Global Research – December 2, 2024
The War on Gaza: A New Global Order in the Making?
By Amir Nour
[This is an abridged version of the article published by Global Research]
Since the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, a new “Sykes-Picot” seems to be taking shape in the region. But while the secret Franco-British agreements of 1916 aimed to “facilitate the creation of a State or a Confederation of Arab States”, the current process aims to dismantle existing States.
The October 2022 Biden-Harris Administration’s National Security Strategy document states that
We will effectively compete with the People’s Republic of China, which is the only competitor with both the intent and, increasingly, the capability to reshape the international order, while constraining a dangerous Russia.”
World Order
In the realm of international relations, order is commonly understood to mean the set of rules and institutions that govern relations between the key players in the international environment.
The Rand Corporation study of 2016 stated: in the modern era the foundation of the international order was built on the bedrock principles of the Westphalian system, which reflected fairly conservative conceptions of order while relying on pure balance-of-power politics in order to uphold the sovereign equality and territorial inviolability of States.
This Westphalian system led to the development of the territorial integrity norm, considered to this day as a cardinal norm against outright aggression toward neighbors with the aim of seizing their lands, resources or citizens, which was once a common practice in world politics. Thus defined in its main elements, this system has continued to prevail, especially since the Concert of Europe, also known as the Vienna Congress system, which from 1815 to 1914 established a whole series of principles, rules and practices having greatly contributed, after the Napoleonic wars, to maintaining a balance between European powers and shielding the Old Continent from a new all-out conflict. It stood fast until the outbreak of World War I.
The RAND report indicates that since 1945, the United States, which was the greatest beneficiary of the restored peace, has pursued its global interests through the creation and maintenance of international economic institutions, bilateral and regional security organizations, and liberal political norms and standards. These ordering mechanisms are often collectively referred to as the “international order”. However, in recent years, rising powers have begun to challenge the sustainability and legitimacy of some aspects of this order, which is clearly seen by the U.S. as a major challenge to its global leadership and vital strategic interests.
Subsequently, thanks to Western colonial expansion, the Westphalian system spread around the world and imposed the structure of a state-based international order, while failing, of course, to apply the concepts of sovereignty to colonies and colonized peoples.
Worldviews and World Orders: The “Individual and Secular” Vs. the “Collective and Sacred”
In modern Western societies, especially within the Anglosphere, it is an indisputable fact that since the Renaissance, which was at the origin of the Enlightenment movement and thought, there has been a gradual and probably decisive and irreversible shift away from the collective and the sacred toward the individual and the secular.
This being the case, in the self-image of Western or Westernized societies, the individual is ennobled and endowed with the power and tools to determine, alone, the course of his personal development and fulfillment as well as those of society, through the idiom – which is then erected into absolute dogma – of rights and the practice of a democracy based on laws and rules. The primacy of the individual over collective rights thus gradually paved the way for the dismantling of the post-war welfare state, making the dividing line between the public and private domains increasingly blurred, and providing wide-open avenues to an unbridled individualism.
In the following paragraphs, I shall attempt to explain why and how the 500-year long global dominance of the “Western civilization” is coming to an end – a fate first and most significantly epitomized and signaled by the West’s self-immolation during the bloodbath of the two Western civil wars, also known as the two World Wars it ignited in a span of only 30 years and led to the loss of 100 million lives. One good way of doing so is by surveying the writings of seven authors who have had a profound influence on Western Man’s thinking, and seven other authors who have predicted and warned against an impending twilight of this Western predominance.
Seven books are bedrock of Western thought
Seven books, published since the beginning of the European Renaissance and the Age of the Enlightenment, are bedrock of Western thought. These books are:
1. Thus, in his 1513 book “The Prince”, Italian Niccolò Machiavelli described methods – including through deliberate deceit, hypocrisy and perjury – that an aspiring prince can use to acquire the throne, or an existing prince can resort to in order to maintain his reign.
2. English Pastor Thomas Robert Malthus claimed in his 1798 “Essay on the Principle of Population” that population tends to grow faster than the food supply. He also posited that the planet would be unable to support more than one billion inhabitants, and advocated therefore for a limitation on the number of poor people as a better controlling device.
3. English Charles Darwin’s 1859 seminal book “The Origins of Species” promoted a theory of evolution by natural selection through the notion of “survival of the fittest”, thus so profoundly challenging Victorian-era ideas about the role of humans in the universe.
4. English philosopher/sociologist Herbert Spencer’s 1864 “Principles of Biology” transferred Darwin’s theory from the realm of nature to society. He believed that the strongest or fittest would and should dominate the poor and the weak who should ultimately disappear. This meant that certain races – in particular European Protestants – individuals and nations were entitled to dominate others because of their “superiority” in the natural order.
5. German Karl Marx’s 1867 “Capital” is the foundational theoretical text in materialist philosophy, economics and politics. Belief in some of its teachings led to communism and caused millions of deaths in the hope (or utopia) of bringing about an egalitarian society.
6. In his most celebrated book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” (1883-1885) German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche elaborates on ideas like eternal recurrence of the same, death of God, and the prophecy of the “Übermensch” (Overman), that is the ideal superior man of the future who could rise above conventional Christian morality to create and impose his own values.
7. Finally, Austrian Sigmund Freud’s theories, although subject to a lot of criticism, were enormously influential. His best-known 1930 book “Civilization and Its Discontents”, analyzes what he sees as the fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual. The primary friction, he asserts, stems from the fact that the immutable individual’s quest for instinctive freedom (notably desires for sex) are at odds with what is best for society (civilization) as a whole, which is why laws are created to prohibit killing, rape, and adultery, and implement severe punishments if they are broken. The result is an ongoing feeling of discontent among the citizens of that civilization.
Beyond shadow of a doubt, Western Man’s mindset, worldview, and behavior have been considerably influenced by the presuppositions of the “seven deadly sins’ embodied in this literature. This led to such calamities for the world as materialism, individualism, scientism, unbridled pursuit of profit, nationalism, racial supremacy, excessive will to power, wars, colonization, imperialism, and eventually, nihilism, civilizational decadence and decline of the Western world.
As a result of this irreversible process, especially following the moral wreckage and colossal human and material cost of the Great War, prominent thinkers and philosophers started to voice their concern about the coming demise of the West. Chiefly among those are seven authors whose books argue that while it is true that the West is in decline, there’s still time to mitigate it or even to reverse it and preserve it for posterity.
Those books are: Oswald Spengler’s “The Decline of the West” (1926); Arnold Toynbee’s “Civilization on Trial” (1958); Eric Voegelin’s “Order and History” (1956-1987); Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History and the Last Man” (1992); Samuel Huntington’s “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” (1996); Niall Ferguson’s “Civilization: The West and the Rest” (2012); and Michel Onfray’s “Décadence: Vie et mort du judéo-christianisme”[8]. Emmanuel Todd’s recently published book “La Défaite de l’Occident” also deserves just as much to be added to this selective collection.
Another stated or implied common feature of these books is the belief that the “Western Christian civilization” has to be defended anew both from internal decay and threats arising externally, mainly Islam, or even worse, an alliance of “Islamic” and “Sinic (Chinese)” civilizations. This fear of Islam is by no means new; it’s deep-rooted in the Western psyche. Today, however, it is being exacerbated to such an unprecedented extent that the debate on the resurgence of Islam has become, more often than not, inextricably intertwined with the talk about the decline of the Western civilization.
With regard to Huntington, it is important, first of all, to clarify with Professor of History at the prestigious Columbia University Richard Bulliet[13] that the phrase “Clash of Civilizations” was not invented by Huntington; it was most probably coined, for the first time, by Basil Mathews in his 1926 book titled “Young Islam on Trek: A Study in the Clash of Civilizations”.
Islam is increasingly at the center of their concerns today and a rampant Islamophobia has naturally, and dangerously, ensued.
Amir Nour is an Algerian researcher in international relations, author of the books “L’Orient et l’Occident à l’heure d’un nouveau Sykes-Picot” (The Orient and the Occident in Time of a New Sykes-Picot) Editions Alem El Afkar, Algiers, 2014 and “L’Islam et l’ordre du monde” (Islam and the Order of the World), Editions Alem El Afkar, Algiers, 2021.
