MANIPAL, India, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- Our new
21st century is seeing religion-based extremism and authoritarian attempts at
hegemony over democratic entities emerge as the twin threats to international
stability, the way Japan and Germany challenged the Western democracies in the
1930s. Deeper than politics, even economics, it is civilisational currents that
are determining the likely alliances in this conflict. Each of the four broad
streams now extant on the planet has its own characteristics.
These four civilisational streams are:
first, Euro-Indic; second, Arabian; third, Sinic; and fourth, African. Each is
further divided into tributaries. The Euro-Indic has the most
offshoots,including those dominant in India, Russia, France, the Spanish
Peninsula, Britain, Turkey, Iran and Germany.
Several earlier manifestations,such as
the Greek and the Roman, have effectively disappeared, as have those from other
streams, such as the Egyptian. Each tributary contains elements of the others,
and indeed significant strands of other streams. For example, African culture
has gone deep into European music and dance.
Next in importance to the Euro-Indic is
the Sinic,which again is divided into tributaries based in China itself. There
are at least three major variants based ton the south, north and north-west of
China itself: Korea, Vietnam and Japan. Several other countries, such as
Cambodia, Thailand and Laos have a fusion of the Euro-Indic with the Sinic,
while Malaysia and Indonesia have evolved a separate tributary based
substantially on the Euro-Indic, but incorporating elements from the Arabian.
The Arabian civilisation has reached most
corners of the globe, though usually in fusion with local tendencies. The main
branches of this are the Arabian, the Egyptian and the Syrian. Both the Turkish
as well as the Persian versions of the Euro-Indic stream have fused
substantially with the Arabic, and vice-versa. These days, that fascinating
polyglot fusion of Euro-Indic and African, "American" civilisation,
is also entering into the Arabian and the three other streams. The other main
stream of human civilisation,the African, has made inroads into the lifestyle and
culture of the Euro-Indic, Arabian and Sinic peoples.
The significance of this four-fold
division is that each stream has separate characteristics that make more or
less effective certain systems. The Euro-Indic peoples adapt best to the
freewheeling democracy found in the United States or in Northern Europe, while
the Sinic populations react better to a form more diluted with paternalism. It
is no coincidence that an increase in Euro-Indic democracy in East Asia has led
to a decline in the population growth rates. While Arabian peoples search for a
guide-figure, the African populations already believe in experimenting with a
succession of such individuals.
It is not an accident that there is an
increase in tension between the core of the Euro-Indic civilizations, the
United States and the core of both the Sinic as well as the Arabian streams.
Should the situation deteriorate into conflict, civilisational factors make it
virtually certain that India will side with its fellow Euro-Indic partners.
Sensitive geopolitical handling can also ensure that both Turkey and Iran, once
the latter is freed of the grip of fanatics, will follow suit. Both cultures
have much more elements of the Euro-Indic in their makeup than any other.
Hopefully, growing fusion and exchange of
cultural strands between the four streams will render harmless the risk of
conflict between "core" elements of different civilizations. Such a
struggle would be far more destabilizing than one that pits a peripheral
variant into the ring, such as Saudi-based Wahabbism or its Iranian
counterpart, Khomeinism. Such peripheral manifestations need to be separated
from their cores in order to be speedily defeated. This is much easier in the
case of Khomeinism, which will find almost zero support within the Euro-Indic family,
than Wahabbism,which -- cancerlike -- has eaten into the core of the Arabian
stream and threatens to take it over.
The inherent paternalism in Sinic
civilization, expanded to superpower levels by am emergent Communist China, has
the potential for leading to tension between itself and major countries within
the Euro-Indic band, especially if that paternalism gets oxygenated into
authoritarian structures that seek power over surrounding regions. This and the
malignant growth of Wahabbism are the twin threats confronting Civilisation in
this epoch
-(M. D. Nalapat is Professor of
Geopolitics and UNESCO Peace Chair at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education,
India)
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