Cancelling the West. Transatlantic relations in the era of culture wars

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article contributes to the debate on long-term trends in Transatlantic relations. It does so by examining some of the ways in which the central ideational foundation of the Transatlantic area, namely “the West”, has become increasingly contested in a highly polarized US domestic discourse. By drawing on, and contributing to, the constructivist scholarship on Transatlantic relations, which argues for the importance of collective identities for long-term foreign policy orientation, the article examines how the notion of “the West” became increasingly politicized under Trump’s presidency. The article then examines the Democrats’ understanding of the US place in the world and shows that the US commitment to Europe is premised and contingent upon a joint commitment to democracy, rather than an imagined ethnonationalist bounded community. As an identity-conferring concept between the US and Europe the paper shows, “the West” no longer fulfils a unifying function in US mainstream public discourse.