It may be time to consider this again.
Stephen Bowman
http://www.stephenbowmanbooks.com
Since
we have not spent a great deal of time publicly examining what would happen
after the end of the cold war, many people feel the world is falling into
chaos-as evidenced by terrorist acts, declining economic systems, a surge of
Islamic fundamentalism, a resurgence of mass genocide policies, and a rise in
racism and anti-Semitism. The list goes on and on. This sense of disorder runs
deep in national and individual psyches, leaving many people with a strong
feeling of being left in a state of limbo in an undefined post-cold war
climate.
At the same time, without
much direction or definition from our politicians, our academics, or our media,
we have a positive sense that all the eruptions happening around the world in a
seemingly helter-skelter manner contain a clue to what our world will be like
over the next hundred years. How we deal with current situations may very well
determine whether the new world will be a peaceful or warlike community. It is
a natural to seek order, any kind of order; a defining moment which outlines
the problems we must deal with or absorb.
Although many terrorist
acts have happened, the World Trade Center bombing had great consequences
because that bomb was planted by Islamic fundamentalists. Even so, we failed to recognize the World
Trade Center bomb was more than our wake-up call to the foreign terrorist
threat. It was our wake-up call to a new clash of civilizations.
Samuel P Huntington,
Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and Director of the John M. Olin
Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, has predicted the next
pattern of conflict in a 1993 report, The Changing Security Environment and
American National Interests.
According to Huntington,
until the Iron Curtain was rent, for all political purposes the world was
divided between two Western superpowers with the rest of the countries governed
by the needs and demands of these powers which carried with them the ancillary
threat of nuclear annihilation. It was the superpowers, and they alone, that
determined the world's battle lines.
Now the old battle lines
have been obliterated in the disintegration of the Soviet Union and new ones
are being redrawn as much more meaningful borderlines. These new parameters are
not defined by capitalism versus communism, but instead by the much deeper
motivations of religion and culture.
In theory, this should be
good news, because every true religion of the world is rooted in the teachings
of peace and fellowship. This was the message at the Parliament of the World's
Religions, which met in Chicago for nine days in August 1993. (It was the first
time the Parliament had convened since its inaugural meeting in 1893 at the
Chicago World's Fair!). Most
"formal" religions were represented, even those professing no belief
in any kind of god. Disruptions during the meeting revealed that, even among
this non-secular group of representatives, the mix of religion and politics was
a volatile combination. And even though each religion was rooted in peace, the
varying degrees of fundamentalist and extremist interpretations could be
applied in very brittle patterns. Evangelical and Christian fundamentalist
groups did not show up at all, though liberal Protestant groups did, but only
quietly observed the proceedings. Eastern Orthodox Christians walked out midway
through the conference in protest of the presence of neo-pagans and goddess
worshipers, as did four Jewish groups when Louis H. Farrakhan of the Nation of
Islam took the speaker's platform.
The goal of the gathering
had been to create a Declaration of Global Ethics, but the "short"
five-thousand-word
document they crafted was indicative of the problems the world faces when
religion and politics mix. To placate the diverse assembly, the word
"God" (even in its un-capitalized form) was omitted; and, rather than
address specific issues, it promoted general goals of nonviolence;
environmental responsibility; economic justice; honesty in politics, culture,
and the media; and the end of sexual discrimination.
A keynote speaker on the
final day, the Dalai Lama, summed up the meeting in the same way he would sum
up the world situation: "We will see." But what we are already seeing
is not as obscure as it might seem at first glance. As we read world headlines,
we are witnessing the globe being divided into eight major civilizations, per
Huntington: Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox,
Latin American, and African
The differences among
these civilizations are very real and very basic. They have to do with history,
language, culture, tradition, and religion. They are the product of centuries
of development, and are not soon to disappear.
These differences pose a
far greater need for understanding than do the conflicts that existed between
the two superpowers. We have long felt that we had a basic understanding of the
Soviet Union (which, however, most Americans have considered to be only
Russian) because tens of thousands of its people had already immigrated to
the United States prior to the cold
war. Too, we felt that the people they left behind were also essentially like
us, only stuck in a system that did not reward individual achievement.
Most Americans cannot
make these same claims of the Islamic, Confucian, Hindu, or other groups. Here
many of us cross more than ideologies: we cross civilizations.
This difference in
perceptions based on cultural background was made profoundly clear during World
War II. Although we were convinced that the German and Italian soldiers were
our hated enemies and their unwitting dupes, respectively, we were largely able
to separate all that from their fellow citizens. The civilians were people who
shared our ancestry and were not (especially in the case of the Italians) to
any great extent accountable for the actions of their dictatorial governments.
When it came to Japan,
however, we went to war against a foreign culture epitomized by such alien
things as samurai warlords and kamikaze suicide missions. It would have been
unthinkable to drop the bomb on Germany or Italy, but with Japan it was not
only thinkable, but was the practical thing to do because of the millions of
U.S. lives it saved due to our demand for unconditional surrender.
Throughout history it has
been the cultural differences-not the conflicts between economic ideologies-that
have caused the most violent and most prolonged conflicts. And, with the
widespread current trend whereby these differences are being promoted even as
interaction among civilizations is increasing in this shrinking world, the
differences are becoming grossly intensified and magnified. With the confusion
of governments and the struggle of economic policies in almost every country,
many traditional governments have lost their power to hold their nations
together. This includes dictatorial, socialist, and democratic governments
alike. Religion has attempted to move in to provide the unifying force in many
countries.
In Iran, the goal is to
rule the nation through Islamic fundamentalist beliefs, and with a demonstrated
anti-Western doctrine. The West views this movement as fanatical and alarming.
But it is meaningful that the leaders of this movement are not the poor masses
rallying behind a radical rabble-rouser: the leaders are the young, educated,
middle-class professionals and businessmen.
This rise of religious
fundamentalism to overshadow and direct political authority not only transforms
the workings of a nation, it transcends national boundaries and unites the
worldwide Diaspora of their respective believers, particularly the extremist
element. Signs of this are evident throughout the more moderate Arab lands,
where "unenlightened" intellectuals, politicians, writers, and media
personalities have been brutally assassinated. Anyone who believes in
secularism or simply accommodates secularism is targeted as a nonbeliever, an
enemy of the greater cause, who must be killed.
If future threats from
Islamic fundamentalists caused the Christian West to respond with a
conservative or even a Christian fundamentalist protection, it is frightening
to ponder the results of a confrontation. If cultural religious morality is the
bottom line, what solution remains other than the annihilation of the enemy?
And yet it is not impossible to imagine this.
In the senior President
George Bush's reelection campaign, the Republican Party suspected that it was
being taken over (or at least manipulated) by a strong coalition of Christian
conservatives, with evangelical preachers lining up behind Jerry Falwell to put
a Christian conservative policy in the White House. But Americans have long
believed in the separation of church and state; most feel it is one of the
basic constitutional principles meant to assure freedom of democracy. And the
religious aspects of George Bush's campaign, mixed with the issues of abortion
and family values, may well have contributed to his downfall, in addition to
his lethargic participation.
Americans who believe in
strong family values also believe that the subject of family values should not
become another government program. But any government drifting toward becoming
a social-welfare state tends to intrude on what was once considered personal or
religious territory. It becomes involved in such issues as abortion and
euthanasia and, as proponents of both sides of the issues run to government to
legislate a solution, both sides give over to government the power to make such
life-and-death decisions.
This initiates a
dangerous progression, to the point where it is not impossible to imagine the
predictions of science-fiction writers coming true, whereby government
institutes such things as mandatory death at age sixty-five to settle economic
or population problems. An extreme example, to be sure, but not as extreme
today as it was only a few years back.
When talking about the
future of terrorist-sponsoring countries, William Colby, the ex-CIA director,
had a message of hope that he tied to economic progress in an interview for
this book. He pointed out that if you look at the countries that have isolated
themselves from the West (Cuba, North Korea, Libya, and others) you'll see that
they are now paying the price of having been left behind while the rest of the
world prospered.
This makes sense, from a
Western point of view: it assumes that the West will continue to dominate both
the politics and the economics of the world. It also assumes that the West will
continue to be liberal. Since we in the West have not completed our own
"return to the roots" movement, we don't really believe that Muslims
want to annihilate us-rather, we assume they would prefer to live beside us in
peace and prosperity. But as each nation succeeds in its resurgence of its own
definition of acculturalization, the "Keep Japan Asian" movement, the
forces of Hinduism in India, the growing Islamic fundamentalism throughout the
Middle East, and the split between East and West in the former Soviet states,
the cultural differences become more defined and more difficult to compromise.
All this may be hard for
most Americans to understand. We live in a nation of immigrants, which now includes
sizable numbers from every nation of the world. We eat together in restaurants.
We work together. Interracial relationships have become common. And because of
our mix of races, we are (for the most part) taught that racism is ignoble and
abhorrent. This contrasts greatly with what is going on in many other
countries, where racism is a common teaching in most acculturalization
programs.
Even in the United
States, where it is still common for people whose families have lived here for
three hundred years or more to identify themselves as one-tenth German,
one-fifth Italian, three-tenths Irish, and so forth, religious fundamentalists
insist that it is not possible to say you are part Christian and part Muslim.
The lines of the eight
civilizations are self-defining, and such interruptions as the domination of
the Soviet Union or of the United States are only that. They do not break the
cultural ties that bind peoples (rather than nations) together. But, as we are
seeing in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia, the fractures along these cultural
dividing lines can be opened like unhealed wounds.
Perhaps even more
meaningful is the trend to divide the world into economic regions. These also
must occur along cultural dividing lines because if they don't, they won't work.
The European Economic
Community is a coalition of Western European states made up of people with
common religious and cultural backgrounds. Former East-bloc countries that do
not fit the predominant Christian description are not allowed into the EEC.
Even poor Turkey, which tried to "go West" by cooperating during the
Persian Gulf War, and thereby excluded itself from the East, has been rejected
by the EEC and now finds itself alone, with only a distant hope of recreating
the Turkish Empire up to the borders of Iran.
China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the Chinese overseas Diaspora
will be an economic unit. Iran,
Pakistan, perhaps a placated Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan will be an economic unit.
The reformed Soviet Empire of Yeltsin's dreams will likely not happen because
his plan calls for a joining of cultural civilizations-and this contradicts the
people's natural, deeper tendencies.
Latin America and Central
America will each be economic units, as will Canada, the United States, and
Mexico.
The bottom line is, per
Huntington, that people of common cultures will band together, and peaceful
interaction across cultural lines will occur only if these moves are in the
best interest of both parties. This is a unique concept for the West, which has
had the luxury of laying down most of the world's rules for the past three
hundred years or more.
It is difficult for the
West to suddenly acknowledge the emerging civilizations. We have seen it as our
moral duty to promote the properties of democracy and liberal ideologies. We
see these as universal values, and anyone who does not agree is perceived as
backward, unenlightened, ignorant-even barbaric. These beliefs, rooted in evangelism,
were the mainstay behind both the preservation of our military dominance and
our justification for promoting our brand of economic interests throughout the
world. But we have never quite understood that the hymn, "Onward Christian
Soldiers" does not play well in Islam. All our most basic beliefs and
universal justifications receive a direct counter response from the non-West,
which perceives us to be imperialistic.
When the Soviet economy
collapsed along with all the communist states of the East bloc, that was hailed
as proof of the superiority of democracy and capitalism, and the inferiority of
totalitarianism and communism. But the arguments along these lines of inquiry
continue, particularly now that most of the Western nations are also struggling
to restructure their economies to meet a changed world.
Students of Marxism argue
that the communist dictators bastardized the original theory (that Marx
predicted socialism would be the natural progression of an open, democratic
society), and they point to the United States as an example, not the Soviet
Union.
Even more perplexing to
Western analysts is the fantastic economic growth occurring inside China under
what the West perceives as an oppressive regime. In just the past fifteen
years, the level of poverty in China has fallen from 30 percent to 10 percent, and
health-care quality is among the highest of all nations, with the chances of a
newborn baby surviving in China better than those of a baby born in New York City.
For most Chinese,
regardless of China's record on human rights and regardless of our opinion of
their standard of living, there has never been a better time to live there than
right now. Most people in most other nations cannot make that same claim,
including Americans (who certainly are better off than the Chinese, but can
easily remember better times).
The West must remember
that its half of the world, which lives in relative tranquility, represents
just 15 percent of the world's population. The remaining 85 percent lives in
relative turmoil. They have different priorities. Most would rather eat than
vote.
The
Shifting of Cultural Plates
Huntington looks at
today's rising turmoil and compares the fracturing among the eight
civilizations to a series of deep faults causing violent earthquakes along the
cultural battle lines. But aren't these cultural movements rather more
comparable to those related to continental drift (the shifting of the upper
layers of earth plates) that has been going on for eons? Let us see.
In many ways, a political
map of the world today is eerily similar to one from 1900. Eerily, because we
remember that the old maps had to be redrawn because of World War I and (more
to the point) World War II, the latter of which kicked off the cold war, the
Korean War, Vietnam, the isolation of Cuba and North Korea and China, the creation
of Israel, and the Mid-East conflicts. Eerily, because we have long been told
that history repeats itself and we've found that, in a way, the only difference
between then and now, militarily speaking, at least, is in the massive
destructive capabilities of our weapons. Eerily, because it seems that after all
this turmoil we have simply come full circle again.
In the final analysis, it
is the deep faults that better represent the cause of the fracturing that goes
on among the eight civilizations: a war between Iran and Iraq, for example, or
an economic battle between Sweden and Finland,
or Italy and France. These
"earthquakes" are short and violent, and do not have the lasting
impact of the kind of cataclysm we have represented as continental drift.
When continental plates shift,
and collide, they create mountain ranges and cause climatic changes, form
deserts and rain forests, and otherwise change the face of the globe forever.
Something like that is
true of the shifting cultural "plates," the major difference being
that we do have the option of controlling them-or at least of insulating their
impact points. And we have good incentive to respond to these options, because
the next World War will undoubtedly be a clash between civilizations-a clash of
biblical proportions wherein everything that defines cultural and religious
beliefs is on the line and pertaining to which there is no compromise or
withdrawal.
A
Redefinition of Power
The Persian Gulf War was
the culmination of a conflict that had been building for sixty years. It began
when the West found oil in the Middle East, and then was accentuated when World
War II ended Western
colonialism and coincided
with the beginning of the growth of Mid-Eastern nationalism and Islamic
fundamentalism. This conflict between Islam and the West is likely to keep on
growing, particularly if the West continues to rely on oil as its energy
mainstay.
Each time the West uses
its massive military power or advanced technical weapons, it reminds the
non-West countries that they can be humiliated by that power and that they are
not yet in control of their own destinies. Even the Arab countries that have
moved toward a more democratic reform have ironically found themselves leading
a populace with a growing anti-West attitude. Any nation in which people are
moving toward new degrees of self-empowerment can expect those same people to
reject symbols of authority and superiority-and once again societal divisions
move beyond the borders of nations, to the more meaningful divisions of
peoples.
The West's knee-jerk
reactions to immigration problems only strengthen these divisions. As European
borders close to burgeoning populations of the East, the barriers highlight
division and exclusion. And there is always a counter-response. The
counter-reaction becomes a form of racism, which is reinforced by religious and
cultural movements that encourage ethnic separation. And, as we have seen, when
the battle is between people of different cultures, ethnic cleansing and
persecution are not only severe but in the fevered minds of fundamentalist,
wholly justified.
A
Redefinition of Responsibility
If we want to avoid
conflict between East and West, we must redefine our priorities, understanding
that a redefinition is not a show of weakness, but rather of strength.
The non-West
civilizations face a near future filled with turmoil, not only along their
cultural borders but within them. The West must decide whether it should
involve itself with these inner struggles, realizing that with each meddling it
increases the danger of escalating a local or regional problem into a cultural
war with global consequences.
For years, the United
States attempted to balance the powers of Iraq and Iran, to play one against
the other, to preserve Mid-East stability, and to off-set Soviet influence in
the area. Iran and Iraq squared off
against each other in brutal combat which killed tens of thousands of their
soldiers and civilians. They used chemical and biological weapons against each
other, and wreaked havoc upon their respective economies as they locked in
mortal conflict. Today, Iran and Iraq still harbor resentment against each
other, but their fundamentalist elements agree on one thing: a hatred of the
United States for messing around in their territories.
In theory, if the West
weren't interfering in these internal conflicts, it would have the option of
sitting back and watching the other civilizations handle their own battles, without
becoming the scapegoat for both sides. And it keeps holding up that if both
sides of the conflict are of the same culture, then only the foreign interloper
will be blamed in the end.
Is it the responsibility
of the West to interfere, or is it more responsible to stay out? The answer
becomes confused when it includes such issues as human rights, arms
proliferation, nuclear and biological weapons proliferation, and the economic
needs of the "free world."
The West views as one of
its duties the responsibility to impose Western concepts on the rest of the
world. But everything the West stands for about individualism, equality,
liberty, judicial freedom, democracy, and freedom of religion holds little
value in many other cultures. Only the West has had the idea of a universal
democracy, or a New World Order. On a global scale, 85 percent of the
population has other priorities, and they view this Western doctrine of a
kinder, gentler democratic world as just another form of imperialism. If a
non-West country does not want to succumb to Western preaching, then it has two
options: It can either isolate itself, or it can begin its own version of a
cold war and build to balance itself against the West, as China is suspected of
doing.
Throughout the non-West,
the trend is to institute forms of modernization without succumbing to the
doctrines of westernization. The trend is to use their (for example) oil-rich
resources to get their own weapons, their own stockpile of nuclear, chemical,
and biological weapons. They are actually more interested in obtaining these
items to strengthen their positions in their own regions than they are to reach
global dominance, but the West does not trust the trends to stop at regional
borders.
If the West does not want
internal clashes to lead to cultural battles, then it will have to recognize
that the non-West is no longer willing to sit on the sidelines. The non-West
will help shape the future of the world's physical, spiritual, and economic
characteristics with or without permission.
To accommodate a peaceful
future, the West must get over its cold war attitude before it creates another
cold war on a variety of fronts. Rather than playing civilizations and
countries against each other, as we did in our ploys to counteract Soviet ploys,
we should realize that promoting cooperation between countries is in our own
best interests.
We should recognize that
almost every institution operating today is viewed by the non-West countries as
a pawn of the West, and of the United States. This includes the United Nations,
NATO, the International Monetary Fund-all representatives of Western interests
regardless of how they feel justified "for the common good."
Since neither the globe
nor human leanings toward war will change overnight, it is important for the
West to maintain military and economic power, but also to recognize that power
includes the ability to allow other countries their differences and
self-empowerment.