I believe that for several decades in the last century, "West" in English speaking countries became somewhat synonymous with "NATO". The "East"/"West" terminol

I believe that for several decades in the last century, "West" in English speaking countries became somewhat synonymous with "NATO". The "East"/"West" terminology was tainted by cold-war political language. I think that this map is a fairly accurate representation of what the typical American "world-view" is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#/media/File:Clash_of_Civilizations_map.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#/media/File:Clash... I don't mean to say that it is "correct" in any way, just that it fairly accurately encompasses how many Americans informally loosely categorize different nations/regions.