Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I disagree. Argentina may by more western than Belarus or Croatia, but in average Eastern Europeans are more western in today standards. An easy example, which population have an easier time to integrate in the US ? Latin Americans or Eastern Europeans ?
Both Latin America and Eastern Europe are culturally western, uncontroversially.
What should be took into account is geography and culture, not geopolitics, which may change in short intervals.
Countries like Poland and Hungary were under sovietic influence 50 years ago and now they have almost nothing different to the West Europe. Latin America is the poor part of the West, but if the countries of the region succeed to grow fast in the next decades, the difference between them and the "rich" West (USA, Canada and Europe) will disappear. And if we look to the East, we will notice that Japan, China and Laos (for example) have few things in common about economy and geopolitics. And what about North Korea and South Korea?
The country which may challenge the definitions of East and West is Russia. And the islamic countries don't fit in any of these definitions, being a civilisation in its own right. Same for tribal peoples in Africa and America.
The west was defined during the cold war. It was the US and its strong democracies allies (in fact it was the NATO + anglosphere). And Latin America was not included, it was a battlefield of influence between Communists (still in power in some countries) and the US&co. Eastern Europe was in the USSR sphere of influence, so considered East. But since the fall of the USSR all former soviet satellites are becoming liberal, capitalist, atheist, etc.. They are only looking to the West to catch up on all those lost soviets decades. Just look at a young Polish, Hungarian or Lithuanian and tell me the difference with a German. Then take a Brazilian or a Guatemalan..
Before the 90's Latin America was more western, but not any more.
Like I said in another post, a country cannot be "western" in a time and "non-western" in another time. Geopolitics change very quickly in the world. The culture remains the same for centuries.
The "West" was not defined in the Cold War, but in very ancient times, when the West was Europe and the East was Asia.
A western country is a country which fits in the following criteria:
* is geographically placed in the West;
* speaks an European language;
* has the Christianity as the dominant faith.
Capitalist and developed countries are simply capitalist and developed countries. Allies of the USA are simply allies of the USA, regardless in which place of the world they are. If we use these definition for the "west", we would include in it countries like Japan, South Korea, which are clearly eastern. How can a country be "western" and "eastern" at the same time?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
