I cannot resist a brief digression on the endlessly repeated question of whether we are “part of the West,” whether we “belong to the West,” and similar formulations. Much of the confusion and deliberate demagoguery—both from government officials and the opposition—arises from a failure to distinguish between two very different meanings of the word “West.”
The first sense is civilizational belonging. This includes:
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The objects and technologies that surround us in daily life.
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The ordinary habits of how we eat, greet one another, establish trust or hostility, form relationships, and conduct ourselves in intimate life—those countless customs that make up the fabric of society.
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The overarching ideals, myths, and shared conceptions of good and evil, of what is important in life.
In this civilizational sense, Czechs, Slovaks, and Hungarians are indisputably Western nations. Dr. Hejlek is right to use the more precise term “Atlantic civilization.” We are far closer to Germans, Dutch, or Portuguese than to Russians, Egyptians, or Chinese. By this same standard, much of the former Soviet bloc was also part of the West, no matter its political alignment.
The second sense is political-economic power arrangements. This refers to which states form alliances, who dominates whom, and what the balance of power looks like. In this sense, our nations are integrated into the Western power bloc—but this bloc represents only a portion of Western civilization. And this integration has been disastrous for the ordinary citizen. We are not treated as true sovereign states, but rather as territories from which cheap labor can be extracted and to which waste can be exported.
There is no compelling argument why Czechs, Slovaks, or Hungarians should regard continued membership in this Western political order as a benefit. And yet the sleight of hand is always the same: politicians conflate civilizational identity with geopolitical allegiance. Thus, if we wish to raise our children as Germans or French do, and not as Dagestanis do, then—so we are told—we must accept being exploited by American corporations. This is the rhetoric of our departing Czech prime minister.
The opposition, meanwhile, performs the mirror image of this trick. If we wish to defend our own national interests, then—so they claim—we must sever ourselves from Western civilization altogether. They, too, fail to grasp the meaning of the terms they employ.