Issue No. 611
Opinion
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7 - 13 November 2002 Issue No. 611 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Has World War III begun?
Mohamed Sid-Ahmed argues that Huntington's "clash of civilisations" could well be a euphemism for World War III
Has World War III begun? That is the question I raised at a conference held this week in Granada, Spain, on the theme of Dialogues: the Islamic world- the US -the West. The conference was organised by the World Policy Institute of the New York-based New School University and chaired by Tunisian writer and novelist, Mustapha Tlili, former director of communications at the UN, who defined the aim of the conference as an attempt to find common ground for understanding with no pre- established positions and to question whether the clash is over civilisations proper or over the perceptions of civilisations. Not surprisingly, the initiative attracted the advocates of a dialogue between the West and Islam but proved less appealing to hard-line proponents of the clash of civilisations theory on either side. However, this did not deter Tlili from describing the Granada meeting as only the first link in an unbroken chain of meetings that will seek to stimulate a debate on the Muslim- Western encounter.
Of course, the argument that a clash of civilisations is inevitable and, indeed, that it is already upon us, found its most persuasive confirmation in the tragic events of 11 September, 2001. But the question that needs to be addressed is what is the nature of the clash. Is it the result of a natural aversion between civilisations or is it a question of misunderstandings and misperceptions?
What happened on 11 September led many prominent Western commentators to abandon the political frames of reference which had hitherto informed their analytical approach in favour of a civilisational frame of reference, in which relations between civilisations became the criterion which distinguished friend from foe and determined who belonged to the "axis of evil" and who to the "axis of good". 11 September also rekindled interest in and subscription to the clash of civilisations theory put forward by Samuel P Huntington, particularly his argument that a clash is inevitable between the West and Islam, in more general terms, between the Judeo-Christian civilisation on the one hand and Islamic and Chinese civilisations on the other. And in the case of Islam, the threat to Western liberalism was perceived to come not only from certain fundamentalist groups, but from the faith itself, a contention that resonated in the aftermath of 11 September.
The view that we were entering a phase marked by a series of conflicts stemming from the fundamental antagonism between cultures was reinforced by a number of new developments in international politics. Foremost among these was the accelerated pace of globalisation, especially in the field of communications and the information revolution. As the plant shrank, it brought into sharper focus the discrepancies between societies and between people within the same society. What came to be called the global village syndrome also invested once distant events, towards which people were more or less neutral, with a new intensity, forcing them to adopt stands that often brought them into conflict with one another. Perceptions changed as distances from and between events seemed to vanish. Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the bipolar world order (at least in its traditional East-West form). This event was instrumental in allowing Huntington's clash of civilisations theory to replace the Marxist theory of class struggle as the underlying cause of conflict in the modern world. Finally, there was 11 September, which was seen by many in the West as a vindication of Huntington's theory.
These events played a key role in having a "civilisational" frame of reference replace the traditional political frame of reference. What was usually attributed to the latter was suddenly abandoned. It was as though history began when the planes hit their targets in New York and Washington; scant, if any, attention was paid to the continuum of events before and after that fateful day. Until then it was widely assumed that the world had become, from the viewpoint of international legitimacy, a unipolar world under the unchallenged hegemony of the US. This assumption was rudely shaken by the terrorist attacks on two of America's most prominent landmarks, the World Trade Centre, a citadel of its economic might, and the Pentagon, the symbol of its military supremacy. It was clear that the world had not settled comfortably into the new, supposedly unipolar, world order, and that bipolarity was still very much part of the global setup, albeit in a non- conventional form. Before 11 September terrorism was regarded as a dangerous but marginal phenomenon; after that date it emerged as a counter-pole to America, a second world pole operating outside the scope of international legitimacy. Described by the US administration as an "axis of evil", the pole of world terrorism is made up of all forces around the world that do not find satisfaction, nor the realisation of their needs and aspirations, in the present world legitimacy, forces that stand up to -- and oppose -- world institutions.
Under the world order which held sway throughout the Cold War era bipolarity was between world capitalism and world communism. The communist pole saw itself, and was seen by many, as the only countervailing force in the face of an unbridled neo-liberal capitalism which ignored the social dimension necessary to reduce the gap between haves and have-nots. The collapse of the Soviet Union signalled the collapse of the world communist pole as a force to be reckoned with; more important, as a force capable of restraining the excesses of neo- liberal capitalism and preventing the deepening of social discrepancies. Liberated from any constraint the world capitalist pole allowed powerful forces of laissez-faireism to run rampant, thus deepening social discrepancies and laying the ground for chaos and terrorism. The Cold War period did not eliminate enmity between capitalism and communism, nor the objective of either to liquidate the other. But the two superpowers agreed to disagree, an accommodation that is not possible in the present confrontation between contemporary capitalism and terrorism.
It is worth recalling that each world war that broke out in the 20th century reflected a structural change in the world system. World War I was the expression of a climatic moment in the rivalry between the established imperial powers, Britain and France, who had divided the colonies between themselves, and a new generation of aspiring imperial powers, Germany and Japan, who wanted a slice of the cake. World War II was the expression of a climatic moment in the ideological struggle between capitalism, communism and fascism, which ended up with the downfall of fascism as a result of the wartime alliance between the Soviet Union and the western democracies. This is generally regarded as the last world war, the wars waged throughout the Cold War era being low intensity wars that could not qualify as a third world war. This sanguine belief was bolstered by the surprisingly peaceful dismantling of the Berlin Wall, which projected the false impression that a structural change of world import could occur without a world war. But the phenomenon of international terrorism, with its counterpart of state terrorism, emerged to reveal that we were closer to a new world war than to a state of world peace.
Thus, to describe the current situation as indicative of a clash of civilisations is an over- simplification that blurs certain aspects of global reality, including the fact that we are dealing here with what can be called a third world war adapted to the conditions of the age. The Cold War demonstrated that the threat of mutual annihilation deterred the protagonists from resorting to weapons of mass destruction. This created the impression that a third world war along the lines of the two which preceded it was out of the question. But that is not necessarily true. A war can first appear as only involving peaceful developments, then evolve into something different. Actually, the point of departure of the new situation was not 11 September, but the downfall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the inability of the socialist camp to remain on parity terms with the West. This prevented the confrontation from first taking the form of an all-out war. War was undertaken in the form of terrorist acts to which given states responded with no less violent counter-acts. And the process spread. It extended to the Middle East, threatened to engulf Iraq, to absorb the Palestinian problem, to reach the Philippines, Indonesia, and elsewhere in the Far East. The process is tending to become global, not to remain regional, and should be perceived as such.
But what is probably the most important revelation of 11 September is how effective and deadly a weapon the readiness to die can be. The threat of mutual annihilation, for the fear of death, which acted as a deterrent on superpowers in possession of weapons of mass destruction and prevented them from igniting a third world war will not deter a suicide bomber who is prepared to die. Whoever is determined to sacrifice his life in a suicide attack has an undeniable edge over whoever is not ready to take sacrifice that far. 11 September demonstrated that activists who are prepared to launch suicide attacks are capable of exploiting every loophole in the world system and of turning themselves into lethal weapons of mass destruction. The mutual neutralisation that prevailed under Cold War conditions has now disappeared. That is why the issue of Palestine, as well as the issue of Iraq, could eventually generate situations that can trigger a world war, a scenario to be avoided at all costs.
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