Civilization and Country
With the end of the Soviet Union , world politics has entered a new era. The years after the Cold War witnessed the beginning of tremendous changes in people's identities and status symbols. Global politics began to follow the cultural path Route reconfiguration.
The most obvious feature of the post-Cold War world is that global politics has become multi-polar and multi-civilized for the first time in history. For most of the past existence of human civilization, contact between civilizations has actually It's intermittent. However, with the beginning of the modern era, global politics took on two dimensions from the 16th century to the post-Cold War world, when a multi-polar, multi-civilizational world emerged.
Samuel Huntington at the 2004 World Economic Conference
Samuel Huntington As a well-known American political scientist, consultant and scholar, he has his own unique insights when talking about modern civilized society and national system . And his theory about "clash of civilizations" made him famous all over the world. He believed that future wars will no longer be between countries, but between cultures.
As early as 20 years ago, Huntington elaborated on his views on Eastern and Western civilizations and the world political pattern in "The Clash of Civilizations and the Reconstruction of World Order" . Roughly speaking, , he believes that Western and Eastern countries will be very different in the future. The end of in the Western world will usher in the rise of the Eastern world, and Japan, China, Russia, and India will become the East. The new power of civilized .
In the 1960s, Huntington criticized the modernization theory that had influenced U.S. policy towards developing countries in the past decade. He believes that with the development of modernization, more complexity and disorder will be the main features of social modernization, and the final result is the violent generation of from .
The modern definition of the Western world depends on whether cultural, economic, spiritual or political criteria are adopted, and it is generally accepted that there are at least 3 " major worlds ", or cultural aspects. There are no clearly defined boundaries for Eastern World, Arabic and African World .
And in 1991 , Huntington mentioned the Portuguese Revolution in his book as the third wave of democratization, which described a global trend , including more than 60 countries in Europe. Later in the "Clash of Civilizations" discussion, Huntington contrasted the contemporary world with the classical concept of the sovereign state,
"To understand current and future conflicts, one must understand cultural cleavages and accept cultures, not states."
The power of civilization in the new era
For Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations represents the development of history. Past world history is mainly the struggle between monarchs, countries and ideologies , as shown in Western civilization. That way. However, after the end of the Cold War, world politics has entered a new stage. Non-Western civilizations are no longer exploited recipients of Western civilization, but have become important participants in shaping and promoting the process of world history together with the West.
We can see this in the post-Cold War world system construction . Developing countries and other third world countries began to find their place in the world. Whether it is economic connections or political diplomacy, there are many signs that this construction of world history is becoming a reality.
The West in the traditional sense is Western civilization Western Christian countries + culture (which also includes other major Western religions and Protestantism). The Eastern world is a mixture of Buddhism, China, Hinduism and Japanese civilization.
From the three aspects of economic, military and political power, the West has undergone major changes in its transfer to other civilizations in the world.Huntington believes that East Asian Chinese civilization has culturally declared its own values relative to the West due to its rapid economic growth.
He believes that China's goal is to re-establish its position in the international reputation. Due to the history of hierarchical structures implicit in Confucianism , countries in other regions will " follow the trend " with China. On the whole, Chinese civilization is opposite to the individualism and pluralism advocated by the West.
Chinese civilization has also had a great impact on neighboring countries
This has precisely made China's neighboring countries more supportive of China,So in Huntington's view, the rise of China actually poses the biggest problem to the Western world system, and it is also the strongest One of the biggest long-term threats.
Looking at only from this aspect, Huntington’s predictions about China’s diplomatic cooperation are not unreasonable, and many of them have already become reality. Nowadays, China plays an important role in the international status. The "Belt and Road" allows us to connect with many neighboring countries to jointly create a better future. The collision of civilizations may cause ripples, but it does not result in waves.
The direction of future civilization
For Russia, Japan, and India , " swinging civilization " may be the best way to describe them. The clash of civilizations is particularly common between Muslims and non-Muslims, and can be traced back to the time when Islam first entered Europe.
The factors that led to conflicts between the West and Islam in the past were the revival of Islam and the population growth of Islam, coupled with the values of Western universalism, which angered Islamic fundamentalists.
In the future, the central axis of world politics is usually the conflict between Western and non-Western civilizations. Regarding the conflict between civilizations , Huntington gave his own explanations and opinions. Generally speaking, , the basic differences of civilization , including prophecy, history, and tradition are the fundamental reasons, which are the products of centuries.
And economic modernization and social change , the world is "getting smaller and smaller", and the closer connections have become the second point of conflict. In addition, in the development of Western civilization consciousness, the promotion effect brought by Western civilization also makes non-Western civilizations begin to be willing to shape the world in non-Western ways. Therefore, as far as Huntington's prediction is concerned, civilization is directly related to political systems, and the conflict of civilizations brought about by differences between religions is the fundamental cause.
Perhaps Western will still be the most powerful civilization in the future, but relative to the power of other civilizations, this power is gradually declining. When the West tries to uphold its values and protect its own interests, non-Western societies are usually faced with two choices: "follow the trend" or balance the West by increasing their own power.
The prosperity must decline. Perhaps it is the promotion effect brought by Western civilization that makes regional civilizations rethink their own existence. As the influence of Western ideology in the process of world history becomes weaker and weaker , we can see that this intertwined world of multiculturalism and multipolar political landscape is gradually adapting to each other.
Although from an individual perspective, conflicts between civilizations still exist, in terms of overall shaping, non-Western civilizations will also become an important part of world history.
