Editorial: The end of ‘the West’ and the future of global constitutionalism

Abstract

The end of 'the West' and the future of global constitutionalism m a t t i a s k u m m , j o n a t h a n h a v e r c r o f t , j e f f r e y d u n o f f a n d a n t j e w i e n e r I. The collapse of 'the West'? A century after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and more than 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 'Eastern Block', we may now to be witnessing the collapse of the American Republic and the Western order it created and led after WWII. Whether NATO, the EU and the string of alliances the United States has built across Asia will continue to exist in three or fi ve years is by no means a foregone conclusion, but it has become an open question. 1 2016 was the year that Americans elected the populist authoritarian nationalist Donald J Trump as the forty-fi fth President of the United States and the British voted in favour of 'Brexit'. The US/British alliance that underwrote the global order after WWII may well remain an alliance: the fi rst foreign leader the new President received was Theresa May, although only after meeting with Nigel Farage, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leader. However, both they and their erstwhile partners in that alliance are now playing a leading role in the unravelling of the order that they built and supported. Thus, Trump has dismissed the United Nations (UN) as a 'social club' and threatened to cut down US contributions, originally characterised NATO as obsolete, and stated that he would be neither surprised nor concerned if the European Union (EU) disintegrated. Furthermore he threatens to upend the global trade order, burying the Trans-Pacifi c Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and ending negotiations surrounding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), threatening the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), at least in his pronouncements, showing no indication to take seriously World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations. Meanwhile under 1 See A-M Slaughter, 'The Return of Anarchy?' (2017) 70 Columbia Journal of International Affairs 11–16.