‘The West’ is an ever-evolving concept, sometimes thought of geographically, at other times culturally or geopolitically. The West wasn’t called the West for much of history. The term gained popularity during the Cold War and its aftermath, when the fall of the Soviet Union drew much of Eastern Europe closer to the Transatlantic world. Depending on how you cut it, there is also a ‘non-geographic West’ encompassing like-minded geopolitical allies such as Japan.

The story of the West is therefore one of expansion in values, reach and, latterly, inclusiveness. It is also a story of re-invention. There have been catastrophes aplenty in the annals of the West, not least in how intense colonial competition hastened the First World War, which dealt a mortal blow to the European empires. And yet, the West’s appeal and stature went on to rise once again, this time in conjunction with the ‘American Century’.

What does it mean if the West has reached the end of its era of expansion? The West is unlikely to be replaced by another world civilisation. The real question is a different one: what does it mean to defend Western values in a less Western-dominated age? This question has geo-economic and geopolitical dimensions. It also has cultural elements, since the partial Westernisation of so many global identities and imaginations — whether forced, during the worst episodes of the European colonial era, or via the positive appeals of US-led globalisation — is another of the defining stories of the preceding centuries.

The West has had many heydays in which the spread of its values, cultures, languages, standards and successes made so much of the modern world. But expansion cannot, by definition, continue indefinitely. Indeed, the West seems to be not just fractured but also increasingly on the defensive, a crisis that goes well beyond its increasingly fractious day-to-day alliance politics, aggravated by the second Trump presidency.

Demographics offer one set of clues as to what is happening. As recently as 1950, according to the calculations of the United Nations Population Divisions based on global census data, nearly 30 per cent of all humanity lived in the West. Based on differing fertility rates and various socio-economic factors, and due to huge population growth across Asia and Africa, the West’s share of humanity is projected to fall to around 12 per cent by 2050.

Consider another metric: the share of the world economy held by the G7, the leading industrialised nations of Europe, North America and Japan. It was at 65 per cent as recently as the early 2000s, but that share has dropped to well below 50 per cent, and may bottom out at close to 35 per cent in the coming decade. Rising economies (and not just China) eat hungrily into the share of global output and productivity.

In absolute numbers there will still be plenty of Westerners in the future, but in relative terms the West must face up to a global future in which it is not as singularly dominant as it has been in the past. Dominance in advanced technology, once a supreme embodiment of the West’s pulling power, simply does not magnify its might in the ways it once did. Take the AI race. China’s DeepSeek upended assumptions about relative national advantages in the world of AI. Technological innovation once faced hard logistical limits on how quickly it could be diffused around the globe; now technological transformations disperse quickly over borders and between countries.

This relative shrinking in size, and the closing of some of its relative advantages, are profoundly important developments that affect where the West fits into a new world order.

Under Trump, the world’s most powerful country is looking out for number one; its instincts are to hoard its power and influence as the world transforms around it. Dissipating its power by pursuing global causes, even on behalf of the rest of the West, is out of favour. Consider as evidence the US focus on the Western Hemisphere, including the Panama Canal, while eyeing up territory in Greenland and Canada. The international cause that truly motivates Trump’s US is a fixation on defending its status, especially in the Pacific, against a rising China.

War, so often the driver of change in world affairs, further questions the role and coherency of the West today. Trump has rejected the argument that supporting Ukraine against Russia is a fight for the future of the West and a defining battle for democracy. He has preferred instead to unilaterally support Israel’s war against Iran, which is the inverse preference in terms of military commitment of most European governments and of Canada.

With few causes to unite the West, over time these fissures will only widen. Disagreements are not new, but rather than consensus as the standard against which disagreements are judged (as with the Iraq invasion in 2003), division risks becoming the norm. And, unlike in past eras, other regions are catching up. At this rate, there may not even be a ‘West’ to speak of in the collective sense, even if its constituent parts still find common cause from time to time.

The West, ever-changing throughout history, will not vanish, but the utility of the term no longer seems assured.