The most disappointing recent development in the world situation is the sudden out-of-control epidemic in India. Previously, many people thought that after this summer, with the full improvement of the epidemic in the United States and developed countries, they would be able to free up their hands to assist other countries, so that in a not too long time, the world economy will return to “normal”. Now it seems that the serious deterioration of the epidemic in India is causing the global epidemic to have to “enter the second half”, and if it is not done properly, this second half will need to be “overtime”, bringing even greater loss of life and economic damage.
As many have already seen, this “global pandemic” caused by the Chinese virus will profoundly change the way of life, and the longer the epidemic drags on, the greater the changes will be and the more far-reaching the impact will be. So, from a geopolitical point of view, what does the prolongation of this catastrophe brought about by the Chinese virus to the entire world mean? My recent reading of Huntington’s famous book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Reconstruction of World Order, has brought a lot of insight into thinking about this question.
To be honest, although I had long read Huntington’s famous essay from the 1990s, I had never bothered to read his masterpiece, published in 2007. As I read it, I became even more impressed with his vision and outspoken courage. Over the years, Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” theory has been severely criticized by the left for being “politically incorrect,” and even the right has not dared to come out in public to support him. However, in the real world, Huntington’s influence is actually growing. It is not difficult to imagine that the “political strongmen” and belligerent “hawks” of many countries will reread his masterpiece over and over again. In this way, Huntington’s moral accusation, which he could never escape, is that his “clash of civilizations theory” is suspected of aggravating the clash of civilizations.
One of Huntington’s key foresights was that the rise of China would pose a challenge to Western civilization that would endanger the global order. In my view, Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” framework is much deeper and more relevant to understanding the U.S.-China confrontation than the “Thucydides” trap. The U.S.-China conflict is not a mere “hegemonic” issue, but is based on an insurmountable conflict of values and cultural identity. Although there is also a “clash of civilizations” between non-Western civilizations, the main thread of the clash of civilizations is the dissatisfaction of non-Western civilizations with Western civilization that inevitably arises in the process of forced modernization. Thus, as the relative strength of Western civilization weakens, this accumulated dissatisfaction will lead to a catastrophic conflict.
Huntington also foresaw that the struggle for control of the South China Sea would be the trigger that would ignite the U.S.-China conflict. In the worst case scenario, the U.S. is likely to abandon the option of fighting China because it has the support of neither Japan nor India. Japan falls to China because China is too powerful, while India hopes to reap the benefits of an all-out U.S.-China confrontation. This analysis by Huntington does have a deep human and historical basis, but also, as he points out, history is unpredictable because there are so many different possibilities. Huntington clearly could not have foreseen the accidental leakage and global spread of the man-made “China virus” that would have had a major impact on the pattern of the clash of civilizations.
It now appears that the protracted global public health disaster caused by the China virus is making Huntington’s most pessimistic imaginings unlikely, i.e., that China would be greatly isolated in a showdown with the United States and Western civilization as a whole as a result of the rampant China virus. This should be a good thing, because it could not only calm a currently feverish China, but also create more opportunities for cooperation among what Huntington calls the “core civilizations,” thereby fundamentally reducing the risk of a global clash of civilizations. China’s isolation would also be a great beneficiary of this pattern, because even if China were to commit “civilizational suicide” not by foreign war but by civil strife, a more cooperative outside world would lend a helping hand.
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