This is monumentally important with respect to the current global dynamic and the process of globalization.
After the Protestant Reformation, the question was in Europe, "Whose religion," and the answer was that each region would follow the religion of the prince.
Cuius regio, eius religio ("Whose realm, his religion"). However, this principle was adopted only after a period of bloody conflict.
Something similar is now taking place with respect to globalization. The West presumes that the question is settled and that Western civilization and its values have been shown to be superior and therefore are the unquestionable basis for globalization.
Other regions disagree, in particular "the Russian world" (
Russkiy Mir), Islam, Iran (which is beginning to reconnect with its Zoroastrian roots of the Persian empire), China (Xi is now emphasizing China's Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist heritage along with Marxism), and India (which is emphasizing
Bharata Mata (Mother India), whose roots are Vedic). These are the major contenders and there are others.
The overwhelming sentiment among the rest is that the West is not going to impose its conception of civilization based on its values on them. Full stop.
Foundationally, this is the basic conflict. It's foundational, since it is a question of whose worldview is going to prevail. This is a gathering storm.
Samuel P. Huntington suggested this in
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996). He asserted this view in response to
Francis Fukuyama's book,
The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which argued that Western liberalism was the apex of ideology.
Huntington began his thinking by surveying the diverse theories about the nature of global politics in the post-Cold War period. Some theorists and writers argued that human rights, liberal democracy, and capitalist free market economy had become the only remaining ideological alternative for nations in the post-Cold War world. Specifically, Francis Fukuyama argued that the world had reached the 'end of history' in a Hegelian sense.
Huntington believed that while the age of ideology had ended, the world had only reverted to a normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict. In his thesis, he argued that the primary axis of conflict in the future will be along cultural and religious lines.[5]
As an extension, he posits that the concept of different civilizations, as the highest rank of cultural identity, will become increasingly useful in analyzing the potential for conflict.
In the 1993 Foreign Affairs article, Huntington writes:
It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.[2]
In the end of the article, he writes:
This is not to advocate the desirability of conflicts between civilizations. It is to set forth descriptive hypothesis as to what the future may be like.[2]
In addition, the clash of civilizations, for Huntington, represents a development of history. In the old time, the history of international system was mainly about the struggles between monarchs, nations and ideologies. Those conflicts were primarily seen within Western civilization. But after the end of the cold war, world politics had been moved into a new aspect in which non- Western civilizations were no more the exploited recipients of Western civilization but become another important actor joining the West to shape and move the world history.[6] — Wikipedia
The West seems bound and determined to prove Fukuyama correct and the rest of the world seems committed to making sure that this doesn't happen.
Huntington suggests that in the future the central axis of world politics tends to be the conflict between Western and non-Western civilizations, in Kishore Mahbubani's phrase, the conflict between "the West and the Rest."
The
Wikipedia article is a good summary, and I suggest taking the time to read it.
It is also becoming clear that there is a conflict developing in the West over the conception of Western civilization itself. Pope Francis is emerging as the champion of the traditional view as opposed to the modern (liberal) view and especially the Post Modern view.
Fort Russ
