{"id":201941,"date":"2019-05-24T12:40:23","date_gmt":"2019-05-24T07:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=201941"},"modified":"2019-05-27T13:27:11","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T07:57:11","slug":"a-history-of-civilisational-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/","title":{"rendered":"A History Of Civilisational Conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Uditha Devapriya<\/a> –<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Uditha Devapriya<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWho rules the world today? Bush? Or us?\u201d\u00a0<\/i>\u2014 <\/i>Professor Nalin de Silva<\/p>\n

Just when you thought tensions between the US and China couldn\u2019t get any worse, Donald Trump<\/strong><\/a> did the unthinkable. It\u2019s a mistake, however, to view or rationalise the ban on Huawei, the world\u2019s second most popular smartphone brand and probably the most widely resorted to 5G technology provider, solely in terms of an escalating trade war between two superpowers. In actual fact it\u2019s much more, which is why to consider it as an economic clash would be meaningless; while it\u2019s too early to call it a CIVILISATIONAL clash, it has the makings of one: the West, a liberal rules-based order, clamping down on the East, an enclosed ruler-based order.<\/p>\n

When Samuel Huntington published his essay \u201cThe Clash of Civilisations\u201d in the US journal Foreign Affairs<\/i> in the summer of 1993, he created a sensation. Over three years, it stirred more discussion than any other essay published in that journal since George Kennan\u2019s \u201cX Article\u201d that, in July 1947, called for containment with the Soviet Union. Huntington\u2019s essay was written after containment, succeeded by detente and rollback, had led to the collapse of the Union; it was a rebuke to Francis Fukuyama\u2019s thesis that the end of Communism would be followed by the triumph of liberal democracy \u2013 the triumph, in other words, of the West over the East.<\/p>\n

In stark contrast to Fukuyama\u2019s persistent optimism, Huntington\u2019s view of the post-Communist world order was, to say the least, cynical. The conflict<\/b> between the communist and capitalist world (outside of which were countries that \u201cclaimed to be nonaligned\u201d \u2013 an accusation made by the likes of John Foster Dulles that SWRD Bandaranaike<\/strong><\/a> would counter) would be followed by conflicts<\/b> between civilisations. It would not be between developed and developing societies \u2013 it would not be a CLASS war \u2013because the latter were not powerful enough to take on the former.<\/p>\n

In that respect the West was more unified than the East, while the East, particularly the less developed regions, were fragmented so much that the very point which could underscore their unity \u2013 separation from the West \u2013 fermented division.<\/p>\n

There was a rift between ideology and culture: countries united by ideology could very well be (as they very often were) divided by culture, be it Mexicans protesting against Proposal 187 (which sought to bar illegal immigrants from using public services in the US) waving MEXICAN, and not US, flags, or the systematic genocide of Bosniaks inspiring solidarity from Muslims countries in displays of crescent symbols, or Eelam flags being waved by Tamil Nadu citizens to express solidarity with Sri Lankan Tamils. Cultural commonalities had brought the West together as one whole; the East had no such commonalities to brandish. The dualism was thus no longer \u201cthe West and the East.\u201d It was \u201cthe West and the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huntington made pronouncements on various cultures and civilisations and group philosophies. (In his essay he listed seven or eight of these groups.) He wrote about Sri Lanka and how the rise of ethno-nationalist-populist democracy had dislodged the elite from power in 1956. He wrote about and predicted China\u2019s rise as a superpower, a phenomenon which had been ongoing even at the time of the Sino-Soviet split and Nixon\u2019s visit. And of those pronouncements, the one which seemed to stand out the most was his take on the rise of Islamism.<\/p>\n

The modern era began in the 15th century after the Portuguese Reconquista<\/i>; until then \u201ccontacts between civilisations\u201d had been \u201cintermittent or nonexistent\u201d. Thereafter global politics \u201cassumed two dimensions.\u201d On the one hand, there was the world of the coloniser: from Britain to the United States, spanning both sides of the Atlantic; on the other, the world of the colonised: everyone else. There were clashes between Western societies, to be sure, between religious sects on the one hand and between republican and monarchical forces on the other.<\/p>\n

But in the end, despite such differences, the West congealed into an international order. This was symbolised by the Treaty of Westphalia in the 17th century and the attempts of Austrian Chancellor Metternich to forge a \u201cConcert of Europe\u201d after Napoleon\u2019s defeat in the 19th. It was to be a strong cosmopolitan order, hardly liberal (the 19th century didn\u2019t breed democrats, it bred Enlightened Despots) but certainly multicultural, at least in its elite figureheads and their families: Metternich\u2019s son spoke French and German as well as Latin and Greek, and once bested Louis Napol\u00e9on at a French dictation test organised by a renowned scholar.<\/p>\n

That the multicultural fabric didn\u2019t quite hold, that the myth of a united continent fell 30 years after the Concert of Europe was inaugurated, did not demolish what George Steiner referred to as \u201cthe idea of Europe.\u201d The myth survived, and it incorporated the US soon afterwards; it was this myth that led someone to call World War I a \u201cwar to end all wars\u201d and Roosevelt to call World War II a war that would \u201cend the system of unilateral action.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in neither case did the idealists win: World War I led to the Versailles Treaty, which alienated Germany and planted in it the seeds of fascism, while World War II led to the United Nations and the European Union, the former of which the Trump administration thumbs its nose at, and the latter of which Britain is getting away from. However, the idea of Western civilisation still held on.<\/p>\n

In the eighties, with the impending fall of the Berlin Wall and Communist Bloc, the two ideologues of the Jathika Chinthanaya<\/i>, Gunadasa Amarasekara and Nalin de Silva (predicting, and preceding, Huntington), bisected the world into two civilisational halves: Judeo-Christian and non-Judeo-Christian.<\/p>\n

Terming \u201cWestern civilisation\u201d as \u201cJudeo-Christian\u201d is something that right-wing political commentators in the West engage in almost all the time (as witness Donald Trump\u2019s exhortations to protect Judeo-Christian values). As Kevin Schultz points out in an article in the New Republic<\/i>, however, the word is something of an anachronism, a catchphrase the Right appropriated to justify their hostility to its opposite \u2013 whatever that is non-Judaic and non-Christian, particularly Islam. In other words it was defined NEGATIVELY, in opposition to the Other.<\/p>\n

For Amarasekara and de Silva, it is the Judaic-Christianity chinthanaya<\/i> that drove much of the West towards a post-Westphalian civilisational consensus in the 19th century. Presumably, parts of the West that did not conform to this consensus, because of the limitations of its rulers or because of revolutionary movements that prevented them from participation in a capitalist order, were incorporated to the dominant chinthanaya<\/i> following the collapse of Communism. This fits in neatly if with Huntington\u2019s central premise: that the fall of the Iron Curtain brought to the fore the civilisational clashes which the Cold War had concealed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Except that where Huntington talked about a conflict between Islam and the West, de Silva and Amarasekara rationalised that conflict between not two, but three cultures: Judeo-Christian, Islamic, and (Theravada) Buddhist.<\/p>\n

Huntington does not talk about the latter, and in fact doesn\u2019t even list it among the cultures he sees the world as being divided into (he doesn\u2019t as much as conflate it with Hinduism). One can say that de Silva and Amarasekara were overestimating the role played by Buddhist societies in the international order, but at the same time it is clear they were being prescient, if not far ahead of Huntington: as the rise of populist yet unethical evangelism, mass scale conversions, and onslaughts on temples and shrines have shown, Buddhism has become as much of a threat to the Judeo-Christian order as Islam, if only slightly less so (as evidenced by the rise in popularity of Buddhism in Western society). Despite this, it\u2019s clear that rifts between Buddhism and Christianity have been superseded, at present, by those between Islam and Christianity.<\/p>\n

In next week\u2019s column the breaking up of Islam into various sects, ranging from the secular to the mystical to the downright fanatical, in response to Western imperialism will be detailed, but what needs to be noted is that rifts between these two, combined with the shift to ideological fanaticism in the Muslim world, did not arise from itself. It was not a suis generis<\/i> or opa pathika<\/i> phenomenon.<\/p>\n

ISIS is only the latest manifestation of a long line of hostilities. How it came about and whether it will end are questions not even prophets are, I suspect, qualified to answer. The tragedy will keep on unfolding. From our side, we can only watch.<\/p>\n

To be continued…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":178419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"\nA History Of Civilisational Conflict - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A History Of Civilisational Conflict - Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[…]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-05-24T07:10:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-05-27T07:57:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/nalin-de-silva.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Uditha Devapriya\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Uditha Devapriya\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/\",\"name\":\"A History Of Civilisational Conflict - Colombo Telegraph\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/nalin-de-silva.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-05-24T07:10:23+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-05-27T07:57:11+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#\/schema\/person\/b5904a220267ce762570cbc2d72d3b58\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/nalin-de-silva.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/nalin-de-silva.jpg\",\"width\":1280,\"height\":720},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"A History Of Civilisational Conflict\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/\",\"name\":\"Colombo Telegraph\",\"description\":\"In journalism truth is a process\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#\/schema\/person\/b5904a220267ce762570cbc2d72d3b58\",\"name\":\"Uditha Devapriya\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b297a69a51f60ce1879f4e3c6c457808cd2a0c2abbbe541ce249772a702e36d5?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b297a69a51f60ce1879f4e3c6c457808cd2a0c2abbbe541ce249772a702e36d5?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Uditha Devapriya\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/author\/udithad\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A History Of Civilisational Conflict - Colombo Telegraph","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A History Of Civilisational Conflict - Colombo Telegraph","og_description":"[…]","og_url":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/","og_site_name":"Colombo Telegraph","article_published_time":"2019-05-24T07:10:23+00:00","article_modified_time":"2019-05-27T07:57:11+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1280,"height":720,"url":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/nalin-de-silva.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Uditha Devapriya","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Uditha Devapriya","Est. reading time":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/","url":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/","name":"A History Of Civilisational Conflict - Colombo Telegraph","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/nalin-de-silva.jpg","datePublished":"2019-05-24T07:10:23+00:00","dateModified":"2019-05-27T07:57:11+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#\/schema\/person\/b5904a220267ce762570cbc2d72d3b58"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/nalin-de-silva.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/nalin-de-silva.jpg","width":1280,"height":720},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-history-of-civilisational-conflict\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A History Of Civilisational Conflict"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/","name":"Colombo Telegraph","description":"In journalism truth is a process","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#\/schema\/person\/b5904a220267ce762570cbc2d72d3b58","name":"Uditha Devapriya","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b297a69a51f60ce1879f4e3c6c457808cd2a0c2abbbe541ce249772a702e36d5?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/b297a69a51f60ce1879f4e3c6c457808cd2a0c2abbbe541ce249772a702e36d5?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","caption":"Uditha Devapriya"},"url":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/author\/udithad\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/nalin-de-silva.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201941"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202007,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201941\/revisions\/202007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}