The phrase ‘world community’ legitimizes Western interests as universal ones

Evidence

The West is attempting and will continue to attempt to sustain its preeminent position and defend its interests by defining those interests as the interests of the “world community.” That phrase has become the euphemistic collective noun (replacing “the Free World”) to give global legitimacy to actions reflecting the interests of the United States and other Western powers. The West is, for instance, attempting to integrate the economies of non-Western societies into a global economic system which it dominates. Through the IMF and other international economic institutions, the West promotes its economic interests and imposes on other nations the economic policies it thinks appropriate. In any poll of non-Western peoples, however, the IMF undoubtedly would win the support of finance ministers and a few others but get an overwhelmingly unfavorable rating from almost everyone else, who would agree with Georgi Arbatov’s description of IMF officials as “neo-Bolsheviks who love expropriating other people’s money, imposing undemocratic and alien rules of economic and political conduct and stifling economic freedom.” — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 490

Categorization

• DEFINE: Huntington exposes ‘world community’ as a euphemistic collective noun replacing ‘Free World’ — a definitional unpacking of a rhetorical term.
• CANDY: Arbatov calling IMF officials ‘neo-Bolsheviks who love expropriating other people’s money’ is a delicious Soviet-era one-liner for dinner conversation.
• XREF: The IMF-unpopularity claim connects to current research on IMF conditionality, structural adjustment backlash, and the global South critique of Bretton Woods institutions.