Is the West built ‘over the centuries with genius and sacrifice’ really lost?

Last week, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared the West was over. “What we once called the normative West no longer exists in this form,” he explained. “At best, it is still a geographical designation, but no longer a normative bond that holds us together.” The chancellor was speaking in the aftermath of the release of the Trump administration’s national security strategy.

Such an extreme comment was oddly placed, as the administration’s strategy which called for “enabling Europe to stand on its own feet,” “building up the healthy nations of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe,” and “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations” – none of which were inherently anti-European to me. Nor does the following: “American diplomacy should continue to stand up for genuine democracy, freedom of expression, and unapologetic celebrations of European nations’ individual character and history.” Neither “We will need a strong Europe to help us successfully compete, and to work in concert with us to prevent any adversary from dominating Europe.”

But the reaction, particularly Europe’s, to the national security strategy has been rehashed, hashed, and rehashed again. A more interesting question is an interrogation of why Merz believes the West no longer exists.

The West has always been difficult to define. Back in 2023, Giorgia Meloni – presciently and unknowingly opposing Merz’s future commentary – argued “the West is more than a physical place. By the word West we do not simply define countries by specific geographical location, but as a civilisation built over the centuries with the genius and sacrifices of many.” She portrayed the West’s greatest opponents as oikophobia – “the aversion to one’s home” – and its claim of superiority to other regions, particularly the global South.

But this version of the West, the one which conquered a majority of the world and produced an unrivalled amount of literature, scientific advancement, art, music and more, is not the one that Merz is mourning. His version of the West – the version seen by modern establishmentarian European policymakers particularly those ensconced in Brussels – was born in the aftermath of World War II. This belief is so commonplace in Brussels that novelist Robert Menasse wrote a scathing satire of Eurocrats, “The Capital”, premised entirely around that concept.

Although World War II is seen as inspirational by Americans, it was not an inspirational affair for Europeans. Europe was, in half a decade, completely conquered by fascism, only to be “liberated” by Soviet communism and American democracy, the latter of which Europeans – even as late as the Second World War – had still viewed as something of a contemptuous upstart. After, the continent became a chessboard between those two powers, a reversal of just half a century prior, when Europe had turned the world into its chessboard.

By the end of the 20th century, Europe had learned to rely totally upon America. But they had also learned to fear themselves. Flags – aside from countries like France, which viewed itself as a winner of World War Two – had entirely disappeared from streets and homes. Merz himself is the last in a long line of German leaders who are truly, deeply ashamed of their country. Former German President Joachim Gauck, head of the German state for most of the 2010s, said that when he first learned about German history he was “ashamed to be German.” His “beloved German language” had become “suspect to me.” “I hate and despise the country” was how he framed his youthful beliefs.

While he moved away from such hate, it is impossible that that core belief – that there should be some level of inherent shame – did not somehow guide him later in life. It has clearly guided modern Europeans, most of whom polls show would be unwilling to fight in a war for their countries. Part of this is due to new migrant arrivals being unwilling to fight for a place they do not identify with, but much of this is likely due to oikophobia. Europeans are afraid of themselves. They are afraid of what they might do, because of what their ancestors did.

Meloni described the West’s oikophobia as “a mounting contempt, which leads us to want to violently erase the symbols of our civilisation, in the US as in Europe.” This mounting contempt is what formed the West that Merz mourns: A West which is based upon a liberal internationalist, globalist agenda. One which specifically disowns the nationalist impulses which powered the West to global supremacy and instead seeks to pretend that we can all come together as one happy globe. This too – the impulse to impose our ways of being on the rest of the world – was what Meloni warned against. It was the responsibility to protect that led to Europe’s adventurism in Libya, uncorking the bottle which led to streams of refugees into Europe. Refugees which Merz’s predecessors strained to pretend belonged there. Angela Merkel claimed that Islam “belongs to Germany,” as did former President Christian Wulff. It’s simply a nonsensical statement: Until the late 20th century, Germany’s largest interaction with Islam was fighting against it or, in the specific case of World War One, fighting with it in the form of the Ottoman Empire. 

Nevertheless, Merz is right to mourn the loss of his West. A desire to restore the true West, one which recognizes the greatness and uniqueness of its people, has been a, if not the, primary motivating factor for the Western populist-right, particularly the European populist right. The cry to make the West great again has echoed from Warsaw to Washington to as far as Argentina. And, as even mainstream media outlets are being forced to admit, voters are responding to their cry, as pro-true Western parties are winning everywhere.

So yes, Friedrich Merz’s West is no more. Born in 1945, dying sometime in the mid-2020s, it lived a good eighty years. But its time is thankfully past. If the Trump administration and its like-minded European allies are successful, in its place will be restored the West as it should be: A civilisation proud of its heritage, proud of its people, and willing to defend both.