Tag: Clash of Civilisations

Destroyed Russian tank near Mariupol

Road to War

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Introduction

In 2022, Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops to invade Ukraine in a so-called special military operation known as the Ukraine War. It is tempting to see Putin as the sole cause of the war, but there is more to this conflict than the godfather of a mobster government trying to expand his turf. Even Adolf Hitler had good reasons for tearing up the Versailles Peace Treaty and occupying the Rhineland. What he did next was less reasonable, and it culminated in mass murder. After World War II, the Allies realised that without the unreasonable Treaty of Versailles, the war probably wouldn’t have happened. Leaders make mistakes all the time. Western leaders ignored Russian interests by expanding NATO into former Soviet territory and promising NATO membership to Ukraine.

Giving in to Putin’s demands will embolden him to invade other countries. You don’t have to doubt that. Donald Trump, like a veritable peace dove, was willing to give the gangster in the Kremlin what he claimed to desire, but Vlad the Empirebuilder sniffed weakness and now thinks he can win the war. Geopolitics works like gangster warfare. The West operates by the same logic. Iraq didn’t pose a threat to the United States. The businesspeople behind the move hoped to profit from looting the country. China plans to invade Taiwan, and once it has done so, a new objective will undoubtedly pop up in the heads of the imperialists in Beijing. Meanwhile, the madman in the White House has set his eyes on the Panama Canal, Greenland and Canada. So, will there ever be peace?

Blaming the West or Putin for the Ukraine war doesn’t prevent the next war. There are always conflicts brewing, such as those between India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran, and Thailand and Cambodia. There is always something to fight about. The Ukraine conflict has a long history, as do many other conflicts, and the motives of he warring parties always appear honourable. Putin’s case for invading Ukraine is better than the US’s case to invade Iraq. Leaders tell stories about national greatness or the threats posed by other states to send us to war. Had the Soviet Union still existed, a state founded on a story of a brotherhood of peoples that repressed nationalism, the Ukraine War would never have happened. That points to both the cause and the solution. We can end warfare by uniting as one humanity with a single story.

Historical background

Between 800 and 1240 AD, the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, was the centre of Kievan Rus, a state founded by the Viking traders who sought a land route to the Mediterranean. By 1240, the Mongols overran the area. When Mongol power waned by 1400, a new Russian state emerged around Moscow, while Ukraine became part of Poland. Crimea and the surrounding territories became part of Turkey. As a result, Ukraine became separated from Russia and developed a separate culture and language. Polish and Turkish power declined from the seventeenth century onwards, and Russia filled the void. By 1800, Russia had become a large empire controlling most of Ukraine.

During World War I, the Russian Empire collapsed, and a civil war followed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. By 1922, the communists had won and held most of Ukraine. In the late 1920s, the Soviets forcefully collectivised farms. Farmers lost their land and ended up in prison labour camps. Agricultural output dropped, leading to a famine and the deaths of three to five million people. In 1939, Hitler and Stalin made a pact. They divided Poland, and the Soviet Union acquired Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Western Ukraine. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, some Ukrainians saw the Germans as liberators, but many more fought in the Red Army. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine became independent. Crimea remained strategically important to Russia as it was the home of the Russian Black Sea fleet.

When the Soviet Union retreated from Eastern Europe, NATO leaders promised Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand into its former sphere of influence.1 Eastern European countries were eager to join NATO. Once liberated from Soviet oppression, they sought security guarantees against their neighbour, Russia, which joining NATO could provide. Several policymakers in the West believed NATO expansion would be a historic mistake. Russia could see it as a violation of the promises made, which could undermine cooperation with Russia.2 NATO expansion proceeded nonetheless. The collapse of the Soviet Union broke the Russian spirit and national pride. Russia had been an empire, and the Soviet Union was a world power. It was all in shambles.

Vladimir Putin worked for the Soviet secret service, the KGB, for sixteen years. After leaving the Secret Service in 1991, he worked for the mayor of Saint Petersburg, where he oversaw the disappearance of precious metals and food, leading to allegations of corruption.3 Later, Putin joined President Boris Yeltsin’s staff. In 1998, Yeltsin appointed him director of the intelligence service FSB, the successor of the KGB. On 9 August 1999, he became Prime Minister.

One month later, a series of terrorist attacks took place inside Russia, which the FSB attributed to Chechen militants, while the evidence indicates that the FSB was behind it. State Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov announced that another bombing had occurred in Volgodonsk, while that bombing had yet to happen. In Ryazan, the local police apprehended FSB agents planting bombs. As Putin had been the FSB’s head until a month before these attacks, the obvious question is whether he had ordered them. His being the kind of guy who would do such a thing doesn’t count as proof, but Putin is the kind of guy who would do such a thing. And so, the conductors of an independent investigation either died mysteriously or ended up in prison.

In any case, Putin seized on the opportunity. He vowed to go after the Chechen terrorists, which made him popular with the Russian people. The terrorist attacks became a pretext for a long and bloody war in Chechnya. A few months later, Yeltsin stepped down and appointed Putin his successor. Putin pledged to restore Russia’s prestige and sphere of influence. He eliminated the oligarchs who opposed him and stripped them of their possessions. His opponents, also those who lived abroad, had a significantly higher death rate than average citizens, attributable to causes like falling out of windows or running into nerve gases. The surviving oligarchs had to pay taxes, which improved the state’s income.

Vlad the Empirebuilder sees the former Soviet territories as a primary interest to Russia and seeks influence or dominance in that area. In 2005, despite corruption, voter intimidation, election fraud and the poisoning of the pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine held free elections due to a popular uprising, much to the dismay of Putin, who had hoped to retain control of the country with the help of his favourite, Viktor Yanukovych. Most other Soviet republics remained within Russia’s sphere of influence, except Georgia, which aspired to EU and NATO membership. Russia then invaded Georgia in 2008.

Prelude

Since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine has had a multi-party system with numerous corrupt political parties in which oligarchs play a central role. The country became almost evenly split into two political blocs. One sought cooperation with the West, and another aimed for closer ties with Russia. People in the West and the centre of Ukraine favoured the Western-oriented bloc, while people in the East and the South generally favoured the Russia-oriented bloc. That coincided with the languages spoken. People in the East mostly spoke Russian, and people in the West spoke Ukrainian.

Many living in eastern Ukraine spoke Russian, felt a connection to Russia, and desired friendly relationships with Russia. Many living in the West thought they were Ukrainian, felt unrelated to Russia, and hoped to become part of the West and be free from Russian influence. It was a recipe for trouble, which the imperial powers, the United States and Russia, sought to exploit. Samuel Huntington called Ukraine a cleft country as these blocs identify with separate civilisations. Ukraine had plans to join NATO. In 2008, Putin warned Moscow would view that plan as a direct threat to Russia’s security.4

After fair elections, Putin’s favourite, Viktor Yanukovych, became president in 2010. By 2013, there was strong support for an economic treaty with the European Union (EU) in Parliament. After lengthy negotiations, a deal was in the making. Then, Yanukovych decided not to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the EU and to seek closer ties with Russia instead. Russia was Ukraine’s largest trading partner, and Putin had offered loans on favourable conditions while threatening to harm the interests of the Ukrainian oligarchs and politicians if they rejected his proposal.5

Protests erupted, calling for the resignation of the president and the government. The demonstrations were initially peaceful, but President Yanukovych responded with a police crackdown that included the use of snipers. The protestors held out for months and fought back with chains, sticks, stones, petrol bombs, a bulldozer and firearms. At some point, the police could no longer defend themselves from protesters’ attacks. In the end, 108 civilians and 13 police officers had died. The Euromaidan protests led to the ousting of the government, and President Yanukovych fled. Most Ukrainians didn’t want to sever ties with Russia at that point, as Ukraine relied on cheap gas from Russia.5 After the Maidan Revolution, pro-Russian protests and uprisings erupted in Crimea, the Donbas and Odesa.

Pro-democratic groups had started the Maidan Revolution. Most participants were ordinary citizens. However, the violence of the well-organised fascists, which included the use of snipers, probably decided the outcome. The Ukrainian fascists have a long history which traces back to the partisan movement from the 1940s. After the Maidan Revolution, fascists patrolled the streets of Kyiv. They also provided fighters for the war against Russia-backed separatists. Among them was the Azov regiment, a group of 900 fighters with Nazi sympathies.6 Their bravery on the battlefield at a time when the regular army had difficulty defending Ukrainian territory made the far-right more respected in Ukraine.

Russia claims that the Maidan Revolution was a Western-sponsored coup to overthrow a legitimate government. Yanukovych had become President after fair elections. Between 1991 and 2014, the US spent $ 5 billion to support civil society and NGOs aiming at strengthening democracy, anti-corruption efforts, and economic development. These groups had played a central role in starting the protests. Had the far-right not come to their aid, President Yanukovych might have been able to subdue the demonstrations with force.

And so, Putin sees foreign aid money as interference and a threat to Russia. After pro-democratic protests in Russia, he made Russian NGOs receiving money from abroad subject to a foreign agent law and closed their operations in Russia. Since the Orange Revolution in 2004, Putin began investing in increasing Russian influence abroad.7 It included interference with the 2016 US elections.8 After the Maidan Revolution, the Obama administration chose not to antagonise Russia after learning the lessons of Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008. The previous Bush administration had provided Georgia with money and weapons in an attempt to build a strategic bridgehead in the southern Caucasus region, provoking Russia to invade Georgia.7

Ukraine War

Ukraine was drifting away from Russia and aligning itself with the West. Most Ukrainians don’t want to live under Putin’s rule, but they also hoped for a good relationship with neighbouring Russia. That is why they elected Volodymyr Zelensky. A Ukrainian NATO membership would endanger that. Putin believed Ukraine was of crucial interest to Russia. Losing Ukraine would be a damaging geopolitical loss for Putin. The Russian invasion of Crimea and the Donbas insurgency had soured Russian-Ukrainian relations. There had been a truce, but there was regular shelling of civilian areas.9 The Donbas attracted Ukrainian far-right fighters seeking combat experience. Russia-backed separatists have reported terrorist attacks with a total of 1,000 fatalities between 2015 and 2021.10

Zelensky had won the 2019 elections by promising to seek peace with Russia. The far-right blocked these plans by promising there would be riots and that Zelensky might be killed.11 A return of Ukraine to the Russian sphere of influence was not to be expected. The truce with Russia was not more than a truce for both parties, as Ukraine intended to regain its lost territories while Putin hoped to bring Ukraine under Russian influence. Ukraine was building its military and seeking NATO membership. Although NATO considers itself a defensive alliance, it is part of the Western sphere of influence, and Putin sees it as a coalition against Russia that could threaten Russia’s security.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, few expected the Ukrainian army would hold out for more than a few weeks. In the first days of the war, Zelensky rejected an evacuation offer from the United States, saying he needed ammunition, not a ride. Street fighting in Kyiv was about to commence. Zelensky, who had been an actor previously, unified the nation and extracted weapons and other support from his Western allies. He had played the Ukrainian President in a comedy previously. Fiction has become a reality. Or is reality fiction?

There were peace talks during the first months of the war. Both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed willing to make concessions. Western powers blocked a peace deal, fearing the agreement would reward the aggressor state, Russia. Western powers also hoped to weaken Russia.12 The discovery of the Bucha massacre in early April, in which Russian troops had murdered over four hundred civilians, was another reason the peace talks failed.13 For three years, the war dragged on. Ukraine needed Western support to keep its army in the field.

It was a stalemate, with Russia making a few territorial gains at the expense of massive losses in military personnel. In 2025, Donald Trump became President of the United States. He initially held a more favourable view of the Russian position and went as far as parroting the Russian propaganda narrative that Ukraine had started the war. The man in the White House took upon himself the role of peace dove and tried to broker a peace deal with Russia by pressuring Ukraine into accepting the loss of territory and giving up NATO membership. The sudden change in American policy left America’s European allies in disarray, prompting them to express their support for Ukraine. Trump soon found out that what his European allies told him was all true, and that the man in the Kremlin wasn’t at all interested in peace.

Clash of civilisations

Geopolitical actors act as gangs, defending and expanding their turf. It is insightful to paint the picture of the Ukraine war as gang warfare, so Putin’s mafia state attacking a state backed by the US mobster state run by neoconservative gangsters and the military-industrial complex, which, amongst others, invaded Iraq to loot its oil. And by the way, far-right thugs in Ukraine, the so-called Nazis, whom Putin was harping about while having Nazi mercenaries from the Wagner Group fighting on the Russian side, have prevented a peace deal with Russia. Meanwhile, Ukraine alleges that China is supporting the Russian war effort, while China claims it can’t accept Russia losing the war.14

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Neoconservative view won out, as the United States found itself the hegemon in a unipolar world. It emboldened the Neoconservatives’ aggressive attitude and pursuit of global dominance. US planners aimed to prevent the emergence of a rival power in any part of the world. They hoped to establish a global order, the New World Order, which George H.W. Bush mentioned in his speeches as a peaceful cooperation between nations. This arrangement would allow other countries to pursue their legitimate interests while deterring them from aspiring to a larger regional or global role or challenging US leadership.11

A single world order can bring peace or at least limited warfare. The Romans pacified the Mediterranean. From behind the desks of the geopolitical planners in the United States, it may have seemed a marvellous idea and an excellent business opportunity for the military-industrial complex. It brought the Iraq War, with hundreds of thousands of fatalities. It has always been the prerogative of the hegemon to ignore the subjected people. The Romans never considered how the Gauls felt about Roman occupation. The resentment about the West’s colonial past and military interventions is understandable, but the end of Western dominance will not end warfare. Nothing will unless we have a single world order.

The clash-of-civilisations view doesn’t provide a workable alternative. Ukraine and Russia are Christian Orthodox and Slavic, but most Ukrainians choose the West. The same applies to Taiwan and a few other countries that share China’s Confucianist heritage, such as Japan and South Korea. The Clash of Civilisations predicted that these countries would seek leadership from the leading nations of their respective civilisations, Russia and China. The world has become closely integrated, so separating this globalised world along civilisational lines makes little sense. China’s growing economic and military power makes Neoconservative thinking increasingly risky. China asserts its sovereignty over Taiwan and the South China Sea, using force to back up its claims. If China’s neighbours feel threatened and seek an alliance with the United States, that could be another path to World War III.

Gang warfare

Geopolitical actors act as gangs, defending and expanding their turf. It is insightful to paint the picture of the Ukraine war as gang warfare, so Putin’s mafia state attacking a state backed by the US mobster state run by neoconservative gangsters and the military-industrial complex, which, amongst others, invaded Iraq to loot its oil. And by the way, far-right thugs in Ukraine, the so-called Nazis, whom Putin was harping about while having Nazi mercenaries from the Wagner Group fighting on the Russian side, have prevented a peace deal with Russia. Meanwhile, Ukraine alleges that China is supporting the Russian war effort, while China claims it can’t accept Russia losing the war.15 The major powers are all making their cynical calculations.

Humans operate in groups. It is human nature, so the gang is our default political organisation. This type of establishment dominated most of human history and still exists today in the form of warlords, militia, drug cartels, and street gangs. States have proven to be effective in repressing violence within their borders. If the order breaks down, gangs will run most places.16 Gang leaders see themselves as public benefactors, on par with eminent leaders of states. And so do their followers. As order is retreating, we now witness the rise of far-right gangster governments in the West with leaders who engage in criminal acts. In gangs, peace also works best, but they regularly fight.

In a unipolar world, where one power dominates, most countries fear and respect the hegemonic power. A hegemonic power can provide order, much like a police officer, or it can be a big bully that attacks others. The United States was the hegemon between 1990 and 2020. Other countries didn’t challenge that position. It allowed the United States elites to develop delusions of grandeur and invade Iraq because of a belief in the superiority of Western values. The Neoconservative planners inside the US government thought Iraq would miraculously turn into a liberal democracy after the invasion.17 It was wishful thinking, promoted by delusions of grandeur about the superiority of Western civilisation. Probably, the business case also seemed profitable.

In a world with two major powers, a stable situation can emerge. During the Cold War, there was mutual assured destruction (MAD) in case of a nuclear war. Still, the United States and the Soviet Union were on the brink of nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and again in 1983, when Ronald Reagan’s aggressive rhetoric made the Soviet leadership believe the US would attack. They put their nuclear forces on high alert. Both on the Soviet and US sides, warning systems for incoming enemy missiles have malfunctioned and sounded the alarm. The soldiers watching the alarms detected red flags, suggesting these alarms were false. And so, we were lucky to come out of the Cold War alive. In a multipolar world, alliances shift, and a stable situation is less likely to emerge. That is what powers like China and Russia are aiming for.18

On the eve of World War I, Europe was a multipolar continent with five major powers and shifting alliances. The future of the multinational Austrian-Hungarian Empire was in peril as the nationalism of the different peoples living in it gradually undermined it. After a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the leadership of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire believed it had to eliminate the Serbian threat. Russia felt it had to support its ally Serbia to prevent it from being overrun by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Germany felt threatened because its foes, France and Russia, surrounded it. Germany saw no option but to back its ally, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. France and Great Britain backed Russia because it was their ally, and Germany their foe. And so, a simple assassination plunged Europe into a war that killed over ten million people. We are drifting toward a multipolar world with several major powers, hence, a politically less stable one.

Conspiring for world peace

Before World War I, the socialist movements declared their opposition to war, which meant workers killing each other for their capitalist bosses. Once the war had started, most socialists and trade unions backed their government and supported their country’s war effort. The workers would have been better off if they had united and refused to fight. So, why did they go to war nonetheless? You and the other are better off if you don’t fight. But you don’t know what the other will do. If you don’t fight, the other might kill you. Workers in France were uncertain about the actions of their German counterparts. If the latter had joined the army, but not the French, then Germany would have overrun France. Furthermore, nationalist stories about pride and heritage proved more inspiring than the rational appeal to the self-interest of the international proletariat.

After World War II, the elites of the West tried to prevent future wars by promoting the cooperation of nations in international institutions dominated by Western elites like the United Nations, the World Bank, and the IMF. Nationalists and socialists distrusted the capitalist and internationalist Western elites, who were the primary beneficiaries. Still, a single world order is a requirement for permanent world peace. Nowadays, Western power is in decline. A peaceful world order doesn’t appear to emerge anytime soon, not from peasants and workers of all nations joining hands, nor from the secretive scheming of the elites. Humans have been incapable of bringing permanent peace on their own and probably remain incapable of it in the foreseeable future. Perhaps the survivors of World War III will come to their senses after having seen billions of people die, but there is no guarantee that they will.

Featured image: Destroyed Russian tank near Mariupol. Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. Wikimedia Commons.

Latest revision: 5 August 2025

1. NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard: Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner. George Washington University (2017). [link]
2. NATO expansion: a policy error of historic importance. Michael MccGWire. Review of International Studies (1998). [link]
3. Putin’s Career Rooted in Russia’s KGB. David Hoffman (2000). Washington Post. [link]
4. Putin warns Nato over expansion. The Guardian (2008).
5. A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War. Jacobin (2022). [link]
6. Profile: Who are Ukraine’s far-right Azov regiment? AlJazeera (2022). [link]
7. Did Uncle Sam buy off the Maidan? Marc Young (2015). Die Zeit. [link]
8. Fact Sheet: What We Know about Russia’s Interference Operations. German Marshall Fund of the United States.
9. UN report on 2014-16 killings in Ukraine highlights ‘rampant impunity’. United Nations (2016). [link]
10. Ukraine-Russia Crisis: Terrorism Briefing. The Institute for Economics & Peace (2022).
11. Why Zelensky won’t be able to negotiate peace himself. Ted Snider (2024). Responsible Statecraft.
12. ‘We want to see Russia weakened’: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says he wants Putin’s forces depleted so he cannot repeat what he has done in Ukraine during his Kyiv trip. Daily Mail (2022). [link]
13. The Grinding War in Ukraine Could Have Ended a Long Time Ago. Branko Marcetic. Jacobin (2023). [link]
14. Defense Planning Guidance (1992). George Washington University. [link]
15. China tells EU it can’t accept Russia losing its war against Ukraine, official says. Nick Paton Walsh. CNN (2025) [link]
16. The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. Francis Fukuyama (2011). [link]
17. What the Neocons Got Wrong. Max Boot. Foreign Affairs (2023). [link]
18. China-Russia ties strengthen, accelerate multipolar world. Andrew Korybko (2025). GlobalTimes.cn. [link]

World Civilisation And Universal Culture

nivtric1 Comment

The West and the rest

Suppose you try to understand why the world is the way it is. In that case, you should know about civilisations and cultures, especially Western civilisation and culture, as it drove modernisation. During the last 500 years, the living conditions of humans on this planet changed dramatically because of modernisation. To illustrate that point, someone who lived 2,000 years ago could go forward 500 years in time and more or less live the same life of subsistence farming. But someone who lived 500 years ago cannot. Modernisation involves the division of labour, industrialisation, urbanisation, social mobilisation, and increased education and wealth. Social mobilisation is organised via purpose-based groups, for instance, corporations. Expanding scientific and engineering knowledge allows us to shape our environment like never before. Modernisation was the most dramatic change in the history of humankind.

People from other cultures and civilisations feel resentment. The West’s imperialism unified the world but destroyed the ways of indigenous peoples and killed millions of people in the process. The Chinese speak of one hundred years of national humiliation when referring to the period between 1850 and 1950 in which Western powers broke the Chinese Empire and plunged it into civil war. Among Muslims, similar sentiments exist because of Western military interventions in Islamic countries. It might not be a solace, but Europeans killed more of their kind than of any other race. One might ask what the world would have been like if the Chinese or the Muslims had been the first to modernise. Perhaps Karl Marx had the answer. The bourgeois society may have been a historical necessity. And I think he is right insofar as it concerns modernisation.

Europeans created a bourgeois world rather than a Chrirstian one. Christian values don’t drive it, but those of Mammon, the god of money. How that happened is a complex historical process. A combination of trends converged in Western Europe, affecting its culture. This bourgeois culture of money has now spread over the globe. No culture has remained unaffected. Hating the West for what it is or what it did is not helpful as it doesn’t address the underlying issues that plague us. Money decides our lives, and the competition between nation-states leads us to war. Capitalists seeking profit drove modernisation. As there is a survival-of-the-fittest competition between societies, nations that supported this process came out on top. Modernisation likely could not have happened in another way.

Modernisation doesn’t change our human nature. When the Huns invaded Europe, they raped and pillaged. And so did the Vikings, the Mongols, and the Muslims. The Spanish in the Americas were keen on perpetuating this ancient tradition. But Europeans began to think ahead. Rather than extracting taxes from their conquests, they turned them into profitable operations. That trend reinforced itself as Europeans often invested their profits of economic exploitation in new enterprises or the expansion of existing ones. Past wars were about survival, conquest, honour, looting, or spreading religions like Christianity or Islam. Europeans made it a profitable enterprise that sustained itself and continued to grow. As a result, merchants started deciding what happened.

Even though the general level of opulence rose, we gradually came to live in a world without values where merchants make the decisions. That is the problem we face. You might try to hold on to your humanist, Christian, Islamic, Confucianist, Hindu or Buddhist values, or you might oppose slavery, discrimination or the oppression of women, but whether you succeed or fail often depends on profit-and-loss calculations. And if we hope to build the world on values rather than profit, we must face that truth.

And we don’t need capitalism for large-scale brutal warfare as war is an outcome of competition. China became unified and the most advanced country in the world around 200 BC after five centuries of gruesome warfare. There was intense competition between warring states that organised themselves increasingly efficiently to maintain armies of up to 500,000 soldiers in the field. That required setting up rational systems of tax collection with property registers. The number of Chinese states decreased over time because of conquest. The most ruthless and efficient state won out and unified China. China’s first emperor was merciless. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been the one who unified the country. Unification was also the end of the competition. Warfare never became that brutal again. And so, the unification of the world could pave the way for a more peaceful future.

Western culture

Hence, we might need a world civilisation and perhaps even a universal culture, as there is a limit to the diversity we can handle. You can’t allow harmful activities to continue, so all cultures need scrutiny. The West was the first civilisation to modernise. But why? Samuel Huntington mentions the characteristics of Western civilisation he believed crucial for modernisation.1 Modernisation affects everyone, so, researching how a future global civilisation and culture will look, might include investigating which elements of Western culture are universal rather than typically Western. And to explain how we got here, we could focus on the features of Western civilisation and how they emerged and developed. According to Huntington, the defining characteristics of Western civilisation are:

  • The Classical legacy. The West inherited from previous civilisations, most notably Classical civilisation. This legacy includes Greek philosophy and rationalism, Roman law, and Christianity. The Islamic and Orthodox cultures also inherited from Classical civilisation, but not as much as the West.
  • Western Christendom, Catholicism and Protestantism. Western Christian peoples believe they differ from Muslims, Orthodox Christians and others. The rift between Catholicism and Protestantism did not change that.
  • Separation of the spiritual and the temporal. Jesus taught that his kingdom was not of this world and that his followers should respect worldly authorities, even pagan ones like the Roman Empire. And so church and state could become separate authorities.
  • The rule of law. It was often a distant ideal, but the idea persisted that power should be constrained. The rule of law is the basis of constitutionalism and the protection of human rights.
  • Individualism. Individualism gradually developed during the Middle Ages. Eventually, people began to promote equal rights for everyone.
  • Social pluralism. The West had diverse autonomous groups not based on kinship or marriage, like monasteries and guilds, and later other associations and societies. Most Western societies had a powerful aristocracy, a substantial peasantry, and an influential class of merchants. The strength of the feudal aristocracy helped to check absolutism.
  • Representative bodies. Social pluralism gave rise to Estates and Parliaments to represent the interests of the aristocracy, clergy, merchants and other groups. Local self-government forced nobles to share their power with burghers, and in the end, yield it. Representation at the national level supplemented autonomy at the local level.

The above list is not complete, nor were all those characteristics always present in every Western society. Some of these characteristics were also present in non-Western societies. It is the combination of features that makes Western civilisation unique. Huntington claimed that Western culture is not universal and added that such a belief is a form of arrogance promoted by centuries of Western dominance.1

That view is not beyond dispute. For instance, liberal democracy has at least some appeal to people from other civilisations. The experiences from Taiwan and Hong Kong indicate that the Chinese may prefer liberal democracy too if they are free to choose. On the other hand, recent developments in the United States and Europe suggest that the legitimacy of democracy can still be contested. Most people would prefer food and security to political influence. So, if a dictator promises to address a real or perceived threat, he might even become popular. In any case, the West has seen an unprecedented amount of social experiments, and in the process, the West may have uncovered elements of universal culture.

The list above does not tell us why the West came to dominate the world for so long. Western culture is a product of a historical accident, but not entirely so, and therein lies the issue. The accident may be about how these characteristics emerged. Their interaction may be a different story. Presumably, there is competition between societies, and the most successful tend to win out. This process involves trying ideas and discarding less successful ones. Conquest usually comes with imposing ideas on others. And you cannot go back in time, so once successful ideas have spread, there is no going back. It is, therefore, not always clear what is typically Western about Western culture.

There are reasons to believe that the future will be entirely different from the past. Humanity is using far more resources than the planet can provide. Something has to give. If humans succeed in dealing with this issue in a civilised manner, then the world may change to the point that the present cultures have lost most of their meaning. The future is unknown, but the past is not. To explain where we are now and why Western civilisation has led the modernisation process, we can investigate the characteristics of Western culture and how they interact.

Greek philosophy

Traditional cultures centre around an idea of wisdom reflected in belief. Wisdom was a greater good than knowledge. If you studied the teachings of the great ancient prophets and philosophers, whether it was Buddha, Confucius, or Christ, you know all you need to know.2 Traditional cultures do not pursue new knowledge for the sake of it, for instance, by studying gravity to come up with a theory of gravity. Greek philosophy was different. Greek philosophers engaged in a rational and fundamental inquiry into the nature of reality and our knowledge and beliefs. It was a quest for knowledge rather than wisdom.

Western Christendom

From Christianity, the West inherited a claim on universalism. Christianity, like Islam, claims to represent the only universal truth that everyone should accept. Christianity, like Islam, also maintains that all people are equal. Everyone can either embrace or reject the only true religion, so there are only believers and non-believers. Non-believers may be inferior to believers, but that is due to their own choice. The West thus inherited the principle of equality from Christianity. In the first few centuries, Christianity spread through individual conversions. Christianity promotes a message of personal salvation, and in this way, it planted the seeds of individualism in the West.

Confucianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism do not claim to be the universal truth, while Judaism lacks missionary zeal. Equality was not the main concern for these religions either. Ideologies invented in the West like Liberalism and Socialism and prescriptions to organise societies promoted by the West like human rights, democracy, and free trade also came with passionate claims on universal truth. Even some atheists demonstrate a desire to convert others. This missionary zeal is not prevalent in other civilisations, except Islam. For instance, China and India do not demand other nations to take over their religions or economic and social models.

Christianity features a division between the profane and the spiritual. Jesus allegedly has said that his kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). Hence a Christian does not need to challenge worldly authorities. And you should give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s (Mark12:17). A Christian could pay Roman taxes. That made it possible to separate church and state so that, in modern Western societies, religions can be equal before the law. And, Christianity came with a powerful message of mercifulness and equality that appealed to the masses.

And it allowed Christianity to spread within the Roman Empire without causing wars and uprisings. As a result, Roman authorities did not consistently view the new religion as the most urgent threat to the empire as there were barbarian invasions and rebellions to deal with. Periods of persecution thus alternated with periods of relative peace for the Christians. Christians believed the Creator to be a higher authority than the emperor, and they renounced the Roman gods, but they did not challenge Roman rule. The Jews did resist, and so Roman armies practically wiped them out.

Not challenging worldly authorities allowed the Catholic Church to establish a vast network of priests, monasteries, and convents and a hierarchy to manage them. As a result of the Investiture Conflict, the Catholic Church gained control over the appointment of bishops and thus became an independent institution with political influence all over Europe. That contrasts with other civilisations. In Orthodox Christianity, the emperor oversaw the church. In Islam and Hinduism, priests and religious scholars could have considerable influence on political affairs. Only, these civilisations had no centralised independent religious institution like the Catholic Church. In China, established religion did not play a prominent role in politics.3

Rule of law and representative bodies

Law consists of the rules of justice in a community. In pre-modern societies, the law was often believed to be fixed by a higher authority, for instance, custom, a divine authority or nature. It made law independent from rulers, at least in theory, and to some extent also in practice. Religious law is administered by priests explaining holy texts. That applies to Judaism, Islam and Hinduism. In China, the state provided the law.3 There never was a Christian law like there is Islamic law, so Christians accepted worldly authorities and their laws.

The Catholic Church embarked on a project of introducing Roman Law throughout Europe. Consequently, Roman Law is nowadays the basis of the laws of most European nations and many nations outside Europe. Roman Law is a civil law meant to regulate affairs between citizens in a society and is not religious. The involvement of the Catholic Church in this project reflects the Christian separation between spiritual and worldly affairs. In England, another tradition of civil law called Common Law emerged.

The rule of law requires the law to be a countervailing power to worldly rulers. Feudal Europe did not have centralised states, so the Catholic Church could use its political power to introduce Roman Law. In England, a power struggle between king and nobility led the king to promote Common Law in the Royal Court to undermine his opponents who administrated the local courts.3 The king prevailed but remained checked by the rule of law and a strong aristocracy who forced him to sign a document, the Magna Carta, that guaranteed the rights of the nobility. The Magna Carta is a precursor to modern constitutions.

The rule of law often was a distant ideal rather than a reality. The outcome depended on the balance of power between the political actors in each society. These were the king, the aristocracy, and the clergy. Traditionally, the aristocrats and clergy were powerful. They had a representation in the Parliaments called Estates that decided over taxes. After the Middle Ages, centralised states began to emerge with kings trying to acquire absolute power and aspiring to decide on their own over taxes.

A power struggle between the kings and the aristocracy ensued. In Poland and Hungary, the aristocrats prevailed. These states soon collapsed because the aristocrats did not want to pay taxes for the defence of the country. In France and Spain, the king more or less prevailed by bribing the aristocracy with tax exemptions and putting the burden of taxes on peasants and the bourgeoisie, who had no representation in the Estates. This move undermined the tax base of the state. In England, a civil war broke out that ended with the arrangement that the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie represented in Parliament decided over the taxes they paid.3

It made taxation legitimate as it required the consent of those who paid taxes. The aristocracy and bourgeoisie in England had a stake in the success of the state. They profited from the colonies, for instance, via the slave and opium trade, so they were willing to pay taxes if they believed that it was necessary. In this way, England could win out in the colonial wars with France in the century that followed despite having fewer resources. England’s finances were in good shape, so England could borrow more money at lower interest rates to finance these wars than France could.

Individualism and social pluralism

In traditional societies, male family lines were the basis of the organisation of families. Families rather than individuals owned property. Family elders made important decisions. In Western Europe, individuals could make important decisions about marriage and property themselves. They already had substantial freedoms in the Middle Ages. This development started soon after Germanic tribes had overrun the Roman Empire and converted to Christianity.3 Christianity comes with an individualistic message of personal salvation.

The Catholic Church took a strong stance against practices that held family structures together, such as marriages between close kin, marriages to widows of dead relatives, the adoption of children and divorce. It allowed the church to benefit from property-owning Christians who died without an heir. For that reason, women could own property too. These individual property rights undermined family structures.3 Individual property rights later became crucial for the development of modern capitalism.

As a result, the Catholic Church could finance its large organisation, provide relief to the poor, and become a significant power. Western Europeans in the Middle Ages did not trace their descent only through the family line of their father, which would be necessary to maintain strict boundaries between families. In this way, it became harder to carry out blood feuds as the circle of vengeance was smaller, and many people felt related to both sides.3

It allowed feudalism to replace kinship as a basis for social solidarity so that social organisation could become a matter of choice rather than custom. In theory, feudalism was a voluntary submission of one individual to another based on the exchange of protection for service. In practice, this was often not the case, but with the spread of the rule of law, feudal relationships turned into legal contracts in which both the lord and serf had rights and obligations.3

In the Middle Ages, there were no strong states in Western Europe. The aristocracy was powerful and responsible for the defence of their realms. As the economy began to flourish, an influential class of merchants emerged in the cities. Many cities gained independence and became responsible for their governance and defence. Serfs flocked to cities in search of opportunities and freedom, thereby further undermining the power of feudal lords. In Northern Italy, feudalism had already ended by 1200 AD and cities run by wealthy merchants came to dominate the area.

Kinship as an organising method had largely vanished. Europeans could organise themselves for a wide array of purposes. In the Middle Ages, there were monasteries, convents, and guilds. There were also military orders, such as the Knights Templars. Later on, societies and corporations emerged. This European pluralism contrasted with the absence of civil society, the weakness of the aristocracy, and the strength of centralised bureaucracies in Russia, China, and the Ottoman Empire.1

The Renaissance

The Renaissance began in the merchant towns of Northern Italy. The elites of Northern Italy became less religious. This process is called secularisation. Wealthy merchants had money to spend on frivolous pursuits like art and literary works. Optimism replaced pessimism. Medieval virtues like poverty, contemplation and chastity came to be replaced by new virtues like participating in social life and enjoying life. The Italian cities needed the active participation of wealthy individuals to finance public efforts like defence.

The pursuit of wealth became seen as a virtue, which signalled the emergence of modern capitalism. People in traditional societies and Medieval Europe frowned upon trade and the pursuit of wealth. They believed that wealthy people must share their riches with their community. Trade often comes with questionable ethics and was seen as a necessary evil.

Building on the existing European tradition of individualism, entrepreneurial individuals came to be cherished. The Italian Renaissance tradition includes individuals like Michelangelo, who was known for his unparalleled artistic versatility, and Giovanni Giustiniani, a mercenary who organised the defence of Constantinople against the Turks and Christopher Columbus, who discovered America.

The separation between the worldly and spiritual realms reduced the obstacles to secularisation. The Renaissance started in the cradle of the Roman Empire. Italian merchants sailed the Mediterranean. The legacy of the ancient Greeks and Romans was everywhere around them. It prompted a renewed interest in classical antiquity, including ancient Greek and Latin texts. The works of the Greek philosophers and their rational enquiries into the nature of reality were rediscovered and began to affect European thought. These texts were secular and promoted virtues different from Christian virtues.

Printing and gunpowder were Chinese inventions that came to Europe. Around 1450, the first movable type printing system was introduced in Europe, making it possible to print books in large numbers. From then on, new ideas could spread faster. Constantinople, the last Christian stronghold in the Eastern Mediterranean, fell into the hands of the Ottoman Turks, blocking traditional trade routes with the Indies. The Portuguese then began to look for new trade routes by sailing around Africa, starting the European exploration of the world.

Double shock

Around 1500, two developments rocked Europe. The first was the discovery of a previously unknown continent, America. It uprooted the belief in traditional knowledge as Europeans discovered their ignorance. It spurred a fundamental questioning of existing ideas and a drive for knowledge2 that would lead to modern science that uses observations to produce general theories. The works of the Greek philosophers turned out to be helpful in this respect.

The second was Protestantism challenging the moral authority of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church had become corrupted by the buying and selling of church offices. Martin Luther taught that salvation is a gift of God that you might receive through faith in Jesus Christ. In line with European individualism, he made faith a matter of personal choice rather than tradition. Luther taught that the Bible is the only source of divine knowledge, thereby challenging the authority of the Catholic Church. He translated the Bible into German, making it accessible to laypeople.

The Portuguese had found new trade routes to the Indies, and Columbus had discovered a continent that promised unparalleled riches. Small bands of Spaniards with firearms overran existing empires and plundered them. After plunder came exploitation. Colonisation was a profitable enterprise that could sustain itself. It generated sufficient revenues to expand the colonies further. Enterprise and investment capital rather than state armies and taxes drove European colonisation. The resulting larger markets favoured economies of scale. After the invention of the steam engine, these economies of scale propelled the Industrial Revolution.

A revolutionary mix

In 800 AD Western Europe was backward compared to the more powerful Islamic, Orthodox Byzantine, and Chinese civilisations. By 1800 AD, China was still a match for England and France, and the Ottoman Empire was a significant power. But the Industrial Revolution was taking off, tilting the balance of power decisively towards the West in the following decades. Europeans had acquired a mindset that made them more curious, enterprising, and flexible. When the gap between industrial and non-industrial nations became clear, Italy, Austria, and Russia started industrialising too. China, Persia, and the Ottoman Empire did not. It may now be possible to identify the elements of Western culture that were crucial to modernisation and shape the ways how Westerners behave:

  • a religion with a message of equality, missionary zeal and an uncompromising claim on the truth;
  • individualism promoting flexible organisation for different purposes;
  • a separation between spiritual and worldly affairs allowing for secular law and secular pursuits;
  • a quest for knowledge and truth, for instance, reflected in science and the scientific method;
  • an absence of a strong centralised political power, but instead, an uncertain balance between countries and political actors within countries that promoted competition;
  • a rule of law that limited the powers of political actors and guaranteed individual property rights so that investments were more secure;
  • entrepreneurial spirit and a drive for profit.

The introduction of railroads exemplifies this trend. The first commercial railroad opened in 1830 in England. By 1850 there were already 40,000 kilometres of railroads in Europe. Asia, Africa, and Latin America together had only 4,000 kilometres.2 The first railroad in China was opened only in 1876. It was 24 kilometres long and built by Europeans. The Chinese government destroyed it a year later. In Persia, the first railroad was built in 1888 by a Belgian company. In 1950 the railway network of Persia amounted to only 2,500 kilometres in a country seven times the size of Britain which had 48,000 kilometres of railroads. The technology of railroads was relatively simple, but the Chinese and the Persians did not catch on. They could not do so because they thought and organised very differently.2

Until 1800, Europe did not enjoy an obvious advantage over China, Persia or the Ottoman Empire, but Europe had gradually built a unique potential. It had developed a culture of individualism, curiosity, and enterprise. When the technological inventions of the Industrial Revolution appeared, Europeans were in the best position to use them.2 They were more innovative, motivated by profit, and organised themselves flexibly for new purposes like building and maintaining railroads.

On the back of these advantages, European ideas spread over the world. Ideologies invented in Europe like capitalism and communism inherited the missionary zeal and uncompromising claim on the truth from Christianity. Similar thoughts were formulated elsewhere, for instance, by Chinese philosophers, but not as a coherent ideology. A few Chinese philosophers proposed that theories require the support of empirical evidence, but they did not develop a scientific method. Science was at the basis of European inventions. Science produced results, which promoted European power and fostered European superiority thinking.

The culture of the future

As the first civilisation to modernise, the West has led in the culture of modernity for several centuries. During that time, the West could impose its will on other civilisations and often did so. Western ideas and values have spread over the globe. As other societies are catching up and acquiring similar patterns for education, work, wealth, and class structure, there may be a universal culture in the future.1 It is by no means certain, but it is possible, most notably if some ideas are superior to others or work better, but that is the same.

Hegelian dialectic sees history as a battleground for ideas. Revolutions like the French Revolution illustrate this point. The old order tried to undo its achievements but failed in the end. Indeed, the French Revolution was why Hegel came up with his concept in the first place. It suggests that more powerful ideas replace weaker ones in a survival-of-the-fittest-like competition. Nearly all the ideological struggle has taken place in the West so the surviving ideas from the West could be superior. It might explain why liberal democracy is a success, to varying degrees at least, in countries with different cultures, for instance, Japan, India, Botswana, Turkey, Taiwan, Costa Rica, Pakistan, Thailand, Uruguay, South Africa, Ukraine, Indonesia and Hong Kong.

The future may be different from the past, so existing cultures may not last. Humanity must face issues like the limits of the planet and poverty as one civilisation. And modernisation does not have to mean Westernisation. Japan was the first non-Western country to modernise. Today it is one of the most advanced countries in the world, and also, a liberal democracy. At the same time, Japan has retained its unique culture and identity. So far, non-Western cultures have been modernising without disappearing. In many ways, Chinese, Islamic, Buddhist or Hindu cultures reassert themselves. As the wealth and influence of non-Western societies is increasing, they are becoming more confident about the merits of their cultural heritage and may be less likely to Westernise.1

Furthermore, the West may not be in the best position for the future as the future could put different demands on societies than the past. There still is competition between countries. Other countries, for instance, China, may now be better positioned to deal with future challenges so that other civilisations, including the West, may have to adapt to China, most notably with issues regarding government effectiveness. That does not necessarily imply dictatorship, but other nations may increasingly copy features from Confucian societies. For the West, it may mean that individualism and individual rights will be reversed to some extent. And charging interest on money and debts may promote wealth inequality, financial instability, excessive government interference in the economy, and short-term thinking so other societies may have to adapt to the Islamic civilisation and abolish interest on money and debts.

People from different cultures interact more often, so a global culture may emerge in the longer term. In any case, the West cannot impose its ideas and values upon others in the future. Often people from other civilisations are resentful of the West’s imperialism.1 The Chinese speak of one hundred years of national humiliation when referring to the period between 1850 and 1950 in which Western powers broke the Chinese Empire and plunged it into civil war. Among Muslims, similar sentiments exist. The West’s recent military interventions in Islamic countries stirred up these sentiments.

These feelings may subside over time, and non-Western peoples may develop a neutral stance towards the West and its past. In the process, they may discover that at least some elements of Western culture have universal appeal. Societies from different civilisations have much in common because human nature does not depend on culture. There may be concepts, for instance, democracy, that can work in other civilisations. The West has tried out more ideas than other civilisations, so it more likely has uncovered elements of a possible universal culture in the process than other civilisations.

Barring a collective challenge coinciding with the emergence of a universal religion that inspires people from all backgrounds, global culture is unlikely to emerge anytime soon. A universal religion has not yet arrived, but this universe could be a virtual reality created by an advanced humanoid civilisation for the personal entertainment of someone we can call God. And so, the advent of a new religion is a realistic possibility. This religion could provide a plausible explanation for our existence, promote a shared destiny, and allow for a greater degree of diversity than currently existing religions and ideologies.

Featured image: Map from Clash of Civilisations, Wikimedia Commons, User Kyle Cronan and User Olahus, GFDL.

1. The Clash of Civilisations and the remaking of world order. Samuel. P. Huntington (1996).
2. Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind. Yuval Noah Harari (2014). Harvil Secker.
3. The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. Francis Fukuyama (2011).