Can Biden save the ‘West’?

Journalists, including Today’s WorldView, deploy the “West” as shorthand to mean sometimes contradictory sets of concepts: It can define a cultural identity, anchored in centuries of both Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman tradition. It can represent a political brand, built on a bedrock of liberal democratic values. It can comprise a legacy of imperial abuse, linked to a still unreconciled history of colonialism and racism. It can be a vestige of the Cold War, seen most tangibly in NATO, the world’s preeminent military alliance.