The West Is Reborn

Sometimes we cannot know what principle we are prepared to defend until it is challenged. In There Is a North, the historian John L. Brooke argues that only after the American South coalesced around the defense of slavery post-1850 did the North discover its own identity in the opposition to slavery. Similarly, in the aftermath of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine—and of the startlingly, almost thrillingly, unified response by major democratic states—we can say, “There is a West.”

We do not yet know quite what that means or whom that includes or just how binding that sense of common purpose will prove to be. We do know, however, how deep and widespread the reaction to Putin’s violation of international law and norms has been: Germany has agreed to increase defense spending to 2 percent