United States of the West

The United States of the West is a political union satirically advocated by French writer, philosopher, social commentator, and self-proclaimed mediologist, Régis Debray (born 1940), in his short essay entitled, "Empire 2.0: A Modest Proposal for a United States of the West by Xavier de C***."

Empire 2.0 is presented as a fictitious letter sent to Debray from an old acquaintance, a French expatriate named Xavier de C***, who is writing to him from America in October 2001, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

The essay was first published in France in 2002, as L'Edit de caracalla.

In Empire 2.0, Debray's fictitious acquaintance, Xavier de C***, argues that the political enfranchisement of Europe by the United States of America and the official consolidation of the West into an enlarged United States of the West, is the best solution to confronting the current ideological threats and political challenges the West faces from radical Islam, international terrorism, competition for finite resources and responsible resource management, as well as population decline, and would be the only effective safeguard against any future claims to a "Confucian" or Asian empire, asserted by an ascendant, militarized, and aggressive China.

Debray begins the epilogue with the lines: "A man of quality went off to war, and never came home. From the other shore of America, he wrote to an old friend from university days, a mellowed Parisian with the perspective of distance."

The letter to Debray from Xavier, begins: "The past is over. You can guess which past I mean, since I'm no longer writing you in our common lingo."

Debray's Xavier de C***, formerly a French citizen, government official, political consultant, and international military advisor, then recounts to Debray how he swore his oath of allegiance in New York City and gained American citizenship in September 2001, immediately after the 9/11 attacks.

Xavier discusses the current state of the world, world history, American and European styles of government, western culture, the intellectual traditions of France, the failures of the European Union, NATO and the United Nations to effectively address serious crises, and his own conception of the Western cultural tradition and Western philosophy, as well as what the events of 9/11 and the inevitable American response which will shortly follow, portends for both men.

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