The phrase “the Free West” is used as if it were self-evident. It rarely is. Behind it lies a mix of sentiment, selective memory, and a set of contradictions that are easier to ignore than to resolve.
Yesterday it happened again. A professor began a sentence with the words, “We, in the Free West.” I understood what he meant, and I suspect most people do, but it remains a curious opening for a scientist. It assumes a clarity that does not really exist.
Who exactly are “we” in the Free West? The Earth is round. There is always a West somewhere, even in the Far East. The term suggests coherence, but in reality it groups together a set of cultures that often differ as much as they resemble one another.
At the center of that construction stands the United States, a country that ranks the highest in the world in the incarceration of its own citizens. That does not immediately evoke freedom. Yet when statements like these are tested against facts, they rarely collapse into clear conclusions. What tends to remain is sentiment. Many widely accepted ideas function less as descriptions of reality than as expressions of shared feeling. Even truth, at least in some philosophical traditions, is treated this way. Not as something fixed, but as something assigned. Facts acquire weight through interpretation. National narratives are particularly effective in doing so.
For a Northern European arriving in the United States for the first time, often in New York, the experience is one of immediate familiarity. The city feels legible. The differences seem manageable. You can navigate it with the skills you acquired at home. But that sense of ease conceals an asymmetry. You can speak with the average New Yorker because your education required you to learn additional languages. The reverse is far less common. Foreign names are often approximated, sometimes carelessly, and followed by the polite disclaimer, “I hope I pronounce that well.” The phrase does not correct the mistake, but it does soften it. Effort is replaced by intention.
Courtesy, however, is unmistakable. Americans are consistently attentive in social interactions. A casual remark such as, “If you are ever in Portland, Maine, make sure to stop by,” is part of that code. It signals openness rather than a literal invitation. It maintains a tone.
Dutch directness operates differently. We are often described as blunt, and the description is largely accurate. Invitations, when they are made, tend to be meant. Although I should add that I am not entirely exempt from the opposite tendency. It is sometimes easier to promise something lightly than to refuse it outright. Social behavior, in that sense, is rarely consistent, even within a single person.
What is easier to observe is the broader cultural influence. American habits are immediately recognizable in Europe, not only because they are distinctive, but because they have been continuously present since the Second World War. Through media, economics, and military alignment, that presence has shaped European societies to a degree that is not always acknowledged, but difficult to deny.
Which raises a question that is occasionally asked, though rarely answered in a simple way. Who won the Second World War? The Western narrative is clear, but it is incomplete. Without the advance of the Red Army from the East, the outcome might have been different. Counterfactuals remain speculative, but they do reveal how selective historical memory can be.
What is less speculative is the postwar record. The United States has maintained unmatched military capacity, yet the outcomes of its later conflicts have often been ambiguous at best. Political language tends to emphasize strength, investment, and global reach. Results are described more cautiously.
In recent days, similar language has resurfaced in discussions about Europe’s role in a potential conflict with Iran. The suggestion is that reluctance would amount to dependency, that Europe has benefited for decades from American protection without contributing enough in return.
That framing, again, leans heavily on sentiment. After the Second World War, Germany was occupied by both American and Soviet forces. In the decades that followed, American military infrastructure expanded across much of Europe, not as a one-sided imposition, but as part of strategic alliances in which European countries also had agency, even if that agency was uneven. Those arrangements were never free of cost, financial or political. At the same time, the consequences of military interventions in the Middle East have extended far beyond their initial objectives, contributing to migration flows that are largely absorbed by European countries. Responsibility, here, is shared, but not always evenly acknowledged.
In Amsterdam, where I live, there is now a visible presence of Americans who openly admire European systems such as healthcare, social security, and childcare. Systems that function differently from those in their country of origin, and that are collectively funded. Their presence is not unusual in itself. Movement across borders rarely is. But the language used to describe it is revealing. We tend to call them expats. Others, in similar circumstances, are more readily described as migrants or refugees. The distinction is less about movement than about perception.