, is still seen as somewhat of a „new“ player on the board and still often called the „new world“.

(As silly and nonsensical as it sounds and is, but especially when you look at countries like Russia, they still often talk like the US is the new kid… **Not that anybody should look and take example from Russia**… but most nations in Europe fought wars literally centuries before the US was founded. There are pubs in Britain that are older. And if anything, feelings of superiority mostly come from some nonsense people are proud of with which they had nothing to do themself.)

Edit: Another example is that many in Germany don’t see the country really belonging to „the west“ also. Germanys history was often influenced by east and by west and the position in europe is very much more often called „central“ instead of „western“. This changed only after WW2.

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What a childish argument. Let’s not stoop down to the level of discourse of the Americans, ok?

Russian bots and American bootlickers are out in force.

„Georgios Varouxakis argues that the idea is older, quintessentially European, and even anti-imperialist“

lol opinion discarded. Proof you can be a historian and still interpret whatever you want out of history.

Never thought of it any differently. This is controversial?

Trying to divide Europe and the US, wonder who that benefits?

“Greece is the core, the rest of Europe is just an offshoot”

History is irrelevant to this, the weight of power has shifted to America and we need to shift it back to Europe.

The „core“ is becoming economically insignificant.

> *For your book The West: The History of an Idea, you spent 12 years researching what people mean when they talk about “the west”. At a time when America’s president shows more admiration for autocratic Russia than for Nato-allied countries in Europe, are we witnessing the end of the west as an idea?*
I certainly wouldn’t write off the west. What we are seeing is a challenge to a version of the west that had America as its leader. But it doesn’t have to signal the end. The west is crucial to Europeans, and they have been the core of it. America joined at some point as an offshoot; it has been isolationist before, and it may become isolationist again. So we may see a different version of the west for a while, with its core in Europe, as it historically has mostly been.

 […] 

> One common view is that the notion of the west gains traction with the foundation of Nato in 1949 and the cold war. At the other extreme there’s the “from Plato to Nato” idea, which says the west started with ancient Greeks when they fought off the Persians. Meanwhile, among historians, there has been a boringly universal consensus that the west as a self-conscious idea begins in the 1880s or 90s, and is due primarily to the needs of British imperialism: it was invented to justify imperialism, to demarcate the oriental east of Asia and Arab peoples as an “other”.
But I disagree. In my research I found it was French writers who first started using the word in the 1820s, and they did so because they realised the term “Europe” was no longer fit for purpose.

> *What was wrong with “Europe”?*
The problem was that geographically and politically, from the time of Peter the Great in the early 18th century, it included Russia. Later, Russia’s Tsar Alexander I came to dominate the 1815 Congress of Vienna and the Holy Alliance that he established subsequently. More and more western Europeans began to worry about Russia’s inevitable domination of Europe. It was a large and expansionist monolith. The 1820s saw the Greek war of independence against the Ottoman empire, but for a lot of French commentators the real danger was that Russia could take Constantinople after an Ottoman collapse they saw as imminent. They began to see the Greeks as a kind of rampart of the west.

Later on, the author compares the Greek struggle for democratic values to today’s struggle of Ukraine, and how in the shifting view on what is „the West“, Ukranians should be included in that. Given that at least in Europe the original definition seems to be „not russia“, especially on the values scale – I’m inclined to agree.

Just a few quotes. A fascinating read, highly recommended. Thanks OP

France’s former President de Gaulle has been proven right about US reliability in NATO.

The US didn’t come to Frances Aid in 1940 when they needed it the most… and its the same again now with Europe and Ukraine…