By Rich Lowry
Friday, February 25, 2022
A clash of civilizations is upon us.
Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine doesn’t
just herald a new era in European security, it underlines a growing threat to
the American-led international order by two revanchist powers, Russia and China.
What they represent, in broad brush, is a civilizational
challenge. China and Russia don’t have a formal alliance, and their current
cooperative arrangement may well break down over time, but they share the same
interest in ending the long era of Western preeminence.
Russia can punch above its weight, but it fundamentally
represents a regional threat, in particular to a NATO alliance that has been a
keystone of Western security. Moscow seeks to divide European countries from
one another and diminish U.S. influence in Europe, toward the end of reversing
the post–Cold War settlement that was the fruit of the West’s triumph over the
Soviet Union.
What Putin seeks is consequential, but not nearly as
sweeping as Beijing’s goal of supplanting the United States at the top of the
hierarchy of nations. China wants nothing less than to restore itself as the
Middle Kingdom, owed the respect and obeisance of the rest of the world.
What unites Russia and China is that they are two
civilizations that feel they were humiliated and trampled by the West (Russia
at the end of the Cold War, China from the middle of the 19th century to the
middle of the 20th) and need to regain their rightful place in the sun.
There is an ideological element to the growing challenge,
as these two authoritarian regimes confront the democratic world, but the crux
of the matter is cultural — neither Russia nor China has ever been a liberal
democracy, and each country is reacting against international norms they’ve
never embraced.
The phrase “clash of civilizations” was made famous by a
1993 essay, later turned into a book, by the late social scientist Samuel
Huntington. His paradigm hasn’t been borne out in all particulars — many
post–Cold War conflicts have been between nations or sects within the same
civilization. But his basic contention looks prescient right now. “The fault
lines between civilizations,” he wrote, “will be the battle lines of the
future.”
It is imperative that the United States, as the leader of
the West and the only nation capable of maintaining the international order
that it has built over the last seven decades, rises to this challenge.
The previous hegemonic power, Britain, had a soft landing
because Pax Britannica was replaced by Pax Americana, run by a partner that
shared similar values and mindsets. The same wouldn’t be true if we hand the
baton over to China.
Consider the seas. As the navalist Jerry Hendrix notes,
the U.S. Navy has kept the seas safe and free for decades now. It’s no accident
that there’s been a surge of global trade during this period that has made
countries around the world more prosperous. Russia and especially China are a
threat to this system, seeking greater control of the seas for their own
purposes.
If the U.S. lacks the resources or will to resist this
Chinese aggrandizement, the rules of the road of international commerce will
change drastically in China’s favor. Imagine a kind of perpetual supply-chain
crisis imposed by China as a matter of policy.
A China that has achieved mastery in Asia and a position
of global predominance won’t leave us to tend our own garden at home. Former
Trump official Elbridge Colby warns that “it could intrude into and shape our
national life, using its position to coerce, bribe, and cajole companies,
individuals, and governments to do its will.”
Resisting the growing challenge to the West will require
continued engagement around the world and the return in certain respects to a
Cold War footing. Ducking our leadership role will mean inevitable decline and
the creation of a more hostile world, beholden to the values and interests of
rival civilizations.
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