Thirteen years ago, Samuel Huntington argued that a "clash of civilizations" was about to dominate world politics, with culture, along with national interests and political ideology, becoming a geopolitical fault line ("The Clash of Civilizations?" Summer 1993). Events since then have proved Huntington's vision more right than wrong. Yet what has not been recognized sufficiently is that today the world faces what might be called a "clash of emotions" as well. The Western world displays a culture of fear, the Arab and Muslim worlds are trapped in a culture of humiliation, and much of Asia displays a culture of hope.
Instead of being united by their fears,
the twin pillars of the West, the United States and Europe, are more often
divided by them-or rather, divided by how best to confront or transcend them.
The culture of humiliation, in contrast, helps unite the Muslim world around
its most radical forces and has led to a culture of hatred. The chief
beneficiaries of the deadly encounter between the forces of fear and the forces
of humiliation are the bystanders in the culture of hope, who have been able to
concentrate on creating a better future for themselves.
These moods, of course, are not uni
versal within each region, and there are some areas, such as Russia and parts
of Latin America, that seem to display all of them simultaneously. But their dynamics
and interactions will help shape the world for years to come.
THE CULTURE OF FEAR
The United States and Europe are divided
by a common culture of fear. On both sides, one encounters, in varying degrees,
a fear of the other, a fear of the future, and a fundamental anxiety about the
loss of identity in an increasingly complex world.
In the case of Europe, there are layers
of fear. There is the fear of being invaded by the poor, primarily from the
South-a fear driven by demography and geography. Images of Africans being
killed recently as they tried to scale barbed wire to enter a Spanish enclave
in Morocco evoked images of another time not so long ago, when East Germans
were shot at as they tried to reach freedom in the West. Back then, Germans were killed
because they wanted to escape oppression. Today, Africans are being killed
because they want to escape absolute poverty.
Europeans also fear being blown up by
radical Islamists or being demographically conquered by them as their continent
becomes a "Eurabia." After the bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London
in 2005 and the scares this past summer, Europeans have started to face the
hard reality that their homelands are not only targets for terrorists but also
bases for them.
Then there is the fear of being left
behind economically. For many Europeans, globalization has come to be equated
with destabilization and job cuts. They are haunted by the fear that Europe
will become a museum-a larger and more modern version of Venice, a place for
tourists and retirees, no longer a center of creativity and influence.
Finally, there is the fear of being
ruled by an outside power, even a friendly one (such as the United States) or a
faceless one (such as the European Commission).
What unites all these fears is a sense
of loss of control over one's territory, security, and identity-in short, one's
destiny. Such concerns contributed to the no votes of the French and the Dutch
last year on the referendum on the proposed EU constitution. They also explain
the return of strong nationalist sentiments in many European countries-on
display during the recent World Cup tournament.
Some of the same sense of loss of control is present in the United
States. Although demographic fears are mitigated by the largely successful
integration of Hispanics (compared with the difficulties surrounding the
integration of Muslims in Europe), they are clearly present. The quarrel over the Spanish version of the American national anthem
echoes the debate over the wearing of headscarves and veils in Europe.
Used to rates of growth
significantly higher than those in most European countries, Americans do not
fear economic decay the way Europeans do (although they worry about
outsourcing). Yet they, too, are thinking of decline-in their bodies, with the
plague of obesity; in their budgets, with the huge deficits; and in their
spirit, with the loss of appetite for foreign adventures and a growing question
ing of national purpose.
The United States'
obsession with security after September u is understandable and legitimate. But
what has it cost in terms of U.S. influence and image in the world? From the
difficulties foreign travelers have entering U.S. territory to the human rights
scandals of Guantainamo Bay, terrorists have at least in part succeeded in
undermining the United States' claims of moral superiority and exceptionalism by
prompting such reactions.
Whereas Europeans try
to protect themselves from the world through a combination of escapism and
appease ment, Americans try to do so by dealing with the problem at its source
abroad. But behind the Bush administration's forceful and optimistic rhetoric
lies a somber reality, which is that the U.S. response to the September u
attacks has made the United States more unpopular than ever. The U.S.
intervention in Iraq, for example, has generated more problems than it has
solved. Iraq is de scending into civil war, and U.S. actions there have tipped
the balance of power within the Muslim world to its most radical Shiite
elements.
THE CULTURE OF HUMILIATION
Europeans started to reflect on their
own decay after World War I: "We civilizations now know ourselves
mortal," the French poet and philosopher Paul Valery wrote in 1919. The
Muslim world, meanwhile, has been obsessed with decay for centuries. When
Europe was in its Middle Ages, Islam was at the peak of its Renaissance, but
when the Western Renaissance started, Islam began its inexorable fall. From its
defeat by a Christian fleet at the Battle of Lepanto, in 1571, to its failure
to capture Vienna in 1683, to its final disappearance after World War I, the
Ottoman Empire slowly shrank into oblivion.
The creation of the state of Israel in
the midst of Arab land could only be seen by Muslims as the ultimate proof of
their decay. For Jews, the legitimacy of Israel was manifold; it combined the
accomplishment of a religious promise, the realization of a national destiny,
and compensation by the international community for a unique crime, the
Holocaust. For Arabs, by contrast, it was the anachronistic imposition of a
Western colonial logic at the very moment decolonization was getting under way.
In their view, crimes of the Christian West, fallen into barbarism against the
Jews, were being unfairly paid for by the Muslim East.
The unresolved conflict between Israel
and its neighbors has helped turn the culture of humiliation into a culture of
hatred. Over time, the conflict's national character has shifted to its
original religious basis-a conflict between Muslims and Jews, if not a clash
between Islam and the West at large. The combination of the deepening civil war
in Iraq and the fighting in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel
has rein forced a sense of outrage in many Muslims that has been fully
exploited by Iran and its allies. In a war of images and symbols, Shiite
extremists can appear to embody the spirit of resistance to humiliation,
getting stronger with each blow they endure.
Globalization, meanwhile, has con tributed to the
problem. Every day, the Middle East is confronted with the contrast between
globalization's winners, essentially the Western world and East Asia, and those
who have been left behind.
The culture of humiliation is not limited to the
Middle East but extends to the Muslim diaspora in the West as well. The riots
that took place in France during the fall of 2005, for example, had an
essentially socioeconomic origin, but they were also a lashing out by the
disaffected against a society that claims to give them equal rights in
principle but fails to do so in practice.
The gap is also, in part, the product of
incompatible worldviews, stemming from different historical eras. As societies
in Europe are becoming increasingly secular, the importance of religion in the
daily life of the Muslim world is increasing. When Europeans look at Islam
today, they are reminded of their own zealotry and wars of religion in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This gap in mind set exists between the
United States and the Muslim world as well, but it is less profound because the
United States remains deeply religious and has even experienced a religious
revival lately. Yet fundamen talism within Islam is unique in the sense that it
is animated by a dual sense of revenge: by the Shiite minority against the
Sunni majority and by the fundamen talists against the West at large.
THE CULTURE OF HOPE
As the West and the Middle East lock
horns, confidence in progress has been moving eastward. An art exhibit
displayed in 2005-6 at the Royal Academy of Arts, in London, entitled
"China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795," summarized new China's
psychology. The explicit message of the exhibit, sponsored by Beijing, was
clear: China is back. The central piece of the exhibit was a huge
eighteenth-century painting, in the Jesuit-European style, showing the envoys
of the West paying tribute to the Chinese emperor. After two centuries of
relative decline, China is progressively recovering its legitimate
international status. Its policy of concentrating on economic development while
avoiding conflict seems to be working, earning Beijing both material benefits
and international respect.
As for India, for the first time in its
modern history it has stepped onto the world stage as both an independent and
an important power. Cooperating diplomatically with the United States and
making economic deals in Europe, the emerging Indian elites are displaying even
more pride and optimism than their Chinese counter parts. The world's largest
democracy will soon emerge as the most populous country, and it seems to know
no limits.
Of course, Cassandras may rightly point
out that strategic, economic, social, and political difficulties abound and that
the culture of hope could easily collapse on itself like a house of cards. Asia
has yet to witness the reconciliation between former enemies that constitutes
the most remarkable achievement of postwar western Europe. The level of
animosity in China and South Korea over Japan's treatment of the past evokes
the situation of Europe in the l950S. (China seems to have set double standards
in this respect, never forgetting Japan's crimes while never re membering its
own.) North Korea is a particularly dangerous rogue state. And arms races and
nuclear proliferation in East Asia could set the region up for a terrible
conflict down the road.
The gap that exists in China between the
dynamism of the economy and the near incapacity or total reluctance of the
present leadership to implement the most elementary and necessary political
reforms does not bode well for the peacefuil evo lution of the country. Yet
despite these concerns, there is hope among both leaders and publics across the
region, and it seems likely to last as long as growth continues.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
In confronting this clash of emotions,
the first priority for the West must be to recognize the nature of the threat
that the Muslim world's culture of humiliation poses to Europe and the United
States. Denying the threat's existence or respond ing to it in the wrong way
are equally dangerous choices. Neither appeasement nor military solutions alone
will suffice. The war that is unfolding is one that the culture of humiliation
cannot win, but it is a war nonetheless and one that the West can lose by
continuing to be divided or by betraying its liberal values and its respect for
law and the individual. The challenge is not figuring out how to play moderate
Islam against the forces of radicalism. It is figuring out how to instill a
sufficient sense of hope and progress in Muslim societies so that despair and
anger do not send the masses into the radicals' arms.
In that regard, the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict appears more than ever as a micro cosm of and possibly a precedent for
what the world is becoming. Israel is the West, surrounded by the culture of
humiliation and dreaming of escape from a dangerous region and of reentry into
a culture of hope. But it must find a solution to the Palestinian problem
first, or else the escape will not be possible. So, too, Europe and the United
States seek to permanently banish their fears but will be able to do so only by
finding a way to help the Muslim world solve its problems.
*DOMINIQUE MOISI is a Senior Adviser at
the Institut FranSais des Relations Internationales (IFRI) in Paris.
