Global Research

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Give Truth a Chance. Secure Your Access to Unchained News, Donate to Global Research.

***

Global great power competition has a concrete geopolitical and economic infrastructure. At the same time, there are ideological and cultural infrastructures that are effectively used in this competition.

The West used this very well during its 300-year global hegemony. It skillfully applied the accumulation of the Renaissance and scientific and ideological enlightenment revolutions as a soft power when it reached the imperialist level.

All states and societies in the world looked at Europe with admiration and tried to idealize the West and take it as an example.

Since the 18th century, when Europe focused on industrialization and colonialism, it has created an ancient Greek myth that claims to be the center and origin of civilization.

However, what is called Ancient Greek civilization was the accumulation of culture and humanity based mainly on ancient Egypt, Phoenicia, Ionian, Hittite and Phrygian Anatolia, Ancient China and Central Asia on the Silk Road, and from Sumer to Babylon in Mesopotamia.

Western civilization, with all its imperialist intentions in its background, was ‘sold’ as the highest point reached by humanity and civilization in particular. It was marketed to the world in the packaging of capitalism with human rights and democracy, as if it were a great invention patented by the West. We saw the peak of this in the theses of the famous neo-conservative ideologue Samuel Huntington at the end of the Cold War. After the end of the Cold War, American values ​​entered a period of domination by Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” theory.

In 1993, Professor Samuel Huntington from Harvard University put forward this thesis in an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine, the organ of the American State Department.

On the one hand, Huntington accepted the diversity of world cultures by dividing civilizations into eight types (Bon Pour Orient), but he put Western values ​​above all of them and assigned them a savior and tutelage role. Huntington’s so-called Western values ​​of “democracy and freedom”, which included discrimination between races and religions, were essentially propaganda created to consolidate the West’s domination over the world. For a long time, it was supported by powerful Western-funded media and collaborative academia. This ideology, which is identity-oriented rather than class-oriented (in terms of nationality, gender and religion), is the product of neoliberalism, which aims for the absolute dominance of the capital sector in the post-Cold War world. The famous French intellectual historian Emmanuel Todd calls this neoliberal nihilism.

However, after the bloody wars under the guise of the war against terrorism and the economic destruction caused by western-based neoliberalism, it has become clear that the dominant international relations discourse is essentially controlled by the West through “proxy and power”. Of course, rising Asia would also have an answer to the clash of civilizations. Russia, an advocate of multipolarity and one of the founders of BRICS+, questions the West’s uniform superiority theory on this issue. China, with its five thousand years old culture, is in a similar position.

The People’s Republic of China launched the Global Development and Global Security Initiatives in 2021 and 2022.

In 2023, the Global Civilization Initiative was declared. Yang Chen and Ma Jinting from Shanghai University describe these three initiatives with the following expressions in ancient Chinese culture: “Making conscience destined for heaven and earth ; to secure life and prosperity for the people and ensure peace for all future generations.”

The global civilization initiative involves “making conscience destined for heaven and earth.”

According to Chinese writers; The Global Civilization Initiative broke the Western monopoly on international relations theory, and in the process, moral realism and Chinese international relations theories pioneered by the Shanghai School became more influential. A concrete example of this is the Iran-Saudi Arabia peace talks, which took place under the mediation of China.

China’s 12-article Russia-Ukraine peace proposal is also included in these principles. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in November 2023 published the “Position Document of the People’s Republic of China on Resolving the Palestine-Israel Conflict”. China sees the multi-country and geographical Belt and Road Initiative as the most important pillar of the Global Civilization Initiative with its philosophy of human-to-human contact.

In short, it can be said that, against the Collective West’s post-Cold War supremacist understanding of globalization, developing countries put forward a peaceful, pluralistic and equality-based world order as a new dialogue of civilizations. Different civilizations can co-exist without conflict and can change, develop with their own free will.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on ATASAM.

Hasan Erel is a Turkish journalist-writer. He worked as a diplomacy and foreign news reporter and editor in TRT and other media for 30 years. He is a frequent commentator of Sputnik News radio and CRI Turk in Turkiye.  

Featured image is from ATASAM