On October 31, 2015, the West, despite its problems and shortcomings, was the most stable, successful and self-confident part of the world. The United Kingdom and the United States were, four years ago, the bedrock countries of the West and the defenders of its faith.
Our economies were relatively strong, our political systems relatively stable and our prospects for the future relatively promising, especially compared to that part of the world governed by authoritarian rulers.
Our two countries had been operating in tandem since the Second World War as twin architects of the most successful international system in modern history—the Liberal Order. With the Atlantic Charter in 1941 our great wartime leaders, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, laid the foundation stone of a new world.
Some historians describe the Atlantic Charter as the foundational document of the west. When I left government, some of my British friends, led by Lord Peter Ricketts, gave me a framed copy of it with Churchill’s revisions penciled in.
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