Make a global judgment – make a fair judgment! Window, out ‘Miloš Horký
01/02/2022
Photo: With permission: Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic
Description: The emphasis on spreading democracy and universal Western norms will only lead to resistance from the outside world. So how do you bring humanity to a bright future?
The year 1989 marked a major turning point for Eastern Europe, which provided the material for political consideration to the greatest ‘global’ thinkers. I would like to mention three of them – Francis Fukuyama, a professor from Stanford, Samuel Huntington, a professor from Harvard, and Jorge Bergoglia, a high school chemist and bouncer from Buenos Aires.
As early as 1992, just three years after the Velvet and just two years after the Gulf War, Francis Fukuyama’s book The End of History and the Last Man appeared on the market. It was basically a celebration of liberal democracy, and especially of its unquestionable victory in the Cold War. The Soviet Union and the Communist camp disintegrated, literally disappearing into a collapsed history, if you’ll allow me to use that ancient ideological flocla. Fukuyama deduced from this that it would now be the main political program to reach the political sky, ie liberal democracy, because only it is able to lead humanity to a bright future. We celebrated and bathed in Fukuyama’s Liberal Democratic Selance for twenty years.
Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama, American writer, political scientist and philosophical descent. He argues that the fall of the so-called Iron Curtain essentially ended history, because the democratic and economically liberal order shows that it is the only possible and final stage in the socio-cultural development of humanity and human government; photo courtesy of Czech Television
Two other global thinkers responded to this book. Samuel Huntington, a professor at Harvard, published his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order in 1996. The professor’s thesis is: To understand current and future conflicts, we need to understand cultural and religious differences. Because these differences, rather than ideological affiliation, may become future wars. This was then a discovery, especially for us, global thinkers from Eastern Europe, who grew up in an environment of irreconcilable ideological struggle.
And now I dare, kind readers, ask for extra attention. Professor Huntington writes that even though Communism was defeated in the Cold War, with the end of the ideological rivalry, the West must (!) Give up its democratic universalism, which finds expression, among other things, in its continuing political, economic and military interventionism. The professor literally wrote: “In a world of evolving ethnic, religious and civilizational conflicts, Western beliefs in the universality of Western culture will suffer from three problems: it is untrue (!), It is immoral (!), And therefore it is dangerous (!). Thirty-five years ago, the professor’s team, with a view of his own, responded to the hateful comments that would appear “in Central Europe in the 1920s.” So welcome! (vice HERE)
Professor Huntington’s geopolitical lines
Huntington, for example, predicted as early as 1996 that Ukraine could enter a war along the cultural line between Catholic western Ukraine and Orthodox eastern Ukraine! Now we even hear from Putin that the Donbas is a territory … In this context, the Russian Huntington also mentioned the Czech Basin – we were able to break up with the Slovaks well because there were no significant religious or cultural differences in the then Czechoslovakia, which was the reason tragedy in the countries of the former Yugoslavia.
The professor argues that Fukuyama’s belief in the universality of Western values and his political system is naive (!) And that the constant emphasis on the spread of democracy and similar Western universal norms will only lead to resistance from other civilizations and the surrounding world in general. However, the entire international political system is based on the values that the West has promoted. According to Western standards, all international treaties and laws are written, for example, it is based on them. United Nations (UN), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB), World Trade Organization (WTO), World Health Organization (WHO), UNESCO, etc. Yes, this entitles the West to pride, no doubt about it. but unfortunately, these rules are not universal for many cultures and many nations, they are still just the rules that the West has imprinted on the world, Professor Huntington concludes.
The transfer of power from the West to the East
The professor further identifies the transfer of economic, military and political power from the West to other civilizations, especially China and Islamic countries. The civilizations of East Asia and China assert themselves by adopting, in the eye, values similar to the Western concept. Asians have done this really cleverly, as it allows them to engage in world trade and also mediates their rapid economic growth. However, China’s goal, says the professor, is not to become a world hegemon, the goal is to become a regional power. Huntington’s notion of regional is important. According to him, China does not intend to conquer anyone, but it is determined to jealously guard its cultural heritage in its region. Ultimately, the Great Wall of China is a sign of this, which is supposed to protect China from the invasions of the surrounding hordes. Are we such a horde?
The West will never believe that China’s ambitions are purely regional in nature, also because it was Europe that conquered the world with its weapons. We and Europeans have simply wiped out small and medium civilizations, such as the Cuz, Aztec, Olmec, Toltec, Mayan, but also North American Indians, such as the Apaches, Chechens, Inuit, Melis, Aleutians, and Aborigines in Australia. Usually a few rifles and a little treachery was enough. If the remnants of these civilizations survived, we were endowed with syphilis and tuberculosis. Those who were many, such as the Indians on the Indian subcontinent, we tried to starve, see repeated famines in Bengal.
Samuel Phillips Huntington was an American political theorist, a former adviser to US President Carter. Many critics consider his work to be xenophobic, especially expressing the need to preserve national and cultural identity and rejecting other cultures. Critics also agree that in their work they are only trying to justify the Western world’s attempts at dominance; photo Wikimedia
We were also in China, but there were really too many Chinese, so we used opium. Thanks to Europeans throughout the 19th century, the Middle Kingdom was in the throes of opium. The history of opium wars is still taught in Chinese schools in a special chapter called Unequal Treaties. Every Chinese knows what the Unequal Treaties were. These were treaties that were forced on China under the threat of weapons, under the threat of rifles. Their remains are, for example, Hong Kong and Macao. If China is to arm itself today, it is because it does not want to relive the historic period of the Unequal Treaties. Huntington therefore rightly believes that China’s rise is the most significant threat to the West, as the promotion of regional Chinese influence clashes with American ambitions, which, however, aim at global hegemony.
The Islamic World and the Gulf War 1991
Huntington further characterizes the Islamic civilization that experienced a massive population explosion, including the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the first Gulf War in the Persian Gulf. It also identifies the ‘bloody line’ between Islamic and non-Islamic civilization. This conflict dates back to the first attack of Islam on medieval Europe, the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, the attacks of the Ottoman Turks on Eastern Europe and Vienna. However, part of this historical heritage is also the arbitrary imperial division of Islamic nations in the 18th and 19th centuries under the auspices of Europe. As a result, the British guaranteed the establishment of Israel in 1948. We should also not forget that Islam, like Christianity, is the religion of the Prophet Abraham and Moses with all the corresponding characteristics (see below).
Russia, Japan and India are supposed to be what Huntington calls swing civils, as they prefer both sides in geopolitics, according to current developments. Although I have the utmost respect for Professor Huntington, I would like to point out that I have to take this interpretation of the concept of swing civilization with doubt. My global perspective tells me that if someone is particularly close to the term swing civils, they are small Slavic countries in Eastern Europe. One day we want the West and another time the East, depending on who just liberated us in the last clash of the great powers. At the same time, the population of these Slavic countries today is around 140 million, ie completely comparable to the population of Russia, 146 million, so they are definitely not ‘mice that roar’. Here, on the example of Russia and the rest of the Slavs, we can see that Caesar’s politics divide and rule! it really works.
Russia, also thanks to its immeasurable mineral wealth, is still an unmanageable power that has never integrated into its political continental Europe, see the tsar’s refusal to participate in the reconstruction of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars or Lenin’s Brestlitev peace. But to those 20 million fallen soldiers in World War II, in the fight against German fascism, the Russians are still extremely sensitive …
Japan is an island nation that guards its island isolation. After the traitorous attack on Pearl Harbor and the brutal Nanjing massacre in World War II, the Japanese are behaving decently today, also thanks to Hiroshima. We have allowed Japan to sell millions of cars to Europe. Toyota will be the first brand to produce exclusively Western electric cars, which is the product of a green ideology. The great swing of Civilization could therefore be India, whose modern political system, being inclined to very old cultural traditions, is still in its infancy. But even in India, in spite of Gandhi’s legacy of not denying evil, they do not remember the European domination of the British rajas for good, thanks to famines.
Make a fair judgment!
Professor Huntington also discusses the religious influences that Christianity (on which Western civilization is based) and Islam (the civilizations of Arab and African countries) are missionary religions. You can call unbelievers pagans, sorcerers, unclean, idolaters, uncircumcised or similar, as those who have doubts about the ideology of the Green New Deal are called today. It’s always the same. Both religions are about converting the Gentiles to the right faith, that is, to theirs. They both use universality and both religions believe that only their faith is correct. You won’t find anything like that in Eastern religions, you just find religious superiority in Japan. So we are back to Huntington’s idea of a return to cultural, not ideological, differences.
The main source of social cohesion in the past was war. The passions that evoke a sense of unity in an anonymous crowd are hatred and fear. These depend on the existence of the enemy, whether real or supposed. However, if Europe today promotes cohesion as a basic social policy and a central subsidy program for its funds, the cohesion of Europeans, the hitherto evoked feeling of threat and war, is inevitably weakened. The lack of defense of Europe’s borders, for example, is characteristic. So far, the terrorist is not an influx of Islamic people.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 266th Pope of the Catholic Church, the first pope from the American continent, the first from the Society of Jesus (Jesuit order) and the first in the history of the church to choose the name Francis in honor of St. Francis of Assisi; photo courtesy of CNA
“So what will be the response of the Western world and its thinking? Will this again be the constant interventionist promotion of Western values, Professor Huntington asks? Or will we engage in a meaningful and responsible, inter-civilization dialogue with other cultures, as another global thinker, Jorge Bergoglio, supports? “We are far from reaching the end of history,” Bergoglio answers Fukuyama in the Gospel of Gaudium. “After all, the conditions for sustainable and peaceful development have not yet been created, let alone fulfilled!”
Let me ask the honorable reader, become a global thinker and make a global judgment. Make a fair judgment!
Entered by: Miloš Horký