Balancing Civilizations to avoid their Clash

Andreas Herberg-Rothe
www.herberg-rothe.com

Balancing Civilizations to avoid their Clash
Clausewitz's theory as political-philosophical paradigm for the twenty-first century

The Cold War ended a long time ago. Nevertheless, our thinking is still obsessed with the concepts developed during this period, particularly toward its end.  Although think tanks worldwide are trying to develop new paradigms for rapid societal, political, economic, cultural, and military transformations,  paradigms outside the military realm often remain rooted in French poststructuralism (Derrida, Foucault) and Lyotard's conception of postmodernism. Another school of thought envisions hypermodernity free from colonialism, the two world wars, and the Holocaust (Habermas and Giddens). While one group argues that these violent excesses are regrettable but unrelated to the essence of the "West," the anti-colonial movement claims that Western values are merely lip service and that its practical politics are still characterized by oppression, exploitation, violence and force to secure only their interests. The same is true for a lot of newly industrialized nations. Here anti-colonialism just serves to legitimize the violent rule of the elites in these countries.

My approach aims to rethink twenty-first-century developments and paradigms through Clausewitzian dialectics rather than Cold War/post-Cold War tropes. This applies not only to French "master thinkers," such as Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard—who developed the concept of postmodernity—but also to Habermas and Giddens, who developed the concept of Western hypermodernity. However, Western hypermodernity and postmodernity are already over. We are in danger of repeating “another bloody century” which is often justified by contrasting civilizational norms. Most of Huntington’s critics have overlooked the fact that he did not write his book to advocate for a clash of civilizations, but rather to avoid it. Some of his other critics argued that there could be no clash of civilizations because, in their view, there are other "religions," but only one civilization: the Western one. Despite his shortcomings, it is evident that the "others" are not only religions or cultures but also civilizations. In the 19th century, Western powers conquered the world. In the 20th century, defeated nations and civilizations had to live with the victorious West. In the 21st century, the world's civilizations must learn to live together; otherwise, Huntington's "clash of civilizations" will become a reality.

Three problematic consecutively developments stand out: First, the peaceful end of the Cold War was misunderstood as an unqualified triumph of Western modernity. Wars were viewed solely as interventions to protect human rights and promote democracy. Today, however, interstate wars have returned to the agenda of world politics due to the rise of the former colonies and vanished civilizations. We are witnessing a return of global power politics. Second, anti-colonialism, which is normative undisputable right, has in a lot of cases given rise to just anti-Western political rhetoric. The "rise of the others," the newly industrialized nations, has partly led to authoritarian and, in some cases, dictatorial states that derive their legitimacy almost exclusively from an anti-Western impulse (e.g., Iran , Syria, North-Corea and Russia). This development is particularly tragic when Russia's imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine is legitimized by an anti-imperialist impulse. A third point that should not be overestimated is the cultural revolution of the right and the return of political religions like Middle Eastern Islam (IS, Taliban), evidenced by the rise of new nationalism and racism in most parts of the world, sometimes in the form of a victimization-discourse. As Samuel P. Huntington emphasized, we are experiencing a return to thinking in friend-foe categories. In short: The global village has given rise to the concept of the globalized villager. We are witnessing a world that is materially and communicatively interconnected, but psychologically provincial. Therefore, we need to understand identity differently.