By Elliott Nace | Staff Writer
On Jan. 20, the United States re-appointed Donald Trump as the leader of the free world — also known as president — for the second time. Our commander-in-chief, if not the most powerful man in the world on account of his military range and strength, is at the very least its premiere figurehead.
It is impossible to discuss the U.S. president’s importance, let alone the modern idea of the free world (literally, a Cold War-era term referring to the nations of the world comprising democracy and free-market economies), without first mentioning the post-World War II effort to usher in globalization.
An encyclopedic entry from National Geographic defines globalization as “the increasing connectedness and interdependence of world cultures and economies,” which is most evidently seen in the postwar formations of networks like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union, among others.
Connecting the world like this is certainly a noble effort. Who would oppose an evolution of foreign policy like this, at least in principle? What wrong could spill out of turning the world’s most powerful players into its protectors?
A better definition of the free world may be as simple as the United States’ sphere of influence. From this point of view, global leaders include the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, Japan, Australia and anywhere else where foreign culture intersects with the many revelations of Western thought.
Us free-worlders concern ourselves with Western matters, and our enlightenment has determined what parts of the world guarantee liberty and soundness of human development. Our time spent ruminating on the merit of the individual, as dictated by a renaissance of the great polymaths of old, has brought the Indo-European tradition to a point of higher understanding. We are the culture — the college-educated — the supposed paragons of acceptance, inclusion and truth.
“The leaders of the free world voice the general horror of all free men at the devilish [sic] excesses of the Nazi hordes,” as eloquently yet simply preserved from a British publication in 1941. In recent years, our leaders have fought to defend our liberties from the many evils brewing in the annals of the unfree world. What emerged from World War II was a renewed sense of iura ad bella — just motives for war — that still spur us on today.
It would not be unfounded to say that war and defense remain a crucial element of global character, especially for the free world. After all, what is warfare if not an actualization of ideology and implicit strength?
Our allies and mortal enemies alike seem to create forced interdependence through globalization. Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, even if motivated by President Vladimir Putin’s publicized want to restore the full motherland during the ongoing war in Ukraine, invariably ended up being a typical grab at fertile land near the Black Sea. The U.S. vows to defend Taiwan from invasion, but now does so in exchange for lucrative merchandise trading and the ever-relevant import of semiconductors.
There are heroes and villains in this world. Russia and other totalitarian states are embroiled in corruption, countless unreported atrocities and general malpractice. We are right to distance ourselves from such antagonistic powers. But does knowing what makes a nation not good mean that we embody — let alone know — what makes one good?
The sovereign free world is rightfully ashamed of its colonizing past, and yet it seems that some imperialist sensibilities remain in place. For one, an increased homogeneity of language characterized by Indo-European and Germanic tongues currently dominates the world of commerce. French is the world’s most-learned language after English, due in large part to the inconvenient truth of its spread through North Africa and Southeast Asia.
Education is also synonymous with the free world. Brain drain, for instance, has proportionately become prominent as higher education becomes more accessible. According to the International Monetary Fund, “migrants to the United States tend to be better educated than the average person in their home (that is, the sending) country, and the proportion of very highly educated people who migrate is particularly high.”
What often follows these emigrations of culture and talent is a more conscious want for global consolidation, as prosperous nations now call for increased awareness toward the very developing world that lends its finest recruits to bright Westernized horizons.
An article from BRIGHT Magazine in which the college-educated American author details her experience teaching students in Langa, South Africa, culminates in her realizing during a lesson that no one could better relay cultural information to young children than locals.
“After a few minutes of talking to a room of blank faces, I realized that the new friend I’d dragged along — a local poet and rapper named Melisizwe Lugulwana — was better positioned to connect with these students. I pulled him up, handed over the binder, and became a witness.”
Democratic superpowers’ attempts at globalization will never properly integrate the developing world. Military policing and modern policy practices still retain traces of the West’s sins, and in the process turn the legitimate need for variety among nations into a sort of exploitation that fails to consider the full wealth of global thought. We know much about what to avoid but are still on the progressive journey toward a global network.
Is there an even remotely feasible solution to this unfortunate farce? Chances are, no. Western influence is undeniable and rooted in good intentions, yet inapplicable to the world stage on its own. Neither self-hatred nor moral grandstanding will get us anywhere, either. All that we can hope to do is look outward at a world beyond our own, harkening back to our Platonic adage of knowing that we know nothing.
