Clash of the Uncivilized - Extremism Mars World Stage
Pacific News Service, Yu Bin Posted: Apr 14, 2001
Extremists from all the world's major civilizations are stepping forth, while moderates hide in the background. The United States could help break the cycle of violence in the world through strong moral leadership, writes PNS contributor Yu Bin. Instead, America may be contributing to a clash of the uncivilized.
Sept. 11 seems to have unleashed the most uncivilized part of every major religion in the world.
Extremists from every part of the world -- be they Islamic fundamentalists, Hindu revivalists, Palestinian "kamikazes," Jewish hard-liners or Christian right-wingers -- are plunging themselves into holy wars of their own definition and making.
The West's reaction to these clashes has been disappointing at best. The Bush team, which effectively destroyed the Taliban with a "with-us-or-against-us" policy, has yet to demonstrate its willingness and ability to reconstruct a global village of tolerance and coexistence for all.
President Bush is determined to settle unfinished business with Saddam Hussein, regardless of disagreement with allies, opposition from the Islamic world and a guaranteed backlash against the United States. This, coupled with the widely held perception of American indifference toward Palestinian suffering, has made America morally hypocritical in the eyes of many. This is strategically destabilizing for a highly interdependent, fragile world system.
In Europe, this global surge of uncivilized clashes has given rise to both anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic momentum. The fear of and hatred for "aliens" has so far bolstered far-right parties running on anti-immigrant themes in a growing number of European countries.
Total war between civilizations is rare in history. The clashes among the most uncivilized today are nonetheless turning Samuel P. Huntington's brilliant theorization on the clash of civilizations into reality.
Extremist conservative forces are running the show in much of the world, and the silence, impotence and disappearance of moderate forces globally has contributed to the current malaise. Already, the Arab world is being rapidly polarized between an ultra-conservative, generally pro-Western elite and growing anti-Western and anti-American societal forces.
In the United States, smart weaponry has been so efficient in reducing the number of homecoming body bags that the linkage between the general public and the Pentagon's overseas behavior seems to be finally severed. Unlike many of their parents, who were dedicated to peace and justice, today's American college students are drinking and partying as if there were no tomorrow.
But when Palestinian teenagers turn themselves into suicide bombers, killing innocent Israeli boys and girls as their answer to F-16s and Apache helicopters, the rest of the world also becomes victim -- physically and morally, sooner or later -- to this rapidly escalating cycle of violence.
In his effort to address the deficiency of capitalism 154 years ago, Karl Marx called upon the workers of the world to unite. The German theorist perhaps never imagined that the world's fundamentalists, hard-liners and extremists would now "unite," ironically by killing each other.
It is still possible to tame this uncivilized beast before it consumes us all. The world needs to address this increasingly dangerous situation not just with smart bombs, but also with political wisdom, meaningful diplomacy, patience, fairness and generosity. If the Civil Rights Movement during the Cold War made America a more attractive place than the former Soviet Union, an international civil rights movement led by a global power with global interests could turn America into a genuine global leader.
Such an effort, no matter how idealistic, will make the United States a power to be respected, not just feared.
Yu Bin (yu1999@hotmail.com) is associate professor of political science at Wittenberg University in Ohio and the author of several books. Most recently, he co-edited "Mao's Generals Remember Korea" (University of Kansas Press, 2001).
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