We must defend Western Civilization as we follow its path into the future--Part One
The fallacious thinking behind the "New Multi-Polar International Order"
Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) in International Law, Harvard University
Contents
Part One: Western Civilization
Part Two: The “New Multi-Polar International Order”
Part Three: The Challenge of Defending Western Civilization and Building on Its Achievements
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Part One: Western Civilization
We think of Western Civilization as having been created by 2500 years of effort and hard experience, beginning with Homer and the Greeks, continuing with the Romans, being forgotten in the Dark Ages, and then flowering from the Renaissance forward.
This view is largely correct, though other and earlier civilizations also contributed to the development of Western Civilization.
The advances of Western Civilization were largely due to “dead white men”, if you consider Jesus and the Christians and the Jews to be white. If you study history, you will of necessity be studying the lives of dead people.
Almost all of those dead people were men, because they dominated the societies in which they lived and were the kings, politicians, and rulers who largely shaped history. Where women played important roles in history, the history of nations, they are also studied, as the names of Nefertiti and Cleopatra in Egypt, Maria Theresa in Austria-Hungary, Elizabeth I in England, and Catherine the Great in Russia readily attest.
Actually, Western Civilization started before Homer and the Greeks.
Some societies were advanced and their contributions to Western Civilization began even before the Greeks, such as those of the Egyptians, the Jews, and the Persians. The Greeks drew heavily on the cultural heritage of the Egyptians. The contributions of the Muslims which did not come until later were actually very important parts of the development of Western Civilization.
These “dead white men” as many dismissively call them, built and made Western Civilization. That is historical fact.
Other high civilizations existed but did not shape Western Civilization as it became dominant throughout the world, due in part to colonization and the superiority of the colonizers’ weapons and naval fleets. In the Americas the Aztec civilization in Mexico and the Incan civilization in South America reached great heights, as had earlier civilizations such as the Maya in Mexico and Central America.
Yet the high civilizations in the New World were discovered and began to have an impact only after the broad contours of Western Civilization had been formed. Moreover, they did not have historians like the Greeks and the Romans did, and their writing systems were not immediately deciphered, as was also the case in Egypt.
The high civilization of India undoubtedly had an influence on Western Civilization, both before and after British colonization, particularly in the cultural arena. 1 But the influence of Indian civilization on Western Civilization, at least before the twentieth century, was in comparative terms not that great.
Nonetheless, beginning in the twentieth century India has had an important impact on Western Civilization, understood in the sense of the dominant developing civilization throughout the world. This is true in two important respects.
First, two centuries of British colonial rule left their mark on India, which developed into the largest functioning democracy in the world. Its example after independence in 1947 undoubtedly had a significant impact on the new countries that were born as a result of decolonization and independence between 1946 and the 1970’s. These newly independent countries, obviously influenced by the colonial powers as well as the examples of other countries, generally adopted constitutions modeled on those of Western democracies.
Second, Mahatma Ghandi’s leadership of the independence movement and the Congress Party, characterized by his devotion to non-violent political change, was a key factor in India’s achieving independence without a violent revolution. His and India’s example had a very large impact throughout the world, from Martin Luther King’s non-violent civil rights movement in the United States to Nelson Mandela’s successful non-violent struggle to end apartheid in South Africa.
China for its part developed a highly advanced civilization, as old as that of the Egyptians, which brought long periods of relative peace and prosperity to “the Middle Kingdom” during centuries which were characterized by ignorance then war and destruction in Europe. But China became weak during the nineteenth century, with the Qing dynasty losing two Opium wars, one with Britain and the second with both Britain and France, which led to a decline of China’s power and ultimately to the 1911 Revolution of Sun Yat-sen which overthrew the dynasty.
Japan, isolated for centuries but opened again to the world in the nineteenth century, sent students and scholars to Europe to learn everything they could from the industrializing West. They returned to Japan and built a modern industrialized society which was greatly influenced by Western Civilization. In law, for example, the Japanese Civil Code of 1896 was based on earlier drafts of the German Civil Code of 1896.
After World War II, both China and Japan contributed to the further expansion of Western Civilization, receiving and incorporating more than directly shaping its contours. In China, Mao Tse-tung’s communist movement emerged victorious from the Chinese Civil War in 1949, adapting the European model of Soviet communism to the realities of a largely agrarian society. The Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-shek lost the civil war in 1949, retreating to the island of Taiwan where over time they and native Taiwanese developed a democratic society along Western lines.
Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have joined and strengthened Western Civilization, as have other countries in Southeast Asia, India, and the countries of Latin America and Africa. India is the largest democracy in the world, although its leader, Nagendra Modi and the ruling BJP party have evidenced autocratic tendencies in recent years.
While the realization of Western ideals of democracy and the rule of law vary from region to region and country to country, and over time, the political and other struggles underway are taking place within the broad paradigm of Western Civilization.
Afghanistan under the Taliban is an exception, although the government supported by the U.S. and its allies for 20 years fit squarely within the paradigm. How the struggles in Afghanistan will ultimately turn out cannot be predicted at the moment, but the odds are that over the long term it too will be shaped by Western Civilization, building on the experience of Western assistance and guidance from 2001 to 2021.
The Soviet Union, and now Russia and the newly independent states which formerly belonged to the Soviet Union, have been decisively shaped by Western Civilization. While despotism has reappeared in Russia and totalitarianism in China, both countries are organized, at least in a formal sense, along Western lines.
Next
Part Two: The “New Multi-Polar International Order”
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See also “Why I care about the war in Ukraine,” Trenchant Observations, June 26, 2023.
See, generally, “India's Impact On Western Civilization,” Encyclopedia.com.