Huntington's theory. clash of civilizations
Samuel Huntington's book "The Clash of Civilizations" is called the first test of the practical application of the new meanings invested in the concept of "civilization" in the second half of the 20th century. The rejection of the binary formula "civilization-barbarism" after the Second World War, the final assertion of the thesis that civilization is determined by culture, entailed a new form of "civilized". The main difficulty of the problem was the classification and geography of civilizations. According to the Russian philosophers P. Shchedrovitsky and E. Ostrovsky, at the end of the 90s, a departure from the geographical component is expected, and the final transition from the formula "blood and soil" to the principle "language and culture".
American political scientist and sociologist Samuel Huntington (April 18, 1927 - December 24, 2008), author of numerous works in the field of political modernization, international relations, the theory of democracy and immigration. Among them are: "The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations" (1957), "The Political Order in Changing Societies" (1968), "The Third Wave: Democratization at the End of the 20th Century" (1991), "The Clash of Civilizations" "(1993)," Who are we? Challenges to American National Identity "(2004). His concept of the "clash of civilizations", which describes the dynamics of modern international relations through the prism of conflicts on a civilizational basis, has gained great fame.
In the summer of 1993, Foreign Affairs magazine published a selection of articles in which prominent scientists and politicians discussed and criticized various aspects of the civilizational model. S. Huntington, director of the Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, was the author of one of the articles. His work "The Clash of Civilizations?", in which he made a statement that the central and most dangerous aspect of the emerging global politics will be a conflict between groups of different civilizations, which hit, as the author himself writes, on the nerves of readers on all continents, caused an unprecedented stir. Given the interest and controversy that arose around, Huntington, aiming to give a more complete answer to the question posed in the article, outlined his concept in the book "Clash of Civilizations".
about the concept of civilizations;
the question of a universal civilization;
relationship between power and culture;
a shift in the balance of power among civilizations;
cultural origins of non-Western societies;
conflicts generated by Western universalism, Muslim militancy, and Chinese claims;
balancing and "tuning" tactics as a reaction to the growing power of China;
causes and dynamics of fault line wars;
the future of the West and world civilizations.
the question of the significant impact of population growth on instability and the balance of power.
the thesis that clashes of civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace, and an international order based on civilizations is the surest means of preventing world war.
Huntington forms a common paradigm, a global policy review system. The main idea of his work is "that in the post-Cold War world, culture and various types of cultural identification (which at the broadest level are the identification of civilization) determine patterns of cohesion, disintegration and conflict" .
The most important differences between people are no longer ideological, political or economic. These are cultural differences. People define themselves in terms of origin, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. And, in the post-Cold War world, culture is both a unifying and divisive force. Superpower rivalry has been replaced by a clash of civilizations.
It is important to note that an attempt to understand the global transformations that had begun in parallel with the work of Huntington was made by the article "The End of History?" (1989) American political scientist Francis Fukuyama. In essence, Fukuyama continued the discussion that began at the end of the 20th century, concerning the “end of ideology” at that time. It began in the 1950s after the defeat of fascism in World War II and the crisis of communist ideology in the developed countries of the West. The American sociologist Daniel Bell, in "The End of Ideology? On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the 1950s," proclaimed that economics had triumphed over politics.
Fukuyama in his essay does not insist that political ideology has completely lost its importance, but he argues that one ideology, the ideology of liberal democracy, has triumphed over all its rivals. “Liberalism,” writes Fukuyama, “has won so far only in the sphere of ideas, consciousness; in the real, material world, victory is still far away. However, there are serious reasons to believe that it is this ideal world that will ultimately determine the material world.”
The end of the story is sad. As Fukuyama predicts, the struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's life for a purely abstract goal, an ideological struggle that requires courage, imagination and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, endless technical problems, concern for the environment and satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period, there is neither art nor philosophy; there is only a carefully guarded museum of human history.
Huntington characterizes the thesis about the triumphant victory of world liberal democracy as a foretaste of euphoria at the end of the Cold War, which gave rise to the illusion of harmony.
And indeed, as Kirsanov notes, at first both articles, Huntington's and Fukuyama's, attracted everyone's attention, but over time, Fukuyama's ideas faded into the background, while the "clash of civilizations" thesis became one of the most popular not only in political science, but also in of all social and humanitarian thought.
The translation of the conversation by American political scientists from the "end of ideology" and "the end of history" to the "clash of civilizations" is, I think, not accidental, and, most likely, was performed in selfish interests, allowing arbitrarily to change the frame, and talk about the topic of "globalization" and, after all, "anti-globalism".
However, as V. Mezhuev noted, Huntington's civilizational model turned out to be more than "timely" for Russia. "Russia was beginning to recover from the democratic" intoxication "of 1989-1991, gradually recognizing itself as a" dowry ", which, in fact, no one offered hands during the stormy night. war" to the country, it has nothing to hope for the special sympathy of the victors, through the mouth of Fukuyama they suggested doubting that it had its own "national interests" and entrusting the protection of Russian-speaking minorities in the Near Abroad to competent specialists from the "world civilized community". It is natural that in Russia, doomed to listen such statements, an instinctive fascist protest grew against the modern world order, in which it was proposed to occupy a far from the most honorable place. Through the mouth of Huntington, “Post-communist Russia, as the core of a special, Orthodox-Slavic civilization, was offered to freely settle not only on its territory, but also on the space of the entire Orthodox ecumene, at the same time saying that in the event of an appropriate civilizational self-determination, it would be closed to entry into Europe.”
According to Huntington, the harmonious world paradigm is too out of touch with reality to be a useful guide in the post-Cold War world. Another picture of the world, which involves the opposition of rich countries to poor ones, also suffers from limitations, as well as the third one, which divides the world into two parts "East - West" on a cultural basis. Only the fourth way will be correct here - the civilizational approach.
In this case, it is important to understand the very nature of civilizations. The key cultural elements that define civilization were formulated back in antiquity by the Athenians - these are blood, language, religion, lifestyle.
Huntington gives the following definition: “Civilization is thus the highest cultural community of people and the widest level of cultural identification, in addition to what distinguishes man from other biological species. It is defined as common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs , social institutions, and subjective self-identification of people". This community is the broadest level of people's cultural identity. The next step is already what distinguishes the human race from other types of living beings.
Civilization can cover a large mass of people - for example, China. But it can also be very small - like the civilization of the English-speaking inhabitants of the Caribbean islands. A civilization can include several nation-states, as in the case of Western, Latin American or Arab civilizations, or a single one, as in the case of Japan. Obviously, civilizations can mix, overlap, include sub-civilizations. The boundaries between them are rarely clear cut, but they are real. Civilizations are dynamic: they have rise and fall, they break up, merge and, of course, civilizations disappear, they are drawn into the sands of time.
Huntington considers the world within the framework of seven to eight civilizations (along which "fault lines" run). Namely: Sinskaya (Chinese), Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox (centered in Russia), Western, Latin American and possibly African civilizations.
In doing so, he marks the moment of Western dominance over other civilizations, and criticizes Western countries for trying to impose their values on the rest of the world.
Speaking of a "universal civilization" common to all mankind and associated in its development with the modernization of language, religion, culture, Huntington reassures that although this concept is a characteristic product of Western civilization, it does not necessarily mean the Westernization of the remaining seven civilizations. "At a fundamental level, the world is becoming more modern and less Western". I somewhat disagree with this provision, because, for example, in Germany, cultural globalization processes are expressed in the spread of the language of international communication (English in its American version) and the European idea.
The structure of civilizations seems to be the following. Huntington writes: "In the post-Cold War world, countries are related to civilizations as participating countries, core states, lone countries, split countries, and torn countries."
A participating country is a country that culturally fully identifies itself with one civilization, such as Egypt with the Arab-Islamic civilization. A civilization can also include peoples who share and identify with its culture, but live in countries where members of other civilizations dominate. Civilizations usually have one or more places that are considered by their members as the main source or sources of that civilization's culture. Such sources are usually located in one core country or countries of civilization, that is, the most powerful and culturally central country or countries.
A lone country has no cultural commonality with other societies. For example, Ethiopia is culturally isolated due to its dominant language, Amharic, which uses the Ethiopian alphabet, its dominant religion, Coptic Orthodoxy, its imperial history, and its religious isolation from the predominantly Islamic peoples surrounding it.
Divided countries are countries with large groups of people belonging to different civilizations. Such divisions and the tension that accompanies them often result in a major group belonging to the same civilization attempting to define a country as their political instrument and to make their language, religion and symbols the state language, as the Hindus, Sinhalese and Muslims in India, Sri -Lanka and Malaysia. Fractured countries, divided by fault lines between civilizations, face particularly serious challenges in maintaining their integrity.
Huntington believes that nation-states will remain the main actors of future conflicts, but the conflicts of global politics will unfold between nations and groups belonging to different civilizations. The fault lines between civilizations will become the lines of future "fronts".
These conflicts will unfold for a number of reasons:
) the differences between civilizations are the most significant and invariable, they are more fundamental than political and ideological differences;
) the growth of civilizational self-awareness, deepening understanding of the differences between civilizations and commonality within civilization;
) the weakening of the role of the nation-state as a source of identification and the emergence of religious fundamentalist movements;
) the struggle of non-Western countries with the West at the height of its power;
) the rigid stability of cultural characteristics and an even sharper religious division of people;
) the strengthening of economic regionalism, the success of which strengthens the consciousness of belonging to one civilization.
By drawing fault lines between civilizations, Huntington points out the locations of future conflicts:
The cultural break of Europe into Western Christianity on the one hand, and Orthodoxy and Islam on the other (the fault line between Western and Islamic civilization).
Arab-Islamic civilization is in constant antagonistic interaction with the pagan, and today predominantly Christian black population of the South.
The conflict between the Orthodox and Muslim populations on the northern borders of the Islamic region.
The struggle between Muslims and Hindus, which results in the rivalry between Pakistan and India, as well as the intensification of the religious war within India (opposition between Hindu groups and the Muslim minority).
In this regard, he speaks of the rallying of civilizations, expressed in the "syndrome of fraternal countries", which is replacing political ideology and traditional considerations of maintaining a balance of power as the main principle of cooperation and coalitions. .
Thus, in the era of globalization processes, the opposing sides in the world must be enlarged. And possible clashes between them in the near future will be characterized by: firstly, civilizational contradictions (the sources of which are determined by culture, affect language, history, religion, customs, social institutions, subjective self-identification of people); secondly, catastrophic consequences in connection with the enlargement, and hence the strengthening of the military power of the participants in the conflict.
This conclusion turns out to be unbearably sad, and the question arises of the possibility of pacifying civilizations.
A clash of civilizations?
Samuel Huntington
Model of the coming conflict
World politics is entering a new phase, and intellectuals immediately unleashed on us a stream of versions regarding its future appearance: the end of history, a return to traditional rivalry between nation-states, the decline of nation-states under the pressure of multidirectional trends - towards tribalism and globalism - and others. of these versions captures certain aspects of the emerging reality. But in this case, the most essential, axial aspect of the problem is lost.
I believe that in the emerging world, the main source of conflict will no longer be ideology or economics. The major boundaries that divide humanity and the predominant sources of conflict will be determined by culture. The nation-state will remain the main actor in international affairs, but the most significant conflicts of global politics will unfold between nations and groups belonging to different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will become the dominant factor in world politics. The fault lines between civilizations are the lines of future fronts.
The coming conflict between civilizations is the final phase of the evolution of global conflicts in the modern world. For a century and a half after the Peace of Westphalia, which shaped the modern international system, conflicts in the western area unfolded mainly between sovereigns - kings, emperors, absolute and constitutional monarchs, who sought to expand their bureaucratic apparatus, increase armies, strengthen economic power, and most importantly, add new lands to their possessions. This process gave birth to nation-states, and, starting with the French Revolution, the main lines of conflict began to lie not so much between rulers as between nations. In 1793, in the words of R. R. Palmer, "wars between kings ceased, and wars began between nations."
This pattern continued throughout the 19th century. The First World War put an end to it. And then, as a result of the Russian Revolution and the reaction to it, the conflict of nations gave way to a conflict of ideologies. The parties to such a conflict were first communism, Nazism and liberal democracy, and then communism and liberal democracy. During the Cold War, this conflict culminated in a struggle between two superpowers, neither of which was a nation-state in the classical European sense. Their self-identification was formulated in ideological categories.
The conflicts between rulers, nation-states and ideologies were mainly the conflicts of Western civilization. W. Lind called them "civil wars of the West." This is just as true of the Cold War as it was of the world wars and the wars of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. With the end of the Cold War, the Western phase of the development of international politics is also coming to an end. The interaction between the West and non-Western civilizations is brought to the center. At this new stage, the peoples and governments of non-Western civilizations no longer act as objects of history - the target of Western colonial policy, but along with the West, they themselves begin to move and create history.
The Nature of Civilizations
During the Cold War, the world was divided into "first", "second" and "third". But then such a division lost its meaning. Now it is much more appropriate to group countries based not on their political or economic systems, not on the level of economic development, but on the basis of cultural and civilizational criteria.
What is meant when we talk about civilization? Civilization is a kind of cultural entity. Villages, regions, ethnic groups, peoples, religious communities - they all have their own specific culture, reflecting different levels of cultural heterogeneity. A village in Southern Italy may differ in its culture from the same village in Northern Italy, but at the same time they remain Italian villages, they cannot be confused with German ones. In turn, European countries have common cultural features that distinguish them from the Chinese or Arab world.
Here we get to the heart of the matter. For the Western world, the Arab region and China are not part of a larger cultural community. They are civilizations. We can define civilization as the cultural community of the highest rank, as the broadest level of cultural identity of people. The next step is already what distinguishes the human race from other types of living beings. Civilizations are determined by the presence of common features of an objective order, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, as well as by the subjective self-identification of people. There are different levels of self-identification: so a resident of Rome can characterize himself as a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a European, a person of the Western world. Civilization is the broadest level of community with which he relates himself. The cultural self-identification of people can change, and as a result, the composition and boundaries of a particular civilization change.
Civilization can cover a large mass of people - for example, China, about which L. Pye once said: "This is a civilization that pretends to be a country."
But it can also be very small - like the civilization of the English-speaking inhabitants of the Caribbean islands. A civilization can include several nation-states, as in the case of Western, Latin American or Arab civilizations, or a single one, as in the case of Japan. Obviously, civilizations can mix, overlap, include sub-civilizations. Western civilization exists in two main varieties: European and North American, while Islamic civilization is divided into Arabic, Turkish and Malay. Despite all this, civilizations represent certain wholes. The boundaries between them are rarely clear cut, but they are real. Civilizations are dynamic: they rise and fall, they fall apart and merge. And as every student of history knows, civilizations disappear, being sucked into the sands of time.
In the West, it is generally accepted that nation-states are the main actors in the international arena. But they act in this role for only a few centuries. Much of human history is the history of civilizations. According to A. Toynbee, the history of mankind has known 21 civilizations. Only six of them exist in the modern world.
Why is a clash of civilizations inevitable?
Identity at the level of civilization will become increasingly important, and the face of the world will be largely shaped by the interaction of seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic Orthodox, Latin American, and possibly African civilizations. The most significant conflicts of the future will unfold along the fault lines between civilizations. Why?
First, the differences between civilizations are not just real. They are the most significant. Civilizations are dissimilar in their history, language, culture, traditions and, most importantly, religion. People of different civilizations have different views on the relationship between God and man, individual and group, citizen and state, parents and children, husband and wife, have different ideas about the relative importance of rights and duties, freedom and coercion, equality and hierarchy. These differences have developed over the centuries. They will not disappear in the foreseeable future. They are more fundamental than the differences between political ideologies and political regimes. Of course, differences don't necessarily mean conflict, and conflict doesn't necessarily mean violence. However, for centuries, the most protracted and bloody conflicts were generated precisely by the differences between civilizations.
Second, the world is getting smaller. The interaction between the peoples of different civilizations is intensifying. This leads to the growth of civilizational self-awareness, to a deeper understanding of the differences between civilizations and commonality within civilization. North African immigration to France evoked hostility among the French, and at the same time strengthened goodwill towards other immigrants - "good Catholics and Europeans from Poland." Americans react much more painfully to Japanese investment than to much larger investments from Canada and European countries. Everything happens according to the scenario described by D. Horwitz: "In the eastern regions of Nigeria, a person of nationality, because he can be ibo-ouerri, or ibo-onicha. But in Lagos he will be just an ibo. In London he will be a Nigerian. And in New York - an African." Interaction between representatives of different civilizations strengthens their civilizational self-awareness, and this, in turn, exacerbates the differences and hostility that go back into the depths of history, or at least are perceived in this way.
Thirdly, the processes of economic modernization and social changes around the world are blurring the traditional identification of people with a place of residence, while the role of the nation-state as a source of identification is also weakening. The resulting gaps are largely filled by religion, often in the form of fundamentalist movements. Similar movements have developed not only in Islam, but also in Western Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. In most countries and confessions, fundamentalism is supported by educated young people, highly qualified specialists from the middle classes, freelancers, and businessmen. As G. Weigel noted, "the desecularization of the world is one of the dominant social phenomena of the late 20th century." The revival of religion, or, in the words of J. Kepel, "God's revenge", creates the basis for identification and involvement with a community that goes beyond national borders - for the unification of civilizations.
Fourth, the growth of civilizational self-awareness is dictated by the dual role of the West. On the one hand, the West is at the height of its power, and on the other hand, and perhaps just for this reason, among non-Western civilizations there is a return to their own roots. Increasingly, one hears about the "return to Asia" of Japan, about the end of the influence of Nehru's ideas and the "Hinduization" of India, about the failure of Western ideas of socialism and nationalism to "re-Islamize" the Middle East, and more recently, disputes about Westernization or Russification of the country of Boris Yeltsin. At the height of its power, the West is confronted by non-Western countries that have the drive, will, and resources to make the world look non-Western.
In the past, the elites of non-Western countries usually consisted of people with the most Western connections, who were educated at Oxford, Sorbonne or Sandhurst, and who adopted Western values and lifestyles. The population of these countries, as a rule, maintained an inseparable connection with their original culture. But now everything has changed. In many non-Western countries, there is an intensive process of de-westernization of elites and their return to their own cultural roots. And at the same time, Western, mainly American customs, lifestyle and culture are gaining popularity among the general population.
Fifth, cultural differences and differences are less subject to change than economic and political ones, and as a result, they are more difficult to resolve or reduce to a compromise. In the former Soviet Union, communists can become democrats, the rich can become poor and the poor can become rich, but Russians can't become Estonians and Azeris can't become Armenians.
In class and ideological conflicts, the key question was: "Which side are you on?" And a person could choose which side he was on, as well as change once chosen positions. In the conflict of civilizations, the question is put differently: "Who are you?" It is about what is given and cannot be changed. And, as we know from the experience of Bosnia, the Caucasus, Sudan, by giving an inappropriate answer to this question, you can immediately get a bullet in the forehead. Religion divides people even more sharply than ethnicity. A person can be half-French and half-Arab, and even a citizen of both of these countries. It's much harder to be half-Catholic and half-Muslim.
And finally, economic regionalism is on the rise. The share of intraregional trade turnover increased between 1980 and 1989 from 51% to 59% in Europe, from 33% to 37% in Southeast Asia, and from 32% to 36% in North America. To all appearances, the role of regional economic ties will increase. On the one hand, the success of economic regionalism strengthens the consciousness of belonging to one civilization. On the other hand, economic regionalism can be successful only if it is rooted in the commonality of civilization. The European Community rests on the common foundations of European culture and Western Christianity. The success of the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Area) depends on the continued convergence of the cultures of Mexico, Canada and America. In contrast, Japan is having difficulty creating the same economic community in Southeast Asia, because Japan is the only one of its kind society and civilization As strong as Japan's trade and financial ties with the rest of Southeast Asia, cultural differences between them hinder progress towards regional economic integration along the lines of Western Europe or North America.
The commonality of culture, on the contrary, clearly contributes to the rapid growth of economic ties between the People's Republic of China, on the one hand, and Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and overseas Chinese communities in other Asian countries, on the other. With the end of the Cold War, cultural commonality is rapidly replacing ideological differences. Mainland China and Taiwan are getting closer. If common culture is a precondition for economic integration, then the center of the future East Asian economic bloc is likely to be in China. In fact, this block is already taking shape. Here is what M. Weidenbaum writes about this: “Although Japan dominates the region, a new center of industry, trade and financial capital in Asia is rapidly emerging on the basis of China. This strategic space has a powerful technological and production potential (Taiwan), personnel with outstanding organization, marketing and service skills (Hong Kong), a dense network of communications (Singapore), powerful financial capital (all three countries), and vast land, natural and labor resources (mainland China) ... This is an influential community, in largely built on the development of a traditional clan base, extending from Guangzhou to Singapore and from Kuala Lumpur to Manila. This is the backbone of the East Asian economy" (1).
Cultural and religious similarity also underlies the Economic Cooperation Organization, which unites 10 non-Arab Muslim countries: Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. This organization was created in the 60s by three countries: Turkey, Pakistan and Iran. An important impetus to its revival and expansion was given by the realization by the leaders of some of its member countries of the fact that the path to the European Community was closed to them. Similarly, CARICOM, the Central American Common Market and MERCOSUR are based on a common cultural basis. But attempts to create a broader economic community that would unite the countries of the Caribbean islands and Central America have not been successful - it has not yet been possible to build bridges between English and Latin culture.
Defining their own identity in ethnic or religious terms, people tend to view the relationship between themselves and people of another ethnicity and confession as a relationship of "us" and "them". The end of ideologized states in Eastern Europe and the territory of the former USSR allowed traditional forms of ethnic identity and contradictions to come to the fore. Differences in culture and religion give rise to disagreements on a wide range of political issues, whether it is human rights or emigration, commerce or the environment. Geographic proximity stimulates mutual territorial claims from Bosnia to Mindanao. But what is most important - the attempts of the West to spread its values: democracy and liberalism - as universal to all mankind, to maintain military superiority and assert its economic interests, are running into resistance from other civilizations. Governments and political factions are less and less able to mobilize the population and form coalitions based on ideologies, and they are increasingly trying to win support by appealing to the commonality of religion and civilization.
Thus, the conflict of civilizations unfolds on two levels. At the micro level, groups that live along the fault lines between civilizations are fighting, often bloody, for land and power over each other. At the macro level, countries belonging to different civilizations compete for influence in the military and economic spheres, fight for control over international organizations and third countries, trying to assert their own political and religious values.
Fault lines between civilizations
If in the years of the Cold War the main centers of crises and bloodshed were concentrated along political and ideological borders, now they are moving along the fault line between civilizations. The Cold War began from the moment when the Iron Curtain divided Europe politically and ideologically. The Cold War ended with the disappearance of the Iron Curtain. But as soon as the ideological division of Europe was eliminated, its cultural division into Western Christianity, on the one hand, and Orthodoxy and Islam, on the other, revived again. Perhaps the most important dividing line in Europe is, according to W. Wallis, the eastern border of Western Christianity, which took shape by 1500. It runs along the current borders between Russia and Finland, between the Baltic countries and Russia, cuts through Belarus and Ukraine, turns west , separating Transylvania from the rest of Romania, and then passing through Yugoslavia, coincides almost exactly with the line now separating Croatia and Slovenia from the rest of Yugoslavia. In the Balkans, this line, of course, coincides with the historical border between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. Protestants and Catholics live north and west of this line. They have a common experience of European history: feudalism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution. Their economic situation is usually much better than that of people living to the east. Now they can count on closer cooperation within the framework of a single European economy and the consolidation of democratic political systems. East and south of this line live Orthodox Christians and Muslims. Historically, they belonged to the Ottoman or tsarist empire, and only the echo of historical events that determined the fate of the West reached them. Economically, they lag behind the West, and appear to be less equipped to build sustainable democratic political systems. And now the "velvet curtain" of culture has replaced the "iron curtain" of ideology as the main demarcation line in Europe. Events in Yugoslavia have shown that this is a line not only of cultural differences, but at times of bloody conflicts.
For 13 centuries, conflict has dragged along the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations. The advance of the Arabs and Moors to the West and the North, which began with the emergence of Islam, ended only in 732. During the 11th-13th centuries, the crusaders tried with varying success to bring Christianity to the Holy Land and establish Christian rule there. In the XIV-XVII centuries, the Ottoman Turks seized the initiative. They extended their dominance to the Middle East and the Balkans, captured Constantinople and twice besieged Vienna. But in the XIX - early XX century. the power of the Ottoman Turks began to decline. Most of North Africa and the Middle East came under the control of England, France and Italy.
With the end of World War II, it was the turn of the West to retreat. Colonial empires have disappeared. Arab nationalism first made itself known, and then Islamic fundamentalism. The West fell into a heavy dependence on the countries of the Persian Gulf, which supplied it with energy resources - Muslim countries rich in oil, rich in money, and if they wished, then in weapons. There were several wars between the Arabs and Israel, created at the initiative of the West. Throughout the 1950s, France waged an almost continuous bloody war in Algeria. In 1956 British and French troops invaded Egypt. In 1958 the Americans entered Lebanon. Subsequently, they repeatedly returned there, and also carried out attacks on Libya and participated in numerous military clashes with Iran. In response, Arab and Islamic terrorists, backed by at least three Middle Eastern governments, took advantage of the weapons of the weak to blow up Western planes, buildings, and take hostages. The state of war between the West and the Arab countries reached its climax in 1990, when the US sent a large army to the Persian Gulf to protect some Arab countries from the aggression of others. After this war is over, NATO's plans are being prepared for the potential danger and instability along the "southern borders".
The military confrontation between the West and the Islamic world has been going on for a century, and there is no sign of easing it. On the contrary, it can become even more aggravated. The Gulf War made many Arabs feel proud - Saddam Hussein attacked Israel and resisted the West. But it also gave rise to feelings of humiliation and resentment caused by the Western military presence in the Persian Gulf, its superiority in power and its apparent inability to determine its own fate. In addition, many Arab countries - not only oil exporters - have reached a level of economic and social development that is incompatible with autocratic forms of government. Attempts to introduce democracy there are becoming more insistent. The political systems of some Arab countries have acquired a certain degree of openness. But it benefits mainly Islamic fundamentalists. In short, in the Arab world, Western democracy is strengthening anti-Western political forces. Perhaps this is a transient phenomenon, but it certainly complicates relations between Islamic countries and the West.
These relations are complicated by demographic factors. The rapid growth of the population in the Arab countries, especially in North Africa, increases emigration to the countries of Western Europe. In turn, the influx of emigrants, taking place against the backdrop of the gradual elimination of internal borders between Western European countries, caused acute political rejection. In Italy, France and Germany, racist sentiments are becoming more open, and since 1990 there has been an ever-increasing political backlash and violence against Arab and Turkish émigrés.
Both sides see the interaction between the Islamic and Western worlds as a conflict of civilizations. "The West will certainly face a confrontation with the Muslim world," writes the Indian Muslim journalist M. Akbar. "The very fact of the widespread expansion of the Islamic world from the Maghreb to Pakistan will lead to a struggle for a new world order." B. Lewis comes to similar conclusions: “We are facing a mood and movement of a completely different level, beyond the control of politicians and governments that want to use them. This is nothing less than a conflict of civilizations - perhaps an irrational, but historically determined reaction of our ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian tradition, our secular present, and the global expansion of both" (2).
Throughout history, Arab-Islamic civilization has been in constant antagonistic interaction with the pagan, animistic, and now predominantly Christian black population of the South. In the past, this antagonism was personified in the form of an Arab slave trader and a black slave. Now it manifests itself in the protracted civil war between the Arab and black population in Sudan, in the armed struggle between the insurgents (who are supported by Libya) and the government in Chad, in strained relations between Orthodox Christians and Muslims on Cape Horn, as well as in political conflicts reaching bloody clashes between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria. The process of modernization and the spread of Christianity on the African continent is likely to only increase the likelihood of violence along this line of inter-civilizational faults. A symptom of the aggravation of the situation was the speech of Pope John Paul II in February 1993 in Khartoum. In it, he attacked the actions of the Sudanese Islamist government against the Christian minority in Sudan.
On the northern borders of the Islamic region, the conflict unfolds mainly between the Orthodox population and the Muslim population. Mention should be made here of the massacre in Bosnia and Sarajevo, the ongoing struggle between Serbs and Albanians, strained relations between Bulgarians and the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, bloody clashes between Ossetians and Ingush, Armenians and Azerbaijanis, conflicts between Russians and Muslims in Central Asia, the deployment of Russian troops in Central Asia and the Caucasus in order to protect the interests of Russia. Religion is fueling a resurgent ethnic identity, all of which heightens Russian fears about the security of their southern borders. A. Roosevelt felt this concern. Here is what he writes: "A significant part of the history of Russia is filled with the border struggle between the Slavs and the Turks. This struggle began since the founding of the Russian state more than a thousand years ago. In the thousand-year struggle of the Slavs with their eastern neighbors, the key to understanding not only Russian history, but also Russian character. To understand the current Russian realities, one must not forget about the Turkic ethnic group, which has absorbed the attention of Russians for many centuries" (3).
The conflict of civilizations has deep roots in other regions of Asia as well. The historical struggle between Muslims and Hindus is expressed today not only in the rivalry between Pakistan and India, but also in the intensification of religious strife within India between the increasingly militant Hindu factions and a significant Muslim minority. In December 1992, after the destruction of the Ayodha mosque, the question arose of whether India would remain secular and democratic, or become a Hindu state. In East Asia, China has territorial claims on almost all of its neighbors. He dealt mercilessly with the Buddhists in Tibet, and now he is ready to deal just as decisively with the Turkic-Islamic minority. Since the end of the Cold War, the differences between China and the United States have become particularly strong in areas such as human rights, trade and the issue of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and there is no hope of easing them. As Deng Xiaoping said in 1991, "the new cold war between China and America continues."
Deng Xiaoping's statement can also be attributed to the increasingly complicated relations between Japan and the United States. Cultural differences increase the economic conflict between these countries. Each side accuses the other of racism, but at least on the part of the US, the rejection is not racial but cultural. It is difficult to imagine two societies that are more distant from each other in fundamental values, attitudes and behavior. The economic disagreements between the US and Europe are no less serious, but they are not as politically prominent and emotionally colored, because the contradictions between American and European cultures are much less dramatic than between American and Japanese civilizations.
The level of potential for violence in the interaction of different civilizations may vary. Economic competition prevails in relations between American and European subcivilizations, as well as in relations between the West in general and Japan. At the same time, in Eurasia, spreading ethnic conflicts, culminating in "ethnic cleansing," are by no means uncommon. Most often they occur between groups belonging to different civilizations, and in this case they take the most extreme forms. The historically established borders between the civilizations of the Eurasian continent are once again blazing in the fire of conflicts. These conflicts reach a particular intensity along the borders of the Islamic world, which stretches like a crescent between North Africa and Central Asia. But violence is also practiced in conflicts between Muslims on the one hand, and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines on the other. The borders of the Islamic world are everywhere covered with blood.
Rallying Civilizations: Syndrome of "fraternal countries"
Groups or countries belonging to one civilization, being involved in a war with people of another civilization, naturally try to enlist the support of representatives of their civilization. With the end of the Cold War, a new world order is taking shape, and as it develops, belonging to one civilization or, as H. D. S. principle of cooperation and coalitions. The gradual emergence of this syndrome is evidenced by all the recent conflicts - in the Persian Gulf, in the Caucasus, in Bosnia. True, none of these conflicts was a full-scale war between civilizations, but each included elements of the internal consolidation of civilizations. As conflicts develop, this factor seems to become more important. His current role is a harbinger of what is to come.
First. During the conflict in the Persian Gulf, one Arab country invaded another, and then entered the fight against a coalition of Arab, Western and other countries. Although only a few Muslim governments openly sided with Saddam Hussein, he was unofficially supported by the ruling elites of many Arab countries, and he gained immense popularity among the broad sections of the Arab population. Islamic fundamentalists were all over the place supporting Iraq, not the governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, who were backed by the West. Warming up Arab nationalism, Saddam Hussein openly appealed to Islam. He and his supporters tried to present this war as a war between civilizations. "It is not the world that is at war with Iraq," said Safar Al Khawali, dean of the Islamic Studies Department at Um Al Qura University in Mecca, in a well-known speech, "it is the West that is at war with Islam." Stepping over the rivalry between Iran and Iraq, Iran's religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini called for a holy war against the West: "The fight against American aggression, greed, plans and policies will be considered jihad, and everyone who dies in this war will be counted among the martyrs." . "This war," said King Hussein of Jordan, "is being waged against all Arabs and Muslims, and not just against Iraq."
The rallying of a significant part of the Arab elite and the population in their support of Saddam Hussein forced the Arab governments, which initially joined the anti-Iraq coalition, to limit their actions and soften their public statements. Arab governments have distanced themselves or opposed further Western attempts to pressure Iraq, including the imposition of a no-fly zone in the summer of 1992 and the bombing of Iraq in January 1993. In 1990, the anti-Iraq coalition included the West, the Soviet Union, Turkey and Arab countries. In 1993, practically only the West and Kuwait remained in it.
Comparing the West's decisiveness in the case of Iraq with its inability to protect the Bosnian Muslims from the Serbs and impose sanctions on Israel for non-compliance with UN resolutions, Muslims accuse the West of double morality. But the world where the clash of civilizations takes place is inevitably a world with double morality: one is used in relation to "fraternal countries", and the other - in relation to everyone else.
Second. The syndrome of "brotherly countries" also manifests itself in conflicts on the territory of the former Soviet Union. The military successes of the Armenians in 1992-1993 prompted Turkey to strengthen its support for Azerbaijan, which is related to it religiously, ethnically and linguistically. “The people of Turkey have the same feelings as the Azerbaijanis,” one senior Turkish official declared in 1992. “We are under pressure. pursue a policy of neutrality? Perhaps we should show Armenia that there is a great Turkey in this region." Turkish President Turgut Ozal agreed with this, noting that Armenia should be scared a little. In 1993, he repeated the threat: "Turkey will still show its fangs!" The Turkish Air Force conducts reconnaissance flights along the Armenian border. Turkey delays food supplies and air flights to Armenia. Turkey and Iran have announced that they will not allow the dismemberment of Azerbaijan. In the last years of its existence, the Soviet government supported Azerbaijan, where the communists were still in power. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, political motives were replaced by religious ones. Now Russian troops are fighting on the side of the Armenians, and Azerbaijan accuses the Russian government of having made a 180-degree turn and is now supporting a Christian Armenia.
Third. If you look at the war in the former Yugoslavia, here the Western public showed sympathy and support for the Bosnian Muslims, as well as horror and disgust for the atrocities committed by the Serbs. At the same time, it was relatively unconcerned about the attacks on Muslims by the Croats and the dismemberment of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the early stages of Yugoslavia's disintegration, unusual for her diplomatic initiative and pressure was shown by Germany, which persuaded the other 11 EU member states to follow its example and recognize Slovenia and Croatia. In an effort to strengthen the position of these two Catholic countries, the Vatican recognized Slovenia and Croatia even before the European Community did. The United States followed suit. Thus, the leading countries of European civilization rallied to support their co-religionists. And then reports began to come in that Croatia was receiving weapons in large quantities from Central Europe and other Western countries. On the other hand, Boris Yeltsin's government tried to stick to a middle ground policy so as not to spoil relations with the Orthodox Serbs and at the same time not to pit Russia against the West. Nevertheless, Russian conservatives and nationalists, including many people's deputies, attacked the government for insufficient support for the Serbs. By the beginning of 1993, several hundred Russian citizens were serving in Serbian forces and, according to reports, Russian weapons were being supplied to Serbia.
Islamic governments and political groups, in turn, stigmatize the West for not coming to the defense of Bosnian Muslims. Iranian leaders are calling on Muslims around the world to help Bosnia. Despite the UN embargo, Iran supplies soldiers and weapons to Bosnia. Iranian-backed Lebanese factions are sending fighters to train and organize the Bosnian armed forces. In 1993, up to 4,000 Muslims from more than twenty Islamic countries were reported to have fought in Bosnia. The governments of Saudi Arabia and other countries are under increasing pressure from fundamentalist groups for stronger support for Bosnia. By the end of 1992, Saudi Arabia was reportedly funding the supply of arms and food to the Bosnian Muslims. This greatly increased their combat capability in the face of the Serbs.
In the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War caused the intervention of countries that were politically fascist, communist and democratic. Today, in the 90s, the conflict in Yugoslavia causes the intervention of countries that are divided into Muslim, Orthodox and Western Christian. This parallel has not gone unnoticed. "The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina has become the emotional equivalent of the fight against fascism during the Spanish Civil War," observed one Saudi observer. "Those who die in this war are considered martyrs who gave their lives to save their Muslim brothers."
Conflicts and violence are also possible between countries belonging to the same civilization, as well as within these countries. But they are usually not as intense and all-encompassing as conflicts between civilizations. Belonging to one civilization reduces the likelihood of violence in those cases where, were it not for this circumstance, it would certainly come to it. In 1991-92, many were worried about the possibility of a military clash between Russia and Ukraine over disputed territories - primarily Crimea - as well as the Black Sea Fleet, nuclear arsenals and economic problems. But if belonging to the same civilization means anything, the likelihood of an armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine is not very high. These are two Slavic, mostly Orthodox peoples who have had close ties for centuries. And so in early 1993, despite all the reasons for the conflict, the leaders of both countries successfully negotiated, eliminating differences. At this time, there were serious battles between Muslims and Christians in the territory of the former Soviet Union; tension, reaching to direct clashes, determined the relationship between Western and Orthodox Christians in the Baltics; - but between the Russians and Ukrainians, the matter did not come to violence.
Until now, the rallying of civilizations has taken limited forms, but the process is developing, and it has significant potential for the future. As the conflicts in the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus and Bosnia continued, the positions of different countries and the differences between them were increasingly determined by civilizational affiliation. Populist politicians, religious leaders and the media have found a powerful tool in this, securing the support of the general population and allowing them to put pressure on wavering governments. In the near future, the greatest threat of escalation into large-scale wars will be borne by those local conflicts that, like the conflicts in Bosnia and the Caucasus, began along the fault lines between civilizations. The next world war, if it breaks out, will be a war between civilizations.
West versus the rest of the world
In relation to other civilizations, the West is now at the height of its power. The second superpower - in the past his opponent, disappeared from the political map of the world. A military conflict between Western countries is unthinkable, the military power of the West has no equal. Apart from Japan, the West has no economic rivals. He dominates in the political sphere, in the security sphere, and, together with Japan, in the economic sphere. World political and security problems are effectively resolved under the leadership of the USA, Great Britain and France, world economic problems - under the leadership of the USA, Germany and Japan. All these countries have the closest relations with each other, not admitting to their circle the smaller countries, almost all the countries of the non-Western world. Decisions taken by the UN Security Council or the International Monetary Fund and reflecting the interests of the West are presented to the world community as corresponding to the urgent needs of the world community. The very expression "world community" has become a euphemism, replacing the expression "free world". It is designed to give global legitimacy to actions that reflect the interests of the United States and other Western countries (4). Through the IMF and other international economic organizations, the West pursues its economic interests and imposes economic policies on other countries at its own discretion. In non-Western countries, the IMF undoubtedly has the support of finance ministers and a few others, but the vast majority of the population has the most unflattering opinion of it. G. Arbatov characterized the IMF officials as "neo-Bolsheviks who take pleasure in taking money from other people, imposing on them undemocratic and alien rules of economic and political behavior and depriving them of economic freedom."
The West dominates the UN Security Council, and its decisions, only occasionally overridden by Chinese vetoes, have provided the West with legal grounds to use force on behalf of the UN to drive Iraq out of Kuwait and destroy its sophisticated weapons and ability to manufacture such weapons. weapons. The United States, Great Britain and France, on behalf of the Security Council, demanded that Libya extradite the suspects in the bombing of the Pan American airliner was also unprecedented. When Libya refused to comply with this demand, sanctions were imposed on it. Having defeated the most powerful of the Arab armies, the West did not hesitate to put all its weight on the Arab world. In essence, the West is using international organizations, military power, and financial resources to rule the world, asserting its superiority, protecting Western interests, and asserting Western political and economic values.
This is at least how non-Western countries see the world today, and there is a significant amount of truth in their view. Differences in the scale of power and the struggle for military, economic and political power are thus one of the sources of conflict between the West and other civilizations. Another source of conflict is differences in culture, in basic values and beliefs. V.S.Neipol argued that Western civilization is universal and suitable for all peoples. On a superficial level, much of Western culture has indeed infiltrated the rest of the world. But at a deep level, Western ideas and ideas are fundamentally different from those that are inherent in other civilizations. In Islamic, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Buddhist, and Orthodox cultures, Western ideas such as individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, freedom, the rule of law, democracy, the free market, and the separation of church and state, hardly resonate. The efforts of the West to propagate these ideas often provoke a hostile reaction against "human rights imperialism" and help to strengthen the primordial values of their own culture. This, in particular, is evidenced by the support of religious fundamentalism by the youth of non-Western countries. And the very thesis about the possibility of a "universal civilization" is a Western idea. It is in direct conflict with the particularism of most Asian cultures, with their emphasis on the differences that separate people from others. Indeed, as a comparative study of the importance of one hundred values in different societies has shown, "values that are of paramount importance in the West are much less important in the rest of the world" (5). In the political realm, these differences are most evident in the attempts of the United States and other Western countries to impose Western ideas of democracy and human rights on the peoples of other countries. The modern democratic form of government has historically developed in the West. If it has established itself here and there in non-Western countries, it is only as a result of Western colonialism or pressure.
Apparently, the central axis of world politics in the future will be the conflict between "the West and the rest of the world," as K. Mahbubani put it, and the reaction of non-Western civilizations to Western power and values (6). This kind of reaction, as a rule, takes one of three forms, or a combination of them.
First, and at its most extreme, non-Western countries could follow the example of North Korea or Burma and take a course of isolation - shielding their countries from Western penetration and decay and essentially withdrawing from participation in the Western-dominated world community. But such a policy comes at a high price, and few countries have adopted it in its entirety.
The second possibility is to try to join the West and accept its values and institutions. In the language of international relations theory, this is called "jumping on the bandwagon of the train."
The third possibility is to try to create a counterbalance to the West by developing economic and military power and cooperating with other non-Western countries against the West. At the same time, it is possible to preserve the original national values and institutions - in other words, to modernize, but not to westernize.
Divided countries
In the future, when belonging to a certain civilization becomes the basis of people's self-identification, countries whose population includes several civilizational groups, such as the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia, will be doomed to disintegration. But there are also internally divided countries - relatively homogeneous culturally, but in which there is no agreement on the question of which civilization they belong to. Their governments, as a rule, want to "jump on the bandwagon" and join the West, but the history, culture and traditions of these countries have nothing to do with the West.
The most striking and typical example of a country split from within is Turkey. Turkish leadership at the end of the 20th century. remains faithful to the tradition of Atatürk and ranks his country among the modern, secularized nation-states of the Western type. It has made Turkey a NATO ally of the West and during the Gulf War, it seeks the country's admission to the European Community. At the same time, elements of Turkish society support the revival of Islamic traditions and argue that Turkey is fundamentally a Middle Eastern Muslim state. Moreover, while the political elite of Turkey considers their country a Western society, the political elite of the West does not recognize this. Turkey is not accepted into the EU, and the real reason for this, according to President Ozal, "is that we are Muslims and they are Christians, but they don't say it openly." Where should Turkey go, which has rejected Mecca and itself has been rejected by Brussels? It is possible that the answer reads: "Tashkent". The collapse of the USSR opens up a unique opportunity for Turkey to become the leader of a resurgent Turkic civilization spanning seven countries from the coast of Greece to China. Encouraged by the West, Turkey is working hard to build this new identity for itself.
Mexico has found itself in a similar position in the last decade. If Turkey abandoned its historical opposition to Europe and tried to join it, then Mexico, which previously identified itself through opposition to the United States, is now trying to emulate this country and seeks to enter the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA). Mexican politicians are engaged in the daunting task of redefining Mexico's identity, and to this end they are pursuing fundamental economic reforms that, over time, should lead to fundamental political transformations. In 1991, the first adviser to President Carlos Salinas described to me in detail the changes being made by the Salinas government. When he finished, I said, "Your words made a strong impression on me. It seems that, in principle, you would like to turn Mexico from a Latin American to a North American country." He looked at me in surprise and exclaimed, "That's right! That's exactly what we're trying to do, but of course no one talks about it openly!" This remark shows that in Mexico, as in Turkey, powerful social forces are opposed to the new definition of national identity. In Turkey, politicians of European orientation are forced to make gestures towards Islam (Ozal makes a Hajj to Mecca). Similarly, Mexico's North American leaders are forced to make gestures towards those who consider Mexico a Latin American country (Ibero-American summit hosted by Salinas in Guadalajara).
Historically, internal divisions have affected Turkey most deeply. For the United States, the closest internally divided country is Mexico. On a global scale, Russia remains the most significant divided country. The question of whether Russia is part of the West, or whether it leads its own special, Orthodox-Slavic civilization, has been repeatedly raised throughout Russian history. After the victory of the communists, the problem became even more complicated: having adopted a Western ideology, the communists adapted it to Russian conditions and then, in the name of this ideology, challenged the West. Communist domination removed the historic dispute between Westernizers and Slavophiles from the agenda. But after the discrediting of communism, the Russian people again faced this problem.
President Yeltsin borrows Western principles and goals, trying to turn Russia into a "normal" country in the Western world. However, both the ruling elite and the broad masses of Russian society disagree on this point. One of the moderate opponents of the Westernization of Russia, S. Stankevich, believes that Russia should abandon the course towards "Atlanticism", which will make it a European country, part of the world economic system and number eight in the current G-7 of developed countries, that it should not rely on Germany and The USA is the leading country of the Atlantic Union. While rejecting a purely "Eurasian" policy, Stankevich nonetheless believes that Russia should prioritize the protection of Russians living abroad. He emphasizes Russia's Turkic and Muslim ties and insists "on a more acceptable redistribution of Russian resources, a revision of priorities, ties and interests in favor of Asia - towards the East. People of this kind criticize Yeltsin for subordinating Russia's interests to the West, for reducing its defense power, for refusing from the support of traditional allies - for example, Serbia, and for the path he chose to carry out economic and political reforms, causing incalculable suffering to the people. A manifestation of this trend is the revival of interest in the ideas of P. Savitsky, who wrote back in the 1920s that Russia is "a unique Eurasian civilization" (7). There are also harsher voices, sometimes openly nationalistic, anti-Western and anti-Semitic. They call for a revival of Russia's military power and for closer ties with China and Muslim countries. The people of Russia are divided no less than the political elite. Poll of public opinion in the European part of the country in the spring of 1992 showed that 40% of the population is positively disposed towards the West, and 36% - negatively. In the early 1990s, as throughout almost its entire history, Russia remained an internally divided country.
In order for a country divided from within to be able to regain its cultural identity, three conditions must be met. First, it is necessary that the political and economic elite of this country as a whole support and welcome such a move. Second, its people must be willing, however reluctantly, to adopt a new identity. Thirdly, the ruling groups of the civilization into which the divided country is trying to merge must be ready to accept the "new convert". In the case of Mexico, all three conditions are met. In the case of Turkey, the first two. And it is not at all clear what the situation is with Russia, which wants to join the West. The conflict between liberal democracy and Marxism-Leninism was a conflict of ideologies that, despite all the differences, at least outwardly set the same basic goals: freedom, equality and prosperity. But traditionalist, authoritarian, nationalist Russia will strive for completely different goals. A Western democrat could well have an intellectual dispute with a Soviet Marxist. But this would be unthinkable with a Russian traditionalist. And if Russians, having ceased to be Marxists, do not accept liberal democracy and start behaving like Russians and not like Westerners, relations between Russia and the West may again become distant and hostile (8).
Confucian-Islamic block
The barriers to non-Western countries joining the West vary in depth and complexity. For the countries of Latin America and Eastern Europe, they are not so great. For the Orthodox countries of the former Soviet Union - much more significant. But the most serious obstacles face the Muslim, Confucian, Hindu and Buddhist peoples. Japan has succeeded in achieving a unique position as an associate member of the Western world: in some respects it is among the Western countries, but it certainly differs from them in its most important dimensions. Those countries that, for reasons of culture or power, do not want or cannot join the West, compete with it, building up their own economic, military and political power. They achieve this both through internal development and through cooperation with other non-Western countries. The best-known example of such cooperation is the Confucian-Islamic bloc, which emerged as a challenge to Western interests, values, and power.
Almost without exception, Western countries are now reducing their military arsenals. Russia under Yeltsin is doing the same. And China, North Korea and a number of Middle Eastern countries are significantly increasing their military potential. To this end, they import weapons from Western and non-Western countries and develop their own military industry. As a result, a phenomenon arose that C. Crowthemm called the phenomenon of "armed countries", and "armed countries" are by no means the countries of the West. Another result is a rethinking of the concept of arms control. The idea of arms control was put forward by the West. Throughout the Cold War, the primary goal of such control was to achieve a stable military balance between the United States and its allies, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union and its allies, on the other. In the post-Cold War era, the primary goal of arms control is to prevent non-Western countries from building up their military capabilities that pose a potential threat to Western interests. To achieve this, the West uses international agreements, economic pressure, control over the movement of weapons and military technology.
The conflict between the West and the Confucian-Islamic states is largely (though not exclusively) centered around the problems of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, ballistic missiles and other sophisticated delivery vehicles for such weapons, as well as control systems, tracking and other electronic means of target destruction. The West proclaims the principle of non-proliferation as a universal and binding norm, and treaties on non-proliferation and control as a means of implementing this norm. A system of various sanctions is envisaged against those who contribute to the proliferation of modern types of weapons, and privileges for those who observe the principle of non-proliferation. Naturally, the focus is on countries that are hostile to the West or are potentially prone to it.
For their part, non-Western countries are asserting their right to acquire, manufacture and deploy any weapon they deem necessary for their own security. They fully absorbed the truth expressed by the Indian Defense Minister in response to the question of what lesson he learned from the Gulf War: "Don't mess with the United States if you don't have nuclear weapons." Nuclear, chemical and missile weapons are seen - perhaps erroneously - as a potential counterbalance to the West's colossal conventional superiority. Of course, China already has nuclear weapons. Pakistan and India can place it on their territories. North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Algeria are clearly trying to acquire it. A senior Iranian official declared that all Muslim countries should have nuclear weapons, and in 1988 the Iranian president allegedly issued a decree calling for the production of "chemical, biological and radiological weapons, offensive and defensive."
An important role in the creation of an anti-Western military potential is played by the expansion of China's military power and its ability to build it up in the future. With successful economic development, China is constantly increasing its military spending and vigorously modernizing its army. It buys weapons from the countries of the former Soviet Union, is working on building its own long-range ballistic missiles, and in 1992 carried out a one-megaton nuclear test explosion. Pursuing a policy of expanding its influence, China is developing aerial refueling systems and acquiring aircraft carriers. China's military power and its claim to dominance in the South China Sea is fueling an arms race in Southeast Asia. China is a major exporter of weapons and military technology. It supplies Libya and Iraq with raw materials that can be used to produce nuclear weapons and nerve gases. With his help, a reactor suitable for research and production of nuclear weapons was built in Algeria. China has sold Iran nuclear technology that US experts say can only be used to produce weapons. To Pakistan, China has supplied missile parts with a 300-mile radius of action. For some time now, a nuclear weapons program has been developed in North Korea - the country is known to have sold the latest types of missiles and missile technology to Syria and Iran. As a rule, the flow of weapons and military technologies goes from Southeast Asia towards the Middle East. But there is also some movement in the opposite direction. Stinger missiles, for example, China received from Pakistan.
Thus, a Confucian-Islamic military bloc was formed. Its purpose is to assist its members in acquiring the weapons and military technology needed to counterbalance the military power of the West. Whether it will last is unknown. But today, it is, as D. McCurdy put it, "an alliance of traitors, led by the proliferation of nuclear weapons and their supporters." A new arms race is unfolding between the Islamic-Confucian countries and the West. In the previous phase, each side developed and manufactured weapons in order to achieve a balance or superiority over the other side. Now, one side is developing and producing new types of weapons, while the other is trying to limit and prevent such a buildup of weapons, while reducing its own military potential.
Conclusions for the West
This article does not at all assert that civilizational identity will replace all other forms of identity, that nation-states will disappear, that each civilization will become politically unified and integral, and that conflicts and struggles between different groups within civilizations will cease. I am only hypothesizing that 1) contradictions between civilizations are important and real; 2) civilizational self-awareness increases; 3) conflict between civilizations will replace ideological and other forms of conflict as the predominant form of global conflict; 4) international relations, historically a game within Western civilization, will increasingly de-Westernize and turn into a game where non-Western civilizations will act not as passive objects, but as active actors; 5) effective international institutions in the field of politics, economics and security will develop within civilizations rather than between them; 6) conflicts between groups belonging to different civilizations will be more frequent, protracted and bloody than conflicts within one civilization; 7) armed conflicts between groups belonging to different civilizations will become the most likely and dangerous source of tension, a potential source of world wars; 8) the main axes of international politics will be relations between the West and the rest of the world; 9) the political elites of some divided non-Western countries will try to include them among the Western countries, but in most cases they will have to face serious obstacles; 10) in the near future, the main focus of conflicts will be the relationship between the West and a number of Islamic-Confucian countries.
This is not a justification for the desirability of conflict between civilizations, but a conjectural picture of the future. But if my hypothesis is convincing, we need to think about what this means for Western politics. A clear distinction should be made here between short-term gain and long-term settlement. Based on positions of short-term gain, the interests of the West clearly require: 1) strengthening cooperation and unity within the framework of their own civilization, primarily between Europe and North America; 2) integration into the West of the countries of Eastern Europe and Latin America, whose culture is close to Western; 3) maintaining and expanding cooperation with Russia and Japan; 4) prevention, growth of local intercivilizational conflicts into full-scale wars between civilizations; 5) limiting the growth of the military power of Confucian and Islamic countries; 6) slowing down the decline in the military power of the West and maintaining its military superiority in East and Southwest Asia; 7) use of conflicts and disagreements between Confucian and Islamic countries; 8) support for representatives of other civilizations sympathetic to Western values and interests; 9) strengthening international institutions that reflect and legitimize Western interests and values, and attracting non-Western countries to participate in these institutions.
In the long term, it is necessary to focus on other criteria. Western civilization is both Western and modern. Non-Western civilizations have tried to become modern without becoming Western. But so far only Japan has managed to achieve complete success in this. Non-Western civilizations will continue their attempts to acquire wealth, technology, skills, equipment, weapons - all that is included in the concept of "being modern." But at the same time, they will try to combine modernization with their traditional values and culture. Their economic and military power will increase, the gap from the West will be reduced. More and more, the West will have to reckon with these civilizations, which are close in their power, but very different in their values and interests. This will require maintaining its potential at a level that will ensure the protection of the interests of the West in relations with other civilizations. But the West will also need a deeper understanding of the fundamental religious and philosophical foundations of these civilizations. He will have to understand how the people of these civilizations imagine their own interests. It will be necessary to find elements of similarity between Western and other civilizations. For in the foreseeable future there will be no single universal civilization. On the contrary, the world will consist of different civilizations, and each of them will have to learn to coexist with all the others.
Huntington Samuel is a professor at Harvard University and director of the Institute for Strategic Studies. J. Olin at Harvard University.
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5. New York Times, Dec. 25, 1990, p. 41; Cross-Cultural Studies of Individualism and Collectivism. - Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. 1989, vol. 37, p. 41-133.
6. Mahbubani K. The West and the Rest. - "National Interest", Summer 1992, p. 3-13.
7. Stankevich S. Russia in Search of Itself. - "National Interest", Summer 1992, p. 47-51; Schneider D.A. Russian Movement Rejects Western Tilt. - "Christian Science Monitor", Febr.5, 1993, p. 5-7.
8. As O. Horris notes, Australia is also trying to become a country split from within. Although this country is a full member of the Western world, its current leadership is actually suggesting that it should backtrack from the West, adopt a new identity as an Asian country, and develop close ties with its neighbors. The future of Australia, they argue, is with the dynamic economies of East Asia. However, as I have already said, close economic cooperation usually implies a common cultural basis. Among other things, in the case of Australia, it seems that all three conditions necessary for an internally divided country to join another civilization seem to be missing.
For the preparation of this work, materials from the site http://www.politnauka.org/ were used.
Synopsis of S. Huntington's article "Clash of Civilizations?".
— Huntington S. Clash of Civilizations // Polis. 1994. No. 1. pp.33-48.
The basis of the article is the author's statement that the central axis of world politics in the future will be the conflict between the "West and the rest of the world", and the reaction of non-Western civilizations to Western power and values.
What is the axial source of the problem and the main source of conflict? The author believes that the most significant conflicts of global politics will unfold between nations and groups belonging to different civilizations. The main source of conflict will not be ideology or economics. The major boundaries that divide humanity and the predominant sources of conflict will be determined by culture.
What are the changes in the nature of conflicts? During the XVII-XIX centuries. conflicts unfolded mainly between sovereigns - kings, emperors, absolute and constitutional monarchs, who sought to expand their bureaucratic apparatus, increase armies, strengthen economic power, and most importantly, annex new lands to their possessions. But since the First World War, "wars between kings ceased, and wars began between peoples." At the present stage, the peoples and governments of non-Western civilizations no longer act as objects of Western colonial policy, but along with the West, they themselves begin to move and create history.
What is the nature of civilizations? Civilizations are determined by the presence of common features of an objective order, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, as well as by the subjective self-identification of people. One can define civilization as a cultural community of the highest rank, as the broadest level of cultural identity of people. Civilizations can mix, overlap, include sub-civilizations. Western civilization exists in two main varieties: European and North American, while Islamic civilization is divided into Arabic, Turkish and Malay. A civilization can include several nation-states, as in the case of Western, Latin American or Arab civilizations, or a single one, as in the case of Japan. The boundaries between them are rarely clear cut, but they are real. Civilizations are dynamic: they rise and fall, they fall apart and merge. Much of human history is the history of civilizations. Only 6 out of 21 civilizations have survived to the present.
Why is a clash of civilizations inevitable? According to S. Huntington's forecasts, the image of the world will be largely formed in the course of the interaction of seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic Orthodox, Latin American, and possibly African civilizations. The most significant conflicts of the future will unfold along the fault lines between civilizations for a number of reasons:
1. due to deep differences between civilizations. Civilizations are dissimilar in their history, language, culture, traditions and, most importantly, religion. People of different civilizations have different views on the relationship between God and man, individual and group, etc., have different ideas about the relative importance of rights and obligations, freedom and coercion, equality and hierarchy. For centuries, the most protracted and bloody conflicts were generated precisely by the differences between civilizations.
2. the world is getting smaller. The interaction between the peoples of different civilizations is intensifying, which leads to the growth of civilizational self-awareness, to a deeper understanding of the differences between civilizations and commonality within the framework of civilization. Interaction between representatives of different civilizations strengthens their civilizational self-awareness, and this, in turn, exacerbates the differences and hostility that go back into the depths of history, or at least are perceived in this way.
3. The processes of economic modernization and social change around the world are blurring the traditional identification of people with their place of residence, while the role of the nation-state as a source of identification is also weakening. The resulting gaps are mostly filled with religion, the "revenge of God", creates the basis for identification and involvement with a community that goes beyond national boundaries - for the unification of civilizations.
4. The growth of civilizational self-awareness is dictated by the dual role of the West. On the one hand, the West is at the height of its power, and on the other hand, and perhaps just for this reason, among non-Western civilizations there is a return to their own roots. In many non-Western countries, there is an intensive process of de-westernization of elites and their return to their own cultural roots.
5. Cultural characteristics and differences are less subject to change than economic and political ones, and as a result, they are more difficult to resolve or reduce to a compromise.
6. economic regionalism is growing. The commonality of culture clearly contributes to the rapid growth of economic ties between countries. For example, Japan has established strong ties with China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. It is impossible to establish such close economic relations with America.
The conflict of civilizations unfolds on two levels. At the micro level, groups living along the fault lines between civilizations are fighting for land and power over each other. At the macro level, countries belonging to different civilizations compete for influence in the military and economic spheres, fight for control over international organizations and third countries, trying to assert their own political and religious values.
What are the fault lines between civilizations?
If in the years of the Cold War the main centers of crises and bloodshed were concentrated along political and ideological borders, now they are moving along the fault line between civilizations. The liquidation of the ideological division of Europe with the disappearance of the "Iron Curtain" was replaced by the revival of its cultural division into Western Christianity, on the one hand, and Orthodoxy and Islam, on the other.
An important dividing line in Europe is the eastern border of Western Christianity, established by 1500. It runs along the current borders between Russia and Finland, between the Baltic countries and Russia, cuts through Belarus and Ukraine, turns west, separating Transylvania from the rest of Romania, and then , passing through Yugoslavia, coincides almost exactly with the line that now separates Croatia and Slovenia from the rest of Yugoslavia. In the Balkans, this line coincides with the historical border between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires.
Protestants and Catholics live north and west of this line. They have a common experience of European history, their economic situation is much better than that of people living to the east. Now they can count on closer cooperation within the framework of a single European economy and the consolidation of democratic political systems.
East and south of this line live Orthodox Christians and Muslims. Economically, they lag behind the West and are less prepared to build sustainable democratic political systems.
All military conflicts of the 20th century took place on the border of civilizations: in the Persian Gulf, in Central Asia and the Caucasus, between Pakistan and India. Cultural differences increase the economic conflict between these countries. The historically established borders between the civilizations of the Eurasian continent are in a state of conflict. These conflicts reach a particular intensity along the borders of the Islamic world, in the space between North Africa and Central Asia. But violence is also practiced in conflicts between Muslims on the one hand, and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines on the other.
What is the syndrome of "brotherly countries" and where does it manifest itself?
Groups or countries belonging to one civilization, being involved in a war with people of another civilization, try to enlist the support of representatives of their civilization. As a new world order emerges, belonging to the same civilization or, as H. D. S. Greenway puts it, “brother country syndrome” is replacing political ideology and traditional considerations of maintaining a balance of power as the main principle of cooperation and coalitions. The gradual emergence of this syndrome is evidenced by all the recent conflicts - in the Persian Gulf, in the Caucasus, in Bosnia.
1. During the conflict in the Persian Gulf, one Arab country invaded another, and then entered the fight against a coalition of Arab, Western and other countries. Although only a few Muslim governments openly sided with Saddam Hussein, he was unofficially supported by the ruling elites of many Arab countries, and he gained immense popularity among the broad sections of the Arab population. The statement "It is not the world that is fighting against Iraq, it is the West that is fighting against Islam" vividly characterizes the nature of the conflict.
2. The "brotherly countries" syndrome also manifests itself in conflicts on the territory of the former Soviet Union. The military successes of the Armenians in 1992-1993 prompted Turkey to strengthen its support for Azerbaijan, which is related to it religiously, ethnically and linguistically. The Turkish Air Force conducts reconnaissance flights along the Armenian border. Turkey delays food supplies and air flights to Armenia. Turkey and Iran have announced that they will not allow the dismemberment of Azerbaijan.
3. The war in the former Yugoslavia. Here, the Western public showed sympathy and support for the Bosnian Muslims, as well as horror and disgust for the atrocities committed by the Serbs. At the same time, she was little worried about the attacks on Muslims by the Croats and the dismemberment of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Thus, the leading countries of European civilization (Germany, the USA, the Vatican) rallied to support their co-religionists. Boris Yeltsin's government tried to pursue a middle ground policy so as not to spoil relations with the Orthodox Serbs and at the same time not to oppose Russia to the West. Today, the conflict in Yugoslavia is causing the intervention of countries that are divided into Muslim, Orthodox and Western Christian.
Conflicts and violence are also possible between countries belonging to the same civilization, as well as within these countries. But they are usually not as intense and all-encompassing as conflicts between civilizations. According to S. Huntington's forecasts, the next world war, if it breaks out, will be a war between civilizations.
Sources of conflicts between the West and the rest of the world.
The West uses international organizations, military power and financial resources to rule the world, asserting its superiority, protecting Western interests and asserting Western political and economic values. One of the sources of conflict between the West and other civilizations was differences in the scale of power and the struggle for military, economic and political power. values that are of paramount importance in the West are much less important in the rest of the world.
Three policy scenarios for non-Western countries: 1. Non-Western countries can take a course of isolation - to protect their countries from Western penetration and decay and, in essence, to withdraw from participation in the life of the world community dominated by the West. But such a policy comes at a high price, and few countries have adopted it in its entirety; 2. the opportunity to try to join the West and accept its values and institutions; 3. an attempt to create a counterbalance to the West by developing economic and military power and cooperating with other non-Western countries against the West. At the same time, it is possible to preserve the original national values and institutions - in other words, to modernize, but not to westernize.
Examples of split countries.
There are countries that are internally divided - relatively homogeneous culturally, but in which there is no agreement on the question of which civilization they belong to. The most striking example of a country split from within is Turkey. Turkish leadership at the end of the 20th century. classifies his country among the modern nation-states of the Western type. It has made Turkey a NATO ally of the West and during the Gulf War, it seeks the country's admission to the European Community. At the same time, elements of Turkish society support the revival of Islamic traditions and argue that Turkey is fundamentally a Middle Eastern Muslim state.
Mexico has found itself in a similar position in the last decade. If Turkey abandoned its historical opposition to Europe and tried to join it, then Mexico, which previously identified itself through opposition to the United States, is now trying to emulate this country and seeks to enter the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA). Historically, internal divisions have affected Turkey most deeply. For the United States, the closest internally divided country is Mexico. On a global scale, Russia remains the most significant divided country. The question of whether Russia is part of the West, or whether it leads its own special, Orthodox-Slavic civilization, has been repeatedly raised throughout Russian history. After the victory of the communists, the problem became even more complicated: having adopted a Western ideology, the communists adapted it to Russian conditions and then, in the name of this ideology, challenged the West. Communist domination removed the historic dispute between Westernizers and Slavophiles from the agenda. But after the discrediting of communism, the Russian people again faced this problem.
President Yeltsin also borrowed Western principles and goals, trying to turn Russia into a "normal" country in the Western world. However, both the ruling elite and the broad masses of Russian society disagreed on this point. At the beginning of the 1990s, as throughout almost its entire history, Russia remained an internally divided country in the turmoil between West and East.
In order for a country divided from within to be able to regain its cultural identity, three conditions must be met. 1. It is necessary that the political and economic elite of this country as a whole support and welcome such a move. 2. its people must be willing, however reluctantly, to adopt a new identity. 3. The dominant groups of the civilization into which the divided country is trying to merge must be ready to accept the “new convert”. In the case of Mexico, all three conditions are met. In the case of Turkey, the first two. And it is not at all clear, according to Huntington, the situation with Russia, which wants to join the West.
What is the Confucian-Islamic bloc?
Confucian-Islamic - military bloc. Its purpose is to assist its members in acquiring the weapons and military technology needed to counterbalance the military power of the West. Whether it will last is unknown. A new arms race is unfolding between the Islamic-Confucian countries and the West. In the previous phase, each side developed and manufactured weapons in order to achieve a balance or superiority over the other side. Now, one side is developing and producing new types of weapons, while the other is trying to limit and prevent such a buildup of weapons, while reducing its own military potential.
What are the implications for the West?
The author puts forward a hypothesis that 1) contradictions between civilizations are important and real; 2) civilizational self-awareness increases; 3) conflict between civilizations will replace ideological and other forms of conflict as the predominant form of global conflict; 4) international relations, historically a game within Western civilization, will be increasingly de-Westernized; 5) international institutions in the field of politics, economics and security will take shape within civilizations rather than between them; 6) conflicts between groups belonging to different civilizations will be more frequent, protracted and bloody than conflicts within one civilization; 7) armed conflicts between groups belonging to different civilizations will become the most likely potential source of world wars; 8) the main axes of international politics will be relations between the West and the rest of the world; 9) in the near future, the main focus of conflicts will be the relationship between the West and a number of Islamic-Confucian countries.
The author believes that the West needs to focus on the long-term perspective of international relations, it is necessary to reckon with other civilizations that are close in their power, but different in their values and interests. The West will also need a deeper understanding of the fundamental religious and philosophical foundations of these civilizations. He will have to understand how the people of these civilizations imagine their own interests.
Model of the coming conflictWorld politics is entering a new phase, and intellectuals immediately unleashed on us a stream of versions about its future appearance: the end of history, a return to traditional rivalry between nation-states, the decline of nation-states under the pressure of multidirectional trends - towards tribalism and globalism - and others. of these versions captures certain aspects of the emerging reality. But in this case, the most essential, axial aspect of the problem is lost.
I believe that in the emerging world, the main source of conflict will no longer be ideology or economics. The major boundaries that divide humanity and the predominant sources of conflict will be determined by culture. The nation-state will remain the main actor in international affairs, but the most significant conflicts of global politics will unfold between nations and groups belonging to different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will become the dominant factor in world politics. The fault lines between civilizations are the lines of future fronts.
The coming conflict between civilizations is the final phase of the evolution of global conflicts in the modern world. For a century and a half after the Peace of Westphalia, which shaped the modern international system, conflicts in the western area unfolded mainly between sovereigns - kings, emperors, absolute and constitutional monarchs, who sought to expand their bureaucracy, increase armies, strengthen economic power, and most importantly - to add new lands to their possessions. This process gave birth to nation-states, and, starting with the French Revolution, the main lines of conflict began to lie not so much between rulers as between nations. In 1793, in the words of R.R. Palmer, "wars between kings ceased, and wars began between peoples."
This pattern continued throughout the 19th century. The First World War put an end to it. And then, as a result of the Russian Revolution and the reaction to it, the conflict of nations gave way to a conflict of ideologies. The parties to such a conflict were first communism, Nazism and liberal democracy, and then communism and liberal democracy. During the Cold War, this conflict culminated in a struggle between two superpowers, neither of which was a nation-state in the classical European sense. Their self-identification was formulated in ideological categories.
The conflicts between rulers, nation-states and ideologies were mainly the conflicts of Western civilization. W. Lind called them "civil wars of the West." This is just as true of the Cold War as it was of the world wars and the wars of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. With the end of the Cold War, the Western phase of the development of international politics is also coming to an end. The interaction between the West and non-Western civilizations is brought to the center. At this new stage, the peoples and governments of non-Western civilizations no longer act as objects of history - the target of Western colonial policy, but along with the West, they themselves begin to move and create history.
The Nature of Civilizations
Here we get to the heart of the matter. For the Western world, the Arab region and China are not part of a larger cultural community. They are civilizations. We can define civilization as the cultural community of the highest rank, as the broadest level of cultural identity of people. The next step is already what distinguishes the human race from other types of living beings. Civilizations are determined by the presence of common features of an objective order, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, as well as by the subjective self-identification of people. There are different levels of self-identification: so a resident of Rome can characterize himself as a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a European, a person of the Western world. Civilization is the broadest level of community with which he relates himself. The cultural self-identification of people can change, and as a result, the composition and boundaries of a particular civilization change.
…Most of human history is the history of civilizations. According to A. Toynbee, the history of mankind has known 21 civilizations. Only six of them exist in the modern world.
Why is a clash of civilizations inevitable?
Identity at the level of civilization will become increasingly important, and the face of the world will be largely shaped by the interaction of seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic Orthodox, Latin American, and possibly African civilizations. The most significant conflicts of the future will unfold along the fault lines between civilizations. Why?
First, the differences between civilizations are not just real. They are the most significant. Civilizations are dissimilar in their history, language, culture, traditions and, most importantly, religion…
Second, the world is getting smaller. The interaction between the peoples of different civilizations is intensifying. This leads to the growth of civilizational self-awareness, to a deeper understanding of the differences between civilizations and commonality within a civilization...
Thirdly, the processes of economic modernization and social changes around the world are blurring the traditional identification of people with a place of residence, while the role of the nation-state as a source of identification is also weakening. The resulting gaps are mostly filled by religion, often in the form of fundamentalist movements...
Fourth, the growth of civilizational self-awareness is dictated by the dual role of the West. On the one hand, the West is at the height of its power, and on the other hand, and perhaps just for this reason, among non-Western civilizations there is a return to their own roots. Increasingly, one hears about the "return to Asia" of Japan, about the end of the influence of Nehru's ideas and the "Hinduization" of India, about the failure of the Western ideas of socialism and nationalism to "re-Islamize" the Middle East, and more recently, disputes about Westernization or Russification of the country of Boris Yeltsin. At the height of its power, the West is confronted by non-Western countries that have the drive, will, and resources to make the world look non-Western.
Fifth, cultural differences and differences are less subject to change than economic and political ones, and as a result, they are more difficult to resolve or reduce to a compromise. In the former Soviet Union, communists can become democrats, the rich can become poor and the poor can become rich, but Russians can't become Estonians and Azeris can't become Armenians.
And finally, economic regionalism is on the rise. The share of intraregional trade turnover increased between 1980 and 1989 from 51% to 59% in Europe, from 33% to 37% in Southeast Asia, and from 32% to 36% in North America. To all appearances, the role of regional economic ties will increase. On the one hand, the success of economic regionalism strengthens the consciousness of belonging to one civilization. On the other hand, economic regionalism can be successful only if it is rooted in the commonality of civilization. The European Community rests on the common foundations of European culture and Western Christianity. The success of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Area) depends on the continued convergence of the cultures of Mexico, Canada and America. Japan, on the other hand, is having difficulty creating the same economic community in Southeast Asia, because Japan is a one-of-a-kind society and civilization. As strong as Japan's trade and financial ties with the rest of Southeast Asia are, cultural differences between them hinder progress towards regional economic integration along the lines of Western Europe or North America.
Thus, the conflict of civilizations unfolds on two levels. At the micro level, groups that live along the fault lines between civilizations are fighting, often bloody, for land and power over each other. At the macro level, countries belonging to different civilizations compete for influence in the military and economic spheres, fight for control over international organizations and third countries, trying to assert their own political and religious values.
Fault lines between civilizations
If in the years of the Cold War the main centers of crises and bloodshed were concentrated along political and ideological borders, now they are moving along the fault line between civilizations. The Cold War began when the Iron Curtain divided Europe politically and ideologically. The Cold War ended with the disappearance of the Iron Curtain. But as soon as the ideological division of Europe was eliminated, its cultural division into Western Christianity, on the one hand, and Orthodoxy and Islam, on the other, revived again. Perhaps the most important dividing line in Europe is, according to W. Wallis, the eastern border of Western Christianity, which had developed by 1500. It runs along the current borders between Russia and Finland, between the Baltic countries and Russia, cuts through Belarus and Ukraine, turns west , separating Transylvania from the rest of Romania, and then, passing through Yugoslavia, coincides almost exactly with the line now separating Croatia and Slovenia from the rest of Yugoslavia. In the Balkans, this line, of course, coincides with the historical border between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. Protestants and Catholics live north and west of this line. They have a common experience of European history: feudalism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution. Their economic situation is usually much better than that of people living to the east. Now they can count on closer cooperation within the framework of a single European economy and the consolidation of democratic political systems. East and south of this line live Orthodox Christians and Muslims. Historically, they belonged to the Ottoman or tsarist empire, and only the echo of historical events that determined the fate of the West reached them. Economically, they lag behind the West, and appear to be less equipped to build sustainable democratic political systems. And now the "velvet curtain" of culture has replaced the "iron curtain" of ideology as the main demarcation line in Europe. Events in Yugoslavia have shown that this is a line not only of cultural differences, but at times of bloody conflicts.
For 13 centuries, conflict has dragged along the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations. The advance of the Arabs and Moors to the West and the North, which began with the emergence of Islam, ended only in 732. Throughout the 11th-13th centuries, the crusaders tried with varying success to bring Christianity to the Holy Land and establish Christian rule there. In the XIV-XVII century, the Ottoman Turks seized the initiative. They extended their dominance to the Middle East and the Balkans, captured Constantinople and twice besieged Vienna. But in the XIX - early XX century. the power of the Ottoman Turks began to decline. Most of North Africa and the Middle East came under the control of England, France and Italy.
With the end of World War II, it was the turn of the West to retreat. Colonial empires have disappeared. Arab nationalism first made itself known, and then Islamic fundamentalism. The West fell into a heavy dependence on the countries of the Persian Gulf, which supplied it with energy resources - Muslim countries rich in oil, rich in money, and if they wished, then in weapons. There were several wars between the Arabs and Israel, created at the initiative of the West. Throughout the 1950s, France waged an almost continuous bloody war in Algeria. In 1956 British and French troops invaded Egypt. In 1958 the Americans entered Lebanon. Subsequently, they repeatedly returned there, and also carried out attacks on Libya and participated in numerous military clashes with Iran. In response, Arab and Islamic terrorists, backed by at least three Middle Eastern governments, took advantage of the weapons of the weak to blow up Western planes, buildings, and take hostages. The state of war between the West and the Arab countries reached its climax in 1990, when the US sent a large army to the Persian Gulf to protect some Arab countries from the aggression of others. At the end of this war, NATO's plans are designed to take into account the potential danger and instability along the "southern borders".
The military confrontation between the West and the Islamic world has been going on for a century, and there is no sign of easing it. On the contrary, it can become even more aggravated. The Gulf War made many Arabs feel proud - Saddam Hussein attacked Israel and resisted the West. But it also gave rise to feelings of humiliation and resentment caused by the Western military presence in the Persian Gulf, its superiority in power and its apparent inability to determine its own fate. In addition, many Arab countries - not only oil exporters - have reached a level of economic and social development that is incompatible with autocratic forms of government. Attempts to introduce democracy there are becoming more insistent. The political systems of some Arab countries have acquired a certain degree of openness. But it benefits mainly Islamic fundamentalists. In short, in the Arab world, Western democracy is strengthening anti-Western political forces. Perhaps this is a transient phenomenon, but it certainly complicates relations between Islamic countries and the West.
These relations are complicated by demographic factors. The rapid growth of the population in the Arab countries, especially in North Africa, increases emigration to the countries of Western Europe. In turn, the influx of emigrants, taking place against the backdrop of the gradual elimination of internal borders between Western European countries, caused acute political rejection. In Italy, France and Germany, racist sentiments are becoming more open, and since 1990 there has been an ever-increasing political backlash and violence against Arab and Turkish émigrés.
Both sides see the interaction between the Islamic and Western worlds as a conflict of civilizations...
Throughout history, Arab-Islamic civilization has been in constant antagonistic interaction with the pagan, animistic, and now predominantly Christian black population of the South. In the past, this antagonism was personified in the form of an Arab slave trader and a black slave. Now it manifests itself in the protracted civil war between the Arab and black population in Sudan, in the armed struggle between the insurgents (who are supported by Libya) and the government in Chad, in strained relations between Orthodox Christians and Muslims on Cape Horn, as well as in political conflicts reaching bloody clashes between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria. The process of modernization and the spread of Christianity on the African continent is likely to only increase the likelihood of violence along this line of inter-civilizational faults. A symptom of the aggravation of the situation was the speech of Pope John Paul II in February 1993 in Khartoum. In it, he attacked the actions of the Sudanese Islamist government against the Christian minority in Sudan.
On the northern borders of the Islamic region, the conflict unfolds mainly between the Orthodox population and the Muslim population. Mention should be made here of the massacre in Bosnia and Sarajevo, the ongoing struggle between Serbs and Albanians, strained relations between Bulgarians and the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, bloody clashes between Ossetians and Ingush, Armenians and Azerbaijanis, conflicts between Russians and Muslims in Central Asia, the deployment of Russian troops in Central Asia and the Caucasus in order to protect the interests of Russia. Religion is fueling a resurgent ethnic identity, all of which heightens Russian fears about the security of their southern borders...
The conflict of civilizations has deep roots in other regions of Asia as well. The historical struggle between Muslims and Hindus is expressed today not only in the rivalry between Pakistan and India, but also in the intensification of religious strife within India between the increasingly militant Hindu factions and a significant Muslim minority. In December 1992, after the destruction of the Ayodha mosque, the question arose of whether India would remain secular and democratic, or become a Hindu state. In East Asia, China has territorial claims on almost all of its neighbors. He dealt mercilessly with the Buddhists in Tibet, and now he is ready to deal just as decisively with the Turkic-Islamic minority. Since the end of the Cold War, tensions between China and the United States have emerged with particular force in areas such as human rights, trade, and the problem of the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and there is no hope of easing them. As Deng Xiaoping said in 1991, "the new cold war between China and America continues."
Deng Xiaoping's statement can also be attributed to the increasingly complicated relations between Japan and the United States. Cultural differences increase the economic conflict between these countries. Each side accuses the other of racism, but at least on the part of the US, the rejection is not racial but cultural. It is difficult to imagine two societies that are more distant from each other in fundamental values, attitudes and behavior. The economic disagreements between the US and Europe are no less serious, but they are not as politically prominent and emotionally colored, because the contradictions between American and European cultures are much less dramatic than between American and Japanese civilizations.
The level of potential for violence in the interaction of different civilizations may vary. Economic competition prevails in relations between American and European subcivilizations, as well as in relations between the West in general and Japan. At the same time, spreading ethnic conflicts, culminating in “ethnic cleansing,” are by no means uncommon in Eurasia. Most often they occur between groups belonging to different civilizations, and in this case they take the most extreme forms. The historically established borders between the civilizations of the Eurasian continent are once again blazing in the fire of conflicts. These conflicts reach a particular intensity along the borders of the Islamic world, which stretches like a crescent between North Africa and Central Asia. But violence is also practiced in conflicts between Muslims on the one hand, and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines on the other. The borders of the Islamic world are everywhere covered with blood.
Rallying Civilizations: Syndrome of “fraternal countries”
Groups or countries belonging to one civilization, being involved in a war with people of another civilization, naturally try to enlist the support of representatives of their civilization. With the end of the Cold War, a new world order is emerging, and as it develops, belonging to one civilization or, as H. D. S. principles of cooperation and coalitions…
First. During the conflict in the Persian Gulf, one Arab country invaded another, and then entered the fight against a coalition of Arab, Western and other countries. Although only a few Muslim governments openly sided with Saddam Hussein, he was unofficially supported by the ruling elites of many Arab countries, and he gained immense popularity among the broad sections of the Arab population.
Second. The “brotherly countries” syndrome also manifests itself in conflicts on the territory of the former Soviet Union. The military successes of the Armenians in 1992-1993 prompted Turkey to strengthen support for Azerbaijan, which is related to it religiously, ethnically and linguistically...
Third. If you look at the war in the former Yugoslavia, here the Western public showed sympathy and support for the Bosnian Muslims, as well as horror and disgust for the atrocities committed by the Serbs. At the same time, it was relatively unconcerned about the attacks on Muslims by the Croats and the dismemberment of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Until now, the rallying of civilizations has taken limited forms, but the process is developing, and it has significant potential for the future. As the conflicts in the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus and Bosnia continued, the positions of different countries and the differences between them were increasingly determined by civilizational affiliation. Populist politicians, religious leaders and the media have found a powerful tool in this, securing the support of the general population and allowing them to put pressure on wavering governments. In the near future, the greatest threat of escalation into large-scale wars will be borne by those local conflicts that, like the conflicts in Bosnia and the Caucasus, began along the fault lines between civilizations. The next world war, if it breaks out, will be a war between civilizations.
West versus the rest of the world
In relation to other civilizations, the West is now at the height of its power. The second superpower - in the past his opponent, disappeared from the political map of the world. A military conflict between Western countries is unthinkable, the military power of the West has no equal. Apart from Japan, the West has no economic rivals. He dominates in the political sphere, in the sphere of security, and, together with Japan, in the sphere of the economy. World political and security problems are effectively resolved under the leadership of the United States, Great Britain and France, world economic problems - under the leadership of the United States, Germany and Japan. All these countries have the closest relations with each other, not admitting to their circle the smaller countries, almost all the countries of the non-Western world.
Apparently, the central axis of world politics in the future will be the conflict between “the West and the rest of the world,” as K. Mahbubani put it, and the reaction of non-Western civilizations to Western power and values (6). This kind of reaction, as a rule, takes one of three forms, or a combination of them.
First, and at its most extreme, non-Western countries could follow the example of North Korea or Burma and take a course of isolation - insulating their countries from Western penetration and corruption and essentially withdrawing from participation in the Western-dominated world community. But such a policy comes at a high price, and few countries have adopted it in its entirety.
The second possibility is to try to join the West and accept its values and institutions. In the language of international relations theory, this is called "jumping on the bandwagon of the train."
The third possibility is to try to create a counterbalance to the West by developing economic and military power and cooperating with other non-Western countries against the West. At the same time, it is possible to preserve the original national values and institutions - in other words, to modernize, but not to westernize.
Divided countries
In the future, when belonging to a certain civilization becomes the basis of people's self-identification, countries whose population includes several civilizational groups, such as the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia, will be doomed to disintegration. But there are also internally divided countries - relatively homogeneous culturally, but in which there is no agreement on the question of which civilization they belong to. Their governments, as a rule, want to "jump on the bandwagon" and join the West, but the history, culture and traditions of these countries have nothing to do with the West.
In order for a country divided from within to be able to regain its cultural identity, three conditions must be met. First, it is necessary that the political and economic elite of this country as a whole support and welcome such a move. Second, its people must be willing, however reluctantly, to adopt a new identity. Thirdly, the dominant groups of the civilization into which the divided country is trying to merge must be ready to accept the "new convert" ...
Conclusions for the West
This article does not claim that civilizational identity will replace all other forms of identity, that nation-states will disappear, that each civilization will become politically unified and integral, and that conflicts and struggles between different groups within civilizations will cease. I am only hypothesizing that 1) contradictions between civilizations are important and real; 2) civilizational self-awareness increases; 3) conflict between civilizations will replace ideological and other forms of conflict as the predominant form of global conflict; 4) international relations, historically a game within Western civilization, will increasingly de-Westernize and turn into a game where non-Western civilizations will act not as passive objects, but as active actors; 5) effective international institutions in the field of politics, economics and security will develop within civilizations rather than between them; 6) conflicts between groups belonging to different civilizations will be more frequent, protracted and bloody than conflicts within one civilization; 7) armed conflicts between groups belonging to different civilizations will become the most likely and dangerous source of tension, a potential source of world wars; 8) the main axes of international politics will be relations between the West and the rest of the world; 9) the political elites of some divided non-Western countries will try to include them among the Western countries, but in most cases they will have to face serious obstacles; 10) in the near future, the main focus of conflicts will be the relationship between the West and a number of Islamic-Confucian countries.
This is not a justification for the desirability of conflict between civilizations, but a conjectural picture of the future. But if my hypothesis is convincing, we need to think about what this means for Western politics. A clear distinction should be made here between short-term gain and long-term settlement. Based on positions of short-term gain, the interests of the West clearly require: 1) strengthening cooperation and unity within the framework of their own civilization, primarily between Europe and North America; 2) integration into the West of the countries of Eastern Europe and Latin America, whose culture is close to Western; 3) maintaining and expanding cooperation with Russia and Japan; 4) prevention, growth of local intercivilizational conflicts into full-scale wars between civilizations; 5) limiting the growth of the military power of Confucian and Islamic countries; 6) slowing down the decline in the military power of the West and maintaining its military superiority in East and Southwest Asia; 7) use of conflicts and disagreements between Confucian and Islamic countries; 8) support for representatives of other civilizations sympathetic to Western values and interests; 9) strengthening international institutions that reflect and legitimize Western interests and values, and attracting non-Western countries to participate in these institutions.
In the long term, it is necessary to focus on other criteria. Western civilization is both Western and modern. Non-Western civilizations have tried to become modern without becoming Western. But so far only Japan has managed to achieve complete success in this. Non-Western civilizations will continue their attempts to acquire wealth, technology, skills, equipment, weapons - all that is included in the concept of "being modern". But at the same time, they will try to combine modernization with their traditional values and culture. Their economic and military power will increase, the gap from the West will be reduced. More and more, the West will have to reckon with these civilizations, which are close in their power, but very different in their values and interests. This will require maintaining its potential at a level that will ensure the protection of the interests of the West in relations with other civilizations. But the West will also need a deeper understanding of the fundamental religious and philosophical foundations of these civilizations. He will have to understand how the people of these civilizations imagine their own interests. It will be necessary to find elements of similarity between Western and other civilizations. For in the foreseeable future there will be no single universal civilization. On the contrary, the world will consist of different civilizations, and each of them will have to learn to coexist with all the others.
Questions for self-examination:
1. What, according to Huntington, is the main feature of world conflicts in the future?
2. What is the nature of civilizations?
3. What are "fault lines" between civilizations?
4. How should Western countries build a new policy?
Samuel Huntington is considered one of the modern followers of Oswald Spengler 1 , but in him, like in Flechtheim, we see not so much the development of the cyclic theory of society that Spengler had, but a departure from it.
Like Spengler, Huntington is a representative of the school of political realism in world politics. R. Rubinstein and C. Crocker point to this fact: “Huntington's thinking remains bound up with the assumptions of political realism, the dominant philosophy of the Cold War period. For him, as for realists, international politics is a struggle for power between individual and mostly isolated agents, each of which is looking for the best way to protect its interests in anarchy. Huntington replaced nation-states, the main figure in the main game of political realism, with a larger figure, civilizations.
Samuel Huntington, along with P. Kennedy, F. Fukuyama, M. Katz, K. Jowitt, Z. Brzezinski and other American political scientists, took part in discussions about the nature of the change in the international order after the end of World War II 1 . Huntington claims to create a comprehensive modern model of world order based on the concept of local civilizations of Arnold Toynbee. He managed to effectively use the civilizational approach to analyze contemporary international politics.
Huntington defines the concept of “civilization” as follows: “We can define a civilization as a cultural community of the highest rank, as the broadest level of cultural identity of people ... Civilizations are defined by the presence of common features of an objective order, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, as well as the subjective self-identification of people ... The cultural self-identification of people can change, and as a result, the composition and boundaries of a particular civilization change” 1 . If Toynbee understands civilization as a block of historical material, then Huntington's civilization is a culture that has reached the natural limits of its distribution.
In the modern world, Huntington finds not five, like Toynbee, but eight civilizations: Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Orthodox Slavic, Latin American and African. Here he has three "new" civilizations - Japanese, African and Latin American. If Toynbee's selection of five modern civilizations was based on the five existing world religions, then Huntington's division is more geographical in nature, in accordance with the cultural characteristics of the regions of the world. This suggests that if Toynbee tried to give some kind of logical explanation for his selection of civilizations, then Huntington completely lacks it. Many peoples of the earth have their own ethnographic and cultural characteristics, which allows the selection of civilizations indefinitely. Probably, Huntington, in his division of the world into civilizations, proceeded from the geopolitical interests of the United States in various regions of the world. It is this logic that dominates the concept of Huntington, who tries to analyze all contemporary problems of world politics through the prism of possible threats to the world domination of the United States. He is convinced that modern world politics depends on relations between civilizations, because, in his opinion, “it is not political ideology or economic interests that are important for people. Faith and family, blood and conviction - this is what people identify with, what they will fight and die for. And so the clash of civilizations will replace the Cold War.
Civilization, according to Huntington, is "a certain cultural entity", "a cultural community of the highest rank, the broadest level of cultural identity of people." Civilization is determined by the presence of common features of an objective order, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, as well as the subjective self-identification of people. Civilization for a person is the broadest level of community with which he relates himself. "The lines between the two are rarely sharp, but they are real," Huntington says, practically in Toynbee's words. True, unlike him and Spengler, he does not define the temporal boundaries of civilizations.
Huntington's use of the concept of "sub-civilization" is hardly new compared to Toynbee, since it is synonymous with his concept of "side branch of the main civilization." However, Huntington did not set himself the task of deepening the theory. For him, much more important is the applied value of already known ideas, their application to a specific international situation and the development of pragmatic recommendations for the actions of the United States and the West.
Interestingly, Huntington borrows from Toynbee not only a civilizational approach, but also his emphasis on the role of religion. According to Huntington, all civilizations develop their own cultural values, which are concentrated in the dominant religion. He writes: "Religion is the main characteristic of civilization." Such statements by Huntington clearly show his conservative approach. In modern conditions, the interaction between different civilizations is intensifying, which leads to a deepening of differences between them, an increase in disagreements and hostility. This process, according to
Huntington is also facilitated by the fact that the role of the national state is weakening. He argues that as a result of the weakening of the role of the state, the role of religion is strengthened, and "religion divides people even more sharply than ethnicity" 1 .
Like Toynbee, Huntington views history not through the prism of nation-states, but tries to reach the regional level - the level of civilizations. Paying tribute to the theories of realism in international relations, he writes: “The main actors in world politics are still nation-states ... Now we are talking about seven or eight major civilizations of the world outside the West ... As the power and confidence in to themselves they are increasingly asserting their own cultural values, rejecting those that are “imposed” on them by the West. “In the 21st century,” noted Henry Kissinger, “the international system will include at least six major powers: the United States, Europe, China, Japan, Russia, and possibly India, as well as many countries of medium and small size” ... Jacques Delors also notes that "future conflicts will be the product of cultural factors, not economic or ideological ones." The most dangerous conflicts of a cultural nature will flare up along the demarcation lines demarcating civilizations.
To make the cultural-civilizational approach applicable to the analysis of world politics, Huntington proposes to consider in each civilization its own political structure, which consists of the so-called central and peripheral states. This division is reminiscent of the geopolitical concept of "great spaces" by Carl Schmitt*.
Huntington disagrees with the traditional liberal thesis, dating back to Immanuel Kant, that there can be no wars between democratic states. “History shows,” he notes in an interview with the West German magazine Focus, “that countries in transition from an authoritarian to a demo-critical system are more likely to go to war than stable democracies or stable authoritarian regimes.” 1 Huntington believes that today inter-civilizational problems come to the fore. They include arms proliferation, human rights and immigration. On these three issues, the West is on one side, and most of the other civilizations of the world are on the other: “The boundaries between civilizations almost completely correspond to the limit to which countries go in protecting human rights. The West and Japan are very protective of human rights; Latin America, part of Africa, Russia, India protect only some of these rights; China, many Asian countries, and most Muslim societies are less respectful of human rights." Here, Huntington has a new criterion for distinguishing civilizations - the observance of human rights. He believes that one of the main strategic tasks of the West is "limiting the growth of the military power of the Confucian and Islamic countries", as well as the use of conflicts and disagreements between these countries-*.
Following Toynbee, Huntington considers the desire to impose their norms and values on others, typical of Western civilization, an important source of modern conflicts. He even denounces the struggle of Western countries for the observance of human rights, since it can become a source of new conflicts "1. With their desire to spread democracy and human rights everywhere, Western countries only create the ground for new international conflicts. What is considered universalism in the West, for everything else of the world is imperialism... These conflicts can escalate into a global world war, the likelihood of which, according to Huntington, remains high in the 21st century, its source is in the Islamic world: "As we have shown, such a war can arise from an escalation along one of the lines clash of civilizations between groups from different cultures, most likely involving Muslims on one side and non-Muslims on the other” 1 .
Zbigniew Brzezinski writes: “Huntington convincingly argues that globalization not only does not create a common civilization, but also generates increasing clashes between civilizations, of which the most dangerous is the conflict between the West and the Islamic world. Summarizing his findings, he states: “European colonialism is over: American hegemony is on the wane. The erosion of Western culture will inevitably come when national customs, rooted in history, languages, beliefs and institutions, will make themselves known to the public.” Therefore, he warns that “democratization, in its essence, does not unite, but separates people in their parochial exclusivity”; the natural result of this process is “popular mobilization against pro-Western elites educated in the West.”
Huntington calls to take into account the influence of the following factors that determine the foreign policy activity of civilizations: 1) rapid demographic growth; 2) the growth of economic and military power. Demographic growth is typical primarily for the Balkans, North Africa and Central Asia. China's economic and military power is growing. All this is a potential cause of new wars between civilizations.
According to Huntington, rapid population growth in Islamic countries generates political tensions that will lead to conflicts along the borders of Islamic civilization in the near future. Islamic civilization also poses a particular danger to the West 1 . Unlike other civilizations, Islamic civilization does not have its own central state. As a result of this, the small states of civilization constantly compete with each other, creating the ground for conflicts. Huntington therefore unequivocally associates Islam with great conflict potential 1 .
Escalation of the conflict between the US and China is possible. According to Huntington, events can develop according to the following scenario: the central state of another civilization (USA) intervenes in the conflict between the central state of a civilization (China) and its own small state (Vietnam). He writes: “In order to prevent major wars between cultures in the future, it is necessary that the central states do not intervene in conflicts within other cultures. It will not be easy for some states, especially the United States, to recognize this truth.
When analyzing modern politics, Huntington points to the moral decay of the West, which, in his opinion, is expressed in the growth of crime, the disintegration of the family, the rejection of work ethics, and the lowering of the level of education. However, according to Huntington, civilizations can not only stop decay, but also regenerate. He hopes that the West will be able to do this. In this sense, Spengler's fatal pessimism is replaced by Huntington's political optimism, leaving all possibilities open for Western civilization.
Huntington considers a constant decrease in population growth to be one of the important signs of the Zapal crisis. This fact leads to constant migration to the West. In Europe, one third of all migrants come from Muslim countries. Huntington believes that the cultural integration of migrants is becoming more and more problematic, becoming a noticeable problem in the internal life of Western states, leading to the fragmentation and decay of their culture.
Huntington sees these problems as signs of a crisis in Western society. In his opinion, it is not enough to provide jobs for migrants, it is necessary that they learn Western cultural values for themselves. He considers a multicultural society a fiction leading to civil war. Huntington considers problematic both the integration of individuals of an alien culture and the change by the state of its mentality, as Ltaturk tried to do in Turkey. He considered the process of changing national identity to be long and painful.
Many political scientists, exaggerating the importance of the economic and political unification of the world on the basis of Western standards, defend the thesis of "the unity of modern civilization." At the same time, Western civilization is seen in its center, which is called “unique”, worthy of world domination 1 . The well-known American political scientist Francis Fukuyama goes even further, believing that all countries will gladly accept Western values and this will mean the “end of history”, the victory of liberal democracy around the world. Oswald Spengler, speaking about the peculiarities of European culture, believed that it was very closely connected with the idea of the end of the world. In modern conditions, this idea has been transformed into the idea of the “end of history”, however, the belief that it is European civilization that is at the center of the world has remained. Eurocentrism, which was opposed by both Spengler and Toynbee, has been transformed today into Americanocentrism. It is no coincidence that today we are talking not about Europe, but about the West, which is impossible to imagine without America. But if it was difficult to fit all civilizations to the complex European standard, then to the simplified standard of American culture, it becomes quite possible, which allows the old dream of conquering and Europeanizing the whole world to be revived.
According to Huntington's logic, states should fight for civilizational values. This kind of idealism is characteristic of American foreign policy, which emphasizes the struggle for democratic values and human rights. In this sense, Huntington's ideas reflect the interests of the contemporary American political elite. Huntington's concept is aimed at proving that the conflict between the West and other civilizations will become the central axis of world politics in the future. The author proposes to unite the Western world, to give it a new consolidating idea, and calls for the global protection of the interests of the West.
Thus, according to Huntington, the influence of the West on the rest of the world and the reciprocal influence of other civilizations will determine the shape of the world in the foreseeable future. The West will have to withstand many blows from other civilizations. In addition, the West will be subjected not only to expansion from outside, but also to the destructive influence of "settlers" from within.
Huntington sees all wars as the result of a conflict of civilizations. He introduces the concept of a fault line between civilizations. Whereas previously hotbeds of crises were concentrated along political and ideological boundaries, now they are moving along cultural fault lines. Of particular danger are conflicts along the fault lines between civilizations. The next world war, according to the American political scientist, will be a war between civilizations. Following the teachings of Toynbee, the American political scientist considers the conflict between the West and the rest of the world to be the main inter-civilizational conflict, calling it the central axis of world politics.
Huntington notes that if earlier civilizations fought for material values, today the time has come for wars “for an idea” - for faith, for culture, which indicates the absolutization of the cultural component of civilization by the American political scientist to the detriment of political and economic. At the same time, Huntington is clearly trying to belittle the role of individual nation-states in civilization, although he states that "at present, nation-states remain the main actors in the international arena" . According to Huntington, civilizations wage wars through their outpost states, so the task of international politics is to identify these "outposts".
Having recognized the central states of civilizations as the main actors of history, Huntington believes that the international system of the 21st century will include six such powers: the United States, the European Union, China, Japan, Russia, and possibly India. He believes that international conflicts will be based "not on political, economic or ideological, but on cultural causes." Although the resurgence of Islam and the rise of China constitute the main threat to the West, in the 21st century these threats will be eliminated, leading to the establishment of complete Western hegemony, hegemony in the form of a world empire, Pax Americana, which will ensure international order. In this case, Huntington acts as a consistent "atlantist" 1 .
The essence of the conflicts of civilizations, according to Huntington, lies in the desire to conquer, conquer, subjugate the neighboring civilization, use its material, natural and human resources. This confrontation was especially acute between the West and Russia. Those who believe that all European states, like Russia, belong to the same civilization, the Christian one, are mistaken. The difference between Catholicism and Orthodoxy is so significant that they historically formed two distinct civilizations. For many centuries there was a fierce struggle between Western and Orthodox civilizations. Attempts to Westernize Russia have been made more than once. The last of them is happening before our eyes in the form of a massive cultural expansion of the West in the former USSR.
In the concept of Samuel Huntington, much attention is paid to the role of Russia and Ukraine in modern world politics. First, it should be emphasized that Huntington singles out the Orthodox civilization from all modern civilizations and assigns an important role to it. He gives Russia the status of a special civilization, since, in his opinion, it is “a product of a special culture coming from Kievan Rus and the Moscow principality, which has Byzantine roots and developed under the influence of Mongol domination. This influence has shaped a society and culture unlike that of Western Europe.
Although Huntington notes the struggle between Westerners and Slavophiles inside Russia and in the countries in its political orbit, he, however, believes that after the collapse of communism, the gap between Russia and the West has increased again "1. In his opinion, Russia is now creating its own state bloc, the core of which will be Orthodox, and on the periphery there will be Islamic states, such as
Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. He comes to the following conclusion: "While the Soviet Union was a superpower with global interests, Russia is a major power with regional ... interests" 1 .
Interestingly, Huntington did not unconditionally include Ukraine in the Russian-Orthodox bloc. Instead, he proposed in 1996 three possible scenarios for the further development of relations between Russia and Ukraine: 1. State association of two kindred peoples. 2. Division of Ukraine along the historical border into Eastern and Western. 3. Russia and Ukraine form the core of Orthodox civilization, just as France and Germany form the core of European civilization. In 1996, he considered the latter scenario to be the most likely.
Another well-known American political scientist, Zbigniew Brzezinski, assesses the situation in the post-communist space in a completely different way. This should also include the right-wing ideology, which copies the United States and seeks to achieve global domination. Somewhat later, on the basis of old anti-communist ideas, a project of the "near abroad" appears, which is shared by only a small part of the intellectuals. Under this project, some understood the old Soviet empire, others - the "Eurasian community". Some Russian politicians have developed the idea of creating an "anti-hegemonic front" consisting of Russia, China and India. All these ideas, according to Brzezinski, were false, since Russia did not have the economic means necessary to carry out these missions.
Brzezinski developed the thesis that the only salvation for post-communist Russia could be "the path to Europe", the path of creating "an organic, ever closer connection with transatlantic Europe". According to Brzezinski, Russia with its geopolitical dreams only postpones the historical moment when it will have to take this step to get out of the current crisis. “No other prospect,” he writes, “can give Russia so many advantages as an alliance with a modern, rich and democratic Europe united with the USA” 1 .
If Russia really embarks on the European path, for which membership in the Council of Europe is the first step in this direction, it will be able to modernize and democratize at the same time. At the same time, it needs to give up imperial ambitions and oppose the process of EU and NATO enlargement. Only this path will help Russia to get involved in world events, guarantee a happy future, preserve its national identity, its authority as a regional Eurasian power, which, despite territorial losses, will remain the largest state in the world.
The degree of "Europeanization" of Russia is determined, according to Brzezinski, by its attitude towards Ukraine. He writes: “We must not forget that Russia will not be in Europe if Ukraine does not become a member of the EU; although Ukraine may well become a member of the EU, but Russia is not. Brzezinski believes that Russia has an interest in respecting Ukraine's state independence and welcoming its EU membership, which will open the door to EU membership and the Caucasian states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Otherwise, Russia will face the fate of a “Eurasian pariah”, which does not find a place for itself either in Europe or in Asia, provoking constant conflicts with its near abroad and with China.
If Brzezinski assumed that Russia without Ukraine would be thrown back, losing its significance as a regional power, Huntington sees Russia and Ukraine as the core of an Orthodox-based civilization. At the same time, both American political scientists were well acquainted with the concept of Oswald Spengler and highly appreciated its significance. This did not prevent them, however, in assessing the policy of modern Russia to come to almost opposite opinions.
If it is difficult to immediately determine which of these American researchers is right in assessing the current historical and geopolitical situation of modern Russia, then it is obvious that Samuel Huntington's position is more in line with the spirit of Oswald Spengler's political analysis. Since the problem of the relationship between Russia and Europe posed here is of great political importance, I would like to consider it in more detail.
If in the 19th century it was about Russia and Europe, then in the 20th century it is about Russia and the West. The concept of "Europe" has changed: it is no longer an independent political entity, but is only a part of Western civilization. This is confirmed in the oft-repeated assurances of European politicians' commitment to transatlantic solidarity. The idea of Russia has also changed: in the 19th century it was the Russian Empire, at the end of the 20th century it was the Russian Federation. If we compare the dynamics of the political systems of Europe and Russia, then several interesting points immediately attract attention, but the main thing is that such a comparison clearly shows that these systems are at different stages of historical development.
The formation of the political system in Europe took several centuries. It was based on the empire of Charlemagne, the borders of which have not changed to the present day, and further development was associated with the formation of national states on the territory of this empire. The establishment of a balance of power among European nations can be considered the highest point in the development of the political system of Europe. Five states, approximately equal in their geopolitical potential, were unanimous in their opinion that none of them had the right to become stronger enough to pose a threat to their neighbors. Otherwise, the rest of the states entered into coalitions to fight together and restore the shaken balance of power.
In the 19th century, this system began to falter. Powerful France upset the balance of power, which was restored only with the help of a non-European country - Russia. In the 20th century, the situation repeated itself, only not France, but Germany, claimed hegemony in Europe. Once again, non-European states (USA and USSR) were forced to intervene in the course of European history. After World War II, the United States began to play an important role in European politics, initiating the process of European unification, that is, the slow destruction of traditional nation-states and the transfer of their sovereignty to pan-European political structures. Today, in the EU, Europe has found a new dynamic form that is constantly changing in the course of its enlargement. Three periods can be conventionally distinguished in the history of the European political system: the period of empire, the period of developed nation-states, and the period of the European Community of Nations (EU). Without knowing these periods, it is impossible to understand contemporary European politics.
Comparison of the dynamics of the political systems of Europe and Russia allows us to highlight the following important difference: if in Europe the processes of unification dominate, in Russia - the processes of disintegration. After the collapse of the Russian Empire, the foundation of which was laid by Peter I, there is a permanent process of isolation of its parts - the process of the formation of new national states. This process is not over yet, as evidenced by current political events. At the same time, the Soviet Union was a transitional form, which had the features of both the former empire and the signs of nation-states. It was during the times of the USSR that the national principle of state building was first fully applied.
The difference between the dynamics of the development of the political systems of Europe and Russia is especially striking if we compare the collapse of the Soviet Union into 15 independent republics and the unification of 15 European states into the European Union that occurred almost simultaneously. If the former republics of the USSR received state sovereignty, then the EU countries gave part of their national sovereignty to supranational pan-European structures. All this confirms the thesis that Russia and Europe are two political systems with different historical dynamics.
Despite the above obvious facts, there are theorists who argue that the European Union and the Russian Federation can create a single political system, which should be called a "single" or "big" Europe. Especially often you can hear about it in Russia, where since the time of perestroika they have been talking about building a “common European home”. This idea is being developed not only by well-known scientists from the Gorbachev Foundation, but also by experts from the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In their opinion, it is not only possible but also necessary to integrate Russia into European political structures.
The opposite opinion is held by the so-called neo-Eurasians, who are currently in opposition to democratically minded political forces. Their most famous ideologists are Alexander Panarin and Alexander Dugin. Assen Ignatov characterizes the position of A. S. Panarin as follows: “Russia's path to the West, its integration into Europe is possible, but only in a completely different way. Representatives of democrats who speak about the need for Europeanization of Russia do not want to notice the fact that Russia is not a “Russian state”, but a special civilization ... It is not a “Second Europe”, but a “Third Rome”, the heir of Byzantium. Thus, the path to Europe is presented, unlike the representatives of the Westerners, only as a path of geopolitical victory under the flag of Orthodox messianism. “Those who want Russia's entry into the EU do not understand that it will be a secondary, dependent country there” 1 .
In the West, another point of view has spread, according to which, if Russia had joined the EU, it would have blown up this organization from the inside. This opinion is shared, for example, by Manfred Peter, who believes that Russia and the EU are independent political entities that can only have agreements on a bilateral level as equal partners. Many European authors approach this issue with a hidden hope that Russia will agree to a subordinate role in Europe. Arguments to justify such an opinion often serve as a statement of the economic and political crisis in modern Russia. The same hope is hidden in the wording "tie Russia to the EU".
The median position on this issue is occupied by the head of the Center for the Study of Russia of the German Science and Politics Foundation in Berlin, Heinz Timmermann. He suggests talking about Russia's accession to the EU in a very distant future: “Many Russian politicians, like Yeltsin, have many times raised the question of Russia's full membership in the EU. Since this prospect seems unrealistic at the present time, this introduction should be regarded as a distant goal.
Helmut Wagner has a special opinion on this matter, he believes that the Russian Federation has real chances to join the EU, but for this it needs to comply with all European standards, and entrust the protection of its national sovereignty to the EU. If Russia does not follow this path, then it will be “sold and betrayed”, “thrown back”, will be isolated and will be forced to cooperate with China. According to Wagner, joining the European Union is in the "national interests of Russia", but for this it must abandon the CIS and create a kind of "confederation" with the EU, which will be an intermediate stage on the way to its full EU membership. The admission of Russia to the EU will lead to the creation of a "united Europe without borders" 1 .
In Germany and other EU countries, Russia is still viewed as a kind of periphery that cannot have a significant impact on Europe itself. Thus, Gerhard Simon writes: "The outlying position of Russia and its cultural proximity to Byzantium led to the fact that in the Middle Ages European institutions did not receive their development there." According to Simon, Russia itself is to blame for this, since it did not want to integrate into the Western world.
Many German authors hold a similar opinion, while pointing out the features of Russia, the features of its history and geographical location. So, Karl Schlegel sees the peculiarity of Russia in its middle position between Europe and Asia: “The dual, dualistic nature of Russia lies in the fact that it feels its belonging to Europe and at the same time alienation from it.”
Political discussions about the enlargement of the European Union again raise the old question of where the eastern borders of Europe lie. To answer this question, it is necessary to look at the relationship between Russia and Europe from a distant historical perspective. Only in this case it becomes clear that Eastern Europe as a whole is such a border. Eastern Europe is not only a political, but also an ethnic, not only a cultural, but also a geographical border of Europe. The ethnic border is the border between the Germanic and Slavic tribes, the cultural border is the border between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, the geographical border is the border between the German highlands and the Russian steppe, between the maritime climate of Europe and the continental climate of Russia.
The middle position of Eastern Europe between Europe and Russia is comparable to the middle position of Russia between Europe and Asia, and in this case Europe and Asia (China) have more in common than Europe and Russia. Pyotr Chaadaev believed that Russia was relying on China with one hand and Germany with the other. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote: "For a real Russian, Europe, like the fate of the entire Aryan race, is as precious as Russia itself." In his opinion, Asia is also of great importance for Russia, since "Russia is located not only in Europe, but also in Asia" 1 .
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