The Peninsula Foundation

Author: Andreas Herberg-Rothe

  • Between Western Universalism and Cultural Relativism

    Between Western Universalism and Cultural Relativism

    TPF Occassional Paper – 01/2025

    Between Western Eurocentric Universalism and Cultural Relativism: Mutual Recognition of the Civilisations of the Earth as precondition for the Survival of Mankind

     

    Andreas Herberg-Rothe

    In the 19th century, the Europeans conquered the whole world; in the 20th century, the defeated nations and civilizations had to live with the victorious West; in the 21st century, the civilizations of the earth must finally learn to live together.

    The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was codified by the United Nations in 1948. But the academic debate on the universality of the norms on which it is based is far from over. The question remains whether there are universal values other than those of the West. Western values alone are often implicitly regarded as universal. But whether this is scientifically justifiable is more than debatable. At the same time, few participants in the debate seriously doubt the need for universal human dignity.

    In the current debate, the binary positions of relativism and universalism are in a stalemate. A way out of this dichotomy would have to withstand the charge of ethnocentrism as well as particular relativism. Neither should dimensions of power and colonialism be ignored, nor should inhumane practices such as torture, humiliation and sexual violence be relativised by reference to another ‘culture’. If a universal approach is to be found, it should not be implicitly Westernised. This is a criticism of existing approaches, particularly in postcolonial theory.

    Historically, ethnocentrism, as a mere description of a state of affairs, has developed into a justification of ‘cultural superiority’ and, as a consequence, of oppression and exploitation.

    It is about the justifiability of universal norms on the one hand, and the inevitability of particular justifications of norms on the other. Historically, ethnocentrism, as a mere description of a state of affairs, has developed into a justification of ‘cultural superiority’ and, as a consequence, of oppression and exploitation. An initially unconscious preference for and belief in one’s own (cultural) perspective, the unquestioned truth and correctness of one’s own norms, values and patterns of behaviour, did not develop into ‘live and let live’. This form of ethnocentrism rejects the acceptance of cultural differences and represents an attitude that legitimises the destruction of the foreigner as a legitimate consequence of one’s own superiority. This, of course, refers mainly to the long-standing colonisation of supposedly ‘inferior’ peoples by European states and the associated cultural appropriation and cultural destruction or exploitation. These practices were morally legitimised on the basis of the conviction that one’s own way of life was superior to all other ways of life, not only militarily and politically, but also cognitively and morally. Ideologically, this argument is based on various elements, including the proselytising idea of the Christian message of salvation, the idea of the ‘progress’ of Western civilisation over other cultures and the idea of ‘racial doctrine’.

    In reaction to this unreflected, chauvinistic ethnocentrism, two main currents of contradiction developed: universalism and relativism. Universalism ‘assumes that it is possible to find standards of value that apply across cultural boundaries and are universally valid’, while the relativist position, in the absence of the possibility of an ‘extra-cultural’, objective judgement of a situation, all cultures, with everything that belongs to them, are ascribed the same value.

    Universalism

    The argumentative basis of Western universalism is the assumed fundamental equality of all human beings – both in their intellectual capacity (cognitive) and in their materiality (normative), which leads to a general insight into certain universal norms. The most obvious example of this is universal human rights, whose need for universality is clear from their very name.

    The cognitive premise of this kind of universalism goes back to the Enlightenment and the idea that all human beings have, in principle, the same cognitive capacities, even if they differ in individual cases. Only on this basis can the premise of normative universalism in the Enlightenment be realised. But this leads to various problems, paradoxes and points of criticism, because this conception is based on a particular understanding of rationality that is rooted in the thinking of Western modernity. For example, it excludes any kind of holism, although this conceptualisation is by no means irrational, but represents a different kind of rationality.

    The apparent paradox of the uniqueness of each culture lies in the claim to universality that all cultures are of equal value. We can therefore speak neither of a universalism that is purely independent of culture, nor of a norm that can be attributed to only one culture.

    One frequently pursued solution to the tension between universal norms, which nonetheless originate in only one culture, and different culturally determined norms has been to search for what is common to all cultures. This approach, which in itself goes further, was pursued above all in the project of the ‘global ethic’, which sought the common foundations of all religions. Western modern universalism had thus abandoned its claim to all-encompassing universality and limited itself to a kind of ‘core norms’. Instead of questioning specific cultural practices, the focus is on the fundamental premises of human coexistence. In my view, this project was doomed to failure after the initial euphoria, because the commonalities were based on an ever-increasing abstraction. This leads to two fundamental difficulties: the unresolved problem of drawing boundaries between different forms of norms, and the justification of particular norms on the basis of the universal assumption that all cultural norms are in principle equal. The apparent paradox of the uniqueness of each culture lies in the claim to universality that all cultures are of equal value. We can therefore speak neither of a universalism that is purely independent of culture, nor of a norm that can be attributed to only one culture.

    Strong normative relativism represents a ‘normative statement that all normative systems are fully justified in their diversity’ – a paradox since this is a statement with a claim to universal validity. In contrast, weak normative relativism is derived from the impossibility of universally valid normative statements, which merely means a ‘non-evaluability’ of normative systems  The demarcation between concrete social norms  is therefore very difficult

    Because of the difficulty of justifying strongly normative positions, ‘differentiated’ theories of relativism argue from a ‘weakened position’, albeit at the expense of unambiguity due to the lack of demarcation. Culture is then understood as ‘dynamic and hybrid’, while ‘normative overlaps’ are recognised without doubting the fundamental relativity of all norms.

    Paradoxical structure

    Relativism does not provide a ‘ground zero’ from which to make generally valid statements – this rules out the possibility of relativism being universally valid in itself, as well as the possibility of relativism being regarded as a ‘universal truth’.  Relativism cannot, therefore, justify itself out of itself, which it has in common with other theoretical currents in the age of postmodern critique (Herberg-Rothe 2025). Moreover, it does not necessarily apply universally, but can be limited in time or place: So the undecidability of normative conflicts might appear to be a particularly obvious contemporary phenomenon, without it being true for all times and places that normative conflicts are fundamentally undecidable. This concept of decidable and undecidable questions is based on the position of Heinz von Foerster’s radical constructivism. In his desperate attempt to leave behind all only apparent objectivity and the subjectivity of all norms, he resorts to a binary opposition between objectivity (in mathematics) and subjectivity.

    Due to the equivalence of all cultural standpoints and the lack of presupposed values, no well-founded criticism can take place, which makes relativism normatively arbitrary in relation to itself. Neither the persecution of minorities nor discrimination can be legitimately criticised if this is seen as a cultural particularity. The norm of ‘absolute tolerance of cultural differences’ is both empirically untenable and logically inconsistent, since here too there is a claim to universal validity. However, this point of criticism already presupposes the premise of universalism that there are conditions that are worthy of criticism despite their culture-specific justification.

    The observed norms and values appear to be specific responses to specific social problems but are in no way connected to the supposed ‘essence’ of a culture, as culture itself is perceived as hybrid, fluid and contradictory – instead of judging inhumane practices of one’s own culture, it is about understanding. In this context, the post-colonial reality should also be mentioned, in which there are no longer any cultures without interference.

    Relativism in its weakened form has moved away from normative statements. In the absence of a judgmental dimension, it no longer makes a statement about tolerance towards certain cultural practices. The observed norms and values appear to be specific responses to specific social problems but are in no way connected to the supposed ‘essence’ of a culture, as culture itself is perceived as hybrid, fluid and contradictory – instead of judging inhumane practices of one’s own culture, it is about understanding. In this context, the post-colonial reality should also be mentioned, in which there are no longer any cultures without interference.

    In order to be able to criticise on the basis of relativism in human practices despite all these objections, two possibilities need to be mentioned:  1. to establish ‘qualified norms’ without further justification in order to criticise on the basis of them, and 2. to practise a particular, culturally immanent criticism – of one’s own cultural norms on the basis of other norms of one’s own culture. For example, there are numerous culturalist justifications for gender equality, “general” human rights or democracy, which shows that a culturally immanent and particular critique of domination does not necessarily have to differ in content from a universalist critique (see for example Molla Sadra in Herberg-Rothe 2023). Both solutions are in no way ideal, because in the first attempt, we encounter a hidden enthnocentrism, and in the latter, the problem arises between contrasting norms within one culture.

    Covert Westernisation and reverse Ethnocentrism

    Relativism is also a theory of Western origin, which can be seen in the Western-influenced ‘idea of tolerance’ – but this point also applies mainly to a normatively strongly interpreted relativism.  Inverse ethnocentrism, on the other hand, means ‘labelling everything foreign as right’.

    What underlies both, universalism and relativism, is the struggle for knowledge: which norms can be taken for granted? Or, more philosophically, what can we know? Both positions have argumentative shortcomings that are not easily remedied.

    Knowledge is closely linked to power (the power to define, to enforce, to disseminate or to withhold knowledge) and thus to domination and often to violence. This connection is expressed in social tensions between the legitimation of domination and the subversion of existing conditions.

    The use of human rights to achieve social change raises the question of “whether this process is not itself, in terms of knowledge, a bureaucratic, almost classically ethnocentric process with an imperial claim to universality’ that spreads ‘Western culture’ and its models of action globally’.

    Transnational encounters since the colonial era have steadily increased due to globalisation and require reassessment. The use of human rights to achieve social change raises the question of “whether this process is not itself, in terms of knowledge, a bureaucratic, almost classically ethnocentric process with an imperial claim to universality’ that spreads ‘Western culture’ and its models of action globally’. At the same time, this process opens up a dialogue beyond culturally determined borders, which we must be aware in order to transcend them.

    How could this stalemate between ethno Universalism and cultural relativism be overcome, at least in perspective?

     A new approach to practical intercultural philosophy

    Intercultural philosophy can play an important role in this process of mutual recognition among the civilizations of the earth. Since Karl Jaspers, the godfather of intercultural philosophy, acknowledged the existence of four different civilizations (Holenstein 2004, Jaspers 1949), immense progress has been made in understanding the different approaches. Nevertheless, all civilizations have asked themselves the same question but have found different answers. Cross-cultural philosophy is thus possible because we as human beings ask the same questions (Mall 2014). For example, in terms of being born, living and dying, between immanence and transcendence, between the individual and the community, between our limited capacities and the desire for eternity, the relationship between us as animals and the ethics that constitute us as human beings – our ethical beliefs may be different, but all civilizations have an ethical foundation. In fact, I would argue that it is ethics that distinguishes us from animals, not our intellect (Eiedat 2013 about Islamic ethics). We may realize the full implications of this proposition when we relate it to the development of artificial intelligence.

    Detour via Clausewitz

    An alternative solution to the problem raised by Lyotard suggests another dialectic, as implicitly developed by Carl von Clausewitz based on his analysis of attack and defence. The approach of Clausewitz is insofar of paramount importance because it presupposes neither a primacy of identity in relation to difference, contrast, and conflict, nor to the reverse as in the conceptualizations of the post-structuralists (Herberg-Rothe 2007, Herberg-Rothe/Son 2018) or the adherents of a purified Western modernity in the concepts of Habermas and Giddens. In contrast to binary opposites, Clausewitz’s model of the “true logical opposition and its identity,” a structure-forming “field” (something like a magnetic field) allows us to think of manifold mediations as well as differences between opposites. If we formulate such an opposition in the framework of a two-valued logic (which formulates the opposition with the help of a negation or an adversarial opposition), there is a double contradiction on both sides of the opposition. From the assumption of the truth of one pole follows with necessity the truth of the other, although the other formulates the adversarial opposition of the first and vice versa. Hegel’s crucial concepts such as being and nothingness, coming into being and passing away, quantity and quality, beginning and ending, matter and idea are such higher forms of opposition which, when determined within the framework of a two-valued logic, lead to logical contradictions. Without taking into account the irrevocable opposites and their unity, a “pure thinking of difference” leads either to “hyper-binary” systems (such as the relation of system and lifeworld, of constructivism and realism) or to unconscious absolutizations of new mythical identities (such as Lyotard’s notion of plasma as well as Derrida’s chora).

    Clausewitz’s “true logical opposition” and its identity enables the thinking of a model in which the opposites remain irrevocable, but at the same time, in contrast to binary opposites

    1. both remain in principle equally determining; this model is therefore neither dualistic nor monistic, but cancels this opposition in itself and sets it anew at a new level.;
    2. structure a “field” of multiple unities and differences;
    3. enable a conceptualization, in which the opposites have a structure-forming effect, but do not exist as identities detached from one another,
    4. and in which there are irrevocable boundaries between opposites and differences, which at the same time, however, are historically socially distinct. The concrete drawing of boundaries is thus contingent, without the existence of a boundary as such being able to be abolished (Herberg-Rothe 2007, 2019 and Herberg-Rothe/Son 2018). Clearly, in the, albeit limited, model of a magnet neither the south nor north pole exists as identity, a (violent) separation between both even leads to a duplication of the model. At the same time, both poles are structures forming a magnetic field, without a priority for either side. And finally, Clausewitz’s model of the true logical opposition goes beyond the one of polarity, because it additionally allows us to think of manifold forms of transitions from one pole to the other (Herberg-Rothe 2007, Herberg-Rothe/Son 2018).

    This conception of an “other” dialectic is also the methodological precondition of thinking “between” Lyotard and Hegel (Herberg-Rothe 2005). It treatises above all categories such as mostly asymmetrical transitions and reversals as well as the “interspace” (Arendt) between opposites. With such an understanding of dialectics, it is possible to understand the apparent contradiction between the rejection of the highest meta-meta-language and the fact that the language used in this critique, theory, is itself this actually excluded “highest” level of language, not as a logical contradiction, but as a performative one. Such performative contradictions between what a proposition, statement, etc., says and what it is are at the heart of Hegel’s notion of dialectic. Of all things, Hegel’s criticized and rejected form of dialectic makes it possible to conceive of these contradictions not as “logical” ones, but as ones that ground, but also force, further development as distinct from mythical ways out. This form of dialectic, however, contains at the same time the demonstration of a principle of development without conclusion and thus puts Hegel’s “great logic” as “thoughts of God before the creation of the world” in its place (Hegel Preface to the Science of Logic, Wdl I, Werke 5). Nevertheless, these performative contradictions should also not be absolutized, they are just one aspect of a different dialectics.

       Although I advocate the development of an intercultural philosophy as part of transnational governance and mutual recognition among the civilizations of the earth, I would like to highlight the main problem, at least from my point of view. Aristotle already asked the crucial question of whether the whole is more than the sum of its parts. If I understand Islamic philosophy correctly, it starts from the assumption that the whole is indeed more than the sum of its parts – one could call this position a holistic approach (Baggini 2018). In contrast, Western thought is characterized by the approach of replacing the whole precisely by the sum of its parts. We might call this an atomistic approach – only the number of electrons, neutrons, distinguishes atoms etc. In terms of holism, I would argue that the task might be to distinguish the whole from mere hierarchies – in terms of the concept of harmony in Confucianism, I would argue that true harmony is associated with a balance of hierarchical and symmetrical social and international relations. Instead of the false assumption in Western approaches that we could transform all hierarchical relationships into symmetrical ones, we need to strike a balance between the two. Harmony does not mean absolute equality in the meaning of sameness but implies a lot of tension. Harmony can be characterized by unity with difference, and difference with unity, as already mentioned (Herberg-Rothe/Son 2018). I sometimes compare this perspective to a wave of water in a sea: if there are no waves, the sea dies; if the waves are tsunamis, they are destructive to society.

    I start from the following fivefold distinction of thinking, based on the fundamental contrasts of life (while Baggini 2018 and Jaspers 1949, for example, reduce different ways of thinking largely to the development of functional differentiation).

    1. Attraction and repulsion, closeness and distance, equality and freedom, love and hate,
    2. Beginning and ending (birth and death, finiteness – infinity),
    3. Happiness and suffering (in Greek and Indian philosophy
    4. Part-whole (individual-community, immanence-transcendence, holism-hierarchies).
    5. Knowledge (experience, positive sciences, extended sense impressions,

    and method – mathematics and logic) versus feeling/the concept of intuition, belief.

    The listed methodological approaches try to cope with unity and opposition. In my opinion, they are also necessary approaches and can be seen as differentiations within the idea of polarity.

    Differentiations in thinking

    1. Either – or systems, = Western modern thought, concentration on the method (since Descartes and Kant, Vienna Circle, Tarski), democracy, individualism, in Islam Ibn Sina and Ibn Khaldun, in Chinese thought the tradition of Han Fei and Li Se; Yan 2011, Zhang 2012).
    2. As well as – Daoism, early Confucianism, but also New Age approaches, Heißenberg’s uncertainty principle, and dialectics.
    3. Neither-Nor enables the construction of “being-in-between”; Plato’s metaxis plus Indian logic, the whole concept of diversity, difference thinking, de-constructivism, the post-structuralism, post-colonialism
    4. system thinking, structuralism – here I struggle with the distinction between holism (in the Islamic worldview) and pure hierarchies (in Islam Al Ghazali); inherent logic of systems (Luhmann) and functional differentiation; in Eastern philosophies, we find this approach mainly in highlighting spiritual approaches
    5. process thinking – in ethics this can be found e.g. in utilitarianism, stage theories (Piaget, Kohlberg; Hegel’s world history as the progress of freedom consciousness), Hegel’s becoming at the beginning of his “logic” as “surplus” of coming into being and passing away; cycle systems; enlightenment; Dharma religions, in China, Mohism.

    While there are probably already worked out methods for points 1, 4 and 5, I lack such for 2 and 3, which are always in danger of expressing arbitrariness. This becomes especially clear in the mysticism of the New Age movement.

    How can this fivefold distinction be derived from one model, which is not a totalizing approach (Mall 2014)? For this purpose I use  again the simplified model of polarity. This method is elaborated in my Clausewitz interpretation of his wondrous trinity and the dialectic of attack and defense (Herberg-Rothe 2007 and 2019).

    Differences in polarity as a unifying model.

    1. Either-Or systems: Each of the two poles is either a north or a south pole (= tertium non datur). We find those approaches in mathematics, logic, rationality and methods in general; such conceptualizations are also to be found in zero-sum games – what one side gains, the other loses (rationality, if then Systems, in Cina Lli Si and Han Fei);
    2. As well As (earlier Confucius, Daoism): the magnet as unity consists of the opposites of both poles and the magnet “is” both north pole and south pole. This is analyzed in detail in my Clausewitz interpretation on the basis of war as unity and irrevocable opposition of attack and defence. We find this thinking, especially in Chinese ideas of win-win solutions. Here, competition and conflict in one area do not exclude cooperation in another (Herberg-Rothe 2007, Chinese version 2020.)
    3. Neither North nor South pole exist as identities (Plato’s metaxis, Indian thought) – they are rather dynamic movements in between the opposites (see in detail again Clausewitz’s concept of attack and defense; this understanding is the methodological basis of diversity; Herberg-Rothe 2007; see the French theorists of post-structuralism).
    4. Structure (system theories, Islamic holism): North pole and south pole “construct” a magnetic field outside and inside the materiality of the magnet, a non-material structure.
    5. Process thinking: Here the simplified example of the magnet finds its end – but can be understood beyond the physical analogy easily as movement from the south pole to the north pole and “always further” (sine curve on an ascending x-axis). In this sense, Already Hegel had considered the discovery of polarity as of infinite importance but criticized it because in this model the idea of transition from one pole to the other was missing (Herberg-Rothe 2000 and 2007). Molla Sadra (1571-1636), the most important philosopher of the School of Isfahan, elaborated this progressive circular movement particularly clearly. Although he is mainly regarded as an existential philosopher who denies any essence, he actually postulated a kind of progressive circle as the decisive essence (for an overview see Yousefi 2016, for more details see Rizvi 2021).

    A unifying model – Virtuous Concentric Circles

    Starting from the premise that Western thinking is shaped by the billiard model of international relations and that of all other civilizations by concentric circles and cycles (Herberg-Rothe/Son 2018), the aim is to work out how extensively both models determine our thinking in the respective cultural sphere in order to develop a perspective that includes both sides. In doing so, I do not assume one-dimensional causes for violent action, nor do I assume pure diversity without any explanation of causes. Instead, I work in perspective with virtuous and vicious circles – in these circles, there are several causes, but they are not unconnected to each other but are integrated into a cycle. So far, this methodological approach has probably been applied mainly in the Sahel Syndrome. The methodological approach would involve trying to break vicious circles and transform them into virtuous circles – this is where I would locate the starting point of a new approach to intercultural philosophy.

    Ideally, a virtuous circular perspective would look like this:

    1. Understanding of discourses on how conflicts with cultural/religious differences are justified/articulated.
    2. Attribution of these differences to different concepts of civilization.
    3. Mutual recognition of the same issues in different ways of thinking.
    4. Self-knowledge not only as religion or culture, but as a civilization.
    5. the self-commitment to one’s own civilizational standards, norms (Jaspers 1949 and Katzenstein 2009) etc., which can also contribute to the management of intra-societal and international conflicts.

    At the infinite end of this process would be a kind of mutual recognition of the civilizations of the earth, accompanied by their self-commitment to their own civilizational norms. My colleague Peng Lu from Shanghai University has made the following suggestion: In the 19th century, the Europeans conquered the whole world; in the 20th century, the defeated nations and civilizations had to live with the victorious West; in the 21st century, the civilizations of the earth must finally learn to live together.  This is in my view the task of the century. Solving the problem of ethno-universalism and cultural relativism has nothing to do with wishful thinking, but is the precondition for the survival of humankind in the twenty-first century, unless we want to repeat the catastrophes of the twentieth century on a larger scale.

    References: 

    Baggini, Julian (2018), How the World Thinks. A global history of philosophy. Granta: London.

    Clausewitz, Carl von (2004) On War. Edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Princeton: Princeton University Press

    Fukuyama, Francis (2018), Against Identity Politics. The new tribalism and the crisis of democracy. In Foreign Affairs, Sept./Oct. Retrieved from: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2 018-08-14/against-identity-politics; last accessed, Oct. 3, 2018, 10.21.

    Herberg-Rothe, Andreas (2003/2017), Der Krieg. 2nd ed., Campus: Frankfurt.

    Herberg-Rothe, Andreas and Son, Key-young (2018), Order wars and floating balance. How the rising powers are reshaping our worldview in the twenty-first century. Routledge: New York.

    Herberg-Rothe, Andreas (2023) Toleration and mutual recognition in hybrid Globalization. In: International Studies Journal, Tehran, Print version: September 2023; Volume 20, Issue 2 – Serial Number 78; pp 51-80.

    Also published Online: URL: https://www.isjq.ir/article_178740.html?lang=en; last access 4.11. 2023.

    Herberg-Rothe, Andreas (2024), Lyotard versus Hegel. The violent end of postmodernity. In: Philosophy and Sociology. Belgrade 2024/2025 (forthcoming)

    Jaspers, Karl (1949), Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte. Munich: Piper 1949 (numerous follow-up editions).

    Katzenstein, Peter J (2009). Civilizations in World Politics. Pluralist and pluralist perspectives. Routledge: New York

    Li, Chenyang (2022), “Chinese Philosophy as a World Philosophy”. In: Asian Studies, September 2022,  pp. 39-58.

    Yan, Xuetong. Ancient Chinese thought, modern Chinese power. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

    Zakaria, Fareed (2008), The Post-American World, New York/London: W. W. Norton, 2008.

    Zhang, Wei-Wei (2012), The China Wave: Rise of a Civilizing State. Hackensack: World Century Publishing Corporation.

     

    Feature Image Credit: www.ft.com

  • The Cultural Revolution from the Right: From the Democratic Concept of the People to its Ethnic-religious Understanding

    The Cultural Revolution from the Right: From the Democratic Concept of the People to its Ethnic-religious Understanding

    Despite all the real political problems we face, it is essential for the twenty-first century to defend the equality of all people, regardless of biological differences such as gender or ethnicity. It is not our biology that defines us as human beings, but our morality.
    According to Dominique Moisi, the Western states are consumed with fear of decline, the Islamic-Arab world is full of despair at unfulfilled promises, and East and Southeast Asia are full of hope for a better life. These global political sentiments are largely responsible for the escalation of conflicts, the disintegration of social cohesion and the spread of violence. 
    More than 50 years ago, a cultural revolution from the left shook the whole world. In the USA, there were demonstrations against the Vietnam War, and the hippie movement gathered hundreds of thousands in search of a new lifestyle and attitude to life. Flower, power, love was the motto of the legendary Woodstock. In Germany, young people turned against old traditions and the concealment of their parents’ and grandparents’ guilt under fascism. But here, too, the double face of the youth movement became apparent: when they celebrated the North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh in their demonstrations, they were in no way aware of the political practice in North Vietnam. This process was even more dramatic during the Chinese Cultural Revolution when the youth were mobilised to ultimately legitimise the claim to power of the “Great Leader” Mao-TseTong. The lesson of that period was that a cultural revolution must precede political change. For some time now, a cultural revolution from the right has been following this pattern. It is characterised on the one hand by social developments in polarised societies, and on the other by a targeted and strategic discourse on the part of the new right. Without underestimating the importance of personalities such as former and newly elected President Trump, as well as Erdogan in Turkey and Putin in Russia (and many others) for this development, they have only been able to achieve such success because they have tapped into the “zeitgeist”. According to Dominique Moisi, the Western states are consumed with fear of decline, the Islamic-Arab world is full of despair at unfulfilled promises, and East and Southeast Asia are full of hope for a better life. These global political sentiments are largely responsible for the escalation of conflicts, the disintegration of social cohesion and the spread of violence.
    In the Western world, instead of recognising the equality of other civilisations, nations and states, the “others” were blamed for the loss of the “white man’s” superiority. The ideology of the white man’s burden to educate the uneducated and indigenous peoples of the world, developed at the beginning of the last century, was revived after the fall of the Soviet Union, but could no longer be sustained with the rise of the others and the newly industrialised nations. However, a dilemma arose – if the success of the others was attributed to them, they would be strengthened and the whites would be even less able to maintain their own sense of superiority. So people looked for internal others to blame for their own decline. This is at the heart of the cultural revolution from the right. It is explained by the fear of no longer being able to maintain the supposed superiority of the “white man” if, for example, a country like Indonesia (i.e. no longer just Japan and China) overtakes Germany’s gross domestic product around 2030. Meanwhile, the US, Germany and many other European countries are not only no longer relatively superior, but parts of the US, for example, are at levels that used to be ascribed only to developing countries. And scapegoats are easy to find and, above all, interchangeable – sometimes it can be emancipated women, migrants, the “elites”, the Chinese, Africans, African-Americans, or anyone who is different. Trump’s statement that migrants are taking “black jobs” from US Americans reveals the core of this ideology: the MAGA movement is the best illustration of this development. Despite Trump’s irrationality and narrow-mindedness, “Make America Great Again” can only take hold if many people fear decline or have already experienced it. Like the masterminds of the cultural revolution on the right, they are trying to conquer the more rural regions first.
    The reference to ethnic pluralism is also one of the defining characteristics of the New Right. The right of all cultures and ethnic groups to exist is unconditionally recognised, but only as long as people remain among themselves or on the territory intended for them. Trump’s idea of expelling millions of Latinos after winning the election corresponds perfectly with the German right’s idea of enforcing re-migration. In Germany, Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger, Ernst Jünger and Oswald Spengler, and even Nietzsche, are relativised in order to legitimise the cultural revolution of the right. Antonio Gramsci, actually a progressive Marxist, whose concept of achieving cultural hegemony in the “pre-political space” is pursued by the Right as “metapolitics”, gains central importance.
    At its core, however, the new right is about undermining human equality – in its view, we are only equal to our own nation or religion and gender. This exclusionary equality only with one’s own kind is at the heart of the right’s cultural revolution, whose ideal model is itself based on hierarchical notions, a graded dignity. Such attempts to undo the gains of the struggle for equality in a counter-revolution can be found all over the world – whether in nationalism, ethnocentrism, misogyny, cultural relativism (“they just have a different culture”) or thinly veiled racism.
    The only thing “new” about this right-wing movement is that it uses different terms. The New Right concentrates on the “battle for the heads”, leaving the battles for the streets and, in some cases, the parliaments to other groups of the extreme right. The storming of the Capitol and the German Bundestag were such actions of the extreme right. It must be admitted that the whole world is in turmoil. At its core, however, the new right is about undermining human equality – in its view, we are only equal to our own nation or religion and gender. This exclusionary equality only with one’s own kind is at the heart of the right’s cultural revolution, whose ideal model is itself based on hierarchical notions, a graded dignity. Such attempts to undo the gains of the struggle for equality in a counter-revolution can be found all over the world – whether in nationalism, ethnocentrism, misogyny, cultural relativism (“they just have a different culture”) or thinly veiled racism. It is also marked by the revival of toxic masculinity (Raewen Connel) through the MAGA movement and in particular Trump’s enthusiasm for the wrestling mentality and martial arts. Opinions can be divided on these as sports, but they have no place in politics and point to an absolutely exaggerated and violent masculinity that Trump embodies. These political discourses are used to win elections in the West. In one sentence, the New Right shifts the concept of the democratic people to the ethno-religious people.
    When the few people of Pegida (Patriotic Europeans to defend the Abendland) in Germany shout into the camera: “We are the people”, they are turning the slogan of the democratic revolution of 1989 into an ethno-nationalist revolution. From the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, we have witnessed this transformation from the democratic to the ethnic concept of the people. Despite all the real political problems we face, it is essential for the twenty-first century to defend the equality of all people, regardless of biological differences such as gender or ethnicity. It is not our biology that defines us as human beings, but our morality.
    Feature Image Credit: Equality Trust
    from ‘The Link Between Inequality and the Far-Right’ – https://equalitytrust.org.uk
    The far-right has always been part of politics. The current global wave of far-right populist political movements began in the late 1970s, grew in the 1990s, and accelerated dramatically in the late 2000s. It has mirrored a sharp increase in inequality across developed economies, the globalisation of neoliberal economics, and the creation of an international super-rich. 
  • The catastrophe of modern capitalism: Inequality as an aim in Neo-Liberal-Ideology

    The catastrophe of modern capitalism: Inequality as an aim in Neo-Liberal-Ideology

    Neoliberalism is the dominant form of capitalism that began in the 1980s as a way to promote global trade and grow all economies. That was a false promise, whereas in essence it supported individuals amassing massive wealth in the name of market forces, at the expense of common man by ensuring states minimise their role and eliminate welfare economics. It ensured least-developed and developing economies remained resource providers to developed economies, exemplifying extraction and exploitation. Neoliberalism is a top down economic policy that does not benefit those who are impoverished. The inequality we see on a global scale is mind-numbing. In 2006, the world’s richest 497 people were worth 3.5 trillion US dollars representing 7% of the world’s GDP. That same year, the world’s lowest income countries that housed 2.4 billion people were worth just 1.4 trillion US dollars, which only represents 3.3% of the world’s GDP. The situation today is far worse as Andreas Herberg-Rothe explains in his critical analysis below. The world is in urgent need of freeing itself from the clutches of neoliberal capitalism. 

     

    ..neoliberalism contains a general tendency towards an extensive economisation of society. Thus, inequality transcends the economy and becomes the dominant trend in society, as in racism, radical extremism, and hate ideologies in general: Us against the rest, whoever the rest may be.

     

    Following on from the initial question about Hannah Arendt’s thesis that equality must be confined to the political sphere, we must ask how democracy and human rights can be preserved in the face of social inequality on an extraordinary scale. By the end of this century, 1% of the world’s population will own as much as the “rest” of the other 99%. And already today, only 6 people own more property than 3.6 billion. Let us take a closer look at some of the ideas of the currently dominant neo-liberalism, which sheds some light on the acceptance of these current obscene inequalities. For this ideology, social inequality is a means to greater wealth. However, since it sets no limits on social inequality, it can be used to legitimize even obscene inequalities. We argue that neoliberalism as an ideology is the result of the spread of a specific approach to economic thought that has its roots in the first half of the twentieth century, when Walter Lippmann’s seminal book “An Inquiry into the Principles of the Good Society” (1937), followed by Friedrich August von Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” (1944), gave rise to neoliberalism. During the Cold War period, neoliberals gained more and more ground in establishing a global system. With the support of Milton Friedman and his “Chicago Boys,” the first attempt to establish a pure neoliberal economic system took place in Chile under the military dictatorship of General Pinochet in the 1970s. In the last decade of the Cold War, neoliberal architects such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan began to impose the new economic model. Since the end of the Cold War, the final development was that neoliberalism became THE hegemonic economic system, as capitalism was de jure allowed to spread unhindered worldwide, and neoliberalism continued on its way to becoming the dominant belief system.

    The critical message in this sense is the following: This process is not limited to an economic dimension – neoliberalism contains a general tendency towards an extensive economisation of society. Thus, inequality transcends the economy and becomes the dominant trend in society, as in racism, radical extremism, and hate ideologies in general: Us against the rest, whoever the rest may be.

    When we talk about global inequality in the era of neoliberalism, we are referring to two other major developments: To this day, inequality between the global North and South persists. While the total amount of poverty has decreased, as seen in the World Bank’s report (2016), there is still a considerable gap between those countries that benefit from the global economy and those that serve as cheap production or commodity areas. The second development takes place in countries that are more exposed to the neoliberal project. In this sense, societies are turning into fragmented communities where the “losers of neoliberalism” are threatened by long-term unemployment, a life of poverty, social and economic degeneration.

    After three decades of intense global neo-liberalism, the result has been a significant increase in social inequalities, polarization and fragmentation of societies (if not the entire world society), not to mention a global financial crisis in 2008 caused by escalating casino capitalism and the policies of a powerful global financial elite.

    We are witnessing a global and drastic discontent of peoples, fears and anger, feelings of marginalization, helplessness, insecurity and injustice. After three decades of intense global neo-liberalism, the result has been a significant increase in social inequalities, polarization and fragmentation of societies (if not the entire world society), not to mention a global financial crisis in 2008 caused by escalating casino capitalism and the policies of a powerful global financial elite. We witness a global and drastic dissatisfaction of the peoples, fears, and anger, the feelings of marginalization, helplessness, insecurity, and injustice. After three decades of intense worldwide Neo-Liberalism, the result significantly intensified social inequalities, polarization, and fragmentation of societies (if not the entire world society), not to mention a global financial crisis in 2008 caused by escalating casino capitalism and the policy of a powerful global finance elite.

    The central critique is that neoliberalism includes social inequality as part of its basic theory. Such capitalism emphasizes the strongest/fittest (parts of society) and uses inequality as a means to achieve more wealth.

    Remarkably and frighteningly, the situation outlined does not provoke the oppressed, marginalised, and disadvantaged populations to turn against their oppressors and their exploitation. These people tend to sympathize with ideological alternatives, either with more triumphant (right-wing) populist movements and parties or are attracted by radical/fundamentalist religious groups such as the Islamic State. The result is an increase in polarization and violence, and even more protracted wars and religious-ideological disputes. Europe is not exempt from the trend toward obscene social inequality. We also find a polarization between rich and poor, between those who have good starting conditions and those who have little chance of prosperity, between those who are included and those who feel excluded. The fact that Europe has so far largely avoided populist parties gaining administrative power (although we have already witnessed this process in France, Hungary and Poland) may be due to the remnants of the welfare state. In this respect, at least a minimum of financial security remains and limits the neoliberal trend. In the United States, on the other hand, a flawless populist could reach the highest office. The people, stuck in their misery, fear and insecurity, voted for a supposed alternative to the neoliberal establishment, but above all against other social outcasts whom they blamed for their misery. This brings us to the central critique of neoliberalism, a system that has caused fundamental social oddities, the impact of which as an ideology has been highlighted above. The central critique is that neo-liberalism includes social inequality as part of its basic theory. Such capitalism emphasizes the strongest/fittest (parts of society) and uses inequality as a means to achieve more wealth.

    In an interview with the German magazine Wirtschaftswoche, Hayek spoke bluntly about the neoliberal value system: He emphasizes that social inequality, in his view, is not at all unfortunate, but rather pleasant. He describes inequality as something simply necessary (Hayek, 1981). In addition, he defines the foundations of neo-liberalism as the “dethronement of politics” (1981). First, he points out the importance of protecting freedom at all costs (against state control and the political pressure that comes with it). The neoliberals see even a serious increase in inequality as a fundamental prerequisite for more economic growth and the progress of their project. One of the most renowned critics of neoliberalism in Germany, Christoph Butterwegge (2007), sees in this logic a perfidious reversal of the original intentions of Smith’s (reproduced in 2013) inquiry into the wealth of nations in the current precarious global situation. The real capitalism of our time – neoliberalism – sees inequality as a necessity for the functioning of the system. It emphasizes this statement: The more inequality, the better the system works. The hardworking, successful, and productive parts of society (or rather the economy) deserve their wealth, status, and visible advantage over the rest (the part of society that is seen as less strong or less ambitious). The deliberate production of inequality sets in motion a fatal cycle that leads to the current tense global situation and contributes to several intra-societal conflicts.

    The market alone is the regulating mechanism of development and decision-making processes within a society dominated by neo-liberalism, and as such is not politics at all. This brings us closer to the relationship between neoliberalism and democracy. The understanding of democracy in neoliberal theory is, so to speak, different. Principles such as equality or self-determination, which are prominent in the classical understanding of democracy, are rejected. Neo-liberalism strives for a capitalist system without any limits set by the welfare state and even the state as such, in order to shape, enforce and legitimize a society dominated only by the market economy. Meanwhile there are precarious tendencies recognizable, where others than the politically legitimized decision-makers dictate the actual political and social direction (e.g. the extraordinarily strong automobile lobby with VW, BMW and Mercedes in Germany or big global players in the financial sector like the investment company BlackRock). Neoliberalism only seemingly embraces democracy. The elementary democratic goals (protection of fundamental and civil rights and respect for human rights) can no longer be fully realized. Democracy cannot defend itself against neo-liberalism if political decision-makers do not resolutely oppose the neo-liberal zeal for expansion into all areas of society. The dramatic increase in inequality coincides with the failure of the state as an authority of social compensation and adjustment, as neoliberalism eliminates the state as an institution that mediates conflicts in society. To put it in a nutshell: Whereas in classical economic liberalism the state’s role is to protect and guarantee the functioning of the market economy, in neoliberalism the state must submit to the market system.

    Our discussion of neoliberalism here is not about this conceptualization and its history, which would require a separate article. Nevertheless, we want to emphasize that in neo-liberalism, social inequality is a means to achieve more wealth for the few. Therefore, we argue that there must be a flexible but specific limit to social inequality in order to achieve this goal, while excessive inequality is counterproductive.

    As noted above, moderate levels of inequality are not necessarily wrong per se. In a modern understanding, it also contributes to a just society in which merit, better qualifications, greater responsibility, etc. are rewarded. The principle of allowing differences, as used in the theory of the social market economy, is a remarkably positive one when such differentiation leads to the well-being of the majority of people in need. However, neo-liberalism adopts a differentiation that intensifies inequality to a very critical dimension. The current level of social inequality attacks our system of values, endangers essential democracy, and destroys the social fabric of societies. Even if we consider a “healthy” level of inequality to be a valuable instrument for a functioning market society, what has become the neoliberal reality has nothing to do with such an ideal. Neoliberalism implies an antisocial state of a system in which inequality is embedded in society as its driving mechanism. Consequently, we witness a division between rich and poor in times of feudalism. A certain degree of social equalization through the welfare state and a minimum of social security is no longer guaranteed. The typical prerequisites today are flexibility, performance, competitiveness, etc. – In general, we see the total domination of individualism within neo-liberalism, leading to the disintegration of society. In one part of the world, mainly in the Global South, we observe the decline of entire population groups. In contrast, in other parts of the world we see fragmented societies in hybrid globalization and increasing tendencies towards radical (religious) ideologies, violence and war.

    It must be acknowledged that neoliberalism was one of the causes of the rise of the newly industrialized nations, but the overemphasis on individual property also contributes to obscene inequality and thus to the decline of civilized norms.

    The Polish-British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman summed up this problem by comparing it to the slogan of the French Revolution: “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”. According to the proponents of the time, each element could only be realized if all three remained firmly together and became like a body with different organs. The logic was as follows: “Liberté could produce Fraternité only in company with Egalité; cut off this medium/mediating postulate from the triad – and Liberté will most likely lead to inequality, and in fact to division and mutual enmity and strife, instead of unity and solidarity. Only the triad in its entirety is capable of ensuring a peaceful and prosperous society, well integrated and imbued with the spirit of cooperation. Equality is therefore necessary as a mediating element of this triad in Bauman’s approach. What he embraces is nothing less than a floating balance between freedom and equality. It must be acknowledged that neoliberalism was one of the causes of the rise of the newly industrialized nations, but the overemphasis on individual property also contributes to obscene inequality and thus to the decline of civilized norms. When real socialism passed into history in 1989 (and rightly so), the obscene global level of social inequality could be the beginning of the end (Bee Gees) of neo-liberalism, centered on the primacy of individual property, which is destroying the social fabric of societies as well as the prospects for democratic development. Individual property is a human right, but it must be balanced with the needs of communities, otherwise it would destroy them in the end.

     

    Feature Image Credit: cultursmag.com

    Cartoon Image Credit: ‘Your greed is hurting the economy’ economicsocialogy.org

  • Lessons for today? Why did Europeans conquer the world while other civilisations did not?

    Lessons for today? Why did Europeans conquer the world while other civilisations did not?

    There is no question that India, China, Egypt, and Persia, in particular, produced flourishing civilisations long before the Europeans. The axial period around which world history revolves, as constructed by Jaspers, between the 7th and 3rd centuries B.C., does not refer to Europeans but to the three great civilisations of China, India, and Persia.

    There is no question that India, China, Egypt, and Persia, in particular, produced flourishing civilisations long before the Europeans. The axial period around which world history revolves, as constructed by Jaspers, between the 7th and 3rd centuries B.C., does not refer to Europeans but to the three great civilisations of China, India, and Persia (see also Katzenstein). Nevertheless, Europeans conquered and colonised the world in the 18th and 19th centuries, not the other way around. There are essentially four explanatory approaches, which are not only mutually exclusive but also determine the self-image of large parts of the world to this day. Put simply, the twentieth century saw a political and, in large parts of the world, an economic decolonisation, but by no means a decolonisation of thought and self-understanding. Moreover, there is a danger that the Eurocentrism that needs to be overcome will only be replaced by ethnocentrism (as is currently the case in Russia and, to some extent, in Israel) or even a civilisational-cultural centrism that is no less problematic than Eurocentrism. China, in particular, is in danger of repeating the mistakes of the West.

    the twentieth century saw a political and, in large parts of the world, an economic decolonisation, but by no means a decolonisation of thought and self-understanding

    So, what are the four explanatory approaches mentioned above? There are two Eurocentric approaches: an Asia-centric approach and a globalist approach. The first Eurocentric approach explains the worldwide colonisation of Europeans in terms of an intellectual superiority that began either in the development of Greek thought or in the Middle Ages. However, since the European Middle Ages were extremely “dark,” there is no direct connection between Greek rationality and the supposed intellectual superiority of the Europeans. Rather, this connection was made possible only by the translations into Arabic of the most important Greek philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, and by further translations into Latin. From my point of view – and a little local patriotism is allowed here, as I live near Fulda – the rise of the Europeans began with a letter from Charlemagne to the monastery in Fulda, in which he praised the religious zeal of the monks, but harshly criticised their intellectual understanding of religion. This gave rise to the so-called Carolingian Renaissance of work, which for the first time saw physical and manual labour as equal value to spiritual development – although it is debatable whether this was the first time this happened. Still, the facts remain undisputed in this explanatory approach. As a result, inventions were made in ever-new waves, the sciences developed, and this ultimately led to spurts of individualisation, the struggle for freedom and human rights that characterised the entire 18th and 19th centuries in the European-American world. This intellectual advantage led to a military superiority that enabled the Europeans to colonise the world despite being vastly outnumbered. To this day, Euro-American civilisation considers itself superior to all others. As for violent colonisation, it is admitted that Europeans are “sorry” for it but that it has nothing to do with the essence of Euro-American civilisation, which is characterised by human rights, democracy, and freedom (see Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber: for an overview see Stark).

    The second Eurocentric position also assumes European superiority but places it not in the intellectual but in the purely military sphere. The consequence is that Europeans owe their relative prosperity, democracy, and human rights not to themselves but to the violent exploitation of the entire world. Here, too, there are two variants, referring to the Spanish-Portuguese conquests and the Orange army reform in Holland. Since the Muslim armies’ extensive conquest of the Mediterranean region, the Iberian Peninsula had been engaged in a defensive struggle for almost seven hundred years, which ended with their conquest. This created a caste of highly skilled warriors who sought a new vocation after defeating the Muslim armies, which they found in the conquest of Central and South America. The reform of the Orange army, in turn, made modern warfare possible. Based on both, the Europeans first plundered the gold and silver in both Americas.

    Still, they soon introduced enslaved Africans, as they were more likely to survive the plantation work on the Caribbean islands than the indigenous peoples, who were nearly wiped out. The gold and silver shipped to Europe and the products of slave labour created a demand in Europe that was not met by Spain and Portugal but by England and the Netherlands – the Industrial Revolution was thus triggered by a demand created by the exploitation of large parts of the world, precious metals and the “black gold” of slave labour. “Incidentally, the discovery of the sea route to China and India also caused the decline of the Muslim empires and civilisations, as they were no longer the link between Europe and South and East Asia but stood isolated. Political decolonisation was eventually replaced by mostly indirect rule, in which the respective elites were supported militarily and economically to continue exploiting the population.

    In most cases, partial military intervention was sufficient for the industrialised states to maintain this system. In the world systems theory of Immanuel Wallerstein and Samir Amin, this practice was conceptualised by dividing the world into centres, semi-peripheries, and peripheries and defining it as a continuous influx of raw materials, goods, and people (brain drain) from the periphery to the mostly Western centres (Amin and Wallerstein).

     

                                                                                                                            

    A third explanation, however, is Asia-centric. In this view, the dominance of the Europeans and the hegemony of the United States are nothing more than an accident of world history. In this view, East and South Asia have always been the centre of the world economy and intellectual and civilisational development. More precisely, on the shores of the North Pacific and the Indian Ocean (including the Arabian Sea), a power shift has been taking place for thousands of years between China, India, and the Arab-Persian powers. Coincidentally, the retreat of China from about 1500 created a power vacuum in this area, into which the Europeans were gradually able to move. However, they could not compete with these civilisations. The current rise of the great empires and civilisations that were destroyed by European colonisation and Euro-American hegemony is nothing more than a return to the centre of the world, to the countries on the shores of the North Pacific and both parts of the Indian Ocean. In this view, the Europeans and the great powers that emerged from them are in no way superior, but rather the barbarians who caused an unprecedented bloodbath in colonisation and two world wars, including the Holocaust. Now, the centre of the world is returning to where it has always been (Abu-Lughod)

    Another approach is the globalisation approach. It assumes that every five hundred years or so, there has been a shift from one global political centre to the next, i.e., hegemonic empires’ rise, peak, and decline. For the late Andre Gunder Frank, we need to review the last 5000 years, not just the previous 500). At times, individual civilisations succeeded in becoming such hegemonic empires twice. Examples include the Egyptian society, the Chinese Empire of the Han dynasty, the Roman Empire, the Sassanid Empire (Persia), the Muslim Empire until its destruction by the Mongols, and finally European colonisation from about 1500.

    we need a floating balance and mutual recognition of the world’s civilisations

    The crucial question for today is whether globalisation will override this succession of great powers and civilisations or whether there will be a renewed, now genuinely global, struggle for world domination. In my view, we need a floating balance and mutual recognition of the world’s civilisations (Herberg-Rotzhe/Son). The rising civilisations are again faced with whether they will merely repeat the past mistakes and the ethnocentrism of the Europeans under different auspices or contribute to an equal coexistence of the world’s civilisations. And conversely, will the Europeans and the settler colonies they founded also learn to regard other civilisations as equals? Both perspectives will determine the fate of the 21st century if we do not want to experience yet another “bloody century”!

    References:

    Abu-Lughod, Janet: Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350. Reprint edition. Oxford University Press: Oxford. 1991.

    Amin, Samir: Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment. (2 Volumes). Monthly Review Press: New York. 1974.

    Frank, Andre Gunder, The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? Routledge: New York. 1996.

    Herberg-Rothe, Andreas and Son, Key-young: Order wars and floating balance. How the rising powers are reshaping our worldview in the twenty-first century. Routledge: New York. 2018.

    Jaspers, Karl: The Origin and Goal of History. Routledge: New York 2021 (original in German 1949).

    Katzenstein, Peter J.” Civilizations in World Politics: Plural and Pluralist Perspectives. Routlöedge: New York 2009.

    Stark, Rodney: How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity. ‎ ISI Books: NewYork. 2015.

    Wallerstein, Immanuel: World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Duke University Press: Durham. 2004.

     

    Feature Photo Credit: Photo of ‘Monument of Discoveries’ in Lisbon. Photo by M Matheswaran. The Monument depicts Henry the Navigator followed by 33 pioneers, including Vasco-da-Gama whose exploration voyages were instrumental in establishing the Portuguese colonial empire, and thus begin the age of colonialism and imperialism.

    Image 1-Map: Asian empires and trade routes – the collector.com

    Image 2: Columbus reaching the Americas (actually the Caribbean) in 1492 – Wikimedia Commons

    Image 3: The story of the colonial looting of Africa – Photo of exhibit in African American Museum, Washington D.C. (Photo – M Matheswaran).

    Image 4: Robert Clive meeting Mir Jaffer in Battle of Plassey 1757 – the beginnings of the British Indian Empire – Wikimedia Commons.

     

     

     

  • From Global Democratisation to the Battle of World Powers? Contradictory Developments in the Present

    From Global Democratisation to the Battle of World Powers? Contradictory Developments in the Present

    Shortly after the democratic revolutions of 1989-1991, Francis Fukuyama wrote his highly influential essay on the end of history- that is, the end of violent history through global democratization.

    Members of the United Nations Security Council sit during a meeting on Syria at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, NY, U.S. April 5, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton – RC141DE9DE00. Image credit: world101.cfr.org

    The world has changed so dramatically since the end of the Cold War that it is necessary to look back in order to understand today’s global political situation. In total, there are five different discourses that will be discussed here as representative of historical developments. They range from Fukuyama’s thesis of global democratization to various versions of coming anarchy and global (“new”) civil wars (Kaplan, Kagan, Kaldor, Münkler), Huntington’s clash of civilizations, the concept of global governance and the “rise of the others” (Zakaria, Zhang), a multipolar world of nation-states, and the re-nationalization of world politics. My central thesis is that all five discourses are present in contemporary political conflicts and that we cannot neglect any of them.

    But if you look at the history of democracy, you can almost discover a law of motion of democratic revolutions based on Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the French Revolution. It starts with a democratic revolt against a dictator or colonial rule. Then the revolutionaries become radicalized, civil war breaks out, a new, this time totalitarian ruler takes power, and only after his overthrow does democracy prevail.

    Shortly after the democratic revolutions of 1989-1991, Francis Fukuyama wrote his highly influential essay on the end of history- that is, the end of violent history through global democratization. And his thoughts were very timely. What better confirmation could there be when, in just a few years, the old dictatorships from Berlin to Vladivostok, which only called themselves communist but were not, but rather geriocracies, were swept away in a wave of democratisation. The Arab Spring seemed to confirm his thoughts, as here, too, long-standing dictatorships were overrun by democratic movements virtually overnight, as in Egypt and Tunisia. But even then, there were counter-movements that contradicted the assumed linear process of global democratization. Fukuyama, therefore, had to defend his original thesis and argue that, despite all the setbacks, democracy was still at the end of history. In a way, he was echoing Hannah Arendt’s theory of revolution. The reverses of democratization in Russia, many Arab countries, and the global civil wars have often been cited as cultural – Russia, China, and Middle Eastern Islam were still too culturally authoritarian to allow for genuine democratization. But if you look at the history of democracy, you can almost discover a law of motion of democratic revolutions based on Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the French Revolution. It starts with a democratic revolt against a dictator or colonial rule. Then the revolutionaries become radicalized, civil war breaks out, a new, this time totalitarian ruler takes power, and only after his overthrow does democracy prevail. The French overthrew their king and got the emperor, Napoleon; the Russians revolted against the czar and got Stalin; the Chinese fought against their emperor and got Mao Tse-tung; the Germans overthrew their emperor after their military defeat and got the leader Adolf Hitler. Resistance to colonial rule also often followed this law of democratic movement: the colonial rulers were driven out and replaced by new rulers.

    In the same year that the Soviet Union collapsed, the terrible civil wars in the former Yugoslavia began, the first Chechen war, followed by countless “markets of violence” and so-called new wars, which in a narrower sense were new civil wars and wars of state collapse. Mass rape became a weapon of war to demoralize the enemy, and an almost complete dissolution of the boundaries of violence took on a life of its own, seeming to make any rational resolution of conflicts impossible. Warlords, drug lords, terrorists, child soldiers, and “archaic” warriors who seemed to belong to the past dominated warfare worldwide. Against this backdrop, Western armies were transformed into intervention armies that were supposed to maintain a minimum of order on the borders of the U.S. “liberal empire” in order to prevent global anarchy (Robert Kaplan) or a “world civil war” (Enzensberger) – at least according to Western discourse. From the perspective of the countries affected by these wars of intervention, however, they were wars to maintain their immediate exploitation (especially in Africa), to keep corrupt regimes that collaborated with Western states alive (Arabian Peninsula), or to eliminate those that opposed the West (Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan). In the open spaces of violence and violent markets, high-value illegal goods were traded: Drugs, blood diamonds, human beings (women and child slaves), weapons and rare earths.

    Linked to these wars of intervention was the apparent cultural triumph of the West, which is associated with the term globalisation, but was, in fact, initially an Americanization, the so-called McDonaldization or Mac World. However, this cultural globalization of the American way of life, combined with U.S. wars of intervention, led to a backlash as many societies saw their cultural identity threatened. Taken together, these two factors triggered Samuel Huntington’s concept of the clash of civilizations.

    In their liberal hubris, his Western critics argued that there could be no clash of civilizations because only the West had produced a civilization – the others were religions or cultures, but not civilizations.

     His book has often been misunderstood as a guide to action for the coming war – but in fact, he had written the book to prevent that clash, and he argued for the U.S. to withdraw from small wars around the world because he saw the liberal identity of the U.S. at risk. Perhaps more importantly, he saw non-Western religions not just as cultures but as civilizations that had grown out of their respective religions. In their liberal hubris, his Western critics argued that there could be no clash of civilizations because only the West had produced a civilization – the others were religions or cultures, but not civilizations.

    While globalization initially had the effect of Americanization, in the medium term, it facilitated the “rise of the others” (Zakaria), the great empires and civilizations that had perished under European colonization and Euro-American hegemony. As a result of their initial economic success (Malaysia, Singapore, the Asian Tigers, China, India, the Pacific Rim countries), they no longer sought to imitate Western culture in order to be recognized as equals, but to develop their own identity, which they considered superior to the West. From the point of view of Western discourse, the “others” were, at best, immature children or barbarians – now the West suddenly sees itself in the role of other civilizations, seeing themselves as superior to the West. One expression of this changed self-image was Zahng Weiwei’s book China – The Civilizational State. We are now experiencing a paradoxical situation in which the West is consumed by fear of decline and the dissolution of its own sense of superiority, leading to the rise of right-wing populist and radical right-wing movements; large parts of the Asian world population are filled with hope for a better life, and the Islamic-Arab world is desperate in the face of unfulfilled promises, leading to the radicalization of young people in Islamist movements.

    The concept of global governance was invented at the beginning of the 21st century as a reaction to advancing globalization. The assumption, correct in itself, was that the absence of a democratic world state did not necessarily mean that there was no possibility of at least regulating global problems, subjecting them to rules, if not solving them. Global governance was based on the idea of cooperation between nation-states, non-governmental organizations, globally active institutions, the emerging global civil society, globally active corporations, and global players. However, the resurgence of big states has pushed global governance into the background, just like globalization itself. Some states want to reverse globalization, at least in the economic and political spheres. This applies at least to Western democracies, whose citizens often see themselves as the losers of globalization.

    The relative loss of importance of the Western states and the institutions they helped to create, such as the U.N., cannot be overlooked – the overstretched role of the U.S. as the world’s policeman is due, on the one hand, to its own lack of investment in development and education, and on the other to the rise of others.

    What we are currently experiencing is not simply a multipolar world of great powers, even if there are signs of a renaissance of great power politics. Instead, we are witnessing a contradictory process of the five discourses alluded to here: Democratization, failed states, the clash of civilizations, further globalization, and the renaissance of great power politics. The still existing, but also partly former, Global South is still dependent on cooperation, even if new forms of cooperation are emerging, such as the expansion of the BRICS, which compete politically but cooperate economically. The relative loss of importance of the Western states and the institutions they helped to create, such as the U.N., cannot be overlooked – the overstretched role of the U.S. as the world’s policeman is due, on the one hand, to its own lack of investment in development and education, and on the other to the rise of others. What remains unpredictable is whether the emerging states of the Global South and the former superpower Russia will make the same mistake as the West in its centuries-long quest for hegemony, namely, to see itself as superior to all others. Eurocentrism would be replaced by an equally problematic ethnocentrism, and a nationalist dynamic would be set in motion that would be difficult for states to control. Even if all current developments point to the contrary and we see a return of tribalism in the form of “us versus them – whoever the others are” discourses, the only option left is to revive intercultural dialogue if we do not want to experience “another bloody century” (Colin S. Gray).

     

    Feature Image Credit: chinausfocus.com

  • Strategies: hierarchy or balancing Purpose, Aims and Means?

    Strategies: hierarchy or balancing Purpose, Aims and Means?

    At the beginning of his famous first chapter, Clausewitz defines war as mentioned above within a hierarchy of purpose, aims, and means. His renowned formula is related to this definition. At the end of the same chapter, nevertheless, he introduces the consequences for the theory of war from this initial reasoning about the nature of war and states: “Our task, therefore, is to develop a theory that maintains a balance between these three tendencies, like an object suspended between three magnets”

     

    Strategy Bridge
    “The Strategy Bridge concept leads to battle-centric warfare and the primacy of tactics over strategy.”

    At the outset, I would like to emphasise that in war and in violent action, justifiable ends do not legitimate all means. But I won’t solely treat the means applied by Hamas on October 7th, nor that of the Israel defence forces afterwards. Nevertheless, if someone argued that the ends justify all means, this would have to be applied to both sides. I want to highlight more principal arguments concerning the ‘end-aims-means’ relationship by contrasting a mere hierarchical approach, which is, in my view, leading to a reversal of ends and means, and a floating balance of them. The task of coming to a proper appreciation of Clausewitz’s thoughts on strategy is actually to combine a hierarchical structure with that of a floating balance. This article examines the relation of purpose, aims and means in Clausewitz’s theory and highlights that this relation is methodologically comparable to the floating balance of Clausewitz’s trinity. Modern strategic thinking is characterised by the end, way (aim), means relationship and the concept of the ‘way’ as the shortest possible connection between ends and means  (consider, for instance, Colin Gray’s concept of a strategy bridge[1]). This notion stems from a very early text of Clausewitz: ‘As a result each war is raised as an independent whole, whose entity lies in the last purpose whose diversity lies in the available means, and whose art therein exists, to connect both through a range of secondary and associated actions in the shortest way.’

    Nevertheless, here we can detect the fundamental difference in many of Clausewitz’s interpretations, which understand strategy as the shortest way of connecting purpose and means (battle and combat). Within this quote, Clausewitz speaks of war as an independent whole, a notion which he later rejects fervently.   A central distinction is the concept to which the means attaches: the Taoist tradition and Sun Tzu hold that the means connects directly to the political purpose of the war; in contrast, for Clausewitz, the means attaches to an intermediary aim within a war, which must be sequentially achieved prior to the fulfilment of the war’s political purpose. The distinctive feature of the Taoist tradition is that strategy as a “way” effectively becomes tactics, in the sense that there exists no “strategic” aim, in the meaning of an intermediate military “strategic” war aim inserted between the political purpose of the war and tactical combat.

    Battle-centric Warfare: Winning battles and losing the War

    If strategy is nothing else than the direct way of linking the political purpose with the means, understood as combat, this understanding results in a ‘battle-centric’ concept of warfare that privileges tactical outcomes. One might attribute the loss of the Vietnam War, as well as the defeat of the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, to this misunderstanding about battle. In the early 1980s, Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr wrote a most influential work about the faults made in the Vietnam War. He observed that the US Army won every battle in Vietnam but finally lost the war. Summers recounts an exchange between himself and a former North Vietnamese Army officer some years after the war. It went something like this: Summers: ‘You never defeated us in the field.’ NVA Officer: ‘That is true. It is also irrelevant.’ [2]Winning battles does not necessarily lead to winning the war, and not only in this case. The same point can be made about Napoleon’s campaign in Russia. Napoleon won all the battles against the Russian army but lost the campaign. It was precisely this observation that led Clausewitz to denounce battle-centric warfare.

    ‘War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will,’ Clausewitz wrote at the beginning of his famous first chapter of On War (75).[3] ‘Force … is thus the means of war; to impose our will on the enemy is its purpose’, he continued. ‘To secure that purpose, we must make the enemy defenceless, which, in theory, is the true aim of warfare. That aim takes the place of the purpose, discarding it as something not actually part of war’ (75). This seemingly simple sentence reveals the core problem: what does it mean that the aim ‘takes the place’ (in German: vertritt) of the purpose? Are they identical or different? To put it bluntly, At the beginning of his famous first chapter, Clausewitz defines war as mentioned above within a hierarchy of purpose, aims, and means. His renowned formula is related to this definition. At the end of the same chapter, nevertheless, he introduces the consequences for the theory of war from this initial reasoning about the nature of war and states: “Our task, therefore, is to develop a theory that maintains a balance between these three tendencies, like an object suspended between three magnets” (89).[4] In relation to the concept of strategy, we must combine a hierarchical understanding of the purpose-aims-means-rationality with that of a floating balance of all three.

    Presenting any of these elements as an absolute would be artificially to delimit the analysis of war, as the components are interdependent. Clausewitz’s solution is the ‘trinity’, in which he defined war by different, even opposing, tendencies, each with its own rules. Nevertheless, since war is ‘put together’ in this concept of three tendencies, it is necessary to consider how these tendencies interact and conflict simultaneously rather than one being absolute. Clearly, if we go to war, there is a purpose for that war, and different purposes for war are possible. Each of these possible purposes is connected with different achievable military aims, and finally, each aim can be achieved by various means. The question, therefore, is whether all three are incorporated into a hierarchy or whether their relationship must be understood as a floating balance among them.

    Purpose, Aims, and Means in War

    Clausewitz explains this dynamic relationship of purpose, aims and means in war in Chapter Two of Book One. At the beginning of Book One, Chapter Two, Clausewitz writes that ‘if for a start we inquire into the [aim] of any particular war, which must guide military action if the political purpose is to be properly served, we find that the [aim] of any war can vary just as much as its political purpose and its actual circumstances’ (90). The consequence of this proposition is that not every aim and means serves a given purpose. The problem of the relationship between purpose and aims is that each element of the purpose-aims-means construct has a rationality of its own, which Clausewitz emphasises in his proposition that war has its own grammar, although not its own logic. He writes, for example, ‘we can now see that in war many roads lead to success, and that they do not all involve the opponent’s outright defeat.’ Clausewitz then summarises that there exists a wide range of possible ways (94) to reach the aim of war and that it would be a mistake to think of these shortcuts as rare exceptions (94). For example, Clausewitz wrote: ‘It is possible to increase the likelihood of success without defeating the enemy’s forces. I refer to operations that have direct political repercussions, that are designed in the first place to disrupt the opposing alliance’ (emphasis in the original) (92).[5]Another prominent example, Clausewitz emphasised, was the warfare of Frederick the Great. He would never have been able to defeat Austria in the Seven Years’ War if his aim had been the outright defeat of Austria. Clausewitz concludes if he had tried to fight in this manner, ‘he would unfailingly have been destroyed himself.’ (94). After explaining other strategies besides the destruction of the enemy armed forces, he concludes that all we need to do for the moment is to admit the general possibility of their existence, the likelihood of deviating from the basic concept of war under the pressure of particular circumstances (99). But the main conclusion is that in war, many roads may lead to success – but the reverse is true, too, not all means are neither guaranteeing success nor are legitimate.[6]

    But the main conclusion is that in war, many roads may lead to success – but the reverse is true, too, not all means are neither guaranteeing success nor are legitimate.

    Why is that so?   Although Clausewitz finishes Chapter 2 of Book I with the notion that the ‘wish to annihilate the enemy’s forces is the first-born son of war’ (99), he emphasises that at a later stage and by degrees’ we shall see what other kinds of strategies can achieve in war’ (99). Nevertheless, he gives us two clues in this chapter. First, that war is not an independent whole but – an extension of the political sphere: that war has its own grammar but not its own logic.[7] Second, in my interpretation of Clausewitz, the difference between attack and defence represents a distinction between self-preservation and gaining advantages in warfare. Already in Chapter Two, he articulates the ‘distinction that dominates the whole of war: the difference between attack and defence. We shall not pursue the matter now, but let us just say this: that from the negative purpose [comes?] all the advantages, all the more effective forms, of fighting, and that in it is expressed the dynamic relationship between the magnitude and the likelihood of success’ (94).

    My thesis is that Clausewitz is trying to combine the Aristotelian difference between poieses and praxis in his writings – an instrumental view of war for political purposes with the performance of the conduct of war, not just with the execution of the political will. Whereas for the early Clausewitz, the ‘purpose’ is a moment within the war, he later opposes this position, emphasising that this purpose is located outside of the actual warfare. With this differentiation of purposes in war and the purpose of war, Clausewitz covers a fundamental difference between various forms of action, which was initially developed by Aristotle and remains even today. The practical philosophy of Aristotle is based on the basic distinction of techne, as based on poiesis and phronesis, and praxis, based on performance and practical knowledge. Techne is technical, instrumental knowledge.

    In contrast, phronesis or praxis of action can be characterised as performance in warfare. If we compare different purposes for going to war with each other, we are close to what Max Weber called the “value rationality” of purposes. Although Max Weber sometimes seems to overemphasise the difference between the rationality of purposes and military aims, his differentiation is useful to shed light on Clausewitz’s theory. Value rationality is primarily about the relationship of different purposes to one another, which can be classified into a hierarchy of purposes. The subordination of warfare to the shaping of international order, as Clausewitz puts it, is ‘value-rational’ as defined by Max Weber. By contrast, “action rationality” is a principle of action exclusively oriented to achieving a particular military aim through the most effective means and rational consideration of possible consequences and side effects.

                Clausewitz initially makes a two-fold distinction between the purpose-aims-means relationship: first, as a value rationality, in which we find a hierarchical relationship starting from the purpose at the top, with aims and means subordinated respectively; second, as a process rationality, in which the military aim as the object of practical action is the output of the purpose-aim-means relationship.

    He made this distinction at times only implicitly based on the different connotations of the concept of purpose. In part, Clausewitz differentiates between the purpose of war and the purpose in war. He used the same terms throughout, providing various contents from which this distinction could be deduced. Henceforth we need to have a further look at his use of terms and concepts.

    Beginning with his earliest writings, Clausewitz asserted that war has a purpose. In his Strategie (Strategy), written in 1804, he wrote that the ‘purpose of the war’ can be: ‘Either to destroy the enemy completely, to remove their sovereignty, or to prescribe the conditions for peace.’ The destruction of the enemy forces is the ‘more present purpose’ of war. If the purpose of war, however, is the destruction of the enemy forces, is it a purpose that is realised within warfare?[8]  The problem is that the destruction of the enemy moves from being a means to an aim in and of itself. In contrast to such an understanding of the purpose-aims-means rationality, for Clausewitz, the military aim within the war is an intermediary dimension between purpose and means. In his later writings, Clausewitz replaces the term’ purpose in war’ through the terms’ aims’ and ‘goals in warfare’ [(he uses the same German term Ziel for both aim and goal).

    The late Clausewitz emphasises that the purpose of war lies outside the boundaries of the art of warfare. He argues that one must always consider peace as the achievement of the purpose and the end of the business of war. (215) ‘Even more generally, the consideration of the use of force, which was necessary for warfare, affects the resolution for peace. As the war is not an act of blind passion but is required for the political purpose to prevail, this value must determine the size of our own sacrifices. Once the amount of force and thus the extent of the applied force is being so large that the value of the political purpose was no longer held in balance, the violence must be abandoned, and peace be the result.’ (217)

    Additionally, one has to take into account the counter-actions of the opponent. Clausewitz emphasises this difference in his chapter about the theory of war, Book Two: ‘The essential difference is that war is not an exercise of the will directed at inanimate matter, as in the case with the mechanical arts, or at matter which is animate but yielding, as in the case with the human mind and emotions in the fine art. In war, the will is directed at an animate object that reacts’. (149). Hence, Clausewitz’s final achievement is not a strategy that could be applied to all kinds of war but a reflection on the art of warfare, the performance of warfare within a political purpose.

    If, as it seems to Clausewitz, the purpose of war lies outside of warfare and war is determined only as means for this purpose, then a technical, instrumental understanding of the war is thereby intended. But this is not the whole of Clausewitz. He also emphasises praxis, performance and practical knowledge. If the purpose lies within warfare, this does not contain a complete identity of the goal of martial action with its execution. In this case too, the purpose is not war for war’s sake. My conclusion is that Clausewitz is really trying to combine the Aristotelian difference between poieses and praxis in his writings – an instrumental view of war for political purposes with the performance of the conduct of war, not just with the execution of the political will.

    Further dimensions of the concept of Purpose in Clausewitz

    According to Herfried Münkler, Clausewitz makes a distinction between an existential and instrumental view of war. If purpose exists at the top of a hierarchy in the purpose-aims-means relationship, there is an assumption that war is instrumental, in the sense that there is a choice between different purposes, thus identifying the purpose in terms of Max Weber’s value rationality. However, if war is “existential”, in that the only purpose is the survival of the state, the hierarchy of the relationship is reversed, as the means by which the enemy is defeated gains primacy, which accords with a process of rationality. Clausewitz summarised the difference between both concepts of purpose: ‘Where there is a choice of purpose, one may consider and note the means, and where only one purpose may be, the available means are the right ones.’[9]

    A pure process of rationality can lead to the fact that the military aim and means of warfare become the purpose in themselves. It is for characterising war in this manner, as an instrument facing inwards on itself, rather than outwards to a wider political purpose, that the early Clausewitz can be criticised. He adopted the Napoleonic model from Jena, trying to seize its successes systematically and, without considering the social background of France, to generalise it as an abstraction. In his critique of Clausewitz, Keegan wrote that the military develops war cultures, which correspond with their social environment. If, however, war is seen as purely instrumental and the connection to this environment is cut, then the danger of blurring the military boundaries threatens potentially endless violence. In this view, the roots of Clausewitz’s image of war refer back to the origins of the modern age, which was characterised by the full possession of civil rights, the general right to vote and compulsory military service, all of which completed the portrait of the citizen soldier and the ‘battle scenes’ of the people’s army.

    The question for today is whether the revolution in military affairs as well as fourth and fifth-generation warfare (5th generation warfare is partisan warfare applied by states or state-like entities like Hamas) are tempting to a primacy of the means and aims over meaningful purposes, a primacy of tactics over strategy and the ‘art of war’, which is in Clausewitz’s view even surpassing strategy.

    The French model was, in fact, adapted for the Prussian circumstances: a revolutionary people’s army in the service of the raison d’ état – but without ‘republic’ (meaning a democratically constituted system of government). In this form, Clausewitz’s theory was proved and began to be used later for multiple purposes. It started its triumphant advance through the general staff throughout the war ministries of the world. In Keegan’s view, the result of this process was the general armament of Europe in the 19th century and its excessive increase in the 20th century.[10] Keegan left unmentioned that Clausewitz’s theory of war had yet to be bisected to fulfil this function, especially by the German general staff in the First World War. Nevertheless, his criticism revealed a fundamental problem of modern war: the separation of potential options for warfare from socially meaningful purposes. In World War I, tactics replaced strategy.

    Although the understanding of the strategy of the early Clausewitz was, in fact, one of an aim or goal independent from the political realm within warfare, the definition of purpose of the later Clausewitz is based on the political purpose outside of warfare. There are still passages in the final version of On War in which Clausewitz does not differentiate clearly between purpose and aims. The question for today is whether the revolution in military affairs as well as fourth and fifth-generation warfare (5th generation warfare is partisan warfare applied by states or state-like entities like Hamas) are tempting to a primacy of the means and aims over meaningful purposes, a primacy of tactics over strategy and the ‘art of war’, which is in Clausewitz’s view even surpassing strategy.

     

    Notes:

    [1]   The relevant discussions may be found in the following books: Echevarria, A. 2007. Clausewitz and Contemporary War. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Gray, C. 1999. Modern Strategy. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Herberg-Rothe, A. 2007. Clausewitz’s Puzzle: The Political Theory of War. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Keegan, J. 1994. A History of Warfare. London and New York: Vintage; Simpson, E. 2012. War from the Ground Up: Twenty-First Century Combat as Politics. London: Hurst; Strachan, H. 2007. Clausewitz’s OnWar. Atlantic Monthly Press, New York; von Ghyczy, T., Bassford, C. and von Oetinger, B. Clausewitz on strategy. Inspiration and insight from a master strategist. Hoboken: Wiley; Heuser, B., 2010, The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Heuser, Beatrice 2010, The Strategy Makers: Thoughts on War and Society from Machiavelli to Clausewitz. Praeger Security International:

    [2]   For details, see Herberg-Rothe, Andreas, Clausewitz’s puzzle. Oxford University Press: Oxford 2007. Clausewitz, Carl von; 1990.  Schriften, Aufsätze, Studien, Briefe, vol. 2, ed. W. Hahlweg. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht.; Clausewitz, Carl von, 1992. Historical and Political Writings, ed. P. Paret and D. Moran, 1992. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; Clausewitz, Carl von,  Politische Schriften [Political Literature], ed. H. Rothfels. Munich: Drei Masken Verlag.  1922.

    [3]   The numbers in brackets are references to Clausewitz, Carl von, On War. Translated and edited by Peter Paret and Michael Howard. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1984. As translation is a highly tricky process, I have tried to make some translations of my own only in some cases, especially in trying to distinguish the German terms „Zweck“ and „Ziel“. These terms have been translated as purpose, object, objective, ends, and as aims, goals and sometimes even ways by Howard and Paret. My main intention in this article is to distinguish between purpose and aims. It might be that the great variety of the translations has contributed to the underestimation of the difference between the purpose of the war and the goal within the war. Although they are closely connected with each other, I follow Clausewitz’s assertion that the same purpose could be reached by pursuing different goals.

    [4]   With this notion, we can explain the difference between Clausewitz’s real concept of the trinity and trinitarian warfare, which is not directly a concept of Clausewitz, but an argument made by Harry Summers, Martin van Creveld and Mary Kaldor. In trinitarian warfare, the three tendencies of war are understood as a hierarchy, whereas  Clausewitz describes his understanding of their relationship as a floating balance In my view, each war is differently composed of the three aspects of applying force, the struggle or fight of the armed forces and the fighting community the fighting forces belong to; based on this interpretation I define war as the violent struggle of communities; see Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s puzzle.

    [5]   This reference seems to strengthen the difference made by Emile Simpson between the use of armed force within a military domain that seeks to establish military conditions for a political solution on one side and the use of armed force that directly seeks political as opposed to specifically military outcomes; Simpson, War from the ground up, p. 1.

    [6]   The confusion about the difference between Zweck (purpose) of and Ziel (aims) in warfare concerning Clausewitz might be additionally caused by his own insufficient differentiation in this chapter.

    [7]   For Clausewitz’s concept of Policy and politics, see Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz’s puzzle, chapter 6.

    [8]           Clausewitz, Carl von, Strategie aus dem Jahre 1804 mit Zusätzen von 1808 und 1809 (Strategy from the Year 1804 with Additions from 1808 and 1809). In EB, Verstreute Kleine Schriften (Small Scattered Writings), pp. 3-61, here pp. 20-21.

    [9]   Clausewitz, Carl von, Historisch-politische Aufzeichnungen von 1809 (Historical-Political Records of 1809). In: Clausewitz, Carl von, Politische Schriften (Political Literature), p. 76.

    [10]         . Keegan, Kultur des Krieges (The Culture of War), in particular, p. 543; Naumann, Friedrich, An den Ufern des Oxos (On the banks of the Oxos). John Keegan corrects Carl von Clausewitz. In: Frankfurter Rundschau from 17.6.98, p. ZB 4.

     

    Feature Photo Credit: Dennis Jarvis – War on the Rocks

  • Perpetrators and Victims: Ways Out of Violence?

    Perpetrators and Victims: Ways Out of Violence?

    Franz Fanon had sharpened the problem in such a way that the colonised would only really liberate themselves through violence and the killing of the colonialists because only in this way could they free themselves from the humiliation they had suffered.

    the real evil is humiliation – and many civilisations and peoples of the world have not only been exploited in colonisation but, perhaps more importantly, humiliated.

    violent action changes one’s own soul.

     

    I would like to emphasise from the outset that many readers of these lines will, of course, think that this is the writing of a Western-influenced intellectual, especially a German, who is marked by the guilt of the Germans for Auschwitz. Indeed, I am. Nevertheless, I want to address several issues beyond the current conflicts.

    An explanation of the causes of violence can very quickly turn into an understanding, and this into a legitimation of violent action. Although the boundary between these three concepts is fluid, it does not follow that identifying the causes of violent experiences legitimises all forms of one’s violent actions. Thus, while one can legitimise the violent resistance of the Palestinians and the establishment of their Palestinian state, one cannot legitimise all forms of one’s use of violence. The Queen of Jordan is indeed absolutely right when she accuses the West of double standards in the application of morality – but the need for moral recognition of the opponent as a human person is in no way invalidated by the Western double standard. In my view, there is no difference in principle whether Palestinian or Israeli children suffer. But the suffering of children on one side does not justify the suffering of children on the other side. At the moment, we are also in an information war in which precisely this is being conveyed – my own experience of violence as a victim legitimises the use of violence by myself. In his anticolonialism impulse, Franz Fanon had sharpened the problem in such a way that the colonised would only really liberate themselves through violence and the killing of the colonialists because only in this way could they free themselves from the humiliation they had suffered. This assumption, however, turned out to be highly counterproductive because violent action changes one’s own soul. While I fully agree with Jacques Vergés that the real evil is humiliation – and many civilisations and peoples of the world have not only been exploited in colonisation but, perhaps more importantly, humiliated. Here the distinction between a biological human being and a legal-moral person took on its nation-destroying dynamic and became a double standard – moral-legal qualities were granted only to Europeans, all others were degraded to half-monkeys, uneducated primitive peoples, or sub-humans (the Jews to the Nazis). This degradation did not kill the body, but like all rape, it killed the soul.

    Perhaps we need to get away from reducing every form of violence to its purpose – violent actions can also become independent. You can’t use violence the way you use cutlery and plates at dinner – after you wash up, everything looks the same, but people have gotten used to violence taking on a life of its own. The surviving fighters from the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Syria, and Iraq form a group of some 40,000 mercenaries who fight each other in ever-changing constellations. The 2012 “Tuareg” rebellion in Mali was also supported by such independent fighters, who returned from Palestine and helped themselves to the weapons stockpiles of the collapsed Ghaddafi regime. Chechen fighters, in turn, were a central part of the IS leadership; today, they are fighting on both sides in Ukraine. A tragic consequence of these developments is the inversion of the perpetrator-victim relationship. Many victims of violence have such fragmented souls that they use violence themselves to prevent themselves from ever being victims again, even at the cost of becoming perpetrators. Ideologies and political goals then become an indiscriminate source of legitimation for one’s violent actions, which ultimately only serve the purpose of no longer being a victim.

    Discourses of history: Throughout the Islamic sphere of influence, as in all colonised countries, there is a pronounced discourse of victimhood – the problem is that while the people concerned were indeed victims to the extent that the Western world still finds difficult or impossible to admit, a discourse of victimhood leads to legitimising even one’s own most horrific forms of violence by saying that one was a victim. Stalinism and Nazism, as well as the ideologies of al-Qaeda, Daesh/IS, the Taliban, and Hamas in Gaza, derive their legitimacy from this discourse of victimhood. At a training course in Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial, this victim discourse, the reversal of the victim-perpetrator relationship, was very vividly presented – not by me, but by the Israeli leaders of the training course. The symbol for this is the desert fortress Massada, where the last Jewish defenders committed suicide in order not to be humiliated as slaves by the Romans.

    But the consequence was the motto: Never again, Massada!

    And the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and Islamic Jew-hatred are not a distant past for Israelis but part of the present discourse – just as for many Palestinians, the Nakba is an ongoing part of the present. In Arabic, the Nakba refers to the flight and expulsion of some 700,000 Arab Palestinians from the former British Mandate of Palestine. It took place between the 1947 UN partition plan for Palestine and the 1949 armistice following the Palestine War, waged by six Arab states against the state of Israel, which was founded on May 14, 1948. In the historical narrative of Palestinians, other Arabs, and anti-Zionists, the Nakba is usually described as a pre-planned ethnic cleansing by the Israeli military; in the historical narrative of Israel, it is generally described as a voluntary flight in response to Arab calls. In my lecture at the World Peace Museum in Kyoto, Japan, I also wanted to talk about the crimes of the Japanese Empire in the 20th century. The colleague who invited me responded, at first incomprehensibly to me, that this could not be made a topic: He meant that you Germans were lucky, you had your Hitler. To my incomprehension, he explained that the Germans could blame the Holocaust entirely on Hitler and his few comrades, which, according to recent research, is not valid. But if he had to talk about the crimes of the Japanese army, he would speak of his father, but really about himself. He found himself unable to distance himself even minimally from his father. Although the greater sense of family in many non-Western societies can be a useful corrective to Western over-individualisation, the danger lies in the repetition of age-old conflicts. To my surprise, even the famous peace researcher Johann Galtung had postulated at a conference in Basel that 3 million deaths in the “Killing Fields” of the Red Khmer were compared to 3000 years of oppression. The undisputed experience of oppression led him to relativise a crime against humanity.

    The problem, however, is that for every terrorist killed, General Abi Zaid, the former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, estimates that five new ones grow. After the violent excesses of Hamas members, it is “understandable” that the relatives of the victims want to kill them, but this will most likely only multiply the number of violent and militant supporters.

      Even with regard to the Holocaust, Hannah Arendt had distinguished between the unforgivable act and the perpetrator, whom one must be able to forgive. But “forgiveness” depends on the admission of guilt. And this admission is made virtually impossible by the victim discourse. In addition, it is difficult to come to terms with one’s own violent actions. Many of these people will never be able to return to civilian society – this could be observed, for example, in the case of US soldiers who, decades after the Vietnam War, still had to “play” the war over and over again in the Nevada desert, because the violence they had committed had filled their identity entirely. There is a drug that is more quickly and deeply addictive than even heroin – and that is violence. Violence eats the soul. And even if Arendt distinguishes between the perpetrator and the act, what to do with perpetrators who cannot distance themselves from the act is problematic. In a study of the recruitment of IS supporters in Iraq, it was found that the main recruitment base for IS was the prisons there. Even in Western prisons, petty criminals often turn out to be serious criminals. Sometimes, you have to admit that the only way to deal with people who are entirely violent is to kill them – like the IS supporters who abused Yazidi women as sex slaves. To this day, it is difficult to understand why the neighbouring states did not put an end to the violent excesses of IS earlier since it would have had no chance against a functioning modern army. The problem, however, is that for every terrorist killed, General Abi Zaid, the former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, estimates that five new ones grow. After the violent excesses of Hamas members, it is “understandable” that the relatives of the victims want to kill them, but this will most likely only multiply the number of violent and militant supporters.

     Both Hamas and the religious extremists in Israel and the settlers in the West Bank are obviously trying to turn a political dispute into a religiously underpinned clash of civilisations, or, as Samuel P. Huntington better calls it, a clash of civilisations. Hamas is not only a liberation movement, as it is often ascribed in defence of its actions, but at least a religious movement oriented toward an eschatological struggle – just like the religious extremists in Israel. Both rely on the construction of identity that Huntington also advocates: we know who we are when we know who we are against. Although there is a renaissance of religion around the world, and it is often very violent, this does not mean that religions per se are violent. But religious belief necessarily excludes other beliefs. It is different from the civilisations associated with them. While religions exclude others, civilisations are much more likely to include others. This difference also explains why the followers of the great monotheistic religions, while claiming to be peace-loving, have been responsible for unparalleled excesses of violence throughout their history. The Islamic wars of conquest, the Crusades, the Ottoman conquests, the Thirty Years’ War, Islamic and Atlantic slavery, and, finally, worldwide colonisation leave a single trail of blood. And this, of all things, from two world religions that considered themselves peace-loving. The traditional explanation is no longer valid: these excesses of violence had nothing to do with religion but only with socio-historical conditions, which themselves were oriented towards eternal peace. This is certainly true for these civilisations (even if the concept of civilisation has been distorted by European colonisation), but not for the religions (which is why the Global Ethic project has failed so spectacularly, contrary to its own claims because it has not gone beyond a minimal consensus).

    Huntington’s liberal critics had argued not only that there should not be a clash of civilisations but also that there could not be one – because, in their eyes, there was only one civilisation, the Western one. The others are religions or cultures, but not civilisations. It is time to abandon this liberal and Western conceit, and the replacement of Eurocentrism with ethnocentrism or religious centrism is not an adequate response to the problems of exploding violence.

     At first glance, a dialogue of the world’s civilisations seems unrealistic in the face of worldwide explosions of violence. On the contrary, it is necessary to prevent political disputes from becoming a clash of civilisations. Huntington’s liberal critics had argued not only that there should not be a clash of civilisations but also that there could not be one – because, in their eyes, there was only one civilisation, the Western one. The others are religions or cultures, but not civilisations. It is time to abandon this liberal and Western conceit, and the replacement of Eurocentrism with ethnocentrism or religious centrism is not an adequate response to the problems of exploding violence. Instead, the appropriate response to the increasing number of wars and excesses of violence worldwide must be to separate the hardliners discursively, politically, and militarily from the population, not to drive the population into the hands of the hardliners. In the latter case, we would only be threatened with a new “bloody century” like the first half of the 20th century. A dialogue among the world’s civilisations is necessary, if perhaps only modest, step to avoid this. For in the mutual recognition of the world’s civilisations, both sides will be bound by their own civilisational principles.

    Feature Image: Nakba of 1948 – Palestinians being forced out by Israelis – arabcenterdc.org

  • Balancing Civilizations: Neither Clash, mere Multiplicity nor Conversion

    Balancing Civilizations: Neither Clash, mere Multiplicity nor Conversion

    The modern world is a product of intense competition and conflict that evolved from the European ‘system of states’ propensity and greed for the acquisition of territory and resources through colonialism and imperialism. The post-1945 world continues to suffer the ills of Western domination and exploitation as is evidenced by the innumerable number of wars, conflicts, and interventions….supposedly part of the imperial civilising missions. As the non-Western world rises the choices are either conflict or cooperation. The G20 Summit 2023 being held in New Delhi is an opportunity to recognise and chart a new path for the world. The authors, Andreas Herberg-Rothe and Key-young Son, emphasise the importance and need for cooperation and harmony amongst the civilisations of the world.

    G20 Summit 2023 in New Delhi is underway on September 9-10, 2023. 

    We propose the non-binary concepts of Clausewitzian floating equilibrium, Confucian harmony, and Arendtian politics of plurality as key ideas to avert and mitigate contemporary conflicts.

    In many of the world’s hot spots, both civil and governmental combatants have become embroiled in unending conflicts based on a binary position: “us against the rest.” After two hundred years of imperialism and Euro-American hegemony that have produced varying degrees of adaptation or rejection of Western modernity, it may be time for the world’s great civilizations to learn how to live harmoniously with one another. The world order of the twenty-first century will not be based entirely on modernist ideas and institutions such as nation-states, laissez-faire capitalism, individualism, science and technology, and progress. How then can we accommodate other civilizations and cultures?

    We propose mediation, recognition, harmony and floating balance as key principles for inter-civilizational and inter-cultural dialogue and conviviality, accompanied by the awareness that we are all descended from a small group of African ancestors. Mediation and recognition between friends and enemies will be the initial recipes for transforming hostility into partnership, while harmony and floating balance between and within opposites, such as individual versus community, freedom versus equality, will help sustain the momentum for forging constructive relationships.

    After the process of political decolonization in the twentieth century, we still need to decolonize our way of thinking. The values of the East and the West cannot survive in their absolute form in this globalized world.

    As former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin put it, “You don’t have to make peace with your friends; you have to make peace with your enemies. As a legacy of previous centuries, however, the binary thinking of “us against them” has paradoxically retained a strong presence in twenty-first-century international relations. If this thinking continues to be the decisive force, we could repeat the catastrophes of the twentieth century. After the process of political decolonization in the twentieth century, we still need to decolonize our way of thinking. The values of the East and the West cannot survive in their absolute form in this globalized world. It is our deepest conviction that the Western and like-minded states could only hold on to values such as freedom, equality, emancipation and human rights if they could be harmoniously balanced with the contributions of other civilizations and cultures.

    The concept of floating equilibrium, derived from our interpretation of the “wondrous trinity” of the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, means not relativity, but relationality and proportionality. At the end of his life, Clausewitz drew the conclusion for the theory of violent conflict that every war is composed of the three opposing tendencies of primordial violence, which he compared to hatred and enmity as a blind natural force, to chance and probability, and to the subordination of war as a political instrument, which makes war subject to pure reason. With Clausewitz’s concept, it is clear that war involves two extreme opposites – primordial violence on the one hand and pure reason on the other. By adding the third tendency, chance and probability, wars become different in their composition.

    We use Clausewitz’s concept as a methodological starting point to find a floating balance between various contrasts and contradictions that are evident in the current phase of globalization, which Zygmunt Bauman calls “liquid modernity”. These contrasts include those between the individual and the community, equality and freedom, war and peace, and recognition and disrespect. We argue that Clausewitz’s wondrous trinity and “floating equilibrium” can be used as a way to interpret and mitigate today’s conflicts, although Clausewitz developed these notions to analyze the warfare of his time.

    Globalization has led to the “rise of the rest” or Amitav Acharya’s “multiplex world” of nation-states, NGOs, global institutions, global terrorism, and violent gangs of young people from the suburbs of Paris to the slums of Rio who are excluded from the benefits of globalization. This includes both of the following macro developments:

    On the one hand, globalization allows the former empires (China, Russia and India) and some developing countries with large populations (Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa) to regain their status as great powers. This development could lead to a global network of megacities competing on connectivity rather than borders, as in China’s efforts to reestablish the ancient trade routes of the Silk Road. On the other hand, it dissolves traditional identities and forms of governance to some extent as a result of social inequality, leading to fragmented societies and a re-ideologization of domestic conflicts, as already seen with the rise of the far right in the US, Europe and Russia, but also Salafism, exaggerated Hindu and Chinese nationalist movements.

    the terrible inequalities in this world, where 1% of the world’s population has as much as 99% of the “rest”, or 62 billionaires own as much as 3.5 billion people, are the result of unrestricted and unbalanced freedom. We need to reinvent a balance between freedom and equality so as not to legitimize the inversion of freedom in the name of freedom by the aristocracy of property owners.

    Failed states, the wave of migrants and refugees around the world, climate catastrophes, and growing inequalities are the result of the “liquid modernity” that accompanies the dissolution of individual, community, and state identities. Ideologies did not dissolve with the end of the twentieth century or the advent of globalization but rather shifted from modern, utopian ideologies such as socialism and democracy and their aberrations such as Nazism and Stalinism to postmodern ones. The rise of postmodern ideologies such as Salafism is the result of globalization and the West’s refusal to recognize other civilizations and cultures. Moreover, the terrible inequalities in this world, where 1% of the world’s population has as much as 99% of the “rest”, or 62 billionaires own as much as 3.5 billion people, are the result of unrestricted and unbalanced freedom. We need to reinvent a balance between freedom and equality so as not to legitimize the inversion of freedom in the name of freedom by the aristocracy of property owners.

    In short, we propose the non-binary concepts of Clausewitzian floating equilibrium, Confucian harmony, and Arendtian politics of plurality as key ideas to avert and mitigate contemporary conflicts. Both Confucian harmony and Hanna Arendt’s concept of plurality are based on the harmonious relationship between different actors, or the floating balance of equality and difference, given that all human beings are similar enough to understand each other, but each is an individual endowed with uniqueness.

    Due to the speed and scale of information processing and transmission, the contemporary world is turning much faster than the commonly known modern world. If modernity is a temporal and spatial playground for rationality, the contemporary world is rather a playground for the mixture of the Clausewitzian trinity: reason, emotion, and chance. This means that while we would like to use reason in making decisions, we are often swamped by emotion and ultimately forced to take chances, given the short time frame available for any reasonable calculation and the ever-changing, chameleon-like internal and external environments. As an analyst of war, Clausewitz had long studied this trinity, for war, as a microcosm of human realities, is where reason, emotion, and chance play their respective roles.

    In this everyday situation of war, Clausewitz’s revived ideas can offer his posterity many valuable insights. All in all, Clausewitz diverts our attention from the unbalanced diet of the modernists in favour of rationality and offers a healthy recipe for analyzing contemporary problems where reason, emotion, and chance intersect, often with an unexpected outcome.

    No matter how powerful a single state may be, it will remain a minority compared to the rest of the world. In this globalized world, there would be no room for any kind of exceptionalism, American or Chinese, but only a floating balance between the world’s great civilizations.

    It is a choice between repeating the same mistake of forcibly imposing our own values on the rest of the world, as we did in the twentieth century, or embarking on a new civilizational project of harmony and co-prosperity. No matter how powerful a single state may be, it will remain a minority compared to the rest of the world. In this globalized world, there would be no room for any kind of exceptionalism, American or Chinese, but only a floating balance between the world’s great civilizations. Such a floating balance is a kind of mediation between the opposites of Huntington’s clash of civilizations on the one hand and the generalization of the values of only one civilization on the other. A mere multiplicity of approaches would only lead to a variant of the clash of civilizations. The first step in this direction is to recognize that in a globalized world, great civilizations must learn from each other for their own benefit and interest. If the values of the Western world lead to such terrible and immoral inequalities, we need to rethink our value systems – and if the concept of hierarchy in the Eastern world leads to violations of a harmoniously balanced society, we need to rethink those value systems as well. Whereas in classical Confucianism harmony was based on strict hierarchical oppositions, in a globalized world we need a floating balance between hierarchical and symmetrical social relations, combining Clausewitz and Confucius.

    Feature Image Credit: Storming of the Srirangapattinam Fort by the British. Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, 1799. Consolidation of colonialism and imperialism. www.mediastorehoise.com

  • From Civil Wars to Gang Wars

    From Civil Wars to Gang Wars

    Depending on the context, these uprooted and redundant young people can become terrorists, child soldiers, members of youth gangs that dominate the suburbs from Paris to Rio, drug cartels, mafia gangs, or human traffickers.

    With the end of the Cold War in 1991, interstate war seemed to have said goodbye. But even then, there was no end of history, as Francis Fukuyama had assumed. Instead, interstate war was largely replaced by wars of intervention in weak states and civil wars. At the latest since the war in Ukraine, however, interstate war is back on the agenda and a new arms race has begun – the wars of the present have been nationalized. What is often overlooked, however, is that civil wars have not completely ceased to exist but have been replaced by gang wars. This will be analyzed here using the example of South American gangs, but it applies equally to large parts of Africa, Iraq, or Southeast Asia.

    A Brief Review

    In order to analyze this, a brief review is necessary. After the fall of the USSR, a return to the Middle Ages was diagnosed in security policy, and a return to pre-modern weapon carriers such as child soldiers, warlords, and private security companies. After the attacks of September 11, the fight against a new totalitarianism, this time Islamist, seemed imminent, and the “war on terror” was proclaimed. Meanwhile, China and Russia have re-emerged as serious rivals to the U.S., at least militarily, and a new arms race is on the horizon. The U.S. has been weakened by its lost wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which even the much-vaunted and overestimated military-technological revolution could not stop.

    While in the 19th century the Western states conquered the whole world, in the 20th century the defeated empires and civilizations had to learn to live with the victorious West, and now the resurgent empires and the West have to learn to live with each other.

    Are there long-term trends in this rapid succession of different experiences and analyses of violent events? Two immediately come to mind: the “rise of the others,” as the influential US columnist Fareed Zakaria has called it, that is, the resurgence of the great empires and civilizations submerged by European colonization and US hegemony. These are primarily China and India, but also Russia and the littoral states of the North Pacific. In short, world affairs are shifting from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific. Whereas the entire 20th century was dominated by the North Atlantic littoral states (with the exception of Japan), in the 21st century there are at least two such centers: the North Atlantic littoral states and the North Pacific littoral states.  Here, the United States has the unbeatable geostrategic advantage of being located on both oceans. These former great empires and civilizations have almost one goal: to no longer be considered underdeveloped or backward by the states of the West, but as equals. While in the 19th century the Western states conquered the whole world, in the 20th century the defeated empires and civilizations had to learn to live with the victorious West, and now the resurgent empires and the West have to learn to live with each other.

    more and more people are becoming aware that Western modernity has a Janus face.   What is the hallmark of Western modernity: human rights, democracy and the emancipation of women, or colonialism, racism, two world wars?

    While until well into the 20th century many assumptions were that the values of Western modernity would spread throughout the world, more and more people are becoming aware that Western modernity has a Janus face.   What is the hallmark of Western modernity: human rights, democracy and the emancipation of women, or colonialism, racism, two world wars? And even Auschwitz was not carried out by “barbarians” but by the Germans, of all people, who are often associated abroad with Goethe, Schiller, Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart.  The opposing interpretations either argue that this is regrettable but has nothing to do with the nature of the West. And conversely, critics of the West argue just as one-sidedly that Western values are just empty words, and that the reality of Western politics is characterized by colonialism and racism. And Donald Trump’s current polemic against female Democratic Party politicians with immigrant backgrounds is racist, colonialist, and hostile to women. And the fact that there has been no outcry from the liberal West against this polemic may even indicate a concealed complicity because we Europeans also come to terms with racist and colonialist stereotypes. Donald Trump’s racism can be summed up in the simple formula: Make America white again. People of a different skin color or origin are only tolerated as long as they fit into the new hierarchy.

    Racist polemics like those of the new right in Europe, of White Power in the U.S., or even of Bolsonaro’s movement in Brazil can really only be understood against a backdrop of fundamental insecurity and grievance. The West feels deeply offended that the “others” who were always seen as less developed no longer want to copy it, and full of fear that they could even overtake the West. Fear rules the politics of the West, fear of the end of its feeling of superiority and of the fact that nothing could then be left if one no longer feels superior to the others.  Freely according to the motto: I am nothing, I can do nothing, but I am German – and this shows its ugly grimace in hate speech and violent outbursts. But we are not alone in this respect. For alongside the resurgence of the Others, which is significant in terms of world politics, civil wars around the world are turning into gang wars – the political community is disintegrating into ever new gangs. This has not been adequately perceived in the West until today because we have not been able to describe this process adequately with our conceptual system. In Western thought, the paradigm of Thomas Hobbes from the 17th century is still valid. It states that in a theoretically constructed state of nature, which always occurs when there is no longer a functioning state, the “state of nature” of the “war of all against all” occurs. In this conception, everyone is absolutely free and has a right to everything he can take, provided he has the power to do so. This life, however, according to Hobbes, is full of violence and fear eats the soul. To overcome this self-destructive “state of nature,” all individuals transfer all violence to a single sovereign, who in return provides them with protection and security. In this simple construction the modern state was born, secured by the state monopoly of violence. Here, only the state has a right to legitimately exercise violence, and non-state violence is criminalized.

    Gang Wars

    What is not included in this construction are gangs – groups of mostly young men left over from the civil wars since the end of the Cold War, uprooted in the refugee movements, or who have lost their identity in the dramatic transformation process we trivialize as globalization. Depending on the context, these uprooted and redundant young people can become terrorists, child soldiers, members of youth gangs that dominate the suburbs from Paris to Rio, drug cartels, mafia gangs, or human traffickers. The context varies, but the cause is the same everywhere: these young people feel marginalized, superfluous, and uprooted. Approaches that have analyzed related global violence have almost always emphasized individual violence or violent enrichment. Of course, there are civil war economies, markets of violence, and state collapse, including “new wars” (Kaldor and Münkler) characterized by the privatization and economization of violence and asymmetric warfare against the weakest in societies. In such markets of violence, people are traded first and foremost, and about 79% of them are women and children, but also weapons, drugs, rare earths, and the well-known blood diamonds as a synonym for precious stones. In many countries, however, violent gangs play at least as large a role.

    A characteristic feature of these gangs is that they are not exclusively concerned with private enrichment through violence, but paradoxically give their members a sense of identity and even home through their violence. This paradox is not provided for in our conceptual system for understanding violence.  Islamist terrorism can in no way be attributed to the pursuit of material interests. It is true that the Islamic State also used oil and that the Taliban dominate the opium trade in the Golden Crescent between Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This only proves that there is a link between political and economic struggles, not that the struggles for recognition and identity in these organizations are economically determined. This means that there is still a link between violence and the market, perhaps it has just become more “invisible”, more visible at the micro level. Macro-violence, on the other hand, is increasingly characterized by struggles for identity and recognition.

    If we say there is a transition to a global war of all against all, I think there is a global transition to gang wars. These may or may not be youth gangs. Drug cartels and mafia organizations can also be based on gang structures. Of course, economic interests play an important role here, but I doubt that cohesion is guaranteed by economic interests alone. One example is the Japanese Yakuza. What are gangs?  A gang is a group that originally formed spontaneously and socializes and integrates its members through fighting and conflict. Typical behaviors include meeting in person, hanging out and occupying public space, traveling in a group, and having a high propensity for conflict – such as rocker groups.

    Many children, adolescents, and young adults in Central and South America are active members of youth gangs called “maras” or “pandillas”.

    The result of this behavior is the development of a distinct tradition, an unreflective internal structure, an esprit de corps, paradoxically solidarity and morality within the group, and a sense of belonging to a unified territory.  The leader must constantly maintain a threatening gesture against his own and also constantly rekindle the waning enthusiasm of his followers; in other words, respect for him must be constantly maintained. Many children, adolescents, and young adults in Central and South America are active members of youth gangs called “maras” or “pandillas”.

    After the end of the civil wars in Nicaragua in 1990, El Salvador in 1992, and Guatemala in 1996, there was a forced migration of illegal immigrants from the U.S. to their home countries, including the deportation of Central American-born members of street gangs formed in the U.S. to their parents’ home countries.  These young people had fled poverty and civil war, formed criminal gangs (maras) primarily on the West Coast of the U.S., and were now forced to return to their home countries, which they may never have seen. Back in Latin America, the mareros regrouped and received a large influx of both young people looking for direction and demobilized security forces and guerrillas (there were about 40,000 of them at the time).

    The most important aspects of a Latin American gang member’s life are honor, drugs, and violence. This is what a pandillero’s entire daily life revolves around, and in most cases, it also determines the when, how, and why of his death. In the gangs, there is a certain code of honor that states that gang solidarity and reputation are more important than anything else.  In a sense, the honor of the gang becomes the transcendence of the members, as the collective as such is religiously exalted and the individual counts for less and less. The individual is obligated to kill unconditionally for the honor of the group or die himself. There is also a paradoxical construction in another point: on the one hand, there is an absolute hierarchy, on the other hand, there is a feeling of being a gang: “We rule the barrio so that no one tells us what to do. If someone does, we silence them. You submit because we are many. We young people rule.  The response of the pandillero in a world where he is nothing is to attack, to dominate the barrio, to submit because he is submitted, to define a territory because he lives in uprootedness, to join an institution that gives identity because he lacks it. The pandillero strives to dominate in an environment that excludes him.

    Whoever belongs to a pandilla must not only master the exercise of violence, but must also be able to accept the suffering of violence. The initiation rituals for men and women are different: men must allow themselves to be beaten by existing members of the gang for a certain period of time, which varies from gang to gang, while women must allow themselves to be raped by any member of the gang. The unimaginable extent of violence in Central American youth gangs is an indication that gangs cannot be attributed to interests alone, for although these interests may be predominant in the exercise of violence, they are unlikely to play a role in voluntary submission to the group, self-sacrifice for it, and endurance of violence. Rather, the recognition by group members of having endured violence is the central aspect of one’s identity and loyalty to the gang. This is the too often overlooked connection between the wars of states and parastatal organizations (IS, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards) and the violence that takes place on a mass but individual level (Hobbes, war of all against all). They cannot be attributed to either level, but are the intermediate realm, the hybrid between the two.

    Feature Image: Salvadoran left wing revolutionary group Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front

  • Clausewitz and Sun Tzu – Paradigms of Warfare in the 21st Century

    Clausewitz and Sun Tzu – Paradigms of Warfare in the 21st Century

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    “No principle in the world is always right, and no thing is always wrong. What was used yesterday may be rejected today, what is rejected now may be used later on. This use or disuse has no fixed right or wrong. To avail yourself of opportunities at just the right time, responding to events without being set in your ways is in the domain of wisdom. If your wisdom is insufficient (…) you’lle come to an impasse wherever you go.”

    –  Taostic Text

    Every war has its own strategy and also its own theorist. In fact, there are only two great theorists of war and warfare, the Prussian “philosopher of war” Carl von Clausewitz, and the ancient Chinese theorist of the “art of war”, Sun Tzu. Nevertheless, there is no single strategy that applies equally to all cases, i.e., not even Clausewitz’s or Sun Tzu’s. Often an explanation for success or failure is sought in the strategies used only in retrospect. For example, Harry G. Summers (Summers 1982) attributed the defeat of the United States in the Vietnam War to the failure to take into account the unity of people, army, and government, Clausewitz’s “wondrous trinity.” In contrast, after the successful campaign against Iraq in 1991, the then Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, Colin Powell, appeared before the press with Clausewitz’s Book of War and signaled, see, we learned from the mistakes of the Vietnam War and won the Iraq War with Clausewitz (Herberg-Rothe 2007). Similarly, after World War I, there was a discourse that amounted to if the German generals had read Clausewitz correctly, the war would not have been lost. This position referred to the victory of the German forces in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and the assessment of the then Chief of General Staff, Helmut von Moltke, that he was able to fight this war successfully by studying Clausewitz’s “On War.” Since then, Clausewitz’s book has been searched for reasons for victory or defeat (Herberg-Rothe 2007).

    If Clausewitz’s status seemed unchallenged after the Iraq war in 1991, it was gradually questioned and often replaced by Sun Tzu. Two reasons played a role here – on the one hand, the new forms of non-state violence and, on the other, the new technological possibilities, the revolution in military affais (RMA), which is far from being completed. In particular, robotic and hybrid warfare, as well as the incorporation of artificial intelligence, that of space, and the development of quantum computers. The trigger of the change from Clausewitz to Sun Tzu was a seemingly new form of war, the so-called “New Wars”, which in the strict sense were not new at all, but are civil wars or those of non-state groups. In the view of the epoch-making theorist of the “New Wars”, Mary Kaldor (Kaldor 2000, much more differentiated Münkler 2002), interstate war was replaced by non-state wars, which were characterized by special cruelty of the belligerents. These weapon bearers, seemingly a return to the past, were symbolized by child soldiers, warlords, drug barons, archaic fighters, terrorists, and common criminals who were stylized as freedom fighters (Herberg-Rothe 2017).

    Since Sun Tzu lived in a time of perpetual civil wars in China, his “art of war” seemed more applicable to intrastate war, (McNeilley 2001) while Clausewitz’s conception was attributed to interstate war. In combating these new weapons carriers and the “markets of violence,” civil war economies, or “spaces open to violence” associated with them, Napoleon’s guiding principle was applied: “Only partisans help against partisans” (Herberg-Rothe 2017). Accordingly, conceptions of warfare were developed by John Keegan and Martin van Creveld, for example, that amounted to an archaic warrior with state-of-the-art technologies (Keegan 1995, van Creveld 1991). On the military level, the transformation of parts of the Western armed forces as well as the Bundeswehr from a defensive army to an intervention army took place. In contrast to the United States, the Bundeswehr placed greater emphasis on pacifying civil society in these civil war economies, and ideally the soldier became a social worker in uniform (Bredow 2006).

    The battle was fought by highly professional special forces in complex conflict areas. The initial success of the U.S. Army in Afghanistan can be attributed to the use of such special forces, which, as a result of modern communications capabilities, were able to engage superior U.S. airpower at any time. Because interstate warfare has returned to the forefront with the Ukraine war, Clausewitz may regain relevance in the coming years – unless the controversial concepts of hybrid warfare, John Boyd’s OODA loop, or NATO’s comprehensive approach gain further influence. At their core, these are based on non-state warfare by states, thus enabling a renaissance of Sun Tzu.

    However, the paradigm shift from Clausewitz to Sun Tzu became even clearer during the Second Iraq war in 2003. From the perspective of one commentator, this campaign was won in just a few weeks because the U.S. army was guided by Sun Tzu’s principles, while Saddam Hussein’s Russian advisors adhered to Clausewitz and Moscow’s defense against Napoleon (Macan 2003/Peters 2003). Before the fall of Afghanistan, former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis brought up the Clausewitz/Sun Tzu distinction anew. “The Army was always big on Clausewitz, the Prussian; the Navy on Alfred Thayer Mahan, the American; and the Air Force on Giulio Douhet, the Italian. But the Marine Corps has always been more Eastern-oriented. I am much more comfortable with Sun-Tzu and his approach to warfare.” (Mattis 2008).

    Without fully following this distinction, it gives us hints that we cannot find absolutely valid approaches in Clausewitz’s and Sun Tzu’s conceptions, but differentiations in warfare. If we simplify the difference between the two, Clausewitz’s approach is more comparable to wrestling (Clausewitz 1991, 191), while Sun Tzu’s is comparable to jiu-jitsu. The difference between the two becomes even clearer when comparing Clausewitz’s conception to a boxing match. The goal is to render the opponent incapable of fighting (Clausewitz 1991, 191) by striking his body, as Clausewitz himself points out, thereby forcing him to make any peace. In contrast, Sun Tzu’s goal is to unbalance his opponent so that even a light blow will force him to the ground because he will be brought down by his own efforts. Of course, all two aspects play a major role in both Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, but Clausewitz’s strategy relates more to the body, the material means available to the war opponents, Sun Tzu’s strategy more to the mind, the will to fight. Both strategies have also often been conceptualized as the antithesis of direct and indirect strategy – in direct strategy, two more or less similar opponents fight on a delineated battlefield with roughly equal weapons and “measure their strength” – in indirect strategy, on the other hand, attempts are made, for example, to disrupt the enemy’s supply of food and weapons or to break the will of the opposing population to continue supporting the war. Examples of this in World War II would be the tank battles for symmetric and the bombing of German cities and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an example of asymmetric warfare. Non-state warfare is also asymmetrically structured in nearly all cases, as it is primarily directed against the enemy civilian population (Wassermann 2015). Perhaps asymmetric warfare was most evident in the Yom Kippur War between Israel and the Egyptian army. The latter had indeed surprised Israel and managed to overrun Israeli positions along the Suez Canal. However, instead of giving the Egyptian army a tank battle in the Sinai, a relatively small group of tanks set back across the Suez Canal and in the back of the Egyptian army, cutting it off from the water supply, forcing the Egyptian army to surrender within a few days (Herberg-Rothe 2017).

    This distinction between Clausewitz and Sun Tzu can be contradicted insofar as Clausewitz begins with a “definition” of war in which the will plays a major role and which states that war is an act of violence to force the opponent to fulfill our will (Clausewitz 1991, 191). But how is the opponent forced to do this in Clausewitz’s conception? A few pages further on it says by destroying the opponent’s forces. By this concept of annihilation, however, he does not understand physical destruction in the narrower sense, but to put the armed forces of the opponent in such a state that they can no longer continue the fight (Clausewitz 1991 215).

    Sun Tzu

    Sun Tzu’s approach relates more directly to the enemy’s thinking. “The greatest achievement is to break the enemy’s resistance without a fight” (Sunzi 1988, 35). Accordingly, Basil Liddell Hart later formulated, “Paralyzing the enemy’s nervous system is a more economical form of operation than blows to the enemy’s body.” (Liddel Hart, 281). Sun Tzu’s methodical thinking aims at a dispassionate assessment of the strategic situation and thus at achieving inner distance from events as a form of objectivity. This approach is rooted in Taoism, and in it the presentation of paradoxes is elevated to a method. Although the “Art of War” contains a number of seemingly unambiguous doctrines and rules of thumb, they cannot be combined into a consistent body of thought.

    In this way, Sun Tsu confronts his readers (who are also his students) with thinking tasks that must be solved. Often these tasks take the form of the paradoxical. This becomes quite obvious in the following central paradox: “To fight and win in all your battles is not the greatest achievement. The greatest achievement is to break the enemy’s resistance without a fight.”(Sun Tzu). In clear contradiction to the rest of the book, which deals with warfare, Sun Tsu here formulates the ideal of victory without a battle and thus comes very close to the ideal of hybrid warfare, in which possible battle is only one of several options.

    Obviously, he wants to urge his readers to carefully consider whether a war should be waged and, if so, under what conditions. It is consistent with this that Sun Tsu repeatedly reflects on the economy of war, on its economic and social costs, and at the same time refers to the less expensive means of warfare: cunning, deception, forgery, and spies. Victory without combat is thus the paradox with which Sun Tsu seeks to minimize the costs of an unavoidable conflict, limit senseless violence and destruction, and point to the unintended effects.

    The form of the paradox is used several times in the book, for example when Sun Tsu recommends performing deceptive maneuvers whenever possible; this contradicts his statement that information about the opponent can be obtained accurately and used effectively – at least when the opponent is also skilled in deceptive maneuvers or is also able to see through the deceptions of his opponent. This contradiction stands out particularly glaringly when one considers that Sun Tsu repeatedly emphasizes the importance of knowledge, for example when he says: “If you know the enemy and yourself, there is no doubt about your victory; if you know heaven and earth, then your victory will be complete” (Sunzi 1988, 211). In a situation in which one must assume that the other person also strives to know as much as possible, this sentence can only be understood as a normative demand, as an ideal: Knowledge becomes power when it represents a knowledge advantage, as Michel Foucault has emphasized in more recent times: For him, knowledge is power. Cunning, deception, and the flow of information, even when they are not absolutely necessary, are, however, in danger of becoming ends in themselves, because they alone guarantee an advantage in knowledge. Information, then, is the gold and oil of the 21st century.

    The presentation of paradoxes is not an inadequacy for Sun Tsu, but the procedure by which he instructs his readers/students. In contrast to the theoretical designs of many Western schools, Sun Tsu relies here on non-directive learning: the paradox demands active participation from the reader, mirrors to him his structure of thinking, and makes him question the suitability of his own point of view in thinking through the position of the opponent. Sun Tsu thereby forces his recipients to constantly examine the current situation and to frequently reflect. By repetitively thinking through paradoxical contradictions, the actor gains the inner distance and detachment from the conflict that are necessary for an impersonal, objectifying view of events. By being confronted with paradoxes, the reader learns to simultaneously adopt very different points of view, to play through the given variants, to form an understanding for the contradictions of real situations, and at the same time to make decisions as rationally as possible. In this way, the text encourages people not to rely on the doctrines it formulates as positive knowledge about conflict strategies, but to practice repeated and ever new thinking through as a method. Sun Tzu’s approach is thus characterized by highlighting paradoxes of warfare by designing strategies of action through reflection aimed at influencing the thinking of the opponent.

    Elective Affinities with Mao Tse-tung

    The conception of the “people’s war” by the Chinese revolutionary Mao Tse-Tung is a further development of that of Sun Tzu and the dialectical thinking of Marx and Engels. At the same time, in these paradoxes, he tries to provide an assessment and analysis of the situation that is as objective-scientific as possible, linking it to subjective experience: “Therefore, the objects of study and cognition include both the enemy’s situation and our own situation, these two sides must be considered as objects of investigation, while only our brain (thought) is the investigating object” (Mao 1970, 26).

    The comprehensive analyses that Mao prefaces each of his treatises have two purposes: On the one hand, they serve as sober, objective investigations before and during the clashes, which are intended to ensure rational predictions of what will happen and are based on reliable information and the most precise planning. On the other hand, Mao uses them to achieve the highest level of persuasion and to mobilize his followers through politicization. Not for nothing are terms like “explain,” “persuade,” “discuss,” and “convince” constantly repeated in his writings, since the people’s war he propagates requires unconditional loyalty and high morale.

    Mao repeatedly demonstrates thinking in interdependent opposites, which can be understood as a military adaptation of the Chinese concept of Yin and Yang. His precise analyses demonstrate dialectical reversals; thus he can show that in strength is hidden weakness and in weakness is hidden strength. According to this thinking, in every disadvantage an advantage can be found, and in every disadvantage an advantage. An example of this is his explanation of the dispersion of forces: while conventional strategies proclaim the concentration of forces (as does Clausewitz, Clausewitz 1991, 468), Mao relies on dispersion. This approach confuses the opponent and creates the illusion of the omnipresence of his opponent.

    Mao understands confrontations as reciprocal interactions and, from this perspective, is able to weigh the relationship between concentration and dispersion differently: “Performing a mock maneuver in the East, but undertaking the attack in the West” (Mao 1970, 372) means to bind the attention of the opponent, but at the same time to become active where the opponent least expects it. Mao’s method of dialectically seeking out weakness in strength and strength in weakness leads him to the flexibility that is indispensable for confronting a stronger opponent.

    Finally, it is the ruthless analysis of one’s own mistakes that bring Mao to his guiding principles; from a series of sensitive defeats, he concluded, “The aim of war consists in nothing other than ‘self-preservation and the destruction of the enemy’ (to destroy the enemy means to disarm him or ‘deprive him of his power of resistance,’ but not to physically destroy him to the last man)” (Mao 1970, 349). On this point, Mao Tse Tung is in complete agreement with Clausewitz. Mao also clarifies this core proposition by defining the concept of self-preservation dialectically – namely, as an amalgamation of opposites: “Sacrifice and self-preservation are opposites that condition each other. For such sacrifices are not only necessary in order to preserve one’s own forces-a partial and temporary failure to preserve oneself (the sacrifice or payment of the price) is indispensable if the whole is to be preserved for the long run” (Mao 1970, 175).

    Sun Tzu problems

    Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” as well as the theorists of network-centric warfare and 4th and 5th generation warfare focus on military success but miss the political dimension with regard to the post-war situation. They underestimate the process of transforming military success into real victory (Macan 2003, Peters 2003, Echevarria 2005). The three core elements of Sun Tzu’s strategy could not be easily applied in our time: Deceiving the opponent in general risks deceiving one’s own population as well, which would be problematic for any democracy. An indirect strategy in general would weaken deterrence against an adversary who can act quickly and decisively. Focusing on influencing the will and mind of the adversary may enable him to avoid a fight and merely resume it at a later time under more favorable conditions.

    Sun Tzu is probably more likely to win battles and even campaigns than Clausewitz, but it is difficult to win a war by following his principles. The reason is that Sun Tzu was never interested in shaping the political conditions after the war, because he lived in a time of seemingly never-ending civil wars. The only imperative for him was to survive while paying the lowest possible price and avoiding fighting, because even a successful battle against one enemy could leave you weaker when the moment came to fight the next. As always in history, when people want to emphasize the differences with Clausewitz, the similarities between the two approaches are neglected. For example, the approach in Sun Tzu’s chapter on “Swift Action to Overcome Resistance” would be quite similar to the approach advocated by Clausewitz and practiced by Napoleon. The main problem, however, is that Sun Tzu neglects the strategic perspective of shaping postwar political-social relations and their impact “by calculation” (Clausewitz 1991, 196) on the conduct of the war. As mentioned earlier, this was not a serious issue for Sun Tzu and his contemporaries, but it is one of the most important aspects of warfare in our time (Echevarria 2005¸ Lonsdale 2004).

    Finally, one must take into account that Sun Tzu’s strategy is likely to be successful against opponents with a very weak order of forces or associated community, such as warlord systems and dictatorships, which were common opponents in his time. His book is full of cases where relatively simple actions against the order of the opposing army or its community lead to disorder on the part of the opponent until they are disbanded or lose their will to fight altogether. Such an approach can obviously be successful with opponents who have weak armed forces and a weak social base but is likely to prove problematic with more entrenched opponents.

    Here, the Ukraine war could be a cautionary example. Apparently, the Russian military leadership and the political circle around Putin were convinced that this war, like the intervention in Crimea, would end quickly, because neither the resistance of the Ukrainian population nor its army was expected, nor the will of the Western states to support Ukraine militarily. To put it pointedly, one could say that in the second Iraq war, Sun Tzu triumphed over Clausewitz, but in the Ukraine war Clausewitz triumphed over Sun Tzu. This also shows that while wars in an era of hybrid globalization (Herberg-Rothe 2020) necessarily also take on a hybrid character, it is much more difficult to successfully practice hybrid warfare-such a conflation of opposites is strategically at odds with those writings of Clausewitz in which he generalizes the principles of Napoleonic warfare, though not with his determination of defense. The Ukraine war can even be seen as evidence of the greater strength of defense as postulated by Clausewitz (Herberg-Rothe 2007).

    And Clausewitz?

    At first glance, Clausewitz’s position is not compatible with that of Sun Tzu. In his world-famous formula of the continuation of war by other means (Clausewitz 1991, 210), Clausewitz takes a hierarchical position, with politics determining the superior end. Immediately before this formula, however, he writes that politics will pervade the entire warlike act, but only insofar as the nature of the forces exploding within it permits (Clausewitz 1991, ibid.). By this statement, he relativizes the heading of the 24th chapter, which contains the world-famous formula. In addition, all headings of the first chapter, with the exception of the result for the theory, the final conclusion of the first chapter, were written in the handwriting of Marie von Clausewitz, while only the actual text was written by Clausewitz (Herberg-Rothe 2023, on the discovery of the manuscript by Paul Donker).

    The tension only implicit in the formula becomes even clearer in the “wondrous trinity,” Clausewitz’s “result for the theory” of war. Here he writes that war is not only a true chameleon, because it changes its nature somewhat in each concrete case, but a wondrous trinity. This is composed of the original violence of war, hatred, and enmity, which can be seen as a blind natural instinct, the game of probabilities and chance, and war as an instrument of politics, whereby war falls prey to mere reason. Violence, hatred, and enmity like a blind natural instinct on the one side, and mere understanding on the other, this is the decisive contrast in Clausewitz’s wondrous trinity. For Clausewitz, all three tendencies of the wondrous trinity are inherent in every war; their different composition is what makes wars different (Clausewitz 1991, 213, Herberg-Rothe 2009).

    While Clausewitz formulates a clear hierarchy between the end, aim, and means of war in the initial definition and the world-famous formula, the wondrous trinity is characterized by a principled equivalence of the three tendencies of war’s violence, the inherent struggle and its instrumentality. At its core, Clausewitz’s wondrous trinity is a hybrid determination of war, which is why the term “paradoxical trinity” is more often used in English versions. In his determination of the three interactions to the extreme, made at the beginning of the book, Clausewitz emphasizes the problematic nature of the escalation of violence in the war due to its becoming independent, because the use of force develops its own dynamics (Clausewitz 1991, 192-193, Herberg-Rothe 2007 and 2017). The three interactions have often been misunderstood as mere guides to action, but they are more likely to be considered as escalation dynamics in any war. This is particularly evident in escalation sovereignty in war – the side gains an advantage that can outbid the use of force. However, this outbidding of the adversary (Herberg-Rothe 2001) brings with it the problem of violence taking on a life of its own. This creates a dilemma, which Clausewitz expresses in the wondrous trinity.

    This dilemma between the danger of violence becoming independent and its rational application gives rise to the problem formulated at the outset, namely that there cannot be a single strategy applicable to all cases, but that a balance of opposites is required (Herberg-Rothe 2014). In it, the primacy of politics is emphasized, but at the same time, this primacy is constructed as only one of three opposites of equal rank. Thus, Clausewitz’s conception of the wondrous trinity is also to be understood as a paradox, a dilemma, and a hybrid.

    As already observed in ethics, there are different ways to deal with such dilemmas (Herberg-Rothe 2011). One is to make a hierarchy between opposites. Here, particular mention should be made of the conception of trinitarian war, which was wrongly attributed to Clausewitz by Harry Summers and Martin van Creveld and was one of the causes of Clausewitz being considered obsolete by Mary Kaldor regarding the “New Wars.” For in the conception of trinitarian war, the balance of three equal tendencies emphasized by Clausewitz is explicitly transformed into a hierarchy of government, army, and people/population. Even if it should be noted that this interpretation was favored by a faulty translation in which Clausewitz’s notion of “mere reason” was transformed into the phrase “belongs to reason alone” (Clausewitz 1984), the problem is systematically conditioned. For one possible way of dealing with action dilemmas is such a hierarchization or what Niklas Luhmann called “functional differentiation”. We find a corresponding functional differentiation in all modern armies – Clausewitz himself had developed such a differentiation in his conception of the “Small War”, which was not understood as an opposition to the “Great War”, but as its supporting element. In contrast, Clausewitz developed the contrast to the “Great War” between states in the “People’s War” (Herberg-Rothe 2007).

    A second way of dealing with dilemmas of action is to draw a line up to which one principle applies and above which the other applies – that is, different principles would apply to state warfare than to “people’s war,” guerrilla warfare, the war against terrorists, warlords, wars of intervention in general. This was, for example, the proposal of Martin van Creveld and Robert Kaplan, who argued that in war against non-state groups, the laws of the jungle must apply, not those of “civilized” state war (van Creveld 1998, Kaplan 2002). In contrast, there are also approaches that derive the uniformity of war from the ends, aims, means relation, arguing that every war, whether state war or people’s war, has these three elements and that wars differ only in which ends are to be realized by which opponents with which means (I assume that this is the position of the Clausewitz-orthodoxy). It must be conceded that Clausewitz is probably inferior to Sun Tzu in practical terms with regard to the “art of warfare” – because in parts of his work, he gave the word to a one-sided absolutization of Napoleon’s warfare – while only in the book on defense did he develop a more differentiated strategy (Herberg-Rothe 2007, Herberg-Rothe 2014). Perhaps one could say that Sun Tzu is more relevant to tactics, whereas Clausewitz has the upper hand in strategy (Herberg-Rothe 2014).

    Summary

    If we return to the beginning, Clausewitz is the (practical) philosopher of war (Herberg-Rothe 2022), while Sun Tzu focuses on the “art of warfare”. As is evident in the hybrid war of the present, due to technological developments and the process I have labeled hybrid globalization (Herberg-Rothe 2020), every war can be characterized as a hybrid. However, as is currently evident in the Ukraine War, the designation of war as a hybrid is different from successful hybrid warfare. This is because hybrid warfare necessarily combines irreconcilable opposites. This mediation of opposites (Herberg-Rothe 2005) requires political prudence as well as the skill of the art of war. The ideal-typical opposition of both is correct in itself, if we provide these opposites with a “more” in each case, not an exclusive “or”.

    Clausewitz’s conception is “more” related to

    “politics, one’s own material possibilities and those of the opponent, a direct strategy, and that of the late Clausewitz on a relative symmetry of the combatants and the determination of war as an instrument. This can be illustrated with a boxing match in which certain blows are allowed or forbidden (conventions of war), the battlefield and the time of fighting remain delimited (declaration of war, conclusion of peace)”.

    Sun Tzu’s conception, on the other hand, refers to more

    “directly on the military opponent, his thinking and “nervous system” (Liddel-Heart), an indirect strategy (because a direct strategy in his time would have resulted in a weakening of one’s own position even if successful), and a relative asymmetry of forms of combat”.

    Despite this ideal-typical construction, every war is characterized by a combination of these opposites. Consequently, the question is neither about an “either-or” nor a pure “both-and,” but involves the question of which strategy is the appropriate one in a concrete situation. To some extent, we must also distinguish in Clausewitz’s conception of politics between a purely hierarchical understanding and a holistic construction. Put simply, the former conception is addressed in the relationship between political and military leadership; in the latter, any violent action by communities is per se a political one (Echevarria 2005, Herberg-Rothe 2009). From a purely hierarchical perspective, it poses no problem to emphasize the primacy of politics in a de-bounded, globalized world with Clausewitz. If, on the other hand, in a holistic perspective all warlike actions are direct expressions of politics, the insoluble problem arises of how limited warfare could be possible in a de-bounded world.

    This raises the question of which of the two, Clausewitz or Sun Tzu, will be referred to more in the strategic debates of the future. In my view, this depends on the role that information technologies, quantum computers, artificial intelligence, drones, and the development of autonomous robotic systems will play in the future – in simple terms, the role that thought and the “soul” will play in comparison to material realities in a globalized world. The Ukraine war arguably shows an overestimation of the influence of thought and soul (identity) on a community like Ukraine, but with respect to autocratic states like Russia and China, possibly an underestimation, at least temporarily, of the possibilities of manipulating the population through the new technologies. Regardless of the outcome of the war, the argument about Clausewitz and/or Sun Tzu will continue as an endless story – but this should not proceed as a mere repetition of dogmatic arguments, but rather answer the question of which of the two is the better approach can be taken in which concrete situation.

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